Elise

“Burnout at its deepest level is not the result of some train wreck of examinations, long call shifts, or poor clinical evaluations. It is the sum total of hundreds and thousands of tiny betrayals of purpose, each one so minute that it hardly attracts notice. When a great ship steams across the ocean, even tiny ripples can accumulate over time, precipitating a dramatic shift in course. There are many Tertius Lydgates, male and female, inhabiting the lecture halls, laboratories, and clinics of today’s medical schools. Like latter-day Lydgates, many of them eventually find themselves expressing amazement and disgust at how far they have veered from their primary purpose.”
― Richard Gunderman

“Jag skriver inte för att jag kan det, för att jag tycker det är lätt, jag gör det för att det är vad jag gör och skriver jag inte, mår jag inte bra. Jag är en som skriver och skriver jag inte, finns jag inte, är jag inte jag. Jag blir inte lycklig av att skriva, ibland är jag lycklig när jag skriver, men då vet jag inte om det; då är jag så inne i skrivandet att skrivandet är det enda jag vet. Det är som i livet, de lyckliga stunderna är när man inte är medveten om sig själv.”
― Bodil Malmsten

“There is a kind of sadness in not wanting the things that give so many other people their life's meaning. There can be sadness at not living out a more universal story - the suppose life cycle - how out of one life cycle another cycle is supposed to come. But when out of your life, no new cycle comes, what does that feel like? It feels like nothing. Yet there is a bit of a let-down feeling when the great things that happen in the lives of others - you don't actually want those things for yourself.”
― Sheila Heti, Motherhood

“Sometimes, when I’m careless, I think survival is easy: you just keep moving forward with what you have, or what’s left of what you were given, until something changes—or you realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find that—yes—your name is still attached to a living thing.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous