.png)
Awakened Anesthetist
This podcast is for Certified Anesthesiologist Assistants, AA students, and anyone hoping to become one. As a CAA, I know how difficult it can be to find guidance that truly reflects our unique perspective. I created Awakened Anesthetist to be the supportive community of CAAs I needed on my own journey.
Every month, I feature CAA expanders in what I call my PROCESS interview series. I also create solo episodes that weave in themes of wellness, self-discovery, and mindful growth - offering insights and reflections that resonate with our high-pressure, high-responsibility lives. Through it all, you’ll discover the power you hold as a CAA to create a life by design, not by default. I know you’ll find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist podcast.
Awakened Anesthetist
CAA Millionaire’s 2025 Financial Review and Pursuit of Enough
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Ever wonder how a “rich life” as a CAA millionaire really looks? In this 2025 financial transparency episode, Mary Jeanne pulls back the drape and breaks down her CAA income vs her entrepreneurial income, and choosing time over her desire for more. She shares every detail on where her money goes and how she is a millionaire but still left 2025 in the red. This is real numbers, real talk and I hope you leave feeling seen.
Mentioned in the episode:
Learn more about Pre-AA Matters 6-wk Intensive
Interested in taking Pre-AA Matters this November? My 6-week intensive that will make AA school "easy"...ok easier...for accepted Pre-AAs or those hoping to be accepted this cycle! We start soon. LEARN MORE
Stay Connected by subscribing to the Awakened Anesthetist Newsletter-
for more CAA specific resources, exclusive content and offers.
Watch episodes of Awakened Anesthetist Now on YouTube!
Let's Chat! awakenedanesthetist.com or on IG @awakenedanesthetist
Welcome + BTS
SPEAKER_00Okay. You're on my bed on like a one of those raising uh computer table stands. So you might be a little crooked if you're watching me on YouTube. That's cool. No worries. My kids got me this koozie that says Cool Mom's Club for Christmas from their little Secret Santa shop that I actually help organize through the PTA. It's like my one PTA thing. And I'm out of breath because I just ran downstairs to get the koozie and to tell my husband to turn down his uh he's listening to podcasts on like 1.5 speed. But I have my water, I have my emotional support bottle and drinks. This is a polar ice. I just practiced what I'm about to say on my stories on Instagram. If you follow me there at Awaken Anestetus, oftentimes I'll do like little just kind of pop-ins and see me in my real habitat, which you are in right now. Um, you're in my bedroom. You have turned on my 2025 financial review as a CAA clinician, a practicing certified anesthesiologist assistant of almost 20 years. And I'm gonna tell you what that looks like because it looks very different from when I started in 2008. And I am also a CAA entrepreneur. I am an educator at heart, an AA educator. But that means that I am doing some things that are now in the content creation realm here on Awaken and Esses podcast, of course, and then also on Instagram and LinkedIn are kind of the two communities that I am trying to cultivate. And I'm gonna tell you oh, so much more about all of those endeavors. But here is what I want to say. I am a practicing certified anesthesiologist assistant and have been one since 2008. I am also a millionaire. I live a rich life, and I can pretty much guarantee that it doesn't look how you would expect. And that's what this 2025 financial review, this episode, is really going to be about. And I'm excited to get into it. So let's go. Welcome to the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast, the first podcast to highlight the CAA experience. I'm your host, Mary Jean, and I've been a certified anesthesiologist assistant for close to two decades. Throughout my journey and struggles, I've searched for guidance that includes my unique perspective as a CAA. At one of my lowest points, I decided to turn my passion for storytelling and my belief that the CAA profession is uniquely able to create a life by design into a podcast. If you are a practicing CAA, current AA student, or someone who hopes to be one, I encourage you to stick around and experience the power of being in a community filled with voices who sound like yours, sharing experiences you never believed possible. I know you will find yourself here at the Awakened Anesthetist Podcast. Welcome in. If you're listening to me on Apple or Spotify or one of the other podcast apps, and you want to see all of this nonsense, you can go to YouTube. I just started streaming or editing the video content as well. So you can watch me on YouTube talking about money. And um I have structured this episode several different times. I've asked Chat GPT to help me structure it. I uh was initially thinking that I was going to do one sort of personal review of my goals and intentions and what happened in 2025 that I want to continue and what I want to let go of. And then I would do a separate financial review episode. But what has come to, you know, be clear to me is that when I talk about money, I talk about my life. And
