Devil on My Back

Ah faithful blog. It has been too long. We had a bit of a falling out over the past months when I tried this thing with facebook, but it didn't end up working out.

What a topsy turvy several months it has been too. Full of breakdowns and long nights, self pity and stress, exhaustion, threat of illness, miniature disasters, and soaring emotional highs. All of those, minus the latter, were brought on by my work, which seems, despite my best efforts, to slowly swallow every aspect of my life until there is nothing but a bleary dismal schedule ahead, and the bitter taste of night shifts behind.

I had a revelation one night. After being awakened from a pleasant sleep at three in the morning by my cell phone ringing and work demanding that I "Get in as quick as possible", for what felt like the twenty thousandth time that week. I proceeded to burst into hot, exhausted tears, pleading for some salvation that I knew deep down was not coming, and that I was only prolonging the inevitable: That long, cold drive back to work. As I sat on Louis's frigid seat (my amazing Honda for those who don't know), and rolled habitually down the road, I thought about work from a step back. I looked at my whole last year. My first year in EMS. At the progression from when I started, in love with my job, happy to do it, amazed that I had gotten it, to this point. This ugly, hate filled point. I didn't like the person work was making me. I still don't, and maybe it's a cop-out to blame work for my change in attitude, but the fact still remained that something did have to change. I was angry all the time. I was frustrated. I no longer worked hard, but just did the minimum to get by, and seemed to almost fail even at that. I hated my coworkers, I hated my bosses, and I hated my patients. To borrow the words of Taking Back Sunday, I was "so sick of being tired, and oh so tired of being sick." I could feel my life slipping past me, full of all the things I was missing out on because I had to work. Birthdays, holidays, Sunday afternoons with my family, Church, friends. I was missing it all. Missing it for a mere job that I didn't enjoy.

Getting to work is the worst part. The dread slowly increases, and especially in the winter time it is usually cold and dark. By the time I arrived and was ready for work, I felt better. I fell into a really impacting conversation with the guy I was working with. We talked about work, how we hated it, how neither of us wanted to do it anymore. He told me he was going to school in January. Something about that stuck with me. Getting out was an option. For some reason I had convinced myself that I was stuck. That because I had gone to school to do my job, I had to stay with it. It was incredibly refreshing to finally have someone who agreed with me.

So I made myself a deal. One more year. And if my feelings towards work haven't changed then I'm getting out of it. Out while I'm still young and don't give away everything I have to offer in exchange for being a workaholic.