on being in a funk and waiting for the storm to pass
and also this is my 100th newsletter!!!
I started this newsletter when I was squarely in the funkiest of funks. I had been working as a PA full time for 3 years, and still trying to quell the electricity bolts of burnout as a result of getting acquainted with medicine during a pandemic.
I was tired of so much intensity and hoped to turn to something softer. Hence the creation of soft 70, which was the launch pad for this weekly writing practice.
In retrospect, it’s kind of hilarious to think that happiness can be built in a matter of 10 weeks. Hell, I’m nearly 2 years in, and that first post feels just as salient most days.
Over the years, I’ve come to think about happiness less as a steady state. And have kind of scrapped the word happy for contentment instead.
Rather than thinking of happiness as a noun, I think of contentment as an active practice and process. Even with a million privileges, happiness can sometimes feel out of reach. The ever changing landscape of healthcare makes some days really, impossibly hard. And living in America in 2025 is also a challenge - so much uncertainty and volatility and for lack of a better word - badness.
And yet for the most part, I found solid ground and footing with contentment.
Which is why it’s odd that on the day after my birthday last weekend, I felt an absolute wave of deep, heavy sadness wash over me. Completely unannounced. Just popped by and barged in without even ringing the doorbell to declare its arrival.
It seems fitting then that 99 newsletters later, I’m in another funk. But the funk this time has different texture. I wish I could say I could pinpoint a reason. And perhaps there is one burrowing below the surface (ahem… turning 33, attending a funeral on my birthday, freezing my eggs, hormonal changes, work changes etc. etc. etc.)
I thought surely it had to do with a steep hormonal drop after the egg freezing process. While researching one of the medications I took during the cycle, I saw that two weeks after the injection, estrogen drops. Though after talking about this with my provider, she said this reaction wasn’t common.
Ugh!
I desperately wanted to hang my hat on a precipitant.
But I suppose it’s a reminder that sometimes there is no clearcut answer. And getting caught on the reason can keep me stuck firmly in it.
What I’ve come to know over the last 100 newsletters is that I’ve been in a flavor of this feeling before. And I’m therefore less afraid of it. I’m not fighting like hell to get out. I’m just simply waiting, knowing that it will pass. In fact, there may even be something to learn here.