Framing A Rich Life And Transparency
SPEAKER_00so I decided to just do one episode, and you'll get what you get, whatever I say about my life, and the money is kind of, I'm gonna speak my piece. I am going to be the perspective that I was looking for when I was looking for any professionals really, but particularly in medicine. And of course, I was looking for CAAs, and I had not found any talking about money and what it really is like to try to lead a rich life. That's not my saying. That is um, Ramit Sadie has a book called How to Live a Rich Life or something to that effect. And the rich life is really more of an idea than it is like a physical money amount. So I wanted to give a nod to him. I also wanted to give a nod to some of my inspos for this episode. I've talked about money before. I am definitely very transparent when it comes to money. I am not ashamed about money. I feel like you could Google how much uh anesthesiologist's assistant makes. I want to be proud of the fact that I'm a millionaire and not be ashamed to say that I made some really good decisions early on when I started working, that is now paying off later in life. But I would not be here talking to you about the depth that I'm gonna talk to you in if it weren't for uh a woman named Halise. She is a content creator, a videographer, a producer that I found on Instagram. She does a whole bunch of other things. I will link her in the show notes. And then, of course, my CAA colleagues and inspirations, Chabelli, who's at CAA Lifestyle here on um Instagram and YouTube. And then also Anesthesia Anonymous, Miss Taylor. She made a financial transparency episode. I think it's a reel on Instagram. And I will try to link all of that for you all in the show notes. But if you are in the CAA community, you likely know those names. So you can go to those accounts and see their take on money as a CAA. So let's get into it. Let's just start off with some of the headlines that I have. I definitely have notes because I want to tell you the actual dollars and cents, and that's more than I can remember. So let's just start off with the big, the biggest numbers, and then we'll kind of go from there and I'll talk about where the money's coming and where it's going. So again, this is not a how-to episode. This is not like do as I've done type of episode. This is about financial transparency above all else. And if there's one overarching message I want you to take away, it is my financial review, my 2025 financial review, is a living practice of enoughness, finding enough, finding the point at which you're satisfied and content, and you don't need to keep pushing for more, whether that is money, which is what we're talking about here, or it is life goals or healing or weight or, you know, insert whatever the thing is that you're pushing for. And that's been a lifelong journey for me to reach the point where I am now, where I feel like I have enough in many, many aspects of my life. So, what does that actually look like? Is what I would love to tell you. So, my big number, my total life income, I guess. So that's from being a working certified anesthesiologist assistant and from teaching, podcasting, content creating, although I guess I haven't made money from content creating, but you get
Income Overview And Philosophy Of Enough
SPEAKER_00it from all the other side projects that do not happen in the operating room. My total income for 2025 was 152,788. That's all the money I made, all the dollars and coins I made in 2025. Now, here's the other number. So my total life expenses, and I will say that when I was putting these numbers together, I tried to keep all of my money separate. I do have a partner, a husband, who makes money. We're very equivalent. We both work part-time. He makes about the same amount of money as I do. He's also self-employed, but I have really taken his money and, you know, taken it totally out of this conversation. Except for when I say this the total life costs that I pay for, which involves, you know, not just me. I have kids and a husband, is 164,456. So a diligent listener would see that I have more than a $10,000 deficit. I'm not sure, does that make me in the, I think that makes me in the red? That's the bad part. Um, and just for naming sake, that difference is made up by my husband's money that he brings in. Um, and there's also some other money that's coming in from him that's not calculated in this, but I do all the fan finances for our family, and all of the big expenses come through my bank account. He has basically given me all those reins willingly, and I enjoy this. And so, yeah, I basically had all of the information to give you all here without having to ask him anything. So I think he knows I'm doing this episode. I