Unashamed Good Omens Pirate

Levi's said yes, actually. Assless chaps and a biker vest. Happy Pride.

i am aware that maturity is a thing, that there is wisdom that comes with age, that age often correlates with having more experiences and knowledge and that people often call this maturity. i've experienced my brain starting to work better as i've gotten older. i'm not claiming that age does nothing.

but age has nothing to do with why i was willing to speak to my biodad after almost a decade. maturity has nothing to do with it. i found one crucial piece of information that changed the way my entire life history looked, and because of this i'm willing to do things i previously wasn't. but my biodad's first reaction, despite knowing that i'd changed my mind based on specific new information, was to approve of the fact that i was doing what he wanted by crediting my "maturity". we'd barely exchanged a few words and he was already trying to drag me back into a world where his definitions matter and my experiences don't.

calling me "mature" was not a compliment. it was an attempt to reestablish control over me. what he meant was "of course you changed your mind when you realized that i'd been right the whole time and you'd been nothing but a stupid child." would you want to take that as a compliment?

all of us, at some point in our lives, will encounter rules that don't make sense, authority figures acting in harmful ways, and people making demands that are unnecessary and would not be a good idea to cave to

if we are always unconditionally submissive to such rules, demands, and authority figures, so many terrible things can result. authoritarian governments, hurt people, or just plain suboptimal outcomes.

it's a critical part of maturity learning how, when, and why to make a stand. yes, some people overcompensate. i know very well, because i have oppositional-defiant tendencies myself and i often have a knee-jerk negative reaction to rules or demands that i end up agreeing with in the end.

but it's sad to me that there are still adults that equate maturity with obedience.

To be fair, bragging about overworking is in many cases a coping mechanism for medical professionals who are stuck in a system where they have very little say in how their workday is structured and how much shit they have to deal with. Doesn’t make the culture any less toxic though. “You have to be strong enough to survive inhuman working conditions in order to make it in medicine” is an attitude that is actively preventing much-needed change towards sustainable working hours and workloads.

I’ve made choices in my medical career that have led to a work situation where I get enough sleep and exercise, regular meals, a manageable workload, the necessary support from attendings, and a department head who actively prioritises the education aspects of my residency. I have time to sit down with coworkers for lunch on most workdays, instead of eating at the desk while typing up paperwork with one hand. I leave work on time for the most part, and I am compensated for the overtime if I have to stay behind to deal with a critically ill patient. I have met fellow doctors from other departments/hospitals who act as if I’m not a “real” doctor unless I regularly suffer at work, and the most charitable thing I can say about that is that I think they’ve worked in an abusive system for so long that they don’t recognise what a healthy job situation looks like when they see it.

And it's frustrating to me, because I think, excepting this aspect of the culture of doctors, I think would enjoy being a doctor AND I think I'd be unusually good at it AND I think, as frustrated as I would get by the brokenness of the medical system here in the US, I also think i would be unusually good at enacting positive change in the system and i would have a heck of a lot more clout and influence in doing so as a doctor than I do now.

I think a large portion of why the medical system in the US is so messed up is that it systematically keeps people such as myself out of the medical system and out of medical professions.

The culture of stress oneupsmanship and stress glorification systematically discourages and excludes people such as myself who have a strong desire for harmony between words and actions and integrity and a low tolerance for compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance.

You want to know why so many doctors give their patients medical advice they don't themselves follow? This is why.

Believe me, I know. My one grandpa was a classic doctor who smoked and drank and ate bacon and southern food deep-fried in trans fat and probably died 10+ years younger than he could have, because of it. And he was smart enough to know much of this stuff too.

This stuff is personal to me. I've seen all the different facets of it, in my own life, in my family, my friends. I've seen it kill people.

Imagine what society would be like if doctors led by example. Imagine if they healed themselves first and then approached healthcare from a place of wholeness. Imagine if a doctor was able to say stuff like...hey, I know it's hard, but you can lower your LDL through changes in your diet and lifestyle. I've done it and countless of my patients have. Here are some of my favorite foods that made it possible. Imagine if the doctor's office were located in a walkable neighborhood that made a walking-centered lifestyle easy. Imagine if the doctor just exuded healing vibes instead of lowkey coming across like House, a show that's often uncomfortable for me to watch just because of how close to home it hits. Like it's a caricature but the phenomenon it depicts is all too real. But imagine if the doctors were actually healthy.

This is what I want. Instead hospitals and medical offices are closing in walkable urban areas left and right and the cynical doctors are living a high-stress lifestyle with long car commutes to suburban hospitals and medical offices, and any half-assed lifestyle recommendations they give come across as "You and I both know full well I don't follow any of this advice myself and you're just gonna come back in a few moths and I'll prescribe you some drugs."

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare.

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.

What if Grace made a lopsided crochet Rocky and cuddled it every night.

What if Rocky couldn’t stop making xenonite puppets of his alien friend.

I couldn't miss an opportunity to make epic geological phenotypes for eridians:D them rocks will look fly as hell on my watch!

Nerding out under the cut:)

“you came back!”✨🫶