Limbo (Part 1)

I am in limbo. Not just a little limbo, but full on transitional hell, limbo. As you may or may not know, I was in an accelerated Primary Care Paramedic program, and failed my final exam. On my re-take, I had food poisoning, and performed poorly.

This may in fact, have been a godsend. I'll explain why; It put me in limbo. Failing my final put me in a place where I had nothing to do (placement cancelled), no money (didn't plan on failure being an option), and to be honest, right burnt out. I would have been NO help whatsoever to my patients in that state. I might've even screwed up my preceptorship.

I came home to lick my wounds. The school would not be notifying me of my returning situation (date, price, courseload, etc...) for another two months. I was officially in limbo. I unplugged, and spent my home-time between going through "stuff" and playing xbox. (oh, and I do mean, STUFF). 6 years of accumulated crap from my various living abodes and jobs. Where am I going with this you ask? It's emotional (and physical) baggage. I don't realise it yet, but I'm about to hit psychological bottom. I have no social network in the new town that I'm living in, and my motivation tank is running on fumes. I managed to get myself a job for minimum wage working at a copy center to start filling the bank account again. Some regard this as "lazy" because it's really close to my house, but it's a tough call. It's a reasonably challenging (and portable) job that pulls on similar job skillsets as paramedicine (with regard to planning, management and paperwork). More on this in another post though, that's not what I'm here to talk about today.

What I'm here to talk about today is the switch that was flipped on in-- no, that *I* turned on inside myself today.

"You can't control anything in life, but you can control how you feel about it, and what you do about it." - Jon @ the Body Temple (This is far from his most epic quote. More later!)

My mother (a management, employment and business skills trainer) has been telling me the same thing for the past few weeks, as I approached my "rebooting" point. You know what? It's true, but it does require a fairly aggressive stance on the world around you to prevent it from steamrolling you over.

... this post is the beginning of a series of posts I'm going to be preparing about being "in limbo", whether you're;

- Between semesters in school
- Failed and waiting to go back to school
- Passed school and waiting to get a job
- Moving from one state to another and waiting for a job
- Preparing to go to school for the first time.
- For any reason, without a focus/target, and in transition.

Look forward to a few podcasts on GenMed about the subject as well! I'll try to get the next section of this typed tonight.