Practice, Part One

I wrote a while back about how online dating got me into meditation.  While I only went on one date with the yoga-loving woman mentioned in the post, we have established a fairly close friendship over the past year, and after listening to her talk about her love of yoga, I decided it was something I should also do.

I had done yoga before, but only in a once- or twice-a-week, go-months-without-practicing kind of way.  Thanks in part to my friend's inspiration, as well as another friend directing me to a fabulous studio, I have now become someone with a regular practice.  I look forward to classes more than almost anything else I do, and I am sad that I don't yet have the stamina to go to a class every day - although I set a personal record of 19 classes in August, so I'm getting there.

In all my posts so far about burnout, I haven't yet written much about the role that yoga played, but ironically, I think it was a big part of why I burnt out when I did.  Before I started doing yoga, I was living with blinders on, getting through each day by focusing on the work and ignoring how miserable it was making me.  In yoga, I spend an hour or more each class inside my own head, and it's really hard to ignore how you're feeling when it's just you and your thoughts*.  Being present with my own emotions forced me to acknowledge them and, eventually, to do something about them.

Yoga also, in a very tangible and physical way, forced me to confront the fact that I am limited.  Doctors aren't supposed to be - we're taught from the beginning of medical school that we should be able to do any amount of work under any conditions without ever making a mistake.  And while I knew intellectually that this was utter nonsense, on an emotional level, this concept of what a physician should be was harder to let go of.  In yoga, my limitations are right there and are impossible to ignore.  If I go to a hard class one day, my muscles will be sore the next day and I won't be able to do the same poses.  I am limited and imperfect.  And I need rest.

Now, on what is hopefully the other side of burnout, yoga is a big part of how I'm rebuilding.  It's exercise and stress relief and a place that always feels safe.  On harder days at work, I take comfort in knowing that I can end my day on my mat, with a bit of calm and a bit of peace.  It's my happy place, and I'm incredibly grateful to have found it.

Namaste.

*and an instructor made of nothing but bone and muscle who can bend their body in super-human ways

When the Body Says No

Overwork crept up on my slowly.

Work has always felt busy to me, but over the past six months, the intensity has been increasing.  An extra patient or two added to each clinic.  A new computer system that is supposed to, but doesn't, make things easier.  An extra trainee to supervise each week.  Nothing particularly time-consuming on its own, but the cumulative effect has been a few extra hours of work every week.

At the same time, life outside of work has become busier.  I've invested a lot of energy into meeting people, and my social circle has expanded.  And on New Year's Day, I met my new girlfriend!  And I've started doing yoga.  And while all of these things are good (some of them really good), they all take time.

I started to notice the effects of being too busy right before my Christmas break.  At the end of yoga class, lying in shavasana (aka "corpse pose"), I'd often fall asleep.  On a particularly bad day, I'd cry.  I thought that I just needed a good break, but I felt just as tired and overwhelmed after my 10-day break as I had before.  The same thing was true when I returned from a recent week of vacation in Mexico.

The lowest point came the first week back from Mexico.  I was in the middle of my usual Thursday paperwork day when I started having an anxiety attack.  I couldn't focus on anything I was supposed to do, and all I could think about was how I could never possibly get done everything I needed to do.  I ended up having to leave early, because I was just desperately spinning my wheels while accomplishing absolutely nothing.

That night, I took a long and serious look at what had gotten me to that place.  (Also a long and serious look at my bank balance.  If it had been high enough for FIRE, that might have been the moment for me.  But alas, it's not even close.)  And I realized that I haven't done anything to protect my time and energy, even though I know that I am someone who gets (relatively) easily overwhelmed.

So my new phrase is "fuck no".  (The "fuck" part said inside my head, because of the aforementioned lack of enough money to retire.)  I have put an absolute moratorium on saying yes to anything else, and I've been getting rid of any commitment that I can possibly get rid of.  I've put a firm cap on my clinics, and when people say "Can't you just squeeze in one more patient?", the answer is "Noooooo".

