My husband said something to me recently that stopped me in my tracks.

He said: "Pharmacy? It sounds like pharmacy is like a spinning compass."

He's right.

If you've ever felt like you're trying everything — different settings, different roles, different titles — and none of them feel like home? That's the spinning compass.

I had 8 different pharmacy jobs. Every single one started the same way: hope. Excitement. "Maybe this is the one."

And every single one ended the same way: "This isn't it either."

Retail wasn't it. Hospital wasn't it. Long-term care wasn't it. MTM wasn't it. Administration definitely wasn't it.

And the whole time I thought the problem was the setting. If I could just find the RIGHT job, the RIGHT corner of pharmacy, it would click.

It didn't. Because the problem was never the setting. It was the model.

Here's what I mean: pharmacy gives you four corners to play in. Retail. Hospital. Academia. Pharma. That's your box. Pick a corner.

But none of those corners were built around what we were actually trained to do — care for patients.

I looked at 17 national pharmacy organizations. Seventeen. And not one of them felt like home. Not one. Because they were all built around those same four corners.

The compass doesn't stop spinning because you find the right job. It stops because you find the right structure.

I didn't know that yet. But I was about to find out.

If your compass is spinning right now — if every direction looks like a maybe and nothing feels like a yes — you're not broken. You're just in the wrong structure.

This week on The Dose, I tell the full spinning compass story. Give it a listen.

🎧 Listen to Episode 2 of The Dose on Substack

—Thea