he I know he doesn't care, but uh Kevin, thank you for what you bring to our financial relationship. Okay, so let me break that down a little bit further because I know you guys are dying to know about how much money I make as a clinician, as a working certified anesthesiologist assistant, because it is the majority of that money is being made by giving anesthesia. So of the approximately 152,000 that I made in 2025, 110,880 was my CAA income. So I have already said several times other places, but I make $200 an hour working PRN. I worked 554.4 hours in 2025, which averages out to about four to five days a month, which is about what I worked. Most weeks I work one day a week. Some weeks I work none, and some weeks I'll work two to make up for it. And I am signed up for now for 12-hour shifts, but they just tell me to go home when they don't need me anymore. Sometimes that's me working an eight-hour day, and sometimes that's me working a 12-hour day, and then of course, all the times in between. Um, but yeah, I work about a day a week. I make $200 an hour. And in 2025, I worked about 55 days. And that is such an amazing accomplishment for me personally. That is exactly the life I wanted to lead when I sat down in 2018 and dreamed of my biggest dreams and what's possible. What I have now is exactly what I could have never believed was possible, but wanted. I believe I said in 2018 I wanted to work two days a week, and I thought that would be be me making like $60,000. And now I work one day a week and I made $110,000. So
Clinical Workload And Pay Breakdown
SPEAKER_00working as a CAA has got me everywhere I've wanted to go. It was not fast, it was not instant, it was not without heartache and a lot of hard work and long hours in the beginning of my career. I only started working part-time in 2019, and I only started working one day a week, absolutely for sure, in May of this year. So in May of or of last year, of May of 2025. Yeah, this is all pretty recent for me, but I'm really, really proud and happy to be here. Okay, let's keep going. So, my entrepreneurial income. So, for the sake of naming it here up front, that's money I make from sponsorships for Awaken Anestus podcast. I'm seeing you, Harmony, Anesthesia Staffing, and my trusted CAA partners, which are on my website. They're all CAA founded, owned, run companies that I know personally as well as recommend personally, and am 100% behind. And I'm proud to help and elevate them as they are helping and elevating me. So go to my website and you can see all of the amazing CAA businesses who are part of my entrepreneurial income. Then I also teach a program called CAA Matters, which is a professional development, emotional intelligence, art of anesthesia curriculum for AA students. And then I teach its sister course called a pre-AA Matters for the pre-AA community. So those three things, podcast is the biggest thing, then pre-AA Matters, and then CAA Matters, which is me being hired. CAA Matters, I am hired by AA programs to teach as like a third-party contractor at their AA school. That all last year in 2025 made me $41,908. My first year as a solopreneur, an entrepreneur, I have an LLC called Awaken Anesthetist. Mind you, I've been doing the podcast and building these curriculums for probably five years, um, definitely the podcast for five years, but in 2025, it was the first year that I went a day a week in the OR and took that time and energy and put it into my AA educator roles and the podcast and just more creative ventures to see what I could do. And I did $41,000, which is amazing. I feel like that's so great for my first year. Again, remember, if we're going back to the top line, I'm still in the red. I overall was short about $10,000 this year to cover everything. And that money came from my husband. But I worked a day a week, we all fed every single day. Uh, I paid for vacations, which I'm about to talk about. We had health insurance, which I'm about to talk about. And I really enjoyed my days and my life. Again, going back to the rich life concept, which is not about throwing money around, but about every day waking up and I feel like, yes, I get to have this day. I'm so excited on my OR days. I'm thrilled. I love giving anesthesia. And because I don't get to do it very much, it's exciting every day. And waking up at 445 once a week is a lot better than waking up at 445 six days a week and then having to work 12 hours. So I just I can't say enough how proud I am for getting here and that this episode is as much about all the things that I don't have in order to have the things that I do have. So while I'm talking about how much money I made, I wanted to also include all the money I'm spending and what's important to me and where that money goes, because it 100% is not going to fancy clothes or like trips to France or like fancy uh, you know, I don't know what else, jewelry and stuff. Like it is going to the things that I hold really important, and that is a rich life. Okay, let's keep going. So