Better to pare back now, when I'm not totally burnt out, than to be forced to do it when I am.

(I have so much more to say about this, but I'm exhausted.  Hopefully soon!)

How I Started to Meditate

I've been thinking about meditating for years.

Although I don't remember specifically, I suspect that I first heard about mindfulness meditation sometime during my medical training.  It was probably during a session on "resiliency" or "work-life balance", and I was probably cursing the fact that I had to sit through an hour of stupid talks before I could get back to the ward to finish my work and go home.  I probably laughed at the idea of using my precious free time to sit on a cushion and focus on my breath.

But it kept coming up.  In talks, in articles, from friends and co-workers.  And always with an emphasis on all the things it has been shown to help with:  depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and pretty much every other bad thing that people struggle with.  So I read a book, which I loved.  And went to one class, which I hated so much I practically ran to the instructor to get a refund at the end of it.  And I thought often about doing it.  But never did.

(This is the point at which I would love to insert something profound about a life-altering experience that motivated me to start meditating.  In reality?  (Rosemary is going to laugh at this.)  It was a girl.)

I met a woman online who is super into yoga - does yoga at least once a day, reads books about yoga, goes on yoga retreats, and has a yoga tattoo, into yoga.  And...she was really cute.  And while I couldn't become an expert in yoga in the week between when we met online and when we met in person, I had enough knowledge about meditation that I felt I could claim some proficiency in it after a week.  And meditation is basically yoga without all the stretching, right?  So I started getting up 15 minutes early every morning to plunk myself down on that cushion and focus on my breath.

Sadly, the date was not the beginning of a great romance that I have failed to talk about here (Despite my abysmal blogging record recently, I would have blogged about something that exciting.).  But the meditation stuck.  From day one, I felt a little less anxious, and a little less stressed.  I slept a little better.  In exchange for getting up 15 minutes earlier, I really do feel 10% happier.

Apparently online dating can pay off.  

Building Community

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the beginning of the end of my relationship with my ex, M.  The anniversary of the actual end will be this Wednesday, but I'm going to be on-call that day, and in the interest of not being a disaster at work, I am trying to get all the feels out this weekend.  I spent Saturday alone at a Nordic spa, warming myself in hot tubs and dry saunas, and yesterday I basically lived in my pjs.  The only reason I bathed was because I had made plans to go to the Mister Rogers documentary with a friend, and I thought she might prefer it if I didn't smell*.

Today, Labour Day, I'm rejoining the real world.  My fourth load of laundry is in, the fridge has been emptied of moldy olives (who knew they could go moldy?), and the dishes are drying in the rack.  And after days of wallowing in the hard stuff, I'm searching for the good things that came out of my "failed" relationship.  What have I found so far?

Community.

M's family has belonged to the same church since her parents met at a local bible college, so their connections to other church members go back decades.  Soon after I started dating M (once she had come out to her church in the middle of a sermon she was delivering), I started getting invited to events with members of her church community.  Fundraisers, potlucks, small group dinners, reunions at the bible college, board game afternoons, and trivia nights...my social calendar filled up effortlessly.  And it was really lovely.  She goes to a very left-wing, social justice-oriented church, so while I didn't share a faith with these people, I definitely shared a philosophy with them.

And then, it ended.  At the same time as I lost M, I also lost my connections to the dozens of people in her life who had become an extended family to me.  My social calendar emptied itself out.  It's been a year, and I still find myself grieving some of the harder losses**.

But the upside is that the loneliness I felt after the breakup drove me to work on my own community.  I had neglected some important relationships while I was dating M, and in the past year I've done what I can to strengthen them again. And because many of my friends chose the past year to start having babies and to disappear from the social world, I've also been looking for opportunities to befriend new people.  I've become really good friends with R, who is the ex-girlfriend of another friend of mine.  I've developed a friendship with the woman I dated after M, because although we were romantically incompatible, we have a freakish amount of things in common.  And I'm becoming friends with another woman I met through online dating.  (One of the perks of same-sex dating...online dating can be a source of friendships!)

