Texas Hold 'Em

I’m not a good card player. Our tatty free deck, inherited from my first longhaul flight in the days of Air Lanka, was missing a few crucial cards, which would always scupper solitaire, the only game I knew how to play. As card-playing was not a tradition in our family, the pleasures and probabilities of games like poker were lost on me and it’s something I still can’t figure out today.

Maybe it’s the glamorous casino association with James Bond but I like the idea of card games. I like the metaphor of them and feel they hold insights for everyday life. How do you play your hand? When will you take a risk? What is your tell? I wish I knew cards better such that I could play more intuitively and therefore, know myself better.

Which is why I feel I’ve been lacking the perfect analogy for this current phase of my life. Having qualified as a GP I can now pursue other avenues as I am out of the rigid structures of training. Different career possibilities have opened up before me and I can now work towards something different, if I want to.

But what? What do I work towards? And am I playing the hand I’ve been dealt in the best way? Should I stick or twist?

As a GP, I already have a defined career, which I could commit to and never have to change roles again. However, this option has become less appealing considering how challenging General Practice is at the moment. I hope that this is the nadir and things will improve over the next few years, but there is no guarantee of that. In fact, I have been holding on to this hope for the past decade and each time the bottom has dropped further.

But with a general election around the corner, maybe this really is the darkness before dawn and by changing trajectories I may miss out on a fulfilling career in a field I have worked so hard in. But if General Practice remains as it is, I will lose yet more years in demoralising circumstances and lose out on time in which I could have been pursuing something more suited to me.

At times like these, I wish I knew poker better. How do you make something of a seemingly bad hand? How do you turn a ‘high card’ into a full house? Raise or fold? Throughout my career I have had times where I’ve felt very much like I was not in control of my own fate, whereas now, confronted by numerous possibilities, I find it difficult to know how to steer my direction.

And what of trends? I thought that by choosing a career as a doctor all those years ago, I’d be in safe, sane territory with a ‘good job’ at the end of it. Little did I know that there would be years of erosion of services and salaries. But if I choose another exciting field now e.g. medtech, would I be pursuing another fata morgana? And what about my driving passion - writing? With that being superseded by AI generated content, am I honing my craft in a soon-to-be obsolete field?

The uncertainty is paralysing.

I have no idea what is the right way forward for me but nonetheless I know I must try it. The solid choices I have made thus far have not led to greater contentment, so I may as well try something new. It’s not too late and at least it’s exciting.

At times like these I find myself coming back to the lodestar poem, The Summer Day by Mary Oliver.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?”

What should I do with my ‘one precious life?’ I don’t suppose it matters, as long as I am trying for better.