Another summer is in the books. Do you remember summer vacation as a child? The anticipation of the last few weeks and days of school in May or June? The utter pandemonium of the last day of school?
How was this summer? What was your favorite memory? Okay… here’s a more challenging question: How many more summers do you have with all your kids at home?
That last question hits close to home. If we are lucky, we get eighteen summers with our kids in our house. Changing our view makes this time—all the joys and challenges—seem much more finite! And that’s because this time is precious!
Like many of you, I dream of spending more summer time with my family. I envision lazy days paddling on the Cascade Lakes, a few nights camping in the Steens or the Alvord Desert, and escaping the August heat with a drive to the Oregon Coast. We have an abundance of choices here in Central Oregon. Except when there are wildfires… the smoke puts a significant damper on our summers lately.
I often reflect on why we work, save, and invest. One of my bigger whys is creating more time to spend with family.
In that vein, this is one of the last summers I plan to spend full-time in the operating room. Beginning in 2025, I plan to work part-time or less clinically. I bring this up in the newsletter not to brag but to hold myself accountable to my readers.
After over twenty years of studying, training, and caring for patients, I am ready for that next phase.
What will it look like? My goal is to have more time for my readers and colleagues through Greeley. I want more time to take our meetings outside—whether that is on the chairlift at Mt Bachelor or Alta, fly fishing in the Metolious, or meeting up for a morning surf session.
How many of you are bored, or at the very least, not challenged anymore with your medical career? Your clinical day is likely routine and familiar if you’ve been in the profession for a decade. Maybe I am in the minority here, but based on my conversations with colleagues in anesthesia and surgery, I sense this is pervasive.
While new medical studies are continually published, how many are genuinely groundbreaking? How many truly change your practice? I bet you are doing the same operations you did in residency or giving the same anesthetic.
So, dear readers, please check in and hold me accountable. It’s so easy to say, “One more year,” until we no longer have that time. Time with family is one of my highest values. I am stepping into a place where I can live that value.
I’m betting some of the changes will be difficult, and there will be unanticipated blind spots. But I’m also betting I will not regret this decision, except that I didn’t dare do it sooner.
Over the last few years, my concept of retirement has dramatically changed. The idea of working a punishing schedule to save for some future life… It just seems so false.
Instead, a more empowering question and a more fun approach is to ask how we can live our lives today. What do we want to spend our time doing, and with whom? How can we get more of that NOW?
We have all seen too many lives taken away too early. We know that tomorrow is not promised. And yet, we put off living and becoming a version of ourselves. I know this feels existential and hard to grasp. I struggle to hold it in my mind as well.
But that’s not a reason not to try and figure out how to live today.