I wanted to shout out financially free CAA, who is another CAA entrepreneur. She is um into, of course, financial freedom and loves financial literacy and she wants to start building a platform, or she is building a platform to ensure that CAAs are all financially literate, which I'm totally behind. In one of her latest reels, she said it was like a question like, what's what do you spend your most money on? And the right answer, she said, for all CAAs is taxes. And when I put my top eight things I spend money on, lo and behold, the number one thing was taxes. So breaking down my income, my total income of 152,000, the top line item that I spent that money went out was taxes. It was about $38,000. Taxes, again, that are taken out of my AA paycheck that covers my income through the hospital, as well as I take out additional money, like I elect on my W9, right? Yes, my W9, additional money so that it covers the taxes I knew I was going to have to pay because I made money as an entrepreneur through my Awakened Anessis LLC. So, as opposed to paying quarterly taxes, that's what I've been doing. I knew about doing that because that's how we've done my husband's taxes. He's also self-employed. He's an antique stealer. He's been an antiques dealer since he was 11 with the same company. It's called Preserved Past. He is amazing at his career, and we've learned a lot about entrepreneurship. I've learned a lot about entrepreneurship and how to run a business by watching him do it since we've been together, which is like um like 25 years. So, okay. The second top expense from my
Building A CAA-Focused Business
SPEAKER_00income that comes directly out of the money I make is food. So to feed my family of five, my husband and myself, my husband's vegan, my kids eat well. We all we're not a picky family, we love good food. I would have said this is what we spent our most money on. Um, we definitely take vacations around food. We have a lot of dinner parties, we love having people over. We have birthday parties that are family parties, like we're we're constantly spending money on food. And we spent about $36,000 in 2025 on groceries, restaurants, food. Which makes a lot of good sense. I would say that's what I expected. The taxes, I guess when I think about it, yes, I spend more money on taxes, but when I think about what I value and want to spend money on, it's really good food. And that's what we did. Okay, the third top thing we spend money on is travel. We spent about $30,000 on travel in 2025, and this is part of living our rich life. I in, I don't know, maybe 2020, like maybe pandemic era, it gave me a lot of perspective on what type of vacation makes me feel refueled. Um, some people love planning, Chibelli, I'm looking at you, love planning like overseas vacations or like different countries, and you know, just like really want to be immersed in culture. And for me, for myself, for right now, I don't know if it's the kids. I don't know if it's the time that it takes to get places. That doesn't sound super appealing to me. I would love to have, you know, every other month, like a trip, a three or four or five-day trip that I can look forward to. I like more frequent vacations than I like big, huge, you know, kind of elaborate vacations. Um, and so last year we spent $30,000 and we took about 10 trips. Again, this is my solo travel, maybe meditation retreats or like little things that I like to do. Um, some couple vacations. So my husband and I went on a couple vacations just on our own. We went to New Mexico and we went to Austin. And then family trips. So one of the things that I want in my rich life is to have the time freedom and the money freedom to show up for my best friend's grandma's funeral who I knew. Or to show up to like a random third kid's baby shower. Or there is a friend who has a charity race that she puts on every year, and I find a way to show up for that, um, which is in Ohio and I'm in Missouri. So just those little trips showing up for people and their life is how I want to spend my money. And it takes more than money to do that, it takes time. And so there's always been this pull in my dream life: like, how much do I have to work in order to have the money that I need to pay for the flight, to go do the things? But if I'm working too much, then I don't have the day off and I can't go, or I can't go last minute. Um, and so it's been this balance, and I've been trying to find it for the past five years of this enoughness. How much money do I need to feel completely satisfied? I can do all the things I want to do, go all the places I want to go, get the coffee when I want to get the coffee, run to Target last minute when that when I need that. Um, how much is that? How much do I have to work? And does the time to money ratio still work? And the life I'm leading right now is like chef's kiss, perfect. I'm there. I don't know how long I'll get to stay here, but I am really enjoying while I'm here. Okay. Moving right along, we're on number four. Interesting that my mortgage is number four. So the fourth biggest expense that we have of that $152,000 that I made in 2025, $19,836 went to our mortgage,
