Is this a job search, or a mid-life crisis?

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Not long ago, I went through an “I should get a new job” phase.

It wasn’t prompted by any specific dissatisfaction with my current position. I didn’t dislike my patient population or co-workers, and the work wasn’t bad-- yet I wasn’t able to muster any enthusiasm to go to work. I wondered if 10 years of working the same job had run its course. Coupling that with entering my 40’s lead to a mid-life crisis mindset where I began wondering if this was all that I would be able to do with my life.

I reflected on the fact that in less than 20 years I would be 60 years old. That’s well into AARP status, isn’t it? And doesn’t the “RP” of “AARP” stand for “Retired Persons”? So by extension, I was less than 20 years away from the retirement age demographic? Whoa-- when did that happen? My life that had once seemed endless was now...20 years from retirement? I knew that I wasn’t ‘young’ anymore, but it suddenly hit me that I didn’t have all the time in the world. There was so much I thought that I would do in life that I wasn’t even close to doing; I found myself unsettled.

I thought back to when I graduated (back in my mid 20’s) from medical school -- the anticipation of moving to Pittsburgh, discovering the city, meeting my fellow residents. Part of me wanted to experience that again, and a new job would certainly bring all of that. And if I were contemplating changing jobs, it would be better (and easier) to do so when I was 40 as opposed to 50 (was it even possible to find a new job at 50?). And so I started looking at job postings.

I was acutely aware that I might not have been looking for a new job for the best reasons. A big driver in this search, I realized, was my unwillingness to accept that I was getting older. On the other hand, I vaguely remembered hearing general career advice that you should change jobs every few years. So maybe a new job was something I should consider. As someone who doesn’t make rash decisions, especially when they are of the life-changing variety, I thought carefully about what a new job would entail.

The first thing to consider would be, of course, the job. I thought about what I could do and would want to do. I found a listing working for the department of corrections as an inmate physician. The pay was more than my current job-- that was good, but not dramatically-- so not quite as good. But I could make my own hours and work as much or as little as I wanted (which wasn’t an option in my current position, so I thought), and I calculated that I could work about 10-20% less than I currently was, with only a small decrease in overall pay. That was good.

The trade-off was that I would be working in a correctional facility, and my patients would be inmates. That wasn’t good -- really not good for me, in particular. I had the experience of doing my 3rd year psychiatry rotation in an inpatient, locked psychiatric ward and didn’t enjoy it at all. Having to go through security every day to see patients who didn’t want to be there -- who didn’t really understand why they were there -- it was a bummer when they were psychiatric patients and wouldn’t feel any better when they were actual inmates.

I also thought about the types of problems I would be treating in such a facility. I’m pretty sure that if I were in prison, I would take every opportunity to spend the night in the infirmary rather than the cellblock, even if it meant injuring myself every so often or claiming that I was having chest pain and anxiety. That is, if I wasn’t actually injured or actually having chest pain and anxiety because I was in prison. I never found the premise of Oz appealing and could only get through the first three episodes of Orange is the New Black before stopping, due to feeling generally uncomfortable with what was happening on the show. No, working in a correctional facility wasn’t for me.

In fact, the rest of the job search didn’t turn up much that I was interested in -- in this city or any other. This should not have been surprising; patient care is patient care, after all. The only things that were going to vary would be the patient population and setting. Job after job was basically the same-- the RVU’s expected, how much nursing home care was involved, the call schedule, ‘just X hours from [insert major metropolitan area]’... They all seemed the same. My current job had all of them beat except on the money scale -- and not by enough to matter.

All of this made me think: did I really want a change? I still liked Pittsburgh, and it was easy to live here. After all, if I made twice as much but lived in Silicon Valley, I definitely couldn’t buy a house as nice as I had in Pittsburgh; I doubt I would be able to buy one at all. My commute was a 10-minute bus ride -- it wouldn’t get much better than that anywhere else. I liked the patients I was seeing and the people with whom I worked. What could make it worth changing all of that -- some unknown new job in a possibly new city? Just to see if I could feel not quite as old as I was? How did that make any sense?

I came to understand that it wasn’t so much my job or the work itself affecting me, but the amount of it. I was tired and in a rut. I felt like all I did was work all the time, and I needed more time off to recharge and pursue other interests. Could I tweak my current job to get a bit more time to myself? So I asked this question, and it turned out that taking a day off every couple of weeks was workable -- much more workable for my employer than having to replace me. In the end, the solution was simpler and easier than I initially thought.

Even though the job search took me back to where I already was, I was glad to have gone through it because of what I learned about myself. For one, doctor jobs are doctor jobs -- they’re pretty much all the same to me, and I’m already in the best doctor job for myself. If I were to leave it for a new job, I would want it to be a new job-- something outside of patient care (and probably outside of medicine). That would be exciting and interesting. Moving from practice setting A to practice setting B -- not so much.

That lead me back to an old interest: writing. It was something I wanted to pursue when I was younger but was unable to due to med school and residency. I resolved to use some of my time off to revive the dormant writing center in my brain and perhaps find a way to merge my experiences in medicine with writing. That led me to searching for part time writing opportunities, which lead to writing posts for this blog. Now I have some ideas about writing a novel that I have slowly been building upon. I know that I’m older and that life is finite, but that unsettled feeling has faded.

So it was this helpful and interesting journey that lead me to a more contented spot in my life, all prompted by my mid-life crisis.