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?

Resisting the Introvert's Tendency to Nest

Despite the winter solstice being over a month away, it is already cold and dark here.  Which means that when I'm not at work, I'm happiest when I'm on my couch with a blanket and a good library book.  (Currently reading Shrill by Lindy West on the advice of...someone?  Twitter?  A blog?  I really like it!)  As an introvert, I can go for very long periods of time with minimal human interaction and actually feel okay about it.  Until I emerge from the dark, eyes blinking in the bright sun, and realize that I haven't maintained any important relationships, of course.

I was reminded of the need to nurture relationships this week when I encountered someone who was in hospital and was very much alone.  It's bad enough for someone to be in hospital, where the beds are hard, the food is cold and bland, and there is absolutely zero privacy.  But to do it completely alone?  I never want to be in that position.  And even if I am lucky enough to avoid being in hospital, I want to always know that there are people in my life that I can turn to when I need them.

So, immediately after the interaction, I pulled out my phone and started texting.  "Friend, want to go for brunch this weekend?"  "Friends-who-are-family, let's spend a day together at Christmas and binge watch movies in our pjs!"  "Mom, want to come put up the light that I unearthed during my massive purge last weekend?"

(The last one may have been more practical than relationship-building.  But that's why we have moms, right?  Ideally, at least.)

It's good to be reminded that I need other people.  Even when I'd rather be at home in my sweatpants.

Dialing It In

It is late at night and I've just returned from drinking two glasses of wine at a friend's house.  I had many ideas for a post earlier tonight, but none of them can be written in under 15 minutes with the amount of mental capacity I have remaining.

It was a good day.  I slept in a bit; did important life maintenance tasks like dishes and laundry; purged a few cupboards in the kitchen; went to dinner and a play with my nieces; and then ended my day with friends.  I totally did not follow through on my plan to finish minimalizing the kitchen, but sometimes when a friend texts you with a photo of the bottle she is about to open, the right thing to do is leave the overflowing cupboard of Tupperware for tomorrow.

It is not always a linear process, but I feel as if I'm starting to settle into the next phase of my life.  Freed from the need to accommodate someone else, I am figuring out what I most want to do, and I am doing it.  And it feels right.

NaBloPoMo Will Not Defeat Me (The 30 Minutes or Less Post)

For the past few years, Wednesday nights have been trivia nights.  My (now ex-) girlfriend and I would meet at a pub with whomever we could drag out (friends, parents, co-workers, friends of friends) for terrible but cheap chicken wings and PubStumpers trivia.  We were never any good, but it appealed to my competitive side and to my I-love-deep-fried-animal-fat-drenched-in-sauce side, so I made it a priority to go almost every week. 

The last time I went was the night before the breakup.  My ex was the one who had gotten us involved with trivia, so until now I've kind of stepped aside and let her continue to go without me being there.  But now that two months have passed, it feels like time to go back.  (Also, she is out of town for the long weekend.  But it's also time.)  So I've gathered four friends, a table is reserved, and to trivia we go.

No matter how shitty the breakup, life does eventually continue.

Growing my Community

As a typical introvert, I have always had a fairly small group of friends.  I hate small talk and big gatherings and casual relationships, so I've always prioritized close relationships with a few people over superficial ones with many.  And for the most part, this has always worked for me.  I still have a friend whom I met in kindergarten* and another whom I met in grade five, and I am closer with them than I am with any of my biological family.

When M and I started dating, I was shocked to see how large her friendship group was.  She is as extroverted as I am introverted, and so she has accumulated an enormous collection of friends and acquaintances over the years.  People from church, people from university, people from her childhood camp, people from work.  We rarely went out in public without running into at least one person whom she would consider a friend.

I have never wanted my friendship circle to be as broad as hers (I don't think I could even remember the names of all the people she knows), but I was always envious of how easy it was for her to find someone to spend time with when she wanted to.  Many of my friends are physicians or new moms, so getting together usually involves weeks to months of planning.  There aren't a lot of people in my life whom I can call up at the last minute when I'm feeling bored or am in need of a sympathetic ear.

