Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.

This is an interesting question. For some reason, I struggled to come up with something coherent!

Good times, health, people and places

At first, because nothing immediately came to mind, I tried to think about phases in life that would be potentially difficult to say goodbye to. Maybe, goodtimes, totally good times without blemish or blame. Relationships – ones that had real depth and meaning. Places, with blissful memories – connected with people, feelings and things. Periods of good health, both mental and physcial.

Never can say goodbye

Then I thought to myself, I feel like, I have never said willingly goodbye to anything. I feel like I am still holding on to my past for dear life with the tips of my fingers. I feel like all phases in my life continue to live with me [haunt me] in some form or another. I’m always referencing the past in some way, using it as the bar or the time stamp with which to measure my current experiences. I am a natural hoarder, so perhaps this comes as no surprise, maybe I collect and curate my life encounters, with ongoing cinematic replay in my head. My two lovely sisters, constantly tell me that I live in the past. I think winding through these endless memories is the thread of hope, that however bad things might have been, there was always the expectation that something better would emerge, so they alway have the theme of what if this had happened instead. I’m constantly rewriting, re scripting and editing the past into a version of what I would want it to be. Something that sits easier with the soul. Is that normal?

The wonder years…?

Still not getting to the point of the question yet – I thought what exactly are the [significant] phases in my life? Childhood years, teenage years, university years, junior doctor years, early consultant years, early married life. I’ve been living and breathing for 47 and a half years – almost a half century so I’ve racked quite a bit of time now! What can I not let go of in all of that? The time periods I have just referenced were all difficult and wonderful in their own ways (I’m a shy, awkward and introverted individual) and continue to shape and inform my here and now. I simply don’t feel like I have left them behind.

Physical and emotional decluttering

So then I thought what does it even mean to say goodbye? Do we really say goodbye to memories and emotions, are they cast aside so easily, sailing off into the proverbial sunset. Can you really just stop thinking about things that happen to you? Can we/I only say good bye to physical things? Am I taking this all too literally 😁😆😅😂🥹🤣🥲

If we say goodbye to [difficult] phases of life, does that mean we are on the road to healing and acceptance of things we cannot necessarily change but acknowledge were a reality? Will that make space for, allow us to develop capacity for new things, joy, hope and passion. Maybe.

Do I need to say goodbye to four decades of equal measures of both turmoil and tranquilty and make space for something fresh, unwritten, start a tabula rasa.

I don’t know.

And now we get to the point…at last!

I’ll tell you something about a phase of life that was difficult to say good-bye to, pre-pandemic working. That’s definately been dashed to the curb. It was something that I had no control over and is not particularly personal to me. It has affected sections of the workforce across the globe.

I will preface all of this by stating, that I know that I am incredibly lucky to work in the profession that I am in and have all the opportunities that I have had and continue to have. I am a community paediatrician, working mostly with children and young people with special educational needs, both physical and behaviorial. I do not do any acute hospital based work and I was lucky enough to be able to work mostly from home when the pandemic first hit (child protection work was the absolute must do, that we came in for, in that early part). I was lucky that my colleagues and I were able to make choices to keep ourselves and our families safe. I cannot be thankful enough, I am sure I am alive because of this.

While for years now, we have gone back to seeing patients face to face, we have retained many of the then new and ‘innovative’ practices we established during that difficult time. We now have better options for bringing other professionals into our behavioural/autism assessments even when they cannot be there in person. Parents and carers do not always have to be present in person, in appropriate clinical situations, for routine clinic appointments/review. In the work that we do, sometimes the parent/carer just needs to talk about what is happening at home/school, without the added stress and distraction of getting to and from the child development centre. Local teaching, training and meetings have a much higher attendences because colleagues do not have to travel from site to site, they can just login in from wherever they are based.

We are hybrid workers now. I truely believe that this is fundamentally a good thing. The balance that many of us have restored into our lives is incredible. We often wonder how we even lived like we lived before the pandemic – running to work, running a household and managing caring responsibilities. It seems insane now. I remember just before the pandemic, I had just managed to secure, at a job plan review, from my then clinical lead and service director ‘permission’ to work from home one day a week, for some weeks of the month. It seems laughable now. Back then [pre-pandemic] I was constantly exhausted from my long commute and overwhelming workload. I thought that with working from home, I would be able to create a more sustainable work-life balance. It was helpful and I appreciated it. Having that one day at home, when I did not have to sit for hours on the motorway before starting a full days work, I felt much less tired and much more in control of my work situation. That was and is important, still really important, because it is easy to burn out in this job, in fact, I probably was burnt out like many other colleagues up and down the country.

