Mind the Gap

I’m traveling on my honeymoon, and having a great time. The last 3 days have been in London, which surprisingly for the population, does not really cater to a gluten free vegetarian. So this blog is written by a woman stuffed full of potatoes of every type, form and preparation. We have just boarded the Eurostar headed back to Paris…. So shortly, I’ll be full of cheese.

A phrase I heard over and over again, was ” mind the gap”, and for some reason it really struck me. In medicine, on each and every application for our exams or hospital credentialing, we always must explain any “gaps” in work or training, but in life there are so many gaps…or at least perceptions of gaps. It is perceived as a possible harbinger of mental illness, or lack of mental strength to make it through the rigors of training.  I always found it odd, because sometimes you just need a break. Burnout is real, yet the stigma of taking time off or out is real too. In surgical residency, we were encouraged to take a year or 2 for research. A permitted gap. A year to work 9-5, to sleep at night, to exercise, regain ” normalcy”, before heading into the final years of training. But aside from that, gaps must be documented or explained. They are frowned upon and looked at with a suspicious eye.

In our friendships, when someone gets a new boyfriend, travels, moves, has a new baby, there are little (or big) gaps. Voids in our relationships, gaps where that person was, until they get settled into their routine and pop back into the space that they were, or a new space. Good friends sometimes live in these spaces, you know and accept their love and friendship as well as their absence, and on seeing them again, the friendship continues just as it was…the gap recognized as a necessity of life. 

Career gaps. Gaps in productivity while we attend to personal tasks, or enter into a new life phase. But the training and dedication remains in place, and people move in and out of waves of productivity as they enter into new roles, new companies, or new phases.

I’ve never taken a 2 week vacation before… I don’t think…well except after having babies, and while our workplaces think of that as vacation, it doesn’t seem so much like a vacation to the new mom! So for me, this honeymoon is a gap. A gap to travel with my new husband, to see so many new sights and revisit others with a fresh attitude. An unusual gap away from the routine of our jobs and home and 3 busy kids, from whom I have never been away from for so long, and have never missed so much.  A gap just to be together, away from politics, television, almost all electronics, cell phone calls at all hours of the day and night, pagers beeping, traffic, crazy schedules, being slaves to the clock that always seems to sneak ahead of where I think it should be….

So here I am, moving at breakneck speed through the lush, green English countryside….and truthfully, I don’t mind the gap.