When I was a few months into dating my girlfriend, we celebrated her birthday together for the first time. For me, birthdays have always a pretty understated affair, marked by a single special dinner and maybe a cake. Not so for my girlfriend. For her, birthdays are an event...or more accurately multiple events involving as many different activities and as many people as possible. I was somewhat stunned that first year by the number of celebrations that a single person could have in honour of her birthday.
It took me a few years to realize that this was something that I could use to my advantage, but now that I'm three years into the relationship and a few days away from my fortieth birthday, I know to milk it for all it's worth. I'm not having a single birthday this year; I'm having a birthday month. Dinner with friends, dinner with both sides of the family, an Escape Room with other friends*, and birthday tapas with the girlfriend. I will be celebrated!
And, inevitably, I will be a bit melancholy. Because there is something about turning forty that feels...old. Forty marks the end of the decade in which I went through medical school, residency, and fellowship. It marks the end of the decade in which my father died. It appears to mark the end of my single life and of dating new people**. Realistically, it probably marks the end of any chance that I will have a biological child. While I am hopeful for good things in the upcoming decade, I can't help but feel a bit wistful for the things being left in my thirties.
How does one let go of so many things that made them who they are?
*Have you ever done an Escape Room? Puzzles and friendly competition all in one? Yes! Love them.
**If my girlfriend reads this, which she only seems to do when I write something she would find remotely bothersome, I can just hear her saying "Appears to? What does 'appears to' mean???"
Showing posts with label The Girlfriend. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Girlfriend. Show all posts
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Surviving Call
When I wrote my most recent blog post, I was feeling a little bit smug about how well my life was going. I was exercising, I was feeling calm, and my relationship was in pretty much the best state it has ever been. I was happy. I was about to start an 11-day stretch of 24-hour-a-day call, but I felt ready for it.
I've got this, I thought.
Except I didn't. It took less than one day of teaching residents, and rounding on inpatients, and answering outside calls (all while still running my normal outpatient clinics) for me to return to my usually high stress level. I went to a movie with M and a friend the evening of my first day of call, and I spent the entire time stressing about work and feeling annoyed that the two of them were calm and actually enjoying themselves. (How dare they?) After weeks of respite, my mind was back to ramped-up panic mode.
And that's where it remained for most of my 11 days on call. I worried and obsessed over the decisions I was making. I felt stressed by the increasing pile of undictated charts piling up on my desk. I lay awake at night rehashing everything I had done and questioning whether I was, in fact, good enough. As it often is, it was awful.
And of course, my life outside of work suffered. My relationship that had, until that point, been ticking along nicely, suddenly struggled. I was short-tempered. Everything she did seemed wrong and irritating. I had moments of panic that I was making the wrong decision about staying with M, even though a few short days earlier everything had been going really well. Also awful.
In the past, my approach when I've felt this way on call has simply been to count the days until it's over and to feel thankful that I'm only on call for 10 weeks a year. Now, having been through some counseling, I realize that there are things that I can do to make the tough parts of my life better, and I'm no longer happy with the grin-and-bear-it approach to call. I want my life on call to still feel okay.
So I've been thinking a lot about the things that I can do to make call less awful. This is what I've come up with so far:
Undercommit: I am about as introverted as introverts get, and as a result, I need a lot of time to rest and recover from activities. Evenings on my couch with a book and my cats are as essential to me as vitamins. This is particularly true when I'm on call and I'm dealing with a lot more people, decisions, and uncertainty than I do in my ordinary life. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of making just as many plans when I'm on call as when I'm not, even though I know that my work life will use up most of my capacity to function in the world.
The other downside to making plans when I'm on call is that I hate disappointing anyone. Somehow the pager always goes off when I'm getting ready to go out with M, and I hate making her wait for me or (worse) do things without me. It makes me feel like a terrible partner, even though she is incredibly patient and supportive and never says anything that even implies that she's disappointed that I got paged and our plans had to change.
I'm not saying that I won't ever make plans when I'm on call, but I do need to be very cognizant of my limitations. I need to plan much less than I often do, and I need to leave enough couch time to recover from my days.
Keep moving: It always comes back to this. Exercise is good. I need to do it. Regularly. End of story.
Talk to M: I have a really good partner who is loving and supportive and a good listener. I always feel better after talking with her, and I need to get better at being open with her about how tough my work life can be.
Let things go: The low point of this week was on Tuesday night, when I really needed to just relax and recharge, but I had a slow cooker of pork that was waiting to be turned into pozole. I normally love cooking, but I resented every minute I spent chopping and frying and pulling pork instead of reading a book. And the resentment was completely unnecessary, as there are clearly foods that are much easier to make than homemade soup!
