the greatest fall

i wanted to write a bit about the seminar / motivation camp i attended about a month ago, but i think i'll reserve that for another day. instead, i'm going to write about moving to australia and the pros and cons i've had over the past week. contrary to my parents' and best friends' advices i had chosen to leave a secure and luxurious future in medicine to pursue what i had thought at the time to be an infinitely more interesting and exciting prospect in lecturing and research. little did i know it would turn out to be the biggest mistake i have ever made in my life. moreso than deciding to be decadent during an opportune year in london. moreso than foregoing potential romance due to 'personal ethics' and principles (also to be referred to as lack of backbone, in the future). moreso than taking my life for granted so far. and only slightly moreso than disappointing and burdening my parents (which i can say because it is intricately associated with and nearly entirely dependent on my horrible choice, anyway).

in effect, leaving london was one of the greatest things to happen to me. i was secretly (unbeknownst to even my closest friends) depressed and hating my life for all the wrong reasons. i say this now not because i have the luxury of writing in a blog which nobody really reads, or being able to veil myself behind a curtain of anonymity, but because it has come high time that i own up to the reality which i worked so hard to deny over the past one and a half years. the fact that i was unhappy with my lifestyle is in itself not particularly malignant, but this lead to me secluding myself (even more) in my room, immersing myself with artificial means of boosting morale (playing world of warcraft and reading fictional books about 70% of the time) and putting aside the worries of the day. i say 'of the day' because during my clinical experience in london i had come to a point where i could not cope with studies as i had nowhere to turn, and self-studying, especially by trying to memorise the text books can only get you so far (in fact, as far as the front door, after which all of the theory falls apart and the practice becomes, well, practice). the short version of this long winded, and rambling paragraph is : i should have addressed my issues earlier instead of letting them accumulate to the point where i made this huge mistake.

now, i'm the kind of person to dwell on past mistakes and sweat the small things. to most, my life will seem comfortable and even desirable. but to me, thinking of the possibilities and the potentian gains is enough to make me again, unnecessarily, depressed (and i mean this in all its clinical sense because i unashamedly exhibit signs which i would rather not).

i moved to australia to start anew. six months or so of being home was supposed to be the time for me to buck up and get to terms with reality, but i spent it doing actually the opposite - wasting the days away and being hedonistic. don't get me wrong, i think i needed it in its entirety, but it doesn't help that past sins will come back and haunt you nonetheless. and if you let them accumulate and return with a raging vengeance, in a throng of continual assaults, then you're pretty much as screwed as i am. again, rambling but i make my point.

banality, thy name is me. there is nothing one can do to erase the past, only to move forward and do his best. most times, though, even the best may not be as good as 'the best it could have been', and that is the lesson learned. one which i can only hope some will take away from this entry, and not need the experience to have it make sense. in all honesty, i have 'known' of these things and had 'seen' it coming, i even had a 'plan' for averting crisis. but personally, it took the experience of having it all come crashing down to see it in its entirety. before i was effectively taking that step back to see the bigger picture and renumerate upon the flaws and caveats of my lifestyle. i guess the best i can say about this all is, at least it only took one and a half years off my lifeline (and potentially 3 or 4 more to come) and one million bucks. relatively cheap compared to 'what i could have lost' ?