I'm also joining pretty much everything I can think of to join.  I became a board member for a local theatre company.  I joined a conversational French group.  I started going to a drop-in knitting group.  I've joined a group of lesbians of "a certain age" who are interested in local cultural activities.  I'm even going to an upcoming information night about co-housing!

I'm not going to lie - it's been hard.  It sucks to have spent over three years in the midst of a supportive community and to have suddenly lost it.  I miss the ease of having a partner and a ready-made social life, at the same time as I recognize that it isn't healthy to be dependent on another person for all of my social activities.  As an introvert, it's also really difficult for so many of my relationships to still be in the early phase.  I want the comfort of 20-year-old friendships, not the awkwardness of new relationships!

But I'm working on it.  I'm taking the opportunities that present themselves, and I'm putting myself out in the world as much as I can.  And trying to be patient as I rebuild the community I lost.

*You should go see this documentary, but if you have any heart, go with someone you're comfortable crying with.  And take Kleenex.

**How am I doing with the whole not wallowing thing?

She Will Be Okay

The first four weeks of my most recent relationship passed in a strange and magical sort of delirium.  Perhaps I have always felt this way at the beginning of a relationship and had simply forgotten, but it seemed more intense and all-consuming than any relationship I'd ever been in.  When we weren't together, we texted constantly, and when not texting, I still thought about her all the time.  It was utterly distracting in the most wonderful of ways.

And then, something shifted.

I can't pinpoint the moment or the reason, but suddenly my interest waned.  I waited longer to respond to texts, and I wanted to see her less often.  It became easier to say goodnight at the end of a date.  Without any real warning, I was done.

So Saturday evening, I broke up with her.

It was a horribly difficult thing for me to do, because I hate hurting people.  In the past, I have stayed in relationships way too long (weeks to months to years too long) out of a desire to not hurt the other person.  While we had only been together seven weeks, we had made plans months into the future, and I felt like an ass for being the one to say that those things weren't going to happen.

I spent most of Saturday agonizing over breaking up with her, even though I had no real doubt that it was the right thing to do.  I contemplated waiting, "giving it a bit more time", because I was dreading the moment of the breakup.  I texted all my close friends, trying their patience with hours of rapid cycling between "I'm going to break up with her tonight" and "I'm going to wait a little longer".  I was unbearable.

And then I saw a Facebook post from an ex of mine from years ago.  She had fallen apart when I broke up with her, crying and sending me angry texts for weeks.  The Facebook post was a picture of her, 20 weeks pregnant, with her wife.  It is completely cliché to say this, but the only way to describe her expression is "glowing".

And then it was easy.  Because while breakups are messy and hurtful and absolutely zero fun, people do survive them.  And hopefully there are better things waiting for all of us on the other side.

What It's Like to be Queer

Pride Week is coming up in my city, and as an early event, last week my medical school hosted a group of transgender individuals talking about their experiences and answering questions.  Although it was a Friday afternoon and I was tired from being on call, I made an effort to attend, partly because I was interested in the session, and partly because as a queer person I feel a sense of responsibility to show up to all LGBTQ* events.  The session was hosted in the same room as my first-year medical school class, and as I pulled open the familiar door, I felt something completely unexpected.

Fear.

Now, before I continue, I want to give some back story.  I came out as a lesbian when I was 16, and as bisexual less than a year later, so I have been out to the people closest to me for decades.  I brought my same-sex partner to a work dinner over four years ago, and I have been answering people's awkward questions about swingers resorts and polyamory at work ever since.  But when I was in medical school, having just returned to my home city after seven years away, none of my classmates knew.  Because I was still dating men at the time, everyone operated on the assumption that I was straight, and I did nothing to challenge them.

So my first thought, walking into my old classroom, was a reflexive "I hope no one sees me here and figures out that I'm queer."  Which...hello.  A little late now.  I work at a small university, and pretty much everyone who knows me also knows that I'm queer.

