grateful

In the second and third years of residency, we're on a schedule where for two months we're working in the hospital with tough hours, then switch to two months of a clinic schedule where we get weekends off and work more 9-5 weekdays. Some of my co-residents get a little restless during these more regular, free months (which are like normal-people-schedules), and miss the hospital in some ways. I appreciate my hospital months, but I don't miss them at all. The months of normalcy never, ever get restless for me. I'll forever be grateful to Yale, and the personal growth and exploration that its flexible system allowed us. Because of it, it's hard for me to ever have enough free time or at least time in which I have the freedom to structure work and life how I want to. So I'm grateful for these clinic months, when not only do I get to the kind of patient care I love most but also indulge other parts of myself.

A list of things I've really enjoyed these past two months of being a normal person:

A new schedule

M and I have started having a regular schedule of sleeping early and waking up around seven, which before daylight savings was when it would start to get light. It's such a luxury to actually be able to have a regular schedule. I love not having to set an alarm, because this well before I need to get up for work, and the light naturally wakes me on most days. I love being up early, but not so early it's depressing like during the days of my tougher schedule. I love being able to go to morning yoga, and I love experiencing all hours of daylight. Lots to love.

Three Junes by Julia Glass

I read this on the plane ride to Kilimanjaro last month, and it was beautiful from page one. Since residency doesn't offer much time for pleasure reading, it can be a risk to start a book without knowing how much I'll enjoy it (this makes me sound practical to the point of being robotic, which can be true). So I was actually excited about the 30 hour plane ride, the long stretch of nothingness with time to experiment, and bought a bunch of books for the plane ride. This was the first one I read, and by far the best. The first section takes place near the water, and the book itself felt like water: fresh, filling and layered despite being incredibly easy to take in.

HIV Clinic

I've been able to spend a half day each week in urgent care of the HIV clinic. A big part of Three Junes is about AIDS in the 80s, and we also recently watched Dallas Buyers Club, and in contrast to those narratives HIV care now is more about longitudinal primary care, less dramatic catastrophes. Though we still see a lot of end stage AIDS and HIV complications in the hospital, the patients I see in clinic are able to live with their illness with all the medications out there. The publicly insured population is a diverse and at times eccentric one, but the HIV population in San Francisco is pretty unique and one that I don't get to see in my primary care clinic since there is a specialized HIV clinic. I appreciate learning things specific to a condition. I think this is something we all value as people, the ability to cater towards something, to feel that familiarity with the unique contours of something helps you to know some of the inside.

Runner's high

After hiking Kilimanjaro I took a break from running because the climb down felt really hard on my joints. But after lots of yoga to recover and with beautiful weather beckoning, I started in again with an hour through Golden Gate Park on a Sunday morning. We don't spend much time there since we live on the other end of the city, but I was craving greenery so drove there. Because it was Sunday morning, there was no traffic and I could take in all the hills and corners that make this city so gorgeous. Golden Gate Park was full of kids playing baseball, people walking dogs and riding bikes and power walking and running. The smells hung heavily in the air, making me forget that it smelled any different anywhere else in the city. The first miles of running were glorious, the middle got choppy and then turned the kind of amazing that makes people wonder why you're smiling so hard to yourself. I'm not fast and my endurance is in the middle depending on the comparison, but I love that that doesn't matter--you can still get the high as long as you go far enough.

Cooking

One of the things that makes me feel less human during my inpatient rotations is the amount of frozen dinners I eat. It's been really nice to cook almost every day, even simple meals. I hate grocery shopping, but with M's help I've grown to like it by getting a bit better at it. Developing certain routines has made me feel very normal and happy and natural. Little things like cleaning out the fridge when we just got new groceries, choosing a new cheese each time we go to the store, placing leftovers in a certain place to remember to eat them. Some recipes we've enjoyed are Alaskan salmon with dill, healthy cinnamon roll pancakes, sesame turkey meatballs (tofu for me) sometimes with an orange glaze, and different kinds of pesto, lentils, quinoa. I like being comfortable enough with certain recipes to vary them every so often.

High school friends

This month I was able to spend more time with Kristina, one of my best friends from high school, and also saw Richard who was visiting from Seattle and who I haven't seen in several years. We got to cook for Kristina and Wayland, and had a long cozy dinner at home. M often talks about how our younger selves can be a pure version of us, indicators of what we want when untethered by expectations and responsibilities. Spending time with people from high school reminds me of what we desired then, of what we naturally gravitated towards, and reminds me to seek those in my life. Kristina's regular blogging during a period of facebook abstinence inspired me to return to this, and her presence made me think of my own, of what I want to make from myself.

So, thank you to all this.