Forfeiture
21:35
BOOK FIVE HARRY IS A MOOD.
I exaggerate. Slightly. But I do feel like I have officially reached my breaking point. And I wish I could just take a step back and breathe.
Pre-reg is no walk in the park. It has, quite literally, taken over my life. The only language I'm speaking is work-home-revise. Rinse and repeat in an endless cycle of patients and assessments and hitting up textbooks, testing the threshold for how much information can be crammed in after a long day at work, with virtually no social/family life to boot.
It's not working life that has me beat - it's the mental challenge of balancing the studying, full-time working and personal life, all the while feeling constantly conflicted with how it plays with me emotionally. There are days when I feel somewhat content with where I am and then there are the days when I feel so out of my element that I go back to counting down to a time where I can move beyond optometry.
I've hit a brick wall. Burn out. I am finally feeling the last few years hit me like a ton of steel. I have spent the last twenty years in academics - I hit the ground running at the age of four when my dad started teaching me algebra with apples and bananas on the kitchen table - and I haven't stopped since. My childhood and teen years were a long run of spending nights and weekends relentlessly studying with my parents and, while I wouldn't change any of that for the world, it fell back-to-back with six years at university, the latter three taking more out of me than I'd like, and I think it's fair to say that I am done.
Pre-reg is no walk in the park. It has, quite literally, taken over my life. The only language I'm speaking is work-home-revise. Rinse and repeat in an endless cycle of patients and assessments and hitting up textbooks, testing the threshold for how much information can be crammed in after a long day at work, with virtually no social/family life to boot.
It's not working life that has me beat - it's the mental challenge of balancing the studying, full-time working and personal life, all the while feeling constantly conflicted with how it plays with me emotionally. There are days when I feel somewhat content with where I am and then there are the days when I feel so out of my element that I go back to counting down to a time where I can move beyond optometry.
I've hit a brick wall. Burn out. I am finally feeling the last few years hit me like a ton of steel. I have spent the last twenty years in academics - I hit the ground running at the age of four when my dad started teaching me algebra with apples and bananas on the kitchen table - and I haven't stopped since. My childhood and teen years were a long run of spending nights and weekends relentlessly studying with my parents and, while I wouldn't change any of that for the world, it fell back-to-back with six years at university, the latter three taking more out of me than I'd like, and I think it's fair to say that I am done.
I am exhausted. And not with studying per se because studying is all I've ever known. It has, in a strange way, become so ingrained in my life that I will always be magnetised to it in some respect. But my heart hasn't been in it for a long time because my heart has never been into optometry. I've been on autopilot for the most part and I don't have the energy left for it anymore. It has been the most overwhelming, stressful, intense few years and God do I hope that there's not long left because mentally, I don't have the space or energy for much more. I am dying for a break, to just be...away. Re-focus my energy elsewhere, at least for a little while. Channel it into something my heart and soul find more worthwhile.
I didn't realise just how bone-deep the life exhaustion ran until I saw it chew away slowly at everything else in my life. When the roller coaster dipped a little too low for my liking. I can't quite explain it, but all the small things began to weigh heavy on the heart. There were bits of myself that I lost along the way and I didn't know how to pick them back up. I figured that I needed a time-out.
I took some time out from work and switched off from optometry, not allowing myself to think about pre-reg (bar the few hours I dedicated to revising). But I blocked the rest out and it was the best thing I did. I did brunch with my mother and watched crime documentaries with my father. I played on the wii with my little cousins and treated them to dinner and dessert. I read a book way past my bedtime and it felt like a luxury compared to cramming in a few pages on my 20 minute morning commute. I caught up on my series and watched a movie well after midnight until it made me cry. I watched Liverpool climb back to the top of the Premier League against Manchester United (albeit it was a shit game but we'll collectively take it). I blogged in the sunshine in this unusual 17-degree February weather with the wind blowing through my open windows, playlist full-blast, writing up the musings that will one day find themselves on the internet.
And, granted, I'm still waiting for that "big" break. A holiday as far away as possible and for as long as possible would be great. And, in an ideal world, I'd love to take a year out - away from hardcore studying/optometry/work to walk down a completely different route - but that's a long way away or just a mere fantasy at this point. But still. I did all the small, stupid shit I haven't been able to do with pre-reg hanging over my head and it was such a breath of fresh air.
I realised how easy it is to forget the importance of taking a time-out to recharge. Whether you treat yourself to a spa day or spend time with people you don't get to spend a whole lot of time with anymore or let yourself have a Netflix evening - whatever it is, it's important to take time away from the stressful parts of life, and cherish the small, wonderful ones. It's easy to stay cooped up in a testing room five days a week, trapped in the confines of four walls that leave no space to breathe sometimes and feeling suffocated when you have to bring it home in the form of exams and assessments. To get caught up in a life that's just work-home-revise-work-home-revise.
But sometimes, it's just not worth letting yourself feel the weight of it. Sometimes, it's worth dedicating the energy to switching off entirely and doing the little things that actually make life worth living. Because sacrificing your peace of mind isn't worth a damn dime.
I took some time out from work and switched off from optometry, not allowing myself to think about pre-reg (bar the few hours I dedicated to revising). But I blocked the rest out and it was the best thing I did. I did brunch with my mother and watched crime documentaries with my father. I played on the wii with my little cousins and treated them to dinner and dessert. I read a book way past my bedtime and it felt like a luxury compared to cramming in a few pages on my 20 minute morning commute. I caught up on my series and watched a movie well after midnight until it made me cry. I watched Liverpool climb back to the top of the Premier League against Manchester United (albeit it was a shit game but we'll collectively take it). I blogged in the sunshine in this unusual 17-degree February weather with the wind blowing through my open windows, playlist full-blast, writing up the musings that will one day find themselves on the internet.
And, granted, I'm still waiting for that "big" break. A holiday as far away as possible and for as long as possible would be great. And, in an ideal world, I'd love to take a year out - away from hardcore studying/optometry/work to walk down a completely different route - but that's a long way away or just a mere fantasy at this point. But still. I did all the small, stupid shit I haven't been able to do with pre-reg hanging over my head and it was such a breath of fresh air.
I realised how easy it is to forget the importance of taking a time-out to recharge. Whether you treat yourself to a spa day or spend time with people you don't get to spend a whole lot of time with anymore or let yourself have a Netflix evening - whatever it is, it's important to take time away from the stressful parts of life, and cherish the small, wonderful ones. It's easy to stay cooped up in a testing room five days a week, trapped in the confines of four walls that leave no space to breathe sometimes and feeling suffocated when you have to bring it home in the form of exams and assessments. To get caught up in a life that's just work-home-revise-work-home-revise.
But sometimes, it's just not worth letting yourself feel the weight of it. Sometimes, it's worth dedicating the energy to switching off entirely and doing the little things that actually make life worth living. Because sacrificing your peace of mind isn't worth a damn dime.
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