From FOMO to JOMO

 Today I woke up at dawn shivering.

I dreamt there was a very strong earthquake. As I ran outside tightly hugging my daughters, parts of the ground beside us suddenly rose, and our car rolled away, crashing into a broken wall. The earth shook violently beneath our feet. We cowered down, praying, my children screaming.

Then I woke up.

Two days ago, I submitted my resignation from the academe.

That initial wave of relief I felt has now slowly turned into dread. I have always been a teacher. I invested my time, my heart, and my soul into teaching. And while I felt so alive and at home with my students, I also felt myself slowly drowning inside an institution where I no longer felt aligned, understood, or at peace.

I had to make a choice.

Today, I felt FOMO. And it crept into me through a dream of earthquakes. I am being shaken and stirred.

But I know this much:

Institutions will forget. I will always be replaceable. My light will burn out someday.

But the students I taught will remember.

My children will remember.

My body and mind will remember that I chose to protect them.

And I know that what is meant for me will find me again.

Today, I have FOMO.

I will not resist it. I will sit with it for now.

Tomorrow, JOMO will come.

And I will still be there. Not a different person. Not a burnt ember of the woman I once was. Still me.

Because today, I chose to protect me.

Never a Prophet in One's Own Town

 Two years ago, I enrolled in graduate studies in Health Professions Education because I wanted to be better: for my students, for my institution, and for the kind of doctors we are trying to form. I paid for these courses, attended workshops and conferences (some of them international), read widely, reflected deeply, and returned home carrying ideas I believed were thoughtful, contextual, and doable.

I didn’t do this to collect certificates. I did it because I believed that if we understood learning better, we could teach better. And if we taught better, we could serve our communities better.

However, I learned another lesson somewhere along the way. We can never be a prophet in our own town.

When I began proposing changes: small ones, careful ones, grounded in evidence and lived experience, I realized that being prepared does not always mean being heard. Sometimes, the more invested you are, the easier it is for your ideas to be dismissed as “too ambitious” or “too idealistic.” Sometimes, institutions would rather listen to voices from outside than to those who have stayed, labored, and cared within.

This isn’t a story of resentment, although it seems like it is. I still believe institutions are made of people doing their best within constraints they may not fully control. And I understand that change is threatening, not because it is wrong, but because it asks something of everyone.

Still, it is quietly painful to realize that effort does not guarantee trust, and training does not guarantee influence. I’m learning to sit with that. But I will not deny that this fire within me, because it burns oh so brightly, is burning me out. This voice within me, which nobody hears, is tiring me, exhausting me. I've always thought that the brighter we burn, the faster we burn out. And here I am dragging my feet exhaustedly, trying to get through every long day, hoping that better days will come soon.

Perhaps this, too, is part of education: understanding that growth doesn’t always translate into immediate transformation of the spaces we love. Sometimes it simply prepares us for future conversations, for different seasons, or for places where our voice will land differently.

For now, I’ll keep learning, not to convince or to change things, but to remain whole. And I’ll trust that the work we do to become better educators is never wasted, even when it feels unseen. 

We have to keep going even when we are unseen. Perhaps someday, a new town will embrace us, and allow us to grow and make the changes we are destined to make.