But there it was, nonetheless.  An almost instinctive desire to hide.  To pretend to be just like everyone else.

And it came up again last night.  The new girl and I went to a theatre show together, which was hosted by the company with which I volunteer, and my first thought was that I needed to hide the relationship from my fellow volunteers.

My fellow volunteers in a left-wing theatre company.  

There aren't a lot of spaces in this world that are more queer-positive than a theatre show, and yet that automatic response was still there.  Even though I live in a country where same-sex marriage has been legal for 13 years and where the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects LGBTQ* individuals, I still feel anxious about being out everywhere I go.

If my patient finds out that I'm queer, will they want a different doctor?
If my doctor finds out that I'm queer, will she want a different patient?
Can I hold my partner's hand in this alleyway at night?  In the elevator of my apartment building?  In the grocery store?

I am so lucky and grateful to live in a time and place where my rights as a queer woman are protected.

And yet.

Anticipatory Grief

Years ago, a friend of mine who was eight months pregnant commented that she hadn't set up her nursery yet, as she knew that it would upset her if she were so unlucky as to have a late complication and lose her baby.  Another friend, who was already a mother, gave her a piece of advice that has stuck with me to this day:

"If you lose your baby, you're going to be devastated whether you've set up the nursery or not.  All that you're accomplishing by trying to protect yourself from grief is preventing yourself from feeling joy right now."

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past ten days.  Ten days ago I met "the new girl", and in addition to blogging about her here, I've also been tweeting about her incessantly.  About how much we have in common.  About how easy it is to talk to her.  About how I kind of wanted to marry her after she told me that she has a plan to retire at 55.

I recognize that this is ridiculous.  We have known each other for only 10 days, and while there are many things that work, 10 days is way too soon to be making any sort of decisions about anything.  It is not impossible to think that we could end up in a wonderful forty-year-long relationship, but we could also be sick of each other by the end of the month.  We just don't know.

And honestly, I'm scared.  I'm scared that I am going to fuck something up, or she is going to fuck something up, or that things are just not going to align in the right way, and this lovely feeling I'm feeling is going to end.  So part of me thinks that I should stop tweeting and daydreaming and feeling all of the happy feels.

But then I remember the advice.  And I just go with it.

Dating

Hey wow...yes...I have a blog.

It turns out that when you take three weeks off of work, no matter how good a job you do of getting caught up before you leave, there will be a shit tonne* of work waiting for you on your return.  And if you're sick for three weeks before you leave and therefore don't get done everything you want?

You're doomed.

It has taken me a solid three weeks of hard work to get almost fully caught up, and I am now on call for two weeks, so I am falling further behind every day.  So there (obviously) hasn't been a lot of blogging happening.

But there has been some dating.  (Also a reason for the not blogging.)

Dating is one of my least favourite activities in the world.  I have a few hangups about my appearance (thanks bad genetics and critical mother!), so putting photos out there for people to judge me by is not fun.  (I'm sure I'm the only person who feels this way.)  I also really don't like to meet new people.  I do like when new people become old friends, but I do not like the anxiety of meeting someone new or the tedium of making small talk with someone I don't like.

So yeah.  Introverts.  Don't like dating.  Who knew?

But then I met someone.  Maybe not SOMEONE, someone.  But someone interesting.  Someone whom I have actually been seeing around my city for years, because my city is small and we both love the theatre.  Someone who likes 90% of the same things as me.  Someone whom I have now spent over 8 hours with and had virtually no moments of awkward silence with. 

Someone.

And it has been pretty wonderful, in a lot of ways.  Except for my anxious brain.  My anxious brain does not like to just relax and let things happen.  It wants answers to everything.  Now. 

Are we compatible enough?  Will my mother like her**?  Will I break her heart?  Will she break mine?  Will I stay with her too long and regret time lost, like I always do? 

