How I Started. Where I am Now.

My life motto has been to begin with the end in mind. I started doing that when I graduated and was interviewing with various clinics, checking out what my professional and personal life would be like if I moved there. I was willing to go pretty much anywhere for a chance to build a great life. As I am pretty adaptable, I was able to see myself doing well in many places.

It was a matter of choice and vision and how much I was required to adapt that eventually won out. What I was looking for was minimal adaption of who I was, a gut feeling I was home. It took going to the 14th practice (a start up) before I felt it. I committed to the vision of what was to be. My current associate was the only one who asked me to write down a list of what I needed from work and what I needed for life. We would discuss it and decide together if we fit in with each other's lists.

That was 10 years ago. This summer I attended my reunion, got interviewed by the local paper and reconnected with classmates from all over the world. It affected me more than I would have guessed. There were those who changed dramatically physically and attitude wise and those who didn't seem to have changed at all. More importantly, it forced me to stop and assess how far I have come in 10 years. In hindsight, it was a really good thing because my gratitude for my life has skyrocketed.

I cannot say I have been ungrateful. For most of my life I have been plagued by pressure. Pressure to prove myself, pressure to succeed, pressure to go beyond what either side of my family had done, pressure from knowing I had no one to rely on except myself.

My upbringing was very very humble. There was no help with homework because my parents were not very educated. There wasn't even camping. I had enough to each and was neatly dressed. I was the first person from either side to go to university and I had to pay for it myself. Being that I am the first born, there were a myriad of hopes and dreams placed on my shoulders from the start. My family came to Canada to give my brother and I better chances and I never forgot that.

I grew up seeing my father work 7 days a week to enable us to live in a detached house. After many decades of being overworked and detached from family, my parents' relationship fell apart. I have an extreme aversion to being overworked, I feel because of this. So it became my goal to dream up a wonderful balanced life for myself and test it out as soon as I could. I want to be someone who walks their talk especially because I work in a field where I have the ability and opportunity to influence many people.