Stuck

My hairstylist here in my new city is very nice, but she's quieter than the vivacious and caring chatterbox that I left behind in my old city.  I feared that I'd never "click" with her; at every appointment, I found myself wishing I was back in my old city with my old stylist.

At my most recent appointment, I was able to pause in my melancholy thoughts long enough to realize that she's one cool chick.  I had been letting my connections to the past keep me from making a connection to the present.

I am stuck in the past, I realized, stuck grieving for the people and places I left behind when I moved here last fall.  I miss my old work colleagues, and I wonder how my patients are doing.  I miss the local restaurants that can't be duplicated here.  I miss knowing everyone in my old hospital, knowing every secret shortcut, knowing who could get what done for me fast.  I miss my cozy shoebox of an office that barely fit a desk and a small filing cabinet.

I'm tired of getting lost in the shiny behemoth of a hospital that I round in.  I haven't met many of the consultants yet, and rounding one week in six is not introducing me to the nurses and staff very quickly.  My new office space is larger than the one I left, with plenty of space for books and files and a big desk; the extra square footage, though, just makes me feel lost.

I'm beginning to worry that this grief is going on too long, that I am mentally there more than here.  Intellectually, I know that those connections in my old city and workplace took years to forge, and I know that much of that is just yet to develop here.  Don't get me wrong: I like much of what I see here.  It's just that the past is so seductively comfortable.

But the past is the past, and by mentally living there, I'm losing out on opportunities here.  I've got to figure out exactly what happened in the stylist's chair last week and keep letting it happen.

It's time to get unstuck.