Monday, August 12, 2013

The end of a road... to merge onto the motorway?

Well, it's been more than a year since my last post, and the impetus for revisiting this blog actually came from a source outside medicine altogether but perhaps more pertinent now for me - an article on an entrepreneurial magazine about tracking your life's satisfaction by way of a happiness diary. I'll go into that perhaps later as I'm currently blogging from my mobile, determined not to let anything get in the way of updating this (not to mention its 1am and I have an early start tomorrow!).

So what's happened? Well to put it bluntly, my life has at once been chugging along as it has realised many new facets. Briefly, I went overseas to Singapore for my medical elective, stressed over and subsequently passed final barrier exams, applied for and now have an internship next year, and on the cusp of finishing my final hospital based rotation as a student ever! On the other non medical side, I wrapped up active duties with student representation at university, did a south east Asia tour, met lots of new people and did a lot of personal introspection.

I don't have much time or energy to write a huge catchup post (though I'll cover those topics hopefully later) but at present I feel like I'm on the edge of an enormous change in my life. Next year will be my first full time job, and along with this the newly found responsibility and financial freedom that this entails. In addition to this are many simultaneously running matters that demand my attention, some of which I'm hoping to finish before I start working and some of which I might not. Some things I want to answer myself include - what do I feel my purpose in life is? Is medicine going to help me achieve this? Will practicing medicine make me happy and satisfied? And how much would I be willing to sacrifice if another door opens? A doctor I recently met joked to me that it wasn't too late to get out. There's a very real chance that for me this may not have been in jest.