Coming Clean

One of my good friends (who had removed herself from The Almighty Networking Tool that is FACEBOOK) recently posted this resolution on her blog:

"I want to try to connect and stay in touch with friends and loved ones better, whether through phone calls, visits, letters, or what have you. I am particularly rich and blessed in friends; I want to stay that way and I want them to know it."

I was just thinking the other day that we have all of these gadgets and apps that are supposed to help us "stay connected" with other people, and yet I know that I often feel more lonely now than I ever have in my life before. I am thinking that this year, I am going to try to go back to the tradition I had in Jr High and High School of writing letters--honest to goodness handwritten letters--once a week. I saw a play last year, called "Love Letters" that was, as you might guess, about letters that two people wrote back and forth to each other through their lives. It was a good (but sad) story, and one of the letters in the play was very touching to me. One part of it went like this:

"I love writing letters to the newspaper, notes to my friends, Christmas cards, anything where I have to put down words. I love writing you. You most of all. I always have. I feel like a true lover when I'm writing to you. This letter, which I'm writing with my own hand, with my own pen, in my own penmanship, comes from me and no one else, and it is a present of myself to you. It's not typewritten, though I've learned how to type. There's no copy of it, though I suppose I could use a carbon. And it's not a telephone call, which is dead as soon as it is over. No, this is just me, me the way I write, the way my writing is, the way I want to be to you, giving myself to you across a distance, not keeping or retaining any part of it for myself, giving this piece of myself to you totally, and you can tear me up and throw me out, or keep me, and read me today, tomorrow, any time you want until you die."
--Love Letters, by A.R. Gurney--

I would like to refocus my efforts to keep in touch better. I was trying, at first, to do it on my blog, but I feel like sometimes I can't blog honestly about how my life is going without being judged or willfully misunderstood by some of my readers. Life isn't pretty and wonderful all the time, but people don't want to hear that, you know? They want to hear that things are beautiful and that your dreams have come true and happiness is a state that can last forever and ever, and if you give them a glimpse of reality they want to tear you down and say that it's just because you're doing something wrong. I don't know...maybe I'm just talking about my judgements of myself and projecting them onto said "readers."

Things have been really hard since I moved here. I think I have always had this belief that if you were doing the right thing, that everything would just magically work out for you, and that has NOT been true of my move here. Every step has been hard, and very often my life feels like a line from a Metallica song:

"Then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel
Was just a freight train coming your way"

There is a lot of beauty here, and there are a lot of really wonderful people, and I really would encourage anyone who is thinking about visiting me to come visit some time, because I think you would really love it. The other side of that reality, though, is that I am so overworked that I'm just constantly exhausted. When I signed the contract to come here, I was going to be the 4th doctor in the clinic, (4 docs and 3 PAs) and less than a month after I got here, two doctors left, so now there is only myself and one other doctor covering OB and a hospital inpatient service 24-7 as well as keeping a clinic open 7 days a week from 8 am to 8 pm. One of our PAs also just quit, so now we only have 2 PAs, and they aren't allowed to do hospital work, so that means, essentially, I am on call 24 hours a day 3-4 days a week (in a row) and also work in clinic 4 days a week for at least 11 hours a day, but often more like 14 hours by the time I get all the charting done and refill requests refilled and messages answered and workmans' comp papers filled out, etc. I get no financial compensation at all for the extra hours I work, or for being on call and doing hospital work, and I just found out that I didn't get my loan repayment this year, but I am "strongly encouraged" to reapply for next year.
I feel like I'm owning up to my end of the deal, but no one is coming through for me--no one is looking out for my well being...and, I don't know, does that mean I made a mistake in coming here? Does it mean I should throw in the towel and just move back to Utah and take a job with Dr. Wade in Bountiful and take the "grass is greener easy way out" because if something is hard, then it's because it isn't the right thing to do? Or is there a reason for me to be here, as I felt there was, and it just isn't going to pretty and easy all the time? It's hard for me to sort it out for myself, let alone try and explain it on a public forum...

Anyway. Thank you for being there, loving and supportive. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here to witness my coming clean about my dirty little secret: My life isn't beautiful and perfect all the time. Maybe not even the majority of the time...

In other news, I have joined a quilting class, so my Turner genes are very thrilled right now. I've only had one class so far, and I'm pretty sure I am in WAY over my head and should have started with the beginner class first, but this was the only one that would fit my schedule. I'm going to blog more about this project soon, and will also be updating you on my "Doing Adam" project, so, stay tuned. =)
Cheers.