WillSpirit!

The essay I’d written for today will be delayed. It was another piece about the unreliability of belief, based on the work of the late physicist David Bohm. I wrote it two days ago but postponed publishing because I’ve decided that sending out entries more often than every three days imposes on readers’ inboxes. Apparently this policy risks what happened today: a topic that sounded interesting before now seems less vital.

So what is ‘live’ for me today? Self doubt.

Thankfully, I’ve gotten pretty adept at accepting the big hardships. Physical pain, failure, and grief feel quite acceptable to me. They even seem to instruct me in wisdom. I can embrace them. On the other hand, right now nothing momentous is bothering me, yet I’m feeling bad about myself.

My life strikes me as eminently comfortable. I live in a lovely area with many nearby trails. The wetlands restoration outside the neighborhood gate is nearing completion so there are more waterways, marshes, and birds in view. I have time to enjoy the natural beauty and also to exercise and meditate for long periods every day. My life right now is nearly without stress: no business to fret about, no medical problems in need of attention, no family issues.

So what’s to complain about? The same thing that has come up for me over and over since my surgical career ended twelve years ago: aimlessness.

What is the point of my life if I have no gainful occupation? Can I find satisfaction merely from blogging? Why have I proven myself capable of working in so many fields while also demonstrating my inability to stick with any of them? How am I going to justify my existence now that professional endeavors no longer seem feasible?

In high school my mediocre performance and chronic delinquency pointed to an unpromising future. But as my senior year approached I found a passion: biology. It grew out of a lifetime interest that dated back to time with my grandfather, who showed me the insides of fish and chickens he prepared for meals, taught me how to cultivate mushrooms, and enlisted me to work in his vegetable gardens. My father had encouraged the curiosity by buying me the Visible Woman and Visible Man models. I’d tried to incubate quail eggs and had loved the nature classes offered at the camp where I spent six weeks every summer. First in Boy Scouts and later with friends, I’d gone on many camping and scuba diving trips around the Los Angeles area, which is rich with natural beauty once you get beyond the freeways.

As high school drew to a close, I found biology so fascinating that buckling down and doing homework suddenly seemed like a great idea. Before long I was at UC Berkeley earning nearly straight A’s. Ecology was the subject that most fascinated me, and I planned to become a marine biologist or some other species of naturalist. But all subjects piqued my interest, and I took a tremendous variety of classes. Soon, I was singled out as possessing strong analytical skills and was shunted into an honors physics sequence tailored to a select few of the most promising students. My father only seemed impressed by this latter turn of events, since he considered biology a ‘soft’ science. Overly influenced by his opinion, I abandoned ecology and decided to pursue neuroscience through graduate studies in biophysics.

Thus began a long, meandering career search in which I seldom felt myself on the right path. Faced with a future spent poking microelectrodes into nervous systems, I became bored and discouraged. I’d also broken up with my high school sweetheart, and my grandfather had recently died. My first major depression hit. A therapist convinced me to go to medical school, largely by telling me how much he wished he’d had the grades for it himself.

Learning about the human body did, in fact, fascinate me, but the practice of medicine terrified me. I did not have the proper attention to detail, and I continually worried about forgetting important steps in clinical care. At the same time, I found the eye remarkably beautiful and decided to specialize in ophthalmology largely on aesthetic grounds. Little did I understand that my choice would place me in one of the most detail-oriented subspecialties. After learning to perform cataract surgery and many other procedures, I decided to pursue further training in ocular oncology and then in reconstructive surgery. These fields offered slightly larger margins for error, and so seemed better suited to my personality. Plus, I liked the artistry of facial surgery.

I got a great job after my training, working at Kaiser. There were no administrative duties and lots of autonomy in patient care. I thrived. But my neck was not up to the strain, and as the pain increased my old fears resurfaced. During a manic episode I made a hasty decision to simply abandon my hard-earned career, rather than doing something smarter like reducing to half-time.

This led to an immediate collapse of my psychiatric health. After a couple of years spent recuperating, I began graduate study of biomedical computing; that lasted about two years before blowing up when the professor I’d planned to train under moved to another state. Then I taught high school biology for a term. After deciding that the life of a high school teacher wasn’t for me, I found a job with the California Department of Public Health teaching physicians about childhood lead poisoning. The work was fun and took me all over the State, but when it started to stress me out a bit my psychiatrist persuaded me to quit (which I think did me a disservice). For a time I looked into studying entomology and took some college classes in preparation, but that direction seemed too far afield after so much training in medicine. I next spent a couple of years preparing for graduate school in psychology, working as a volunteer counselor, but when the few institutions I applied to rejected me, I gave up. Through an informal internship, I then learned to work as a patient rights advocate in mental hospitals, but the pay seemed far too low. Finally came the acupuncture venture, which longterm WillSpirit readers already know about.

Do you get the sense that I’ve pursued a lot of different disciplines but abandoned all of them? I do. Ecology, neuroscience, biophysics, ophthalmology, ocular oncology, reconstructive surgery, bioinformatics, high school teaching, public health, entomology, counseling, advocacy, acupuncture, etc., etc., etc.

My hobbies have been similarly sporadic. Just as I was getting some recognition from local sculpture teachers as a figurative sculptor, I gave it up due to neck problems. Poetry periodically grabs me, but I usually get tired of it before too long. I’ve written some memoir pieces that instructors really liked, but I never follow through to create a sustained text. For some reason I keep the blog going, but probably only because it’s so easy.

Whew. That’s my long catalogue of aborted vocations and avocations. In the last few days I’ve spent time with a number of friends, each of whom seems really committed to his or her career path. Why have I never found a road worthy of ongoing effort? Why do I always seem to find reasons to change directions?

I have no good answer. It appears my personality permits me to be a Jack of all trades, but a master of none. This is intellectually fascinating but professionally suicidal. Back in college the professors seemed unanimous in their belief that I was headed toward a stellar future. What went wrong?

Clearly, part of the problem is that I’ve been too easily swayed by the opinions of others. And I’ve often chosen directions that made logical sense but had little appeal to my heart. Other times, I’ve ignored obvious limitations and pushed myself to tackle fields that were too stressful. I’ve acted impulsively and in the face of challenges have quit projects entirely rather than effect more nuanced changes. So I suppose there are lots of reasons, but most of all, there’s been a lack of staying power.

Given that I’m blessed with reasonable financial security, fairly good health, and endless free time, you’d think I’d feel happy even without employment. Instead, I’m working hard to prevent my psyche from beating up on itself about my inability to sustain a career. The only remedy seems to be meditation, which allows me to stop thinking about what’s happened and imagining what might have been. So I’m practicing intense mindfulness as much as possible, including while driving, walking the dogs, and swimming.

Just a week or two ago I felt beyond all this; I was ready to commit myself to spiritual growth and abandon the pursuit of worldly success. Circumstances seem to be forcing me to look at my situation despite my resolve to turn my back on career obsessions. Perhaps I need to better understand what went wrong before I’ll be able to accept it. Or maybe this productivity-oriented culture simply makes it difficult to find relief from this angst. In the end, of course, I must simply embrace my life and myself. But apparently I’m not quite there yet.