Changing rooms

I'm moving rooms today. It is a strange feeling. It is like moving house, but cheaper and quicker. Emotionally though, it is still very odd. Apart from that, everything else is changing too, which is adding to the oddness. I have a new girlfriend; by the end of the week I shall have a new housemate/lodger; the relationship with my partners is changing; I can't look forward to skiing which I normally would at this time of year; my career outside the practice is still a bit up in the air; my ex-wife, mother of children, is doing her usual periodic thing about money; I can't drive. So I'm not sure if I'm sad about the passing of an era, or excited about the future.

The Tuscany adventure has taken a turn in an odd direction. Rachel reminded me that actually I'd always wanted to have a house in France and suddenly I thought that maybe I should be looking at houses in France rather than Tuscany. We're going to Pisa next week anyway, so will look at those properties but then perhaps compare them with the ones on offer in France.

At work there have been heavy discussions about the future of the practice and indeed the partnership. I'm very grateful to them, of course, for letting me take time off to see Australia, but now we are back I want to look forward to the future. I don't want to coast to retirement, as I suspect my partners do. I might as well retire now as do that. I have a vision of six days a week provision of care, form eight-til-eight. It seems to me it's what the public wants, what the government want, what we need to do to maximise the use of our building. So I will need to persuade them that this will mean no more work for them, just a redistribution, and that we shall at last enter the 21st century in service provision. Whilst one partner listens, the other glazes over and looks weary. This is going to be a struggle. Coasting is not an option though and if necessary I will leave them behind.

So back to today and moving out of my room. I've been here over five years. Leaving it makes me reflect on the last five years or so. Relationships mainly. Outside the window there is still lots of snow and ice. I like views from windows. The same buildings and the same trees, changed only by the seasons is reassuring. But, as we say in medicine, 'stasis equals sepsis'. So changing rooms seems somehow appropriate, a metaphor for a new anxious and exciting next phase/chapter/era. Who knows, perhaps the last.