A rock and a hard place.

"Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament." - George Satanyana.

Here' s my predicament: One step up and two steps back seems to be where my life is headed at this point. As much as I have wanted to move forward with both career and life goals, it seems as though I am stuck in neutral, with no clear way to shift forward - at least until last week.

It's no secret that I struggled with depression about seven years ago. A laundry list of reasons, from 22 years of riding on an ambulance, to my illness and transplant, to the loss of a very dear friend, all these things built up to the point of crushing my psyche. It also had the effect of stripping away the best part of me, the Mr. Nighttime that was evident during my long years as a paramedic.

This was driven home to me recently when I was reconnected with an old medic buddy of mine, who recounted the story of what I did in the emergency department of a particular hospital in Brooklyn. I remember the incident well. It was my buddy's first week as a paramedic, so new that the sheen was still bright on his license that he carried in his wallet.

We brought a patient into this hospital that was having some mild trouble breathing, and before we left, I wound up shoving a doctor out of the way while he was trying to intubate the patient, (he was doing it wrong) for he was killing the poor man. I intubated the patient on the first shot, and just growled at the doc to do what I told him when I told him to do it. My buddy told me how awed he was by this that he never saw anyone do that to a doctor before, and to this day he tells that story from time-to-time.

I remembered everything about that incident, save for the part at the end. My buddy told me, "Yeah, but when you told him (the doc) he was about as useless as tits on a bull, that's when I almost lost it."

I said that?

This was the part that got to me. I began to recognize that the Mr. Nighttime that could have the brass cojones to say and do what he did in that emergency department all those years ago, that Mr. Nighttime is what is missing today. Well, not missing, but buried somewhere. It was that Mr. Nighttime that drove himself to being a writer, a speaker, an actor, and it is that Mr. Nighttime that got himself promoted twice within the medical center where he worked.

The person who I was back then was aggressive, and focused. I lost a lot of that along the way, and have been struggling to get it back for the past 10 years or so. I need to get that person back completely, if I am ever goign to gey myself out of this suck-ass job, and where I want to be as a person, and as a writer, amongst other things.

I put myself back into therapy recently, and through an exercise we did, the one thing that stood out was that the most important thing that I saw in myself was my desire to help people. I can't do that as a paramedic anymore, and I have not been able to find that one thing that allows me to have that with the regularity that I was used to: the day-to-day stimulation from riding on that ambulance provided. I get it piecemeal now, through writing, acting, improv and some other ways, but it isn't the same. This is what I think, has been the greatest impediment to my being able to move forward.

My predicament? Getting back to where I once belonged.