I need to let go of the idea of myself as someone who always cooks elaborate whole foods from scratch. I can eat a fried egg with toast or a frozen fish fillet and the world will not end. Pozole can wait for a week when I'm not on call. As can many other things. Call weeks should be about doing what is necessary, not what is perfect.
Recognize my irrationality: I am an anxious person, and I am only now starting to realize just how detrimental a role anxiety plays in my life. When I'm in the extremes of my anxiety, it can lead me to think really irrational things. Like that my relationship may not be a good one. Or I'm not cut out to be a doctor. Or I'm going to end up on the street if I don't hoard every penny I earn. Thankfully, I'm learning to distinguish between true facts and crazy anxious talk, and I'm learning not to listen to the latter.
Keep going to counseling: I am somewhat amazed at the difference that six counseling sessions made in my life. It probably saved my relationship with M. It certainly made work better. It was worth vastly more than the $480 it cost, particularly because the cost was covered by our provincial medical association.
Unfortunately, the medical association only pays for six sessions, so I stopped going after the sixth. Which is UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID OF ME, because I can still afford to go. I spend $80 in restaurants without batting an eye, so I can spend $80 on a counseling session.
UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID. (I'm looking at you when I say that, Solitary.)
For now, call is done, and I am recovering on my couch with my computer/books and Callie. It is taking all of my self restraint to not add 85 other activities into my day (dishes! groceries! laundry! coffee with friends!), but I know that I depleted all of my reserves over the past 11 days, and I need to replenish them.
Hopefully my next time on call will be better.
I've got this, I thought.
Except I didn't. It took less than one day of teaching residents, and rounding on inpatients, and answering outside calls (all while still running my normal outpatient clinics) for me to return to my usually high stress level. I went to a movie with M and a friend the evening of my first day of call, and I spent the entire time stressing about work and feeling annoyed that the two of them were calm and actually enjoying themselves. (How dare they?) After weeks of respite, my mind was back to ramped-up panic mode.
And that's where it remained for most of my 11 days on call. I worried and obsessed over the decisions I was making. I felt stressed by the increasing pile of undictated charts piling up on my desk. I lay awake at night rehashing everything I had done and questioning whether I was, in fact, good enough. As it often is, it was awful.
And of course, my life outside of work suffered. My relationship that had, until that point, been ticking along nicely, suddenly struggled. I was short-tempered. Everything she did seemed wrong and irritating. I had moments of panic that I was making the wrong decision about staying with M, even though a few short days earlier everything had been going really well. Also awful.
In the past, my approach when I've felt this way on call has simply been to count the days until it's over and to feel thankful that I'm only on call for 10 weeks a year. Now, having been through some counseling, I realize that there are things that I can do to make the tough parts of my life better, and I'm no longer happy with the grin-and-bear-it approach to call. I want my life on call to still feel okay.
So I've been thinking a lot about the things that I can do to make call less awful. This is what I've come up with so far:
Undercommit: I am about as introverted as introverts get, and as a result, I need a lot of time to rest and recover from activities. Evenings on my couch with a book and my cats are as essential to me as vitamins. This is particularly true when I'm on call and I'm dealing with a lot more people, decisions, and uncertainty than I do in my ordinary life. Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of making just as many plans when I'm on call as when I'm not, even though I know that my work life will use up most of my capacity to function in the world.
The other downside to making plans when I'm on call is that I hate disappointing anyone. Somehow the pager always goes off when I'm getting ready to go out with M, and I hate making her wait for me or (worse) do things without me. It makes me feel like a terrible partner, even though she is incredibly patient and supportive and never says anything that even implies that she's disappointed that I got paged and our plans had to change.
I'm not saying that I won't ever make plans when I'm on call, but I do need to be very cognizant of my limitations. I need to plan much less than I often do, and I need to leave enough couch time to recover from my days.
Keep moving: It always comes back to this. Exercise is good. I need to do it. Regularly. End of story.
Talk to M: I have a really good partner who is loving and supportive and a good listener. I always feel better after talking with her, and I need to get better at being open with her about how tough my work life can be.
Let things go: The low point of this week was on Tuesday night, when I really needed to just relax and recharge, but I had a slow cooker of pork that was waiting to be turned into pozole. I normally love cooking, but I resented every minute I spent chopping and frying and pulling pork instead of reading a book. And the resentment was completely unnecessary, as there are clearly foods that are much easier to make than homemade soup!
I need to let go of the idea of myself as someone who always cooks elaborate whole foods from scratch. I can eat a fried egg with toast or a frozen fish fillet and the world will not end. Pozole can wait for a week when I'm not on call. As can many other things. Call weeks should be about doing what is necessary, not what is perfect.
Recognize my irrationality: I am an anxious person, and I am only now starting to realize just how detrimental a role anxiety plays in my life. When I'm in the extremes of my anxiety, it can lead me to think really irrational things. Like that my relationship may not be a good one. Or I'm not cut out to be a doctor. Or I'm going to end up on the street if I don't hoard every penny I earn. Thankfully, I'm learning to distinguish between true facts and crazy anxious talk, and I'm learning not to listen to the latter.
Keep going to counseling: I am somewhat amazed at the difference that six counseling sessions made in my life. It probably saved my relationship with M. It certainly made work better. It was worth vastly more than the $480 it cost, particularly because the cost was covered by our provincial medical association.
Unfortunately, the medical association only pays for six sessions, so I stopped going after the sixth. Which is UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID OF ME, because I can still afford to go. I spend $80 in restaurants without batting an eye, so I can spend $80 on a counseling session.
UTTERLY AND COMPLETELY STUPID. (I'm looking at you when I say that, Solitary.)
For now, call is done, and I am recovering on my couch with my computer/books and Callie. It is taking all of my self restraint to not add 85 other activities into my day (dishes! groceries! laundry! coffee with friends!), but I know that I depleted all of my reserves over the past 11 days, and I need to replenish them.
Hopefully my next time on call will be better.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
So Many Things
You know how something happens and you think "I should blog about this", but then you don't have make the time to do it, and then something else happens that you want to blog about, but you can't because you still have to blog about the first thing, and then it happens over and over again until you have ten things you want to write about and you haven't blogged in almost a month?
Yeah. That.
So...because I can't decide which of the major life events I want to leave out of my blog post, and because no one wants to read a brief autobiography disguised as a blog post, here is the last month of my life in bullet points:
*I'm giving her an initial, because it's far too tedious to keep typing "the girlfriend" or "the ex-girlfriend" depending on my current relationship status. Also my hands are sore from typing chart notes.
**When did I turn 80?
Yeah. That.
So...because I can't decide which of the major life events I want to leave out of my blog post, and because no one wants to read a brief autobiography disguised as a blog post, here is the last month of my life in bullet points:
- I got back together with my (no longer) ex-girlfriend. After the breakup, I don't think I went more than four or five days without seeing M*, and I definitely didn't go that long without talking to her. I missed her. We started out doing the "we're spending all our time together but not dating" thing over a month ago, and we declared ourselves dating again a few weeks ago, and so far it seems to be going well. We're doing our best not to repeat some of the mistakes we've made in the past, and it definitely makes for a healthier relationship. We shall see where this goes...
- My grandmother died. My grandmother was 94, slightly senile, and diabetic, and yet I was convinced that she would live forever. A few weeks ago, I got the call that she had had a heart attack and been made palliative, so I headed out to her small community as prepared as one ever is to say goodbye. When I arrived at the hospital, she was asleep in her bed, but she quickly roused and demanded to be taken home. By the time we got her back to the PCH, she was back to her usual feisty self, showing no signs of what had happened. Unfortunately, a week later she fell and broke her hip (for the third time), and that was the beginning of a very rapid end. My grandmother was the most resilient of the resilient Depression era farm women, and so it's still amazing to me that she's gone. I still have moments when I feel guilty for not visiting her, so I don't think it's quite sunk in yet.
- I decided what to do with my budget. The comments on my previous blog post were fascinating to me! It's interesting how everyone has their own unique way of being financially responsible, many of which are different from my own. In the end, I realized that my current method of budgeting is actually working pretty well for me, except for the fact that the amount of money I was allowing myself didn't fit with the amount of income I was bringing in. So, I threw $500 at the budget to get myself out of the black, and I increased the regular amount in my budget by 1/3. Since the change, I have bought Threadless t-shirts and Happy Socks, taken a thankfully not sick cat for a very expensive vet visit, and booked a luxurious spa day for the long weekend. So I'm over budget again. But enjoying spending some of my hard earned money instead of just hoarding it in the event of future catastrophe.
- I started counselling. I wrote before about how I had seen a psychiatrist through a service at work, but what I've never written about was how abysmal the whole experience was. I went in looking for some coping strategies and maybe some cognitive behavioural therapy for anxiety, but what I got was someone who wanted to put me on medication and explore all of the supposedly traumatic events from my childhood (um, no thanks). It was a terrible match. I put off looking for someone else until M and I got back together, and then I decided that I needed someone external to help me navigate the waters of rekindling an old relationship. I've met with the counsellor once, and it seems like a better fit so far, so I'm hoping that something good will come out of it.
