It is exactly 49 steps from my bedroom to my garage. It is a 23-mile drive to the hospital and 75 steps to the unit. It takes 10 seconds to walk to the nursing station. I can measure what it takes to get me to work each morning with absolute certainty. I know because I have measured it a million times hoping something will prevent me from reaching my destination. I live 49 steps, 23 miles, 10 seconds and another 75 steps from my job. And it has taken me over a decade to find the courage to actually quit.
I was forty-three years old and five months into my new life when I realized I had to return to my old job. Having served two stints as a psychiatrist at a very busy hospital, I was enjoying a lovely period I like to call “the second time I quit my job.” The decision to leave my job the second time was less of a choice and more of a mandate; it came on the heels of an almost nervous breakdown when I was blasted with words like, “You’re just not strong enough.”
These words peppered me like bullets, and I believed them. I decided I would leave immediately (or in six weeks when my boss could write me out of the call schedule), and I would do it without guilt. But I would still work at least one weekend a month. My nervous breakdown aside, we needed the money.
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