With the Mega Millions estimated annuitized jackpot prize at $970,000,000 (zeros) and Powerball at $430,000,000 (zeros!), it is more than tempting to blow a few dozen bucks on tickets. Even knowing the cash values are a mere $548,000,000 (ZEROS!!) and $248,000,000 (SO MANY ZEROS!!!!) respectively, it's hard not to think of everything I could accomplish with all those zeros. Never have to work another day in my life. Get out of debt. Buy a house. Buy a house on an island. Buy an island. Try a different hobby every day for the rest of my life. I'd really like to get into sailing the world, but why stop there? I bet the Sea of Tranquility is lovely this time of year. I think of all these things fondly, with the subconscious belief that these things, and ultimately money itself, are a worthy goal unto themselves and will bring me fulfillment.
It is a big burden having to plan your steps in life with the practicalities of finances in mind, especially when you have a huge amount of debt. Add to that the nagging preconceived notion that you're sub-par and are destined to eke out an existence taking the crappy positions no one else wants, and it's hard to be optimistic about the future. But there's hope. In Psalm 50, God said he owns the cattle on a thousand hills.* While this was not said in the context of him being able to provide for our needs, it does highlight the fact that God is not wanting for anything. More to the point, in Luke 12 and Matthew 6, Jesus says we shouldn't focus on or worry about our physical needs. Instead, we should be focused on God's will. Wanting to win millions upon millions of dollars goes well beyond the desire to get out of debt and have financial stability. It gets into the realm of wanting to dictate the course of my life and be the master of my world.
Two guiding questions came to mind: Are my desires for my life in line with what God wants with my life? Do I trust him to provide the resources to accomplish these plans? If I can honestly answer "yes" to both of these, suddenly the lotto jackpots don't matter anymore. Even with all those zeros.
* This surely meant something to the ancient Israelites to whom this was initially said, but to help put this concept in terms we can understand today, I made some assumptions, did some measurements of the hills around Jerusalem on Google Maps, spent way more time researching cows than I thought I would have to, then ran some numbers. Estimating the average hill in Israel is at least a square mile, each hill would have 640 acres or more of grazing land. A thousand hills would thus provide 640,000 acres of grazing land. The USDA recommends 1.8 acres per cow (https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb1097070.pdf). For simplicity, I assumed modern US cows and ancient Israeli cows would have similar grazing area needs. This would put God's herd on a thousand hills at 355,555 head of cattle. The average US cow at slaughter prior to the advent of intensive selective breeding in the 1970s and later widespread use of growth hormones in the 1980s was 1,047 pounds (https://www.beefmagazine.com/genetics/0201-increased-beef-cows, https://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/safetyhealth/productsafetyinformation/ucm055435.htm), which I'll use as an estimate of the average ancient Israeli cow. The current price of a bovine is about $111/cwt (http://www.agcenter.com/newcattlereport.aspx, https://beef.unl.edu/faq-2009beefprices). This translates to our average 1,047 pound cow being worth $1,162.17. We modern day folks could therefore think of God as saying he has $413,215,354.35. Kind of anti-climactic that this ended up being less than the current jackpot amounts, yet if we focus on the big picture, God created everything on which the value of money is based, which makes the concept of assigning value to cows or money rather silly and leaves God alone as having worth.
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Saturday, October 6, 2018
New Journey. Overdue update.
Long time no see.
I am winding down my first position as an attending physician, and as of my departure, I will have been in the position for just over a year. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that the way in which my employer wants me to practice and the way in which I'm comfortable practicing are not aligned. I have pretty strong mixed emotions about this whole situation. On the one hand, I was ready to settle down, grow roots, and be a part of a community for the rest of my life and career, and now I'm yet again moving on to something else. On the other hand, I am glad to be leaving an employment situation that is not to my liking and it's sort of exciting transitioning to something different. It gives me a sense that my life is going somewhere and I'm not just stuck in a rut. Additionally, I have learned a lot about the real world of being a physician and what my preferences are in practice. I still have unanswered questions about what I want to do long term, but I will soon be learning a lot about that.
My plan is to do locum tenens, which is basically travel doctoring. I will be filling open positions for 1-6 month stints around the country, potentially even around the world if I work at US military bases. Because it is standard for housing at the locations to be covered, I will be giving up my apartment and basically become a nomad. I'm going to keep an official address and a storage space in my home town, which will help me feel rooted somewhere, but I think I'm going to feel like a resident of everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. One of the reasons I'm doing this type of work is that it is highly flexible and I'm not locked into a contract for more than a few months at a time. I can pick and choose the positions that don't require seeing too many patients in a day so I don't have to feel pressured to churn through appointments too fast, which is my highest priority at this point.
With the flexibility, though, comes the fact that I'll soon be a nomadic 1099 contractor, so I'm figuring out how to finagle car insurance, driver's licensing, taxes, health insurance, retirement accounts, packing away most of the trappings of a modern household into storage since I can't feasibly move them with me, etc. Above, I alluded to the fact that I'm feeling stuck in a rut in my current life situation. This mindset is somewhat concerning, because there is still a large part of me that wants to settle down and grow roots, but if I start feeling stuck in a rut every time I try settling down, I'm going to run into serious contentment issues. Perhaps I just need to find the right setting to settle into; one of the things I'm hoping to gain from seeing so much of the country and so many practice settings and working with so many different people is a sense for what type of personal and professional life characteristics I want in the long term.
On that note, I'll sign off and wish you well until next time, which hopefully will not be another three years.
I am winding down my first position as an attending physician, and as of my departure, I will have been in the position for just over a year. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that the way in which my employer wants me to practice and the way in which I'm comfortable practicing are not aligned. I have pretty strong mixed emotions about this whole situation. On the one hand, I was ready to settle down, grow roots, and be a part of a community for the rest of my life and career, and now I'm yet again moving on to something else. On the other hand, I am glad to be leaving an employment situation that is not to my liking and it's sort of exciting transitioning to something different. It gives me a sense that my life is going somewhere and I'm not just stuck in a rut. Additionally, I have learned a lot about the real world of being a physician and what my preferences are in practice. I still have unanswered questions about what I want to do long term, but I will soon be learning a lot about that.
My plan is to do locum tenens, which is basically travel doctoring. I will be filling open positions for 1-6 month stints around the country, potentially even around the world if I work at US military bases. Because it is standard for housing at the locations to be covered, I will be giving up my apartment and basically become a nomad. I'm going to keep an official address and a storage space in my home town, which will help me feel rooted somewhere, but I think I'm going to feel like a resident of everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. One of the reasons I'm doing this type of work is that it is highly flexible and I'm not locked into a contract for more than a few months at a time. I can pick and choose the positions that don't require seeing too many patients in a day so I don't have to feel pressured to churn through appointments too fast, which is my highest priority at this point.
With the flexibility, though, comes the fact that I'll soon be a nomadic 1099 contractor, so I'm figuring out how to finagle car insurance, driver's licensing, taxes, health insurance, retirement accounts, packing away most of the trappings of a modern household into storage since I can't feasibly move them with me, etc. Above, I alluded to the fact that I'm feeling stuck in a rut in my current life situation. This mindset is somewhat concerning, because there is still a large part of me that wants to settle down and grow roots, but if I start feeling stuck in a rut every time I try settling down, I'm going to run into serious contentment issues. Perhaps I just need to find the right setting to settle into; one of the things I'm hoping to gain from seeing so much of the country and so many practice settings and working with so many different people is a sense for what type of personal and professional life characteristics I want in the long term.
On that note, I'll sign off and wish you well until next time, which hopefully will not be another three years.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)