- I started exercising again. It has become abundantly obvious to me that everything is better when I exercise. Not in a future oriented "I won't have a heart attack when I'm 50" kind of way, but in an "I'm less of a psycho hose beast when I exercise" kind of way. Exercise is definitely good for my stress, my energy level, my sleep, and my all round happiness. My goal for September, in fact, is to restart the habit of exercising three times a week. It will likely consist of me running on the treadmill on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, as I have no clinics those mornings, and then doing something else on Saturdays or Sundays. I may alternatively do an exercise class at work on Thursday afternoons, as there's one that starts after my work day ends. This week I'm planning to go to yoga on Saturday morning, as my sciatic pain has flared up from the running**, but I may be more creative in the future.
- I signed up for a meditation class. This terrifies me. I've been reading books about how wonderful meditation is (like 10% Happier and Full Catastrophe Living), and I'm fully convinced that it can make me a happier and more productive person, but I absolutely hate the idea of having to actually do it. Sitting with nothing but my thoughts? Breathing exercises? Walking meditations? All of that sounds terrible. And yet, starting October 5 I will be doing it every Wednesday evening.
*I'm giving her an initial, because it's far too tedious to keep typing "the girlfriend" or "the ex-girlfriend" depending on my current relationship status. Also my hands are sore from typing chart notes.
**When did I turn 80?
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Afterwards
Life is a strange contrast at the moment. I am on call for the week, so my days are run-off-my-feet busy between my regular clinic schedule and the added inpatient service. I am constantly scribbling notes in a chart while balancing my cell phone on my shoulder, or listening to my resident present a patient while I not so inconspicuously scan blood work on the computer. I start my days anxious and I finish them overwhelmed, uncertain of where I will get the energy to do it all again tomorrow.
And then I go home. My pager is relatively silent most evenings, my apartment even more so. My dining room table is empty, the jacket and wallet and keys that used to live there now scattered across the dining room table at my ex-girlfriends' family home. Beyond feeding myself and the two cats, there is nothing that I have to do. I read for a few minutes, then watch tv for a few minutes, then stare at the cats willing them to be better conversationalists. Occasionally they purr, and I tell myself that they are trying to make me happy, although I am well aware that cats are inherently assholes.
I don't know what to do with myself.
For two years, my life was filled with her and with the bustle of activities that filled her restless, extroverted life. The first day after the breakup, my introverted self reveled in the stillness of her absence, but as time passes stillness transforms into tedium. There is no shortage of things I should do - the not quite unpacked suitcase from our trip is still on my bedroom floor, and there are always dishes - but I am longing to want to do something. I am five-year-old me, whining at my mother: "I'm bored".
"Clean your room," she replies, and the answer is as unsatisfying now as it was 34 years ago.
And then I go home. My pager is relatively silent most evenings, my apartment even more so. My dining room table is empty, the jacket and wallet and keys that used to live there now scattered across the dining room table at my ex-girlfriends' family home. Beyond feeding myself and the two cats, there is nothing that I have to do. I read for a few minutes, then watch tv for a few minutes, then stare at the cats willing them to be better conversationalists. Occasionally they purr, and I tell myself that they are trying to make me happy, although I am well aware that cats are inherently assholes.
I don't know what to do with myself.
For two years, my life was filled with her and with the bustle of activities that filled her restless, extroverted life. The first day after the breakup, my introverted self reveled in the stillness of her absence, but as time passes stillness transforms into tedium. There is no shortage of things I should do - the not quite unpacked suitcase from our trip is still on my bedroom floor, and there are always dishes - but I am longing to want to do something. I am five-year-old me, whining at my mother: "I'm bored".
"Clean your room," she replies, and the answer is as unsatisfying now as it was 34 years ago.
Thursday, June 9, 2016
Zero
Two major events happened last week.
First, I finally hit the zero point on my net worth. After two years of budgeting and frugal(ish) living, I finally dug myself out of the hole that medical training and lots of careless spending created. I feel a little bit lighter and a little bit less stressed, but it hasn't been quite as momentous an achievement as I had hoped. Now that I am officially worthless (ha ha), I want to actually start accumulating some money. An emergency fund! A down payment on a home! Apparently I'm incapable of being satisfied with where I am in life.
Second...I broke up with my girlfriend of two years.
