Oh, This Is Hard... (or: The 2-Year Mark)

It's 22:00, and my legs are really tired. I know this feeling. And I know exactly what it means. Friday's Digest #159.

Table of contents

1. Life Update
2. The 2-Year Mark

Life Update

This week was hard.

On regular days, I work around 11 hours. Some days it's around 16.

So when I come home, I have no energy left in my legs.

Exhausted.

And yet. The next day. 06:00. I'm already in scrubs.

I've been thinking a lot lately about where I am. It's been almost two years since I came back home after my fellowship.

Two years of building. A research program, clinical trials, and new roles.

It's been hard. Really hard.

But here's the thing.

I've been here before.

And I know how this ends.

Number 159!

The 2-Year Mark

There's a pattern I keep noticing.

I first noticed it during my studies.

During dental school. Then during my PhD. Then, during med school. Then my fellowship. And now (again) since coming back home.

It goes like this: you start something new.

You work. You grind.

Everything requires full concentration. Everything is harder than it should be.

And then, somewhere around the two-year mark, something happens.

Not dramatically. Not overnight. But things start to settle. Your level is different. Your knowledge is different.

YOU are different.

The strange part? You rarely notice it while it's happening.

🔵 Day 730

The last day of my fellowship.

I remember the first day, too. I was already a trained surgeon, but still, I was starting over.

New environment, new culture, new expectations.

Everything took effort.

Day 730 was different.

The procedures were the same. The OR was the same. But something had quietly shifted over two years without me ever stopping to watch it happen.

The way I thought through a case.

The way I communicated.

The way I moved.

None of it had changed in a single moment. It accumulated.

Day after day, until I arrived at day 730.

As a different person.

I only saw it on the last day.

It's the same pattern wherever I look back. In dental school and medical school, there were two years of clinical training, and the jump was enormous.

After 2 years into my PhD, I was running experiments independently, troubleshooting on my own, thinking like a researcher without needing anyone to hold my hand.

I hadn't noticed crossing that line.

I just looked up one day and realized I was already on the other side.

The two-year mark keeps showing up.

🔵 Oh God, This Is Hard

Right now, I'm not at day 730.

I'm somewhere in the middle. Close, but not there yet.

I don't FEEL the progress.

That's the truth.

When you're inside the two years, you don't FEEL yourself growing.

You feel the weight of everything that still requires full concentration.

Everything that still doesn't come automatically.

You don't feel the distance between where you are and where you started.

🔵 I Know How This Ends

Here's what gets me through.

Not a morning routine. Not a productivity hack. Not a motivational book.

Just the knowledge.

That the two-year mark comes.

And when it does, things that required enormous effort become automatic.

Things that felt foreign feel like yours.

You stop second-guessing yourself on problems you've solved a hundred times.

The weight doesn't disappear. But you are bigger than you were, and you carry it differently.

So when it's 10 pm, and my legs have nothing left, I'm not thinking about growth or the long game.

I'm thinking: don't stop before two years.

Don't take things off your schedule. Don't do less. Don't let go of the things you wanted when you started. Just keep going.

Because I've been to day 730 before.

And I know what's waiting there.

Epilogue

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That’s it for this issue.

See you next week!

Shay

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