Ramblings above the clouds

So here I am more then halfway done with third year. I am flying home right now from a lovely vacation in Costa Rica with my husband, my sister, and her boyfriend. I can't say that I am happy to be going home. A large part of me wanted to just stay in Costa Rica and never return but I have accepted the fact that time seems to move more quickly when you are having a good time. The only good thing is that I will be returning to family and friends and another week of time off.

I kind of broke right before I left. I moved in with a friend when I started burn and I was fine the first day but by the second night, I was so sad I didn't know what to do with myself. Part of it is that this year is so isolating and moving any from Dave was hard. Intuitively I knew it was only for a week and I needed to do it so I can make the 6am work time but it was hard. It was also hard because everything was so new: the resident was new, the location was new, the nurses were new, the attending was new, and the surgeries were more disgusting than my wildest imaginations. I have certainly gone through all of this before...in fact every 2-3 weeks, I feel like I a, starting over but this time it was all too much. I just didn't care anymore. I couldn't study, I couldn't give a crap about anybody or anything and it was just all bad. Then thankfully I made it to vacation time.

It has been so nice to be away from it all. To just feel like a real human being. I was going to study this break but I just can't muster up the motivation. I keep thinking about just quitting because it seems strange to work a job when you don't care about outcomes. My family thinks I am burned out and perhaps this is true but I think I just don't know what to do. For the first time in my life, I don't have a clear sense of direction. All I know is that I want to survive. I have discussed this with Dave and he has convinced me I need to stick it out for 5 more month. Then I will be done with this year and can quit if I still feel crappy. He says I would regret not finishing and I agree but it has been really hard. I think I just hit a wall and hopefully it will all be ok but it wears on me to work so hard, to study so much, and still fell completely insufficient. As a gift to myself, I am going to take it easy the rest of this rotation. I will work as little as possible and study as much as I think is necessary to pass. The bar for honoring surgery is 3.8 out of 4.0. I think even if I worked my ass off, I could never meet that mark so I am going to try and survive. Maybe I just need a vacation both from this year and from myself.