It's hard to know what to say about this, because there are so many things at play in a breakup, and they never quite fit together into a coherent story. It's inevitably messy. I can say that it was my decision, that I had a sense it was coming for a while, that I'm doing okay. That it is very strange to watch carloads of her things disappear from my small apartment and to see my old life emerging from underneath them. That the worst thing in the world is hurting someone you love. There is so much more.
For now, one of the many songs that I'm listening to, over and over again.
First, I finally hit the zero point on my net worth. After two years of budgeting and frugal(ish) living, I finally dug myself out of the hole that medical training and lots of careless spending created. I feel a little bit lighter and a little bit less stressed, but it hasn't been quite as momentous an achievement as I had hoped. Now that I am officially worthless (ha ha), I want to actually start accumulating some money. An emergency fund! A down payment on a home! Apparently I'm incapable of being satisfied with where I am in life.
Second...I broke up with my girlfriend of two years.
It's hard to know what to say about this, because there are so many things at play in a breakup, and they never quite fit together into a coherent story. It's inevitably messy. I can say that it was my decision, that I had a sense it was coming for a while, that I'm doing okay. That it is very strange to watch carloads of her things disappear from my small apartment and to see my old life emerging from underneath them. That the worst thing in the world is hurting someone you love. There is so much more.
For now, one of the many songs that I'm listening to, over and over again.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
The Way Things Should Be
Like a number of my favourite bloggers (see here and here), I recently read Leo Babauta's post about how to not be frustrated all the time. In the post, he argues that frustration arises from our desire for things to be different from how they are.
"It’s from not wanting things to be a certain way. Not wanting other
people to behave a certain way. Not wanting ourselves to be a certain
way."
Yup. Welcome to my life. After reading the post, I started paying attention to how much mental energy I expend wishing that things were different, and I was shocked by the fact that there is pretty much a never ending stream of thought going through my head that judges everything in my life as inadequate. For example:
When waking up in the morning: "I wish it wasn't Tuesday and that I didn't have to get up and go for a run, because I'm tired and want to stay in bed under the warm covers and running sucks and I'm out of shape and I'm never going to get in shape anyway."
When walking to clinic: "I wish I didn't have so many patients booked because I'm sure some of them are going to be really challenging and then I'm going to feel rushed, and feeling rushed makes me stressed, and I hate being stressed, and if I were a better doctor I would never feel stressed."
When dictating: " I hate dictating, it's so boring and it takes so much time, and I don't have enough time for fun things or for more important work because I'm always spending time dictating, and if I were a better doctor I wouldn't take so long to do my dictations."
When leaving work: "It's nice that work is over, but the evenings are never long enough, and I have to do things that aren't fun like cook supper and wash dishes and that always ruins the little bit of time I have when I'm not working."
And on and on and on. The funny thing is, before paying attention to my thoughts, I would have described myself as a positive person. I'm generally pretty happy, and I'm usually able to find the positive side of a situation, so I was shocked to realize just how much negative crap goes through my head on a daily basis.
Once I was conscious of my thought patterns, I realized how incredibly draining all of the negative crap is. So I'm trying to change it. I'm trying to follow Babauta's advice to become aware of my frustration and to let go of my expectation that things will always go my way.
"You want things to go your way, want people to behave the way you want
them to. But you don’t and can’t control the universe. You aren’t
entitled to getting everything your way."
Now, when I start down the horrible negative thought death spiral, I try to catch myself and be aware of it. And then I try simply to not engage in all of the negative thinking (sometimes easier said than done). I acknowledge that I would rather be on my couch drinking an Old Fashioned than sitting in my office doing my 12th dictation of the day, but that isn't my reality. Or that I wish my girlfriend wouldn't look like she's on a terrifying roller coaster ride every time I drive, but that is my reality. And I am better off accepting these things (as much as I can) than I am constantly raging against them.
The amazing thing to me is that it's actually helping. I don't dread dictations and paperwork nearly as much as I used to, and I'm more efficient at them because I'm not wasting time feeling like the most hard done by person on the face of the Earth. I'm not freaking out when I take longer than planned with a patient, because I know that there is some cushion in my schedule, and life will go on even if my clinic runs overtime. Things feel surprisingly easier, despite making what seems like a very minor change in my thinking.
Since that Babauta post, I've encountered the same ideas in a few different places. (It's almost like the universe is trying to tell me something.) I went to a workshop about physician burnout on Friday, and there was a session on mindfulness meditation that explored the same concepts. I recently finished a really good book called 10% Happier, which is about a tv anchorman's experiences with mindfulness meditation. The more I encounter the idea, the more I think I might benefit from spending more time exploring the concept of mindfulness.