This wasn't a huge problem when M and I were dating, as I could always call on her, but I became aware of it again when we separated.  The weekend after the breakup, almost every person in my life was busy.  It was almost comedic to see how many people were unavailable that weekend - my mom was visiting her family halfway across the country, my aforementioned long-term friends were both away, my brother was on call, two of my friends had brand new babies, and another good friend had quarantined herself in her house with her three plaque-ridden children.  Thankfully a close friend whom I had met through online dating** years ago was free, although I suspect she could have done without being my primary emotional support at the beginning of my breakup.

So...this post sounds a bit whiny, which is really not my intention.  This post isn't so much about gaining sympathy (or worse, pity) as it is about being self-aware.  While my introverted tendency is to be insular and not deal with the stress of meeting new people, my newly single self is craving more connections and a larger community.  Which means taking risks and living with some of the initial discomfort that comes from dealing with strangers.

So far, my focus has been mostly on strengthening my existing relationships, which I unfortunately neglected a bit while I was deeply ensconced in my relationship with M.  But the next step is to broaden my circle.  I have recently joined a French conversation group, as I am trying to become fluent(ish) in French, and it's an opportunity to meet some like-minded people.  I'm also applying to be on the Board of Directors for a small local theatre company, which would combine meeting new people with my slightly obsessive love of theatre.  And I'm trying to reconnect with some of my cousins, with whom I've lost touch since my Dad died eight years ago.

All of this feels a little (a lot?) stressful to me, as I am very comfortable in my own comfort zone.  But even introverts need friends, so I'm going to use the opportunity of my newly single life to bring more people into it.  Fear and discomfort be damned.

Any other ideas for growing my community?  How do you meet new people as an adult?

*35 years ago.  How insane is that?

**One of the advantages of same-sex relationships.  If there's no romantic chemistry, sometimes you can be friends!

Financial Personalities

I am very lucky to have a few super long-term friends, the longest-term of whom is my friend L.  L and I met in kindergarten, and we have lived fairly parallel lives ever since (same elementary/junior high/high school, same university, same medical school, same residency site, and now working at the same hospital).  Although our lives have been pretty similar, we are nonetheless very different people.  Where L is outgoing, I'm a classic introvert.  Where I am uptight and neurotic, she is laid-back and has a laissez-faire attitude.  She chose to be an Emergency physician because she loves the fast pace and variety, while I chose to be an Internal Medicine sub-specialist so that I could spend lots of time thinking and pouring over medical minutiae.  We're closer-than-sister friends, but very different in many respects.

As an introvert, I cling tightly to established relationships, so I make it a priority to maintain my friendship with L.  Because we're both busy people, the easiest way for us to do this is to get together for dinner, which we try to do once a month.  (This is one of the reasons my eating out budget is ridiculously high.)  Earlier this week, we met at a local restaurant for cocktails, charcuterie, and a chance to catch up on everything that's happening in our lives.  And one of the subjects that came up was money.

Having known her for 35 years, L is one of the few people with whom I can honestly talk about money.  So I talked frankly about how I'm horribly a little bit obsessive about saving money, about how closely I monitor my net worth, and about how much I would love to have enough to retire right now, even though I probably wouldn't.  As I talked, I could see a bemused little smile form on her face.

"Oh my god, Solitary!  You're a physician.  Stop worrying about money so much!  You have enough money.  Just spend it!"

She then proceeded to tell me about her financial strategy, which is basically to meet with her financial advisor once a year to review her debt repayment strategy and investment strategy, after which she spends whatever money is left over.  She doesn't really know her net worth, and she certainly doesn't know her daily net worth like I do.  But with how little attention she pays to her money, she is vastly less stressed about finances than I am.

Now...I have no idea whether her financial strategy is a good one or not.  She might be saving only a small percentage of her earnings, thus ensuring that she will need to work til 65 or beyond, in which case her approach isn't great.  But she spends pretty reasonably for a high income earner, and she does recognize the importance of saving, so I suspect she's doing okay.  And as I just said, she is vastly less stressed about finances than I am.