I suppose it was a natural evolution, post pandemic, that many of us never returned fully to the office. It was clear that we could work just as efficiently and even more so, remotely. Now when you think about it, if you have a laptop, sensible IT support and good Wifi connection, why you would drive 60 miles into an office to dictate and correct a few letters, when you can do the same thing in the comfort of home? So that became the new normal – come into work on clinic days to see patients and then work at home on admin days. It worked, it still worked. But increasingly over time, I found I was missing the human connections. I missed seeing my colleagues regularly. I missed sharing an office with my colleague who had made me feel so welcome when I started at the place over 6 years ago. I missed the comraderie that comes when you see people every day. Don’t get me wrong, we were not a perfect team. Sometimes the work atmosphere was ‘interesting’ but I think born of the pressures and stresses we were all under. However, work is like a second family, for me at least. Despite our differences we are a team with a common goal. That for me overrode any of the difficulties we faced. In any case, I never got involved in any office politics, I was and continue to be neither interesting or important enough to generate conversation or controversy.

If I am honest, I miss going into work everyday. Yes, I’ve said it. Sounds terrible, given all the complaining I do about work to anyone anywhere that will listen to me! However, I think it boils down to the fact that in the past decade I have choosen absurd, long and complicated commutes into work, so I’m always tired all the time, in addition to my ununsustainable work practices. So I would never have anything good to say about work or work-life balance. I have been a touch jaded. But the reality is, I love being a paediatrician, when I am not tired and pissed off. I actually do love my job. I am not really sure who I am when I am not a doctor – just passing time baking and writing blog posts between shifts!?! I miss talking to my colleagues about everything work related and also finding out what they are doing in the weekend. I miss just wandering into their offices and sharing stories about our morning clinics, interesting things we have seen and learnt. I miss just being able to ask a question about investigations, diagnoses, prescriptions, the lastest evidence for X,Y and Z and ‘what do you think?’. Many times I feel quite isolated at work and even though I’m a grown-up consultant, who is meant to be independent and mature, it’s still quite disconcerting! I am, I suppose thankful that I am not a trainee in this time. Knowing me, my personality, I would have failed and floundered rather than flourish and thrive in this type of environment out in the community. It says something about the drive, tenacity and strength of character of the trainees that have managed to get through this and get where they need to be. In the post-pandemic times that I have had a trainees to supervise, I’ve become better at changing my schedule to ensure that as far as possible I complete my meetings and supervision with them in person, but even I have fallen foul of the ‘why would I drive 60 miles for one 90 minute meeting to review clinic letters, when I can send a link on MS Teams‘ but I feel bad about it. Face to face interaction are simply better, far superior in my opinion. Not even to mention the wealth of practical resources I am used to accessing in the physical space of my office and clinic rooms.

It’s not all doom and gloom. I do go and find my colleagues in their clinic rooms and they do come and find me and we talk, we have nice long chats and it so refreshing and heartwarming. We do message each other on SystmOne and Whatsapp. We call each other on MS Teams for those what do you think? moments. We have lunches and tea-breaks together when are in on our clinic days. We are starting to have more face to face meetings. We had the first of 2024, in January. Honestly, it was just the best feeling to see my colleagues both old and new. People are so different when not on a screen! I was disproportionately elated for a Tuesday meeting, that in the pre-pandemic days, I would have dragged myself to and internally raged at having to be there! We had our first team night out in four years in January too – it was great, so nice to do something so normal. So it’s all changing, for the better, slowly, but it is certainly not the same. In the same breathe, I can see how we all still benefit.

There is a part of me that believes that if I lived much closer to work and I did not have a ridiculous commute, I would go into work everyday. However, I also love and understand that I have the privilege and flexibility of working from home and I would never want that removed from me or anybody else. It has more benefits than drawbacks. However, I like work being a separate entity, that does not invade my private space. I like getting up, getting dressed and leaving the house to go somewhere. The somewhere has a beginning, middle and end and then I return to my sanctuary that is my home.

I have, over the past 4 years, learned that we are never going to back to the way it was before. That phase of working life is well and truly over. I have to have self-soothing messages to myself, and sometimes some of my colleagues that we must embrace change. I am not sure I truely believe it myself, in this particular set of circumstances, but we have no choice. Well, that is not strictly true, but I am choosing to learn from this experience and be extremely grateful for the control that I do have in my life.

In conclusion…

So what have I learnt from all of this.

I don’t like change.

Sometimes I resist it with every fibre of my being.

But sometimes, sometimes we have to let go and let life unfold. Sometimes it is glorious and beautiful and sometimes it is dark and dismal. But it never stays the same. As they say…

…this soon shall pass.