better be home soon

I feel this big shift. It happens, not commonly, but it happens, in time. The plates move, and the tides turn. I hit a real low recently and thought I had made a lot of bad decisions in my life - maybe it was time to regret everything, and give into the very real temptation to wallow in misery.

Unhappiness is not the same for everyone, it really isn't. For me, it's not a sustainable condition. When I really feel unhappy, really (not ennui, not melancholy, not a moment of navel-gazing overanalyzing), I cannot be in that state for very long. It is not productive, it's almost paralytic. Yet it's also not, because it pushes me into reexamining the whole of my situation, because there is only one direction to go from there. Well, there are two directions to go, but only one that I can afford nowadays. At a certain point in life, you simply no longer have the luxury to go further down, darker, deeper. Not that you can always avoid it. But I know some years back, I could have looked at this point and seen it as a choice.

Now it is a matter of figuring out how to make that shift. That part used to be easier. Sometimes I yearn for the naivete I used to have. The business of getting yourself on the right track, it's more complicated than it used to be, when you're stripped of the notion that everything will work out. Not everything, in fact. So then, you have to figure out what needs to work out. If you can figure out what realistically needs to happen, it can in fact happen. That part does feel certain.

A family member recently wanted to get me something- this family member has a habit of making big purchases as a way to demonstrate affection. And it's not for me to judge, because I have my own odd ways of expressing (or not expressing, regrettably) my feelings. But I really thought about it, and the problem is, I don't want anything like that. I don't have an iPad mini or an iPhone 6 or an expensive pair of shoes, but it's not really because I can't afford it. Fellows get paid a measly sum but I don't really have much cause for spending, so I am not holding my breath to make ends meet. But what I don't have that I really crave, that I never appreciated until I became a physician, is time- which I know is awfully cliche to say. It is the end of the year, and when I fell down into the hole where I often find myself in December, I realized the real problem was that I just didn't have the time to scrutinize my life for long enough to determine what needs to change. But I guess that's the thing about time though. You have to make it - sometimes conjure it up even, if necessary.