Top Expenses: Taxes, Food, Travel
SPEAKER_00which is not very much. I have a beautiful, beautiful home that we bought in 2012 as a foreclosure. Perfect timing, amazing neighborhood. At the time, it was like three minutes from the hospital that I worked at. And not exactly what we were thinking. My husband, again, is the antiques dealer, so we thought, oh, we're gonna live in a historic home, downtown Kansas City. We're gonna live that like suburban or not suburban, urban life, eating the good food, going to the good restaurants. Like that's what we envisioned. And we ended up moving to the burbs, three minutes from the hospital, in a home that was built in 1986 and was not historic, but it was just a beautiful home, great location, great schools. We were starting to kind of think about having kids, and we just couldn't say no. And it ended up being a decision I would have never thought I would make. And it was, it's the best decision we've ever made. We will likely not ever leave this home until our kids are, I don't know, in college. It's just the place that we're gonna be. We're just really, really happy here. And because we bought it as a foreclosure, we have a very low mortgage. So very close to our fifth biggest expense, which I would have thought was a little bit higher on the list because for me, health insurance, which is our sixth biggest expense, health insurance for myself, my kids, and my husband was the biggest limiting belief I had for going PRN, like fully PRN, which is what I am now, a day a week. I am not employed by the hospital per se. They could just like cut me if they don't need me, which they have sometimes for sure. Like called me last minute and been like, we don't need you, stay home, and then I don't get paid. So I'm non-salary. And when I went totally PRN, I snatched up that time freedom real happily, but also lost a lot of the benefits. So I no longer have group subsidized health insurance. You're always usually paying some premium for your health insurance, but when you work in a group or for a hospital, you're an employee of them, they full-time employee generally, they'll pay some of that premium, your health insurance premium. Well, now I have to pay all of my premium because I'm self-employed. So my health insurance premiums for the 12 months of 2025 was $16,092. And this went up from my last job that paid for my health insurance. Um, I was working part-time, but they still paid for some of my health insurance. And that was in 2023, and I paid $10,000, basically, almost $11,000, $10,000, $10,800 for the health insurance I had when it was paid by a group. And now it's gone up to $16,000. And I just, I'm reiterating that because I thought for so long that I would never be able to go part-time because I wouldn't be able to afford health insurance. And I don't think I ever calculated really how much I was already paying or still paying in health insurance, even when my group provided it for me. Like, best case scenario, I think when I first started and I was just single, my group, I think paid all of my premium, which was amazing. So zero cost for healthcare premiums. Of course, I still had to pay to go to the doctor and have surgery and whatever. Um, but then when you had a spouse or kids added on, then you had to pay some of that premium. And it was thousands of dollars. It wasn't like I was getting anything for free. But in my mind, I thought, oh, there's no way I'll ever be able to afford it. And now it's like a $6,000 difference from, you know, being a part-time employee with my last employer in 2023 when they told me what days to work, versus now I tell the hospital what days I want to work and I pay $6,000 more of health insurance. Like it doesn't now seem like that big of a risk. So I just wanted to say that plainly for anyone else who's maybe thinking about going locums or PRN or making a switch, like it really helps to put the numbers down on paper and see them side by side and you know, consider can I really afford that? Maybe you can. Maybe you can't, but it helps to, you know, do the math. Okay. My um next one was is number six. It's the sixth biggest chunk of money that I have spent in 2025. It is also um when I was doing my year review, like personal review on goals and things that have happened, it was the thing I was most proud of. So I wanted to share that in 2025 I spent $12,671 on paying my interns. My pre-AA matters interns, Miss Tiffany, Miss Adri, and Miss Victoria are the three pre-AAs. They are all trying to get into AA school. Um, they're on little different time timelines, but likely in the next couple years, they will all go off to AA school and I will lose them all. And I am already sad for that, but I'm so excited for their future. They have been amazing assets to me as an educator, as a creator, um, as a human being who sometimes needs a pick-me-up