A colleague messaged me out of the blue checking up on how I was doing and it made think about what the fuck I've been doing lately. For context, I've been unemployed since January from profession as a physician and I'm in no hurry of coming back to the labor force to work. I just saved enough funds to afford being lazy and have 1st world problems for more than a year. There's job security in this profession so I'm all fine at the moment but time is ticking and I should have made progress in figuring out what to do with life. This is a shitpost disguised as a journal by the way so if you're expecting entertaining content, your time is spent somewhere else but here.
But for those that like to read my ramble, you're welcome to stay as this is a letter to a future self when I'm on a streak to review what I've been doing with my life. Yes, I check my old posts from years a back here, there is no better self torture than looking at your old posts and cringe.
It's comforting to have a colleague at your former workplace message asking when you'd be coming back and they still want you around and this is genuine stuff because they have less incentives to care. I previously thought I wasn't the crowd favorite in the office due to my noticeable aversion to gossip which was like a social currency.
Now I just thought my social standing wasn't so bad at all. Anyway, the TL:DR version why it was a mutual separation was my superiors noticing I wasn't giving my best because I performed poor or average on a regular basis but manage to score within the top 10 at the national levels when it really mattered. Translation, it just looked like I was lazy when it comes to doing the daily mental work and it's true.
As a resident in a specialized training, our priority should be studying for our field and less about other stuff. But this generation and the trend of promoting a work life balance got in the way which made me distracted on what I really wanted to do during training so it ended up me not giving my best and just floating around.
When you're surrounded by people that excel at their work, even if you passed the exams, the gap in results makes it look like you're failing. It also doesn't make me look good that my mentors were national level consultants in terms of fame. Looking back, it was really not that hard to excel, but I was still at a phase when I wanted to discover other skills sets (I still do) in life which makes topics like investing, financial literacy, marketing, freelance digital art, bookkeeping, transcription and translation jobs more appealing than the dull hospital work I get stressed by.
I'm fully aware that me getting unemployed was a calculated loss and take full responsibility for it. By calculated, I did saved up for a scenario where I get laid off work and lived cheap enough to be a bum just enough for one and half a year. I could still afford doing nothing until next year and there's job security in being a doctor in this country so I'm just stuck with a first world problem of having so much free time to figure what I want to do with my life.
It's not exactly something I can readily discuss with peers because they got their jobs and probably figured out what they want to do in life so I'm on my own in this situation. For the past few months since January, I have indulged in a cycle of lazy to productive streaks exploring new things because now I had more time to do what I want. Now it just feels like having no direction and I want to have a job to fill that empty void.
I don't know if I just want the security or routine or it's really just trying to rationalize some direction I should be in. Getting a job is part of the plan but the type of job is the question, I could just abandon my entire health care service background, toss more than a decade's worth of studying in exchange for a job that's less stress free and still pay equal if not more than what I could be earning as a doctor. What's worse is that I'm pressured to answer this soon because opportunities can come and go it's just a matter of how long the intervals last.
Thanks for your time.