It is, frankly, ridiculous.  I haven't known her long enough to be wondering any of these things.  All of these questions, and the many others that distract me constantly, can be answered with time.  There is no rush.

I can just date.

So I am trying to go against my nature and do just that.  Trying to slow down and let things unfold how they will. 

We shall see.

*The metric equivalent of a shit ton.

**Probably not.  But that's just my mother.

When Money Meets Dating

When my ex and I broke up, I gave myself a six-month hiatus from dating.  I wanted to relearn how to be happy as a single person before I started dating again, in the hope that I wouldn't make bad relationship decisions to avoid being alone.

It ended up being easier than I had expected.  I had been unhappy in my old relationship for a long time, so the absence of the relationship's negativity in itself felt like happiness.  And there are big positives to being alone.  I like planning trips to France without considering what someone else wants to do, and I like always getting to pick the movie. 

Then my ex started dating again, and I got jealous.  I was doing so well with being single that I decided I didn't need to wait a full six months, so I signed up for an online dating site about a week ago.  It has been about as much fun as I expected it to be, with my previously healthy self esteem now as volatile as the stock market.  I check my profile more frequently than Twitter, and I devote way too much of my precious mental energy to the eternal question of "Why didn't she respond to my message?"

A friend of mine who is in a happily committed relationship keeps telling me that I should enjoy the process, which makes me kind of hate her.  Meeting new people is anathema to an introvert, and it is only made worse by the inherent vulnerability of trying to find someone who will like you enough to want to share your bacteria.  The best I can do so far is view this as a means to an end, and if I survive the process without hating it*, I will consider myself to have handled it well.

When I first subjected myself to this hell five years ago, I didn't really think about money.  I was a solid five figures in debt, so I didn't worry that someone was going to pursue me for my wealth.  But now, things are...different.  I'm on pretty solid financial ground for a forty-year-old, and assuming the stock market stops imploding, my finances are going to keep getting better very quickly.  My financial situation removes a lot of ordinary worries from my life, and it also lets me do a lot of things that most people can't.

One of the first things I've noticed with online dating is how different my travel history is from most people's.  "Where have you traveled?" is a common conversation starter online, and I feel uncomfortable listing off all the places I've been lucky enough to visit.  I abhor bragging, and it feels like that's what I'm doing when I say "Oh, I've traveled to all the places you have, but also 20 other places, because I am a rich doctor."  (I'm not actually that awkward online.  Hopefully.)  I know that this is a really nice problem to have, and this is not a complaint but rather a reflection, but it is still weird to me.

The bigger issue that arises with online dating is financial compatibility.  My city has a pretty shallow lesbian dating pool, so picking a partner isn't like customizing a sandwich at Subway.  What if I find someone who is cute and funny and nerdy but is terrible with money?  Or who wants to stay at home and play with the cats while I pay all the bills?  (Note to the internet:  If you are a queer woman who would like to pay all the bills while I stay home and play with the cats, my email address is on the sidebar.)

Dating is so frustratingly difficult. 

*I was going to make a joke about being murdered, but have you heard about the horrible murders in Toronto's LGBTQ* community? 

I Just Need to Write Something, Right?

You know when you have an entire day to do something, like write a blog post, so you dither around doing other stuff, like checking Twitter every 7 minutes to see if someone has posted a cute animal/baby photo?  And then suddenly it's 6 PM and you need to cook something, because the broccoli you bought last week really should have been used yesterday, and it has to be quick, because you need to be at your friend's house by 8?

Yup...That's my current state of inspiration.

As for why I need to be at my friend's house by 8...apparently I agreed to go dancing tonight.  Which is so completely unlike me that I must be mistaken.  I know that I am an awkward dancer and that I hate crowds and that my kittens expect me to spend Saturday nights with them on the couch, so it must not actually have been me who agreed to this.

Apparently when you're single and you have already dated all four women from the online dating site, you are willing to do things waaay outside your comfort zone.  Like dancing.  And talking to strangers.

Wish me luck.