Which will unfortunately have to wait, because on Thursday I hop on a plane for three weeks in Egypt, Greece, and Jordan. While this sounds wonderful (vacation!), I'm honestly a bit terrified, because there are going to be some major challenges. Such as 24 hours of travel, jet lag, staying in an apartment that is 100 stairs from the main floor (no elevator), highs of 44 C*, crowds, noise, and two out of three weeks spent with my girlfriend's family. Oh, and the fact that most of the places we're traveling to hate the gays, so we'll have to pretend that we're roommates. My goal for the trip (Let's call this my May goal, shall we?) is to be mindful of all the things about travel that frustrate me and to do my best to let go of them.
Or, at the very least, to not have a screaming match with my girlfriend in front of the pyramids.
*I think the hottest I've ever experienced was about 35 C, and I felt like I was going to die.
Friday, March 25, 2016
Notes Towards a Poem That Can Never Be Written
"The facts of this world seen clearly
To see clearly and without flinching,
are seen through tears;
why tell me then
there is something wrong with my eyes?
To see clearly and without flinching,
without turning away,
this is agony, the eyes taped open
two inches from the sun." - Margaret Atwood
Part of my girlfriend's job involves resettling Syrian refugees. After experiencing almost unspeakable horrors in their home country, these people have now traveled halfway across the world to a foreign city searching for something better. Which they don't always find. The cold and the grey of a Canadian winter, even as it begins to melt into spring, isn't always inviting. The residents of my city too aren't always welcoming towards more people who will need government support (more taxes on the already overtaxed) to establish themselves. The low-income housing into which people are placed doesn't always match with the image of an affluent Canadian city. Life here can be hard.
And so they talk. They talk about many of the sad things from their pasts and about the disappointment that they don't leave the sadness behind when they physically leave their country. They talk to my girlfriend, and she listens because she's a good person and can feel these people's need to unburden themselves, if only a little. With each story, each heartbreaking story, some of the weight of their experience transfers from them to her. Their loads lighten, hers becomes heavier.
And I see it in her. I see it in how she laughs a little bit less and seems a little bit more distracted when we talk. I see it when I awaken in the night, and she is already awake, her mind unable to rest. And I know what it is like, to bear witness to the suffering of others, and to feel powerless.
And I wonder, how do we - the doctors, the nurses, the social workers, the myriad of helpers - stay intact? How do we witness these things and not be destroyed by them? How do we keep coming back, day after day, offering what little we have to offer, when all we see is the neverending need?
Sunday, December 6, 2015
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
I find the Christmas season stressful. I'm a person who prefers being undercommited to being overcommited*, so I get easily overwhelmed by the addition of holiday parties and gift buying and dainty making to my schedule. (But not the dainty eating. I'm always game for dainty eating.) Last year was particularly challenging for me, as it was my first Christmas with my girlfriend, and we tried to fit in all of the gatherings and traditions that are important to both of us. It was too much, and it left both of us (mostly me) exhausted by the end.
This year, I thought I would cut back on my stress level by being on top of my game from the beginning. I would make all the dainties and buy all the gifts and stock the liquor cabinet early so that once the celebrating began, I would be ready to just enjoy myself. And I was doing okay, up until the point two weeks ago when I said "Why yes, I'd be happy to revamp the entire curriculum before January"**.
Wait...what? Who agreed to revamp an entire curriculum in six weeks? At Christmastime? It couldn't possibly have been me, because I am a rational human being who recognizes her limitations and doesn't take on utterly ridiculous and near impossible tasks.
Aren't I?
Apparently I'm not. Because I did take on that task at precisely the time when I most want to be scaling back and enjoying my life outside of work. And if I could find a way to go back in time and open my mouth and take those words back into it and swallow them whole so that they could never, ever escape my lips, I absolutely would. Because when I look ahead to the next 19 days, it isn't Christmas spirit that I see.
*What does it say about our society that overcommited is a legitimate word, while undercommited apparently isn't?
**Back in July, I also said "Why yes, I'd be happy to be on call the entire week after Christmas", not realizing that my girlfriend would have the time off of work. Bah humbug.
This year, I thought I would cut back on my stress level by being on top of my game from the beginning. I would make all the dainties and buy all the gifts and stock the liquor cabinet early so that once the celebrating began, I would be ready to just enjoy myself. And I was doing okay, up until the point two weeks ago when I said "Why yes, I'd be happy to revamp the entire curriculum before January"**.
