bird by bird

Back from a near three weeks in Vietnam, where the first half sped by and made me feel I'd been there forever and where the second half slowed to normality and felt too short, and where both halves exhausted me with experience. I went to Vietnam to translate for a medical mission, a group of plastic surgeons repairing the lips, eyes, and ears of children and a few adults. Afterwards I was able to spend some time with family and family friends.

Coming back I've returned to a disorientation that almost feels familiar at this point, coupled to the overwhelming sense of too many things-to-write that also feels familiar and would be friendly if it weren't for the fact that many times I'd rather it be a stranger. I have a couple months before I go to California for a primary care rotation, and in those couple of months, I'd like to:

-complete patient interviews for my research project
-start sorting through the lit review & begin introduction for my project
-write on translation & pros/cons of medical missions
-work with my co-translator to write about particular aspects of our mission, namely--how much do we know about our patient population when entering this foreign place?
-work on several projects for atrium magazine
-finish loose ends on the public health research project from years ago
-compile information re: family & relation to Vietnam
-plan trip to Bar Harbor with Allison, possible end-of-May trip with M somewhere?
-plan things-to-do in my month in California

Most everything is writing-oriented, and most everything is vague and nebulous; I'm working in the realm of broad goals, not yet to the point of concrete tasks. I've been re-learning chemistry as M bravely marches through his post-bac classes, and it's strangely been a deceiving escape to a contained world of facts and answers. But I think back to when I was contained in that, and how I saw it as a gateway to where I am now.

My advisor recommended a book on writing to me this morning, called Bird by Bird. The title comes from a story about the author's brother, who had a year-long term paper to write on birds. Near the very end, he'd attained encyclopedic information on a large number of birds, and sat unable to write anything about him. His dad told him to take it bird by bird, and somehow the image of birds on a wire turned a rational -ism into something real and felt to me. It's always been hard for me to multi-task, as the significance of each thing is so present to me, but as I chug piece by piece I feel it's not about finishing but about continuing; I remember that I'll never want to run out.