–10:48 PM–
Uncertainty-pyramid (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
It’s been 3 days since I made my last post which was not a happy one anyways. It’s confusing when what you know about yourself isn’t in alignment with what you feel like. I spent 5 weeks training but my numerical transcription on the scale was disappointing. I’m being taken over by a strong notion of throwing in the towel. The more I thought about it the last few days the more I realized that what I’m up against is way bigger than what I thought.
So many thoughts racing through my head but the long and the short of it is that I was trying to erase the last year with all its disappointment, waste of time and lack of money and get back to the me I used to know. I gave up a good paying job of a call center supervisor to finish up a life-sucking mandatory medical internship year before being licensed as a physician. It was really hard for me to make the sudden move of having a title even if it was in a freaking call center where I got to make decision and manage a team to porting blood to patients from the in-house blood bank, measuring urinary output, changing dressings to some of the most disgusting wounds I’ve ever seen, vital signs recording and occasional oral and urinary catheterization whenever instructed to do so. Didn’t quite feel like a doctor nor a nurse, I was sort of doing middleman dirty work. You add a few elements to the picture, like lack of proper training from superiors partly because the crazy flow and partly because they simply don’t have to for it’s not something they’re rated upon not to mention the impatience of patients and sometimes lack of proper respect too. It was never easy for me keeping my cool when a few times I was called names because unhappy patients had to take it on someone and that somebody happened to me for the sheer reason that I happened to be there at that particular instant. Dealing with superiors wasn’t all daisies too, I had to put up with endless duties, lack of proper doctor-to-doctor relation and sometimes insecurities too from people who are so happy they finished up their doomed internship year and are happy to make it up for themselves by making the life of other interns pure torture. Many times it was easy to get caught up in all this crap and forget about the bigger picture of becoming a physician, of course a monthly allowance from the hospital of 40$ helped add to the aggravation because now I was paying from my hard-earned savings that I kept aside from my previous job which is almost gone entirely now.
Despite that I finished the year 2 months ago I’m still tied to the place because I still need a few signatures before I’m finally set free but then again I won’t be free because I then have to apply for my mandatory military service.
You see I really don’t mind all this, I did what I had to do, I even made a few friendships that mattered to me, I didn’t really mind the steep downhill change in lifestyle that had to come with the package. What I’m not happy about is that this whole thing made subtle changes in me that accumulated over the days that slowly but steadily made the me I knew remote from who I’m today. I find myself always exhausted, short-tempered, not welling to get into discussion even if it was to find a personal point of view. But it’s all so subtle that only me or the people who know me best would be able to identify for on the outside I’m still a talkative person who keeps a smile.
It kills me to admit it but it’s the truth and it became clear to me as daylight in the last couple of days. The strong urge to throw in the towel, the feeling that whatever I do, there will come another obligation or responsibility that would make all the hard work, sweat and willpower I invest into my body go down the drain just like what happened this past year, the feeling that despite I’m a free law-abiding citizen but many of the things I have to do to get by are purposeless, time-wasting things from my perspective.
I remember all the things I wanted to be as a kid, I remember all the lessons my parents gave me about honest hard work and I remember I lived by those lessons but I still haven’t found any materialization for what I believed in!
I don’t want to sound ungrateful and I apologize if I do, truth is God has been gracious to me all the way. He blessed me with a caring family, smarts and a capable body and that’s just the least of what God has granted me plus He’s always been patient with me when I sinned and when I still do. Ironically enough sometimes I feel like this is one of the reasons I’m not a regular prayer, I don’t have a face when it comes to talking to Him.
When all this hit me like broad day light I realized, or like to think that I did, that what I sat out for is way bigger than shift deleting what has been done in the last year, it’s bigger than getting fit, losing fat or even quitting cigarettes it truly is a journey into self-realization, living by my own standards, bettering myself for me and the people around and above all finding a true meaning to what it feels like being God’s greatest creation on earth.
It’s quite intimidating for me when I put it that way, but this is how I see things now. And it’s even more intimidating when my logic tells me over and over again that no uphill swing to my life will happen any soon and that I should be grateful that no tragic life incidents happened to me. It’s true and I’m grateful but the power I’m able to generate from such feeling just isn’t enough to awaken the giant within me.
I always give up to the saying that what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. I believe in it and I have always embraced it but sometimes you truly realize that saying things is something and doing them is a total different story.
I’m not in the best shape of my life, not physically nor physiologically. I’m trying to get myself out of this hole and I pay in sweat but then again I find myself out of fuel when I need it the most.
American-Beauty-–-Lester-Burnham. Photo credit: bleed-art.com
Truth is if there is anything I am grateful for the most, it’s that I decided to start this blog and put what I think and feel into words. It’s like a good seed that I planted and would really love to see grow and prosper. Many times I’m freaked out from the fact that I’m sharing this with the world. I feel naked and wonder what if I’m not good enough not just for you but actually for me?! But I always calm myself knowing that fear was always associated with anything worth having or doing. It’s just life! And after all “I’m just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose”, quoting Lester from American Beauty movie.
I’m gonna keep going on just as long as the sun keeps shining bringing in a new day, I’ll be making some modifications to what I do and the way I post to this blog which I’ll be letting you in the know of once I accurately identify them by writing on a piece of paper but for now I think I’m comfortable enough into letting you know that Springnation isn’t just about some inspiring, number determined physical transformation story. It’s my life in words and it happens as I make it!
Peace.
Ahmed Seif
Springnation 