breaking habits

So I was going to title this "breaking bad habits," but I thought about it more and felt that context plays a big role in whether a habit is bad or not. Sometimes in certain environments you develop techniques to adapt, and it's not necessarily selling out or giving in, but finding ways to keep other parts of yourself in tact. That said, during residency I developed a lot of habits that I feel are now unhealthy for me and that I'd like to spend conscious time reshaping.

1. Making use of every minute.

In residency there was never down time. I always felt like I should be doing something, so that I could get home earlier, get more sleep, build up minutes to go do something. This was useful to me in residency because when there's so little free time, being productive while at work means you have more time for yourself later. Now, though, I have a lot time to myself and I find that I always want to be finishing a task or making a list of tasks. And it might be efficient, but efficiency isn't so much my priority anymore, at least not right now. I want fullness and surprise, life less edited and manufactured by me or by the system in which I function. I want not to cater constantly to "the system in which I function."

2. Not returning phone calls

In med school I talked on the phone all the time, despite seeing my friends all the time. In residency I was terrible at answering and returning calls from people. I've always been very good at keeping in touch, but when you spend so much of your time with people, and when you've been born a pure introvert and your environment has accepted and encouraged introverted qualities, it is hard to continue conversation after coming home. Especially because as an introvert your role in most conversations is to listen, and even when you love to do this, after you have spent 16 hours listening to patients, nurses, attendings, interns, fellow residents, you kind of just want to quiet down. By you I mean me. So in some ways not communicating with the outside world helped me maintain some reserve so that I could take care of my patients. But I am sorry not to have taken better care of the rest of my personal community, and am looking forward to reconnecting with the important people in my life.

3. Online shopping

I became a little addicted to online shopping during residency, because who has time to go to the mall? But I spent a ton of time repackaging and returning packages, and also way more hours mindlessly shopping to the point of headache, much more so than if I just went to the store. So often I bought a ton online only to keep one of the items. Of course, I said, I can just return them for free, always choosing places I could ship back for free (but often giving into Ann Taylor, feeling that I could return in store, which was always a hassle). But so it ended up that it took hours to buy really just one item. Despite loving clothes I kind of hate both means of shopping, but I do think that the intellectual feeling that online shopping is time-saving is (personally) not borne out by the practical ability to try on something and decide right then and there if you want it. Not going to lie, I'm still going to shop online but I do want to do it less and venture out more. Also, while I kind of hate the mall, several people have pointed out to me that it is a very different environment than my usual places of work, study, and recreation. And it is probably the most valuable thing to me to continually expose myself to life in all forms. That might sound like a stupid way to talk about a mall. But when you spend 90% of your life in a county hospital where, when you're talking in a narrow sense of function, half the people are the highest functioning individuals in society and the other half are the least, it is opening to immerse yourself somewhere in the middle.

4. Sacrificing sleep

M always told me that I should go to sleep. I'd want to climb, or read, or answer emails. He always said that sleep was most important and as much as I tried to listen, I always wanted to be doing things because so much of my day was spent NOT doing things, at least things related to my own life. Or, I'd want to be doing work-things because there was never enough time in the day to finish them and I wanted to be a good doctor. But I just slowly became more and more tired, and I don't think I can accomplish any of the above tired.

To that end, I'm going to bed at 10 PM on Friday night and am really happy about it.

the end of residency

I have a lot to say about completing my residency, but am feeling a little too under the weather to get into much. But wanted to put down some initial thoughts.

Residency was very hard for me, and I think there were a lot of things I feel I could have handled and balanced better. At the same time, as I am enjoying my time off in which I indulge in everything-for-me, I find myself increasingly grateful for three years dedicated to things outside of myself. Throughout it I felt that it was inhuman to force us to be so inattentive to ourselves. I still think this is true, but perhaps to a lesser degree as I think about how amazing it was to be so attentive to others.

During my time off since residency, I have been doing everything that I love and that had shaped my sense of self before residency. I've been active, going to yoga and climbing almost every day, running and swimming outside. I've indulged in the art of creativity of others, listening to hours and hours of music and audiobooks on end. I've been healthy, cooking meals and hydrating myself. I've gotten back into the flexible mindset of being able to travel, which I did in residency but always felt too narrow slipped between weeks of exhaustion. I'm looking forward to all the outdoors and travel I get to do this summer: lush Vermont and New York with M, Denver with my family, and a hiking/camping trip to Iceland with my brother.

I know too that as I throw myself into this, I'll wind down and find a place between these two extremes. This feels like a necessary time after a lot of sacrifice. And the sacrifice wasn't just of stuff-for-me; I was disappointed in how it also felt that I sacrificed some of my interests in medicine in order to do it. In medical school I was interested in geriatrics, palliative care, research and policy. In residency, I sought out very little outside of what I needed to do on a daily basis, and when I did have more time I spent it, reasonably and unregrettably, on the personal aspects of my life. So I hope that after some recovery I will be able to not only re-incorporate aspects of my outside-of-medicine life back into my identity but also revive the inside-of-medicine elements that drew me to it in the first place.

Throughout residency I felt moments of excitement about my growth as a physician, and moments of sadness over sometimes losing my sense of self. Looking back, this was most definitely a singular experience in which I lived what it was like to really put others first. I don't think it should be at the cost of one's own well-being, but it is true that you can go farther for others than you think and I feel incredibly full that I was pushed and was surrounded by others committed to the same. I'm glad that it's over, and I'm glad that it happened.

july 4th recipes

One of my top ten favorite things in the world: going to the farmer's market on Saturday morning and making food for the day with freshly bought foods.

Today for our July 4th meal I made:

1) Thai quinoa salad, recipe below. Such a pretty mix of colors, and I cooked the quinoa in a mix of vegetable broth and light coconut milk and the coconut really complemented the fish sauce and lime. M absolutely loved it, fish sauce and all. http://www.onceuponachef.com/2013/05/thai-quinoa-salad.html

2) This delicious marinade for chicken and tofu skewers; the spices were amazing: http://www.feastingathome.com/grilled-jerk-chicken-and-peach-skewers/

3)And veggie sliders made from chickpeas, from a friend's facebook recipe, which I've just prepared but haven't eaten yet so unclear how my execution of the recipe will be, but looking forward to it.

I love cheap farmer's markets on crisp weekend mornings, especially REAL weekend mornings where I'm not working, just SUMMERING. Happy fourth of July!