I miss going from one place to the next. I miss being a nomad. I miss knowing I’ll never see the same people again.
I left home after high school and went somewhere for undergrad that I literally knew one person (a friend of a friend). I lived there for 3 years, knowing after the three years, that I wouldn’t see anyone again.
I then left for grad school to a place where I knew no one. I lived there for a few years and then went around the country on my clinical rotations for two months each.
I packed up and drove my Mini Cooper half way across the country and back and literally knew no one prior to arriving. There is a sense of freedom in knowing that you can go to any park and do handstands and it wouldn’t matter who you saw because you’d never see them again. It’s almost like you were invisible. You could do anything and be anyone you wanted.
I’ve changed a lot since I left home and I’m not sure how much of it is because I never had to deal with being anywhere long term. There was a timeframe for how long I was spending at each location, then who knows where I’d go.
I just realized this morning that I no longer have that. I am tied down to this location for at least four years with this job.
Although I live over 20 miles away from my work, someone has seen me running. I went on a walk this morning and had the urge to climb a tree, so I climbed the tree at a park. I realized as I was coming down that it was not professional for me to be climbing the tree and what would I have done if a patient saw me. It’s not acceptable for an adult to be climbing a tree.
This was the first time in a very long time that I thought about what others thought of me. I feel like I can’t truly be myself anymore. I have to be who I am “supposed” to be. I feel like I have to limit what I do and who I share it with. I mean, honestly… having my Instagram page and this blog isn’t the most “professional.” What would my patients think of what I was wearing? I mean honestly, there’s really nothing bad on it and I’m really not doing anything wrong, but I still am questioning all of these things. Is my account stupid? Does it have a purpose? Why did I start?
I wanted to make people realize that there are other ways to workout besides what you see in the gym and that if you’re not having fun working out, you’re doing something wrong. If I positively impacted one person, then I’d be okay. To some extent, I’ve done those things, but something is still missing.
I almost wish that I could compartmentalize things. Work related things here, life related things here, and no overlap would occur. My question is, because that’s not possible, how much do you really have to change yourself for work?
What is professional in one setting may not be in another. For example, sometimes it is appropriate to do handstands at work; sometimes it isn’t…even in the same setting. I suck at reading these things. At what point do things get a little too crazy as long as safety and productivity aren’t impacted?
What persona can I use at work? At home? In public? What persona is actually me vs. society’s construction of me?
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