Which makes me wonder:  Is a person's stress level about money inherent and inflexible, or can it be changed?  If I start paying less attention to my finances, could they be less of a source of anxiety for me, or is this just part of my innately anxious personality?  I had thought that building up a solid net worth would get rid of my financial worries altogether, but it has really only lessened them slightly.  I'm now convinced that achieving Financial Independence is the key, but I'm not certain that even that will be enough.  Maybe I'm just hard-wired to worry?

Are you anxious (reasonably or unreasonably so) about your finances?  If so, how do you deal with it?

Making Peace with My Food Budget

When I first put myself on a budget about 2.5 years ago, I had to cut out a lot of things to make it balance.  Things like clothing and online shopping got essentially eliminated.  Travel changed from fancy overseas vacations to trips within Canada that I purchased with AirMiles.  Visits to my favourite independent bookstore were replaced by the public library.

But one area that didn't get cut much was eating out.  Throughout training, eating out was my main form of entertainment and relaxation.  It was also an essential way of staying connected with friends and family at a time when my apartment was too messy and my fridge too empty to ever entertain at home.  So despite being ruthless with my spending in many areas, I averaged about $300 a month on eating out throughout my training.

And then I became an attending.

At first, I stuck to essentially the same budget, as I was somewhat obsessed with reaching a net worth of zero.  Once I had worked for about nine months, and I had achieved the long-dreamed-of positive net worth, I started to relax a bit more.  We started eating out a bit more often than before.  And ordering a few cocktails or a bottle of wine with our meals.  And dropping $100+ on dinner at a fancy restaurant, instead of $20 at one of the tasty dives that had previously been our favourites.

When I reviewed my spending for 2016, I was absolutely appalled to discover that I had averaged $600 per month on eating out.  SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!  Which is utterly ridiculous.  And to make it even more crazy, that only accounts for my contribution to eating out.  My girlfriend was also paying for restaurant meals, and although she tends to pay for the less expensive meals given that she works for a non-profit agency and doesn't earn a physician's salary, she was probably still contributing a few hundred dollars a month to our eating out budget.  And, the $600 was an average for the year.  At the beginning of the year, it was closer to $300 a month, meaning that it was well over $600 a month by the end.  RIDICULOUS!

So in early January, I said enough is enough and put myself on a slightly strict eating out budget of $300 per month.  I figured that I had lived with that level of spending as a fellow, so it wouldn't be all that hard to go back to it.  I motivated myself with calculations of how much $300 a month would be worth at retirement (about $138,000 if I retire in 20 years).  I promised myself that it wouldn't be the end of eating out, but just an opportunity to recalibrate my spending.  I was ready.

I lasted approximately two weeks.

It took me two weeks to realize just how many of my favourite moments happen in restaurants and how much I would miss out on if I based my spending on an arbitrary budget instead of conscious choice.  In those two weeks, I spent a Friday night eating takeout with a friend and her young baby while talking about the crazy rollercoaster ride that is being a new attending.  I spent a Monday night at a ramen bar with another friend hearing about her struggles with infertility.  And I spent another Friday night with my partner eating in a cheezy 80s style Greek restaurant because we were both too worn out from the week to even think about cooking.

After the two weeks, in which I didn't quite manage to stick to my eating out budget, I realized that food is my sacred cow.  I'm quite happy to live in a modest home and drive a car that my physician friends make fun of and never own a Coach purse.  But I'm not happy saying no to friends or my partner when they want to get together over food.

So bring on the ridiculous food budget.  I'm ready for some tapas.

Goals: Review of January/Plan for February

Well...

My main goal for January, if you remember, was to go to the gym three times per week.  I think the best phrase to describe my performance is epic fail.  In total, I think I made it five times.  And the fifth only happened because my girlfriend resisted my desperate pleas to stay in the warm bed this morning and dragged me to the gym. 

Part of the failure wasn't my fault.  Soon after recovering from my horrible Christmas cold, at approximately the time when my chapped nostrils were starting to heal and I was getting used to being able to breathe without choking on phlegm, I got another cold.  So for at least 3-4 days I didn't have the respiratory function to run on the treadmill.  The rest of the failure was clearly my fault.  Some of the excuses I used for skipping the gym included not getting enough sleep, feeling groggy from getting too much sleep, the bed is warm, and of course "I don't want to".