and is trying hard things for herself and, you know, is scared to be vulnerable sometimes and scared what people are gonna think. And it just is so amazing to have these three women behind me who are so capable, incredibly creative and intelligent, cheering me on. And I'm just excited to spend 2026 with them and see what we can do creating CAA Matters and PreAA Matters even further. And actually, the day I'm recording this is Wednesday, January 21st. And today at 6 p.m. my time, I will teach the first class of Pre-AA Matters to the 2026 cohort. And it's just great. So amazing. It's just the work I want to do. My rich life is about making impact, doing work that lights me up and fuels me, and is the change that I want to see in medicine, in what it means to be a CAA. And I'm just lit up every day to get to do it with these three women. So well worth the $12,671 it took to pay them to do their wonderful work. I think I hired them in May. So that was actually only like six months. Like we worked a lot in that time. Okay. Um, the seventh and second to last largest line item. There's only one more after this that I'm going to share, is my hero, my knight in shining armor, Miss Christina, who for the past 11 years has helped me clean my home on a varying schedule. Right now, she cleans it for me every other week. She actually just came today, which is also maybe why I chose to record this today, because she took so much off my plate. I first kind of allowed myself to even consider being someone who would have a house cleaner after I had my first kid, after I had my son, who is almost 12 now. And the woman to walk through our front door was Miss Christina, and we've followed her to another company now, and she's part of our family. She makes my life better. She makes my life possible. I can't say enough good things about the ease that she allows me
Home, Health Insurance, And Risk
SPEAKER_00to have in my life and the enjoyment. And she's just a delight to know. My kids call her Aunt Christina, like she is part of our family. And I paid her $7,236 in 2025 to help me clean my home. Thank you, Christina. Okay, my last one that I want to share, um, just because I wanted to talk a little bit about it in detail, is how much I've saved in my own retirement. So this kind of goes back to the top of the episode when I said that I am a certified anesthesiologist assistant who is a millionaire and is only working a day a week. That maybe sounds like I don't know, something that I thought when I was younger, which is like, oh, I'm just like rolling in cash and you know, don't have a care in the world, and every month I just have like so much extra money. That's not actually true. What is true is that I've been a CAA making six figures since I was 24 years old. And now I'm 41. I'll be 42 this May. And for the beginning decade of my career, I was single, and then it was just my husband and I, and then it was uh just my son and my husband and I for a long time. And so we were able to max out my retirement for basically the first decade of my career. And through the power of compound interest, I have been able to bank that money through um, you know, from employer to employer. I just keep moving it over, moving it over. Right now it's in a Charles Schwab account because, again, I'm self-employed now. And so we manage all of it ourselves. My husband is very, very good at that. He is self-taught during the pandemic and he manages all our money at that end. I manage the day-to-day, he does all the retirement. I personally have over a million dollars now in just my retirement money. That's the like the Roth 401k and the traditional 401k that I've had from various employers. I've also had profit sharing at different points of my career. And now that money over the almost 20 years is more than a million dollars. And then, of course, we have my husband's money, which is totally separate, like his retirement. And then the only debt we have right now is our home. So completely debt-free minus a mortgage. And we have a very substantial FU fund. So an emergency savings, which I call an FU fund, from my husband's dad, my father-in-law, because he had always told my husband, like, be sure that you have an FU fund in case you hate your job and you want to be like F you, I'm leaving. So that's how that came to be. So we have a substantial FU fund that would allow something crazy to happen for like 12 months, and we would still be okay. We'd be able to live off that for a good 12 months and not have to change anything even. So longer than that, if we really scrimp and saved. And that money is sitting in a high yield savings account at like 3.6% interest right now. So this number that I'm about to tell you is not what you should do. This is not financial advice. This is my real situation, and I'm not recommending that you contribute this little to your retirement. But in 2025, my eighth biggest expense, and the last one I'm going to talk about, is my retirement savings. It is what I invested in a Roth 