Do you ever find yourself wishing your life away? You’re probably thinking no, of course not, but think about it. Do you wish the work week would move quickly so you can get to the weekend? Do you wake up hoping the day will fly by so you can get to what you have planned that night?
It’s only natural to enjoy some aspects of life more than others and to look forward to the more enjoyable parts. I’m trying to find some pleasure in the less enjoyable parts too now.
I am on call this week. In my practice we take call a week at a time starting on Friday morning. Call is very unpredictable. Sometimes it’s really light and sometimes it’s incredibly busy. Usually it’s both depending on the day. I hate being on call. I have learned that I am not that spontaneous; I like to know what my day will hold. As much as I caution myself not to get annoyed by the calls, I still do. Sometimes my annoyance is justified, for example when a patient calls me at 10:00 Saturday night for a problem that’s been going on all week. Sometimes it’s not, and I have to learn to get over myself. I found myself wishing this holiday weekend full of beautiful weather away, so my call would be over.
I really do want my call to be over, but I don’t want to wish my time away. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that we never know how much time we have.
The nature of call seems to be that if I plan something, that’s exactly when a patient will call who needs to be seen. So I don’t make plans when I’m on call. This leaves me a lot of unstructured time, especially on a 3-day weekend, something I don’t usually have.
Sunday afternoon, my husband and I tried to take the family on a walk through the neighborhood. Between children needing to go to the bathroom at inopportune times, and phone calls from the answering service, that didn’t work out so well. But at least we tried.
That night we succeeded in having a lovely dinner on the back porch and then playing with the kids in the back yard. The weather and the patients cooperated. If my wish of being done with my call had come true, I would have missed that.
That would have been a shame.
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