I don't know how to do better.  While my resolve is generally good when I'm thinking about going to the gym during the day, it is abysmal at 6:45 in the morning when the room is dark and I am buried under my favourite duvet.  I'm hopeful that my girlfriend will be a positive influence, as she has committed to working out regularly, and she's vastly better at sticking to habits than I am.  (She still wears her retainer at night.  Over a decade after her braces came off.  I think I might have done that for a month, if that.)  I know that it isn't enough to rely on my girlfriend's commitment, but maybe her encouragement will help me in the early stages of developing this habit.

Recycled February goal:  Go to the gym three days a week.

My other January goal was to find a counselor.  Success!  Thanks to a service for physicians, I've actually been able to get an appointment with a psychiatrist for an initial assessment next week.  I'm a bit nervous about it because 1) it's in the hospital where I work and 2) I know some of the psychiatrists who are on the treatment team.  I can't say I like the possibility that someone I know, or worse yet one of my colleagues, could find out about this.  But...I believe very strongly that we shouldn't stigmatize mental illness, particularly in medical professionals, and one of the ways of breaking down the stigma is to show that good, competent physicians can struggle with mental health issues.  So I'm just going to suck it up and do it.

Second February goal:  Don't chicken out and skip the assessment with the psychiatrist.

Because it's rather boring to just recycle old goals, I'm setting one new big goal for the month.  I wrote recently about how much I hate winter, and my hatred just seems to grow as the season continues with no sign of an end.  Despite my plans to embrace winter, I've been doing a spectacular job of staying home on my couch, which isn't doing anything to make me a happier person.  So, I've set myself a goal of making two social plans with friends or family for every week in February.  It doesn't matter what it is, as long as it requires me to change out of my sweatpants and spend time with another person.  And it can't just be my girlfriend or friends of my girlfriend, as I'm way too reliant on her for social interactions (a problem when introverts date extroverts, and something I've been meaning to blog about for a while).  It has to be someone whose primary connection is to me.

It's been kind of fun to brainstorm things that I can do over the next month.  While restaurants and movies will undoubtedly feature heavily in my plans, I'm also thinking about taking my nieces to a play, having friends over for games, and hosting a potluck.  And maybe even going skating with friends in an attempt to get over my hatred of this miserable season.

Any other creative ideas?

Third February goal:  Spend time with people I love.  At least twice a week.  The girlfriend doesn't count.

Responsibility

I just had a very long phone conversation with a friend trying to figure out what to do with a mutual patient.  She is the patient's attending, and I the consultant, and we were stuck deciding between two similarly bad alternatives.  Pick option A, and the patient might die.  Pick option B, and the patient might still die.

We discussed whether there were other options for treatment (none that we could see).  We debated the pros and cons of each option (essentially equal).  We tried to think of similar cases we had seen that could possible guide our decision (none that either of us had seen).  In the end, after applying all of our cumulative knowledge and wisdom and experience to the case, we essentially flipped a coin.

And it feels terrible.  It feels terrible that there is no clear answer to this difficult question, and it feels terrible knowing that we are the ones who are responsible for this decision.  There is no longer an attending who takes responsibility for everything.  We are the attendings now.  And at times it is completely and utterly terrifying.

In Need of Sleep

The past few nights I've found myself lying awake for hours on end, stressing about money and my return to work and anything else I could think about.  Despite the resultant fatigue, today I drove to the country to visit one of my closest friends from medical school.  While we ate cafe food and she nursed her wee babe, I poured out my anxieties and fears for hours.  She, a master listener, absorbed everything I said.  After I had exhausted my deep pool of insecurities, she said simply "It will all be okay".  And because she is always right, I knew it would be.

Now, back in the city, I feel lighter than I have in weeks.  My mind is slowing and my limbs are growing heavy, and it is time to give in to sleep.  I'm hoping it will be a good one.