401k account. I am PRN, but my employer allows me to contribute and get a 2% match. And so I took full advantage of that. And I contributed $4,435, which they've matched and has since grown, but that's the only money that I contributed to retirement in 2025. Again, hear all the things that I said that we already have in place, because that would not be enough to be saving if I were not already in the financial position that I'm in. And yeah, I just I don't want that number to sound, I want it to sound how it really is, which is not very much. But um, it is number one, because of the financial stability that I've already created through two decades of working and saving. And number two, it's not where I want to stop. So I do want to start saving more for retirement in different ways or just investing in different ways myself with money that I hope to continue making as I hope to continue growing. Pre-A matters and CAA matters. Of course, as things get bigger, time becomes of the essence. Maybe I need more people to be helping me behind the scenes. And so my dream is not to have some huge empire. My dream is to make impact in my community in a way that I can sustain and that is manageable and that fuels me and that I continue to get to wake up and be excited about my day. And also do this thing that's called slow living, which is like, hey, I don't feel great today. Let me just chill and like relax and not feel guilty about it. And no one's breathing down my neck to turn anything in. Or um, it's a great example. Today, I woke up, got my kid up, my oldest up for um middle school, got to hang out with him in the morning. I meditated. My other two kids woke up. I had my third cup of coffee, also not a recommendation, but is my life. Um, walked them
Team, Interns, And Buying Back Time
SPEAKER_00to the school bus. I worked on the prep for this episode a little bit. Christina, our amazing house cleaner, came over. We chit-chatted. I went to yoga. I came home, I took a shower, I prepped for this episode, I sat down and recorded this episode. I've been talking to you for 45 minutes, which means I need to be almost done. And my husband and I are about to go on a day date, which we try to do every single Wednesday. Likely we're gonna go to a coffee shop and walk around a little bit. But that is my beautiful life. Like that is what I want to be doing. Tonight, I get to take my girls to gymnastics and then teach pre-AA Matters and work with those three amazing interns and the pre-AAs who have signed up for today's class and, you know, do the thing I love, which is teach and talk about the art of anesthesia and help people succeed inside this profession and give back to this beautiful. I don't know, is it a profession? Is it a community? I think community, this amazing community that's allowed me to live my rich life. So I think that's all I want to share. I um am grateful to you if you've lasted to the very end of this episode. I hope it was informative. I hope it was something to aspire to, not in terms of the dollars, but in terms of the feeling, and that feeling of enough is worth kind of doing the hard back-end work to figure out what is your enough? What are you wanting? Oftentimes when we go looking for enough, we find all of the places where we're hurt or we're not fulfilled, or we don't feel loved. And I have absolutely been on that journey and am still on that journey and will probably always be on that journey. But so much of it has been about accepting myself. And, you know, you've heard my OCD story now. You um know about this journey. If you've been here at Awaken Anesthetus, how I've wanted things and you know, have taken years to really see this life come to fruition. And I'm just really grateful to be here telling you all about it and to have this perspective and to be able to like listen back and watch back this episode and just feel proud. Like, I'm not ashamed to say, like, I'm proud to be here and to be enjoying my life as fully as I am. And I can't wait to wake up tomorrow and get to have another day. So thank you so much for being here. I'm gonna go tell my husband that he was very patient because I was supposed to be done like 45 minutes ago. And yeah, I just I will see you next time on Awaken Anesthetist, and we'll talk soon, y'all. Bye. Thanks for listening to Awakened Anesthetist. If this episode resonated with you, share it with a CAA friend, an AA student in your life, or a perspective, and let them know why you loved it. It's the most important thing you can do to support this podcast and its mission. You can always find more ways to connect with me and this CAA community at awakenedanesthetist.com, including an invitation to join season five Mindful Connections. These are free virtual gatherings open to anyone in our Awakened Anesthetist community. And while you're scrolling the website, check out my trusted CAA partners who make this podcast possible with a special thank you to my season five sponsor, Harmony Anesthesia Staffing. Talk soon.
