About time

I have fallen terribly behind on writing. There are too many patients to see. There isn't enough time. There is a great problem with this. It cuts into the time for reading and writing. In the academic world, when I was an assistant professor, we didn't really care very much about the quality of SERVICE. We cared about the quality of the care we provided. But SERVICE wasn't an issue. If people had to wait for four or five months to get a new patient appointment, it didn't matter to us. We had the prestige to demand this. Since we taught and did research, we didn't really care that much about patient productivity and our "practice". It was almost a side job. But now, that is entirely different. The patients are the priority. I still find that we don't service people well. We don't get people in here for weeks. It upsets them. The problem is, there just isn't the time. So now, the reading and writing are starting to suffer. Mostly, it's writing. Soon, it will be the reading.

I have thought before about time delusions. We have wrong perceptions of time. The time seems to come and go on its own schedule, rather than our own. We are always making choices about how we use our time. People are always telling me that they don't "have time" to exercise. But we have to make that time happen. We really "have" the time. It's just that we choose to use it doing something other than exercise. It's the difference between letting life happen and making life happen. Letting vs. Making. We just have to create the life that we want.

This is one of the things that is critical to a successful illness. When I have time, I do need to write a book on the good things about illness. (First I have to finish the one about being healthy). I'd better create that time. When we get sick, we tend to re-assess priorities. We make our decisions differently. We change the way that we use our time. I think if I were to get sick, then I would write more. Of course, the practice will suffer a little. People will have to wait, or another solution to seeing people will have to appear.