I NEED A HOBBY.

December 8, 2006

I wrote this after a 24 that felt more like 48. I had just gotten home, dropped my gear at the door, and stood in the kitchen staring at the microwave like it owed me something. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t tired in any useful way. I was just… unmoored.

That kind of exhaustion turns your brain to mush. Your thoughts get weird. You start obsessing over things that don’t matter and forgetting the things that do. I remember opening the fridge and thinking, I could make eggs. Or I could lie down on the floor and dissolve into the tile.

I didn’t do either. I sat down and wrote instead.

The point of the post wasn’t that I needed a hobby. It was that I needed something that wasn’t this job. EMS was bleeding into every part of me—my sleep, my relationships, the way I saw the world. Every joke I made was a medic joke. Every reference was a call. I couldn’t shut it off.

I envied people who could leave work at work. The guy who goes home, grills a steak, and talks about fantasy football. I didn’t have that gear. I had patient reports in my backpack and half-written narratives in my head at all times.

So I wrote, half-kidding, I need a hobby. But I wasn’t kidding. Not really.

I needed something that reminded me I was a person before I was a patch.