My inner voice(work/is)

 Options+ Choices

A friend recently asked me a question that has had me thinking for days. "What is your inner dialogue right now, and what do you want it to be?"

At first, I thought that was a pretty simple question. Then I realized it wasn't. The truth is that my inner dialogue about work has changed. For most of my life, the conversation was pretty straightforward. Get up. Go to work. Do your job. Take care of your family. Work overtime because you have to. Figure it out. 

Now I'm sitting on the edge of returning to work on light-duty before knee surgery, and the conversation in my head sounds completely different.

If I'm being honest, the voice isn't saying, "I can't wait to get back." It's screaming, "DON'T DO IT. YOU ARE GOING TO BE MISERABLE."

That's hard to admit.

For years, I have worked in EMS. I've seen things that most people never see. I've worked long shifts, missed holidays, worked weekends, dealt with stress, dealt with difficult calls, and carried things home that nobody should have to carry. At the time, it was just part of the job.

But somewhere along the way, something changed.

Maybe it was losing my dad. Maybe it was losing my father-in-law. Maybe it was watching my mother-in-law slowly disappear from Alzheimer's. Maybe it was going through one of the hardest calls of my career. Maybe it was the depression and anxiety that followed. Maybe it was simply getting older and realizing that time isn't unlimited.

Whatever it was, the voice in my head started asking different questions. Instead of asking, "How much longer can I do this?" it started asking, "Do I even want to do this anymore?" The strange thing is that I don't have to.

Years ago, that wasn't true. Today, it is. Thanks to others' blessings and changes in my financial situation, I have options. That word keeps showing up in my thoughts.

Options.

I could go back full-time. I could go back part-time. I could do a different kind of EMS work. I could do something completely different.

For the first time in my adult life, I have choices. And I think that's what my inner dialogue is really about. Not work.

It's choice.

For years, I did what I had to do. Now I'm trying to figure out what I want to do. That's a question I haven't had to answer very often.

I'm not sure where all of this leads. I don't have some grand conclusion or life-changing lesson. I just know that the voice in my head isn't asking how to survive anymore. It's asking what I want the rest of my life to look like.

And maybe that's a question worth paying attention to.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 7, 2026 at 6:49 PM

    you should write about the different types of people that do well in EMS .. there seem to be a wide range of personalities

    ReplyDelete

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