Wait...what? Who agreed to revamp an entire curriculum in six weeks? At Christmastime? It couldn't possibly have been me, because I am a rational human being who recognizes her limitations and doesn't take on utterly ridiculous and near impossible tasks.
Aren't I?
Apparently I'm not. Because I did take on that task at precisely the time when I most want to be scaling back and enjoying my life outside of work. And if I could find a way to go back in time and open my mouth and take those words back into it and swallow them whole so that they could never, ever escape my lips, I absolutely would. Because when I look ahead to the next 19 days, it isn't Christmas spirit that I see.
*What does it say about our society that overcommited is a legitimate word, while undercommited apparently isn't?
**Back in July, I also said "Why yes, I'd be happy to be on call the entire week after Christmas", not realizing that my girlfriend would have the time off of work. Bah humbug.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Status Update
I had no intention of being absent from the blog for as long as I was. Work got busy; life outside of work got busy; and somehow, in the midst of it, six weeks passed without a single blog post. Sorry!
A few weeks ago, I was finally starting to settle into the routine of being an attending. My anxiety about being responsible for all the people was becoming manageable; I was figuring out how to work with my large and diverse group of clerks and nurses and other support staff; and I no longer had moments when I would look around me hoping that there was, in fact, someone other than me who was in charge. It was refreshing after two months of nearly continuous panic. Then, two weeks ago, I started back on the inpatient service, and it all went to hell again.
In addition to my entirely manageable schedule of clinics and clinic prep time (so many labs to review, so many patients to call), I was once again dealing with new consults and follow ups and phone calls from remote communities with no access to anything and residents with their own needs and personalities. And it was nuts. I would find myself at the end of the day doing the terrifying dance of a three-year-old in need of a potty because I hadn't made it to the bathroom since I left for work in the morning. I kept cancelling plans with my girlfriend because the work never seemed to end. I was exhausted. And stressed! So stressed that I could think of nothing other than the seemingly endless needs of the patients under my care.
And then, Friday night, after 12 consecutive days of call, I finally got a reprieve. My girlfriend had forced me to take the weekend off of call because her birthday was Saturday, so I started my glorious 63-hour break from my pager. It took me the first 24 hours to stop frantically reaching for my belt and panicking that I'd forgotten my pager at home, but it has otherwise been lovely. We've had a birthday party with friends, gone to explore a new kitchen store*, eaten at a fancy restaurant, and bough $245 worth of booze**. I am now sitting on the couch in pjs with cats, which is pretty much my favourite way to spend a Sunday. My girlfriend is off at church, and when she returns we will have a second birthday party, complete with fancy cocktails and cheesy card games. Life is good.
As long as I don't think about the fact that I go back on call at 8 am tomorrow***.
*Funny story (to me at least): The kitchen store was selling a chef's knife that I have been coveting for years for 50% off, and we decided that it was too good a deal to pass on. The only problem was that my girlfriend had been planning to buy it for me for Christmas, which she obviously couldn't do with me standing right there. I offered to just buy it for myself, which she thought was a terrible idea, because I am a person who wants very few material things and is therefore impossible to shop for. (I'm also incredibly picky.) After hemming and hawing for a few minutes, I finally decided that she should just go ahead and buy it for me, but wanting to maintain the illusion of surprise, I loudly declared "I'm just going to walk over to the other side of the store, and I will pay no attention to whatever may or may not happen between you and that knife." The clerk thought we were nuts.
**I bought my girlfriend a cocktail recipe book for her birthday, and we decided that we needed "a few things" in order to make some of the more interesting cocktails. We probably shouldn't have gone to the liquor store late at night when we were both exhausted/lacking our usual self restraint, but the upside of the experience is that we are now well-equipped to make pretty much any cocktail that a person could want. Unless it requires cognac, because I still had enough self restraint to not spend $3 per ounce on the cheapest bottle of cognac. Hard liquor never goes bad, right?
***Thankfully for only three days. On Thursday, I head to San Francisco for a conference and a few days of vacation with my girlfriend. I was traveling in San Francisco when the girlfriend and I started chatting online, so I'm looking forward to showing her all of the places that I told her about when I was first wooing her.
A few weeks ago, I was finally starting to settle into the routine of being an attending. My anxiety about being responsible for all the people was becoming manageable; I was figuring out how to work with my large and diverse group of clerks and nurses and other support staff; and I no longer had moments when I would look around me hoping that there was, in fact, someone other than me who was in charge. It was refreshing after two months of nearly continuous panic. Then, two weeks ago, I started back on the inpatient service, and it all went to hell again.
