So that’s a wrap for 2022, the year that held the lowest point of my life, and potentially the highest point of my life. The lowest being the sudden loss of my father, and the highest being my acceptance into PA school. I don’t want to dwell too much on the pain that was most of this year. I do want to focus on what I’m walking away with. I’m walking away with fond memories of my father and all of the time we did get to spend together, especially over the past couple years since I moved back home. My acceptance of the loss of him his complicated and a constant rollercoaster that I will be processing for the rest of my life.
Life just isn’t the same, and not just because he’s not around. Life feels so incredibly temporary and fragile now. I realized I was taking absolutely everything for granted. I was very ignorant and truly in a clueless bliss. The other side of losing a loved one is terrifying, knowing that life can exist one second and cease existing another, or even worse be suspended in some sort of minimally conscious state. Life can truly be horrifying. I struggled desperately to find some sort of positive, some sort of lesson following this tragedy. And I think the best I could come up with is that this was some sort of dark wake-up call to make sure I don’t waste my life. Life and awareness is so incredibly rare and valuable. I have so many existential moments where I wonder what the purpose of life is. My own awareness, thought, the music I enjoy, the purpose of it all. I’m still coming to terms with it all.
This year was still full of some positives. I feel like for the first time in my life I finally have a substantial social life which I truly treasure. Working in an emergency room is a great chance for an introvert to find his place. This year I was accepted into physician assistant school. I honestly couldn’t be more excited to start in August. It will be bittersweet; I’ll be trading my first solid social life for a life as a student, but I know in that a new social life will be born. And that’s not to say I can’t keep my current social life intact. This time next year, my life will be entirely different from so many perspectives. I’ll have my own place to live again; I’ll be living in another county for the first time in… 25 years? I’ll be a quarter of the way through a master’s degree to practice medicine. Wow.
I’ve given a lot of thought to how I want to spend the next 7 months before school starts. I still want to work a bit and save up some money. This year I finished a side-hustle career of being a wedding photographer for nearly 7 years; what a ride that was. Not doing weddings definitely opened up some bandwidth for me which I am looking forward to. I want to spend my time doing independent study. I’ve been independently studying pharmacology, biochemistry, organic chemistry, and anatomy and physiology, and plan to continue doing that. This spring I plan to have a semester of study all to myself.
I also want to spend time having fun. I just bought a new bass guitar, returning to my roots of the first musical instrument I picked up. I plan on playing video games. I plan on listening to music and going to concerts. I plan on spending time with friends. And I plan on doing some type of travel but I haven’t yet decided yet.
My dating life has been… non existent and to be honest I’m completely fine with that. Life can be lonely, but there are so many benefits to being single and I am reaping all of those. For all of the time to be my own is truly a blessing. I think there will be a benefit to going away to school single. I want every single chance to excel in my studies. With that said… if my soulmate finds her way to me in the next seven months, then so be it. I’m ready to meet her.
I’ve been going to the gym more consistently than ever before and I want to keep that up to and through school since exercise is such an important part of keeping a sharp mind. A huge thanks to the movie theater cardio room at Edge Fitness for allowing me to rock out to pop punk music on the elliptical. I also plan on making some social changes, and trying my best to be more grateful, spend my time more purposefully, and even gossip and judge people less. Overall, I just want to strive to be a better person in all aspects of my life.
So that’s really it. I’m glad that this year is finally behind me and my family. And I hope and pray that we can move forward and grow and flourish over the next year. See you in the next one.