Latest Blog Post

34. H.U.M.A - published 12.08.2014

This blog was first published on the 12th August 2014. 

Incase you haven't guessed already, I like these little acronyms that help me remember things!

In DEFCON for dentists I developed a little scheme to assess my stress and to try and identify and action when things are getting tough. I can tell you that recently, for the first time in a long time, I hit DEFCON 5 which is the equivalent to nuclear war in stress levels. Hopefully as we go forward I will write about what happened but I can't bring myself to do that at that moment. If DEFCON is one of the symptoms of failing to achieve a balance, another is HUMA which in my world stands for Head Up My Arse.

The stories that your granny told you about 'becoming what you surround yourself by' is exactly true. That, of course, is a 2-way street and can be of huge benefit if you're aspirational and decide to 'better yourself' whatever that might mean. The other side of this, is that when your head disappears so far up your back passage that you can see nothing that is important apart from yourself.

When you find yourself saying "but they need me at the BDA section lecture to 14 people in Walthamstow on 19th November" you really have reached that stage where your head needs surgical extraction. Incase you're unaware of your history, Presidents can get shot and the world continues to turn therefore, the ins and outs of my job are completely insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

My stated goal is to try and be as best I can and to develop myself as best as I can while limiting my time away from my family. In order for me to progress in my career (and to see my friends) it is necessary for me sometimes to go away but always I have to consider the benefits and disadvantages of this before I decide.

HUMA takes you away, surrounds you with other people infected with HUMA, people who like to be away from home, people who don't like their families so when I look around at a meeting or a course or a congress I realise that (but for the precious few) I am surrounded by people who would rather be here than at home and those are not people like me.

Interestingly, I think HUMA is linked to DEFCON and as one goes up so does the other. I need to work harder at this.

Blog post number: 1534