RIP to my attention span. The world seems to be opening back up now that we are no longer surging (or are just between surges?), but I wouldn’t say that I feel normal again. Lack of focus has been one of the most pronounced negative effects. For example, I sat down with a cup of coffee and opened up a text editor to write this note about an hour ago and have since abandoned the window no fewer than seven times (see Appendix)....
June 2021 marks my eleventh year in New York City. I wasn’t supposed to be here this long. The Plan™ was never to stay in New York for this long. The Plan™ was to come here for five years to learn how to be a surgeon, then go back to Chicago and be a surgeon and live happily ever after. When I was younger, I didn’t think that carefully about my future, which is kind of terrifying to think about now, how I made decisions about my life without really thinking about them....
As some of you have heard, I recently resigned from surgical residency, and am leaving clinical medicine. Ten years ago, I decided to be a doctor. It was a decision that made perfect sense at the time: I wanted to help people who were suffering, and I was fortunate to have the ability and resources to gain entry into medical school. I wasn’t sure which specialty would be my calling, but shortly after starting my clinical rotations I fell in love with surgery....