Working 8 to 5

I need advice. 

Some months ago, I got "reassigned" to one of my city's vaccination posts, where I work as a vaccination doctor. My main job there is to handle all sorts of medical concerns related to vaccination, like when someone's blood pressure is too high before getting jabbed, or when someone has a medical condition that needs further assessment. 

But in between all those things, I mainly help the screeners. Screeners are what we call the nurses who interview patients to find out if they're medically fit for vaccination. I'm not really required to do it, since there are other people hired to do that specific job. But I do it anyway because sometimes there are just too many patients coming in, and they need my help. 

Screening is easy. You just ask the same questions over and over again.

Is this your first time getting vaccinated? How are you feeling today? Do you have any allergies? Do you have any underlying medical conditions? Were you recently a close contact of someone with Covid? Did you recently test positive for Covid? Are you pregnant?

It takes virtually no brain work. But it takes a lot of voicework. I'm saying these things over and over in a noisy room, surrounded by other screeners who are also struggling to make themselves heard. It strains my voice. And with every patient who says, "Ha?" because they can't hear me, I die a little inside because it's literally painful to speak any louder. 

But there's something truly... soul-crushing about the work. It's routine. Repetitive. Boring. It's work that could easily be eliminated by having patients just fill out questionnaires themselves. 

And it's my life for the next year or so, until we achieve herd immunity. And probably even beyond that.

It's bringing me down because I feel like I'm not using my skills to their fullest potential. I'm a creative thinker, a problem-solver, a planner. I had some big ideas for public health projects I wanted to implement during my time as a Doctor to the Barrio. I'm usually spirited, enthusiastic, eager to work. I wanted to spend a lot of time doing field work, going into the farthest sitios, taking care of the poorest of the poor. 

But ever since I got assigned to the vacc post, all that creativity, energy, and enthusiasm just... died. Screening work is essentially just reading out a list to someone else, over and over until the work is done. There's no creativity in that. I tried asking my boss to be reassign me back to my health center, but she denied my request, saying that the vaccination post needs me.

I know that this work is essential to getting the world to how it was. But there's already one other regular doctor at the vacc post, and zero doctors in our health centers doing free primary care clinics. When patients need consults, they have to go directly to the hospital now, or to a private doctor, because Ysa (my co-DTTB, also in a vacc post now) and I are not around. 

So anyway, that's my story. I spend most of my days just feeling hollow and empty, going through the motions, asking literally the same questions every day, over and over. I feel somehow flattened, like balloon with no air, a virus with no spikes. I'm living for the after-work hours and the weekends, but then Monday comes and I find it so hard to get out of bed.

Is this.... what normal, adult life is? Going through the motions, feeling bored at work, stifling one's joy and spirit in the name of making a living? At the age of 28, this is technically my first 8-to-5 job, and I wonder if all this inner turmoil is just me learning to adjust to this adult world. Is it normal to feel this way? To always feel hollow and dead inside? Or am I just clinically depressed now? 

Help. I need advice.