In addition to my entirely manageable schedule of clinics and clinic prep time (so many labs to review, so many patients to call), I was once again dealing with new consults and follow ups and phone calls from remote communities with no access to anything and residents with their own needs and personalities. And it was nuts. I would find myself at the end of the day doing the terrifying dance of a three-year-old in need of a potty because I hadn't made it to the bathroom since I left for work in the morning. I kept cancelling plans with my girlfriend because the work never seemed to end. I was exhausted. And stressed! So stressed that I could think of nothing other than the seemingly endless needs of the patients under my care.
And then, Friday night, after 12 consecutive days of call, I finally got a reprieve. My girlfriend had forced me to take the weekend off of call because her birthday was Saturday, so I started my glorious 63-hour break from my pager. It took me the first 24 hours to stop frantically reaching for my belt and panicking that I'd forgotten my pager at home, but it has otherwise been lovely. We've had a birthday party with friends, gone to explore a new kitchen store*, eaten at a fancy restaurant, and bough $245 worth of booze**. I am now sitting on the couch in pjs with cats, which is pretty much my favourite way to spend a Sunday. My girlfriend is off at church, and when she returns we will have a second birthday party, complete with fancy cocktails and cheesy card games. Life is good.
As long as I don't think about the fact that I go back on call at 8 am tomorrow***.
*Funny story (to me at least): The kitchen store was selling a chef's knife that I have been coveting for years for 50% off, and we decided that it was too good a deal to pass on. The only problem was that my girlfriend had been planning to buy it for me for Christmas, which she obviously couldn't do with me standing right there. I offered to just buy it for myself, which she thought was a terrible idea, because I am a person who wants very few material things and is therefore impossible to shop for. (I'm also incredibly picky.) After hemming and hawing for a few minutes, I finally decided that she should just go ahead and buy it for me, but wanting to maintain the illusion of surprise, I loudly declared "I'm just going to walk over to the other side of the store, and I will pay no attention to whatever may or may not happen between you and that knife." The clerk thought we were nuts.
**I bought my girlfriend a cocktail recipe book for her birthday, and we decided that we needed "a few things" in order to make some of the more interesting cocktails. We probably shouldn't have gone to the liquor store late at night when we were both exhausted/lacking our usual self restraint, but the upside of the experience is that we are now well-equipped to make pretty much any cocktail that a person could want. Unless it requires cognac, because I still had enough self restraint to not spend $3 per ounce on the cheapest bottle of cognac. Hard liquor never goes bad, right?
***Thankfully for only three days. On Thursday, I head to San Francisco for a conference and a few days of vacation with my girlfriend. I was traveling in San Francisco when the girlfriend and I started chatting online, so I'm looking forward to showing her all of the places that I told her about when I was first wooing her.
Wednesday, September 2, 2015
Check In - Home and Hobbies
About a month ago, I wrote a post about my goals for "Home and Hobbies" and promised to check in after starting work to let everyone know how things are going. Here's the update:
Have two knitting projects on the go at all times:
I've been using knitting as a way of relaxing in the evenings (when I'm not mindlessly surfing the internet), and I've made some good progress on my knitting projects. I recently finished knitting a baby sweater for a friend, and I just need to sew the hood and sleeves for it to be completely finished. Her son is now seven months old, so it's a good thing I opted for the 18-month size! I'm also almost to the end of knitting my first sock, which has been a six-month-long exercise in frustration; I may never knit the second one.
Now that I've finished knitting the baby sweater, I've essentially only got one knitting project on the go, so I need to find something else to work on. I'm thinking maybe something mindless, like a prayer shawl (maybe a Christmas gift for my Mom?), or something big, like a cozy sweater for myself. Ravelry here I come!
Cook regularly with my girlfriend:
This one has been fairly successful. We have a ton of produce from our CSA share (too much zucchini), so we've been doing a lot of cooking in an attempt to avoid wasting the beautiful organic vegetables. I also finally got our BBQ cleaned off, so we've been eating a lot of charred meat. I feel a bit like a caveman.
Read for pleasure every day:
This one got off to a very slow start due to exhaustion and my unfortunate technology addiction, but it's starting to pick up. After starting a few books that didn't hold my interest, I finally found "Chasing the Scream", which is a fascinating book about how the prohibition of drugs has led to the worldwide drug war. If you have even a passing interest in drug laws or racism or gang violence, you should read this book.
Now that I have a good book, I'm finding some time almost every day for reading. Unfortunately, I'm approaching the end of this book, so I'm not sure what I'll read next. Any "must-read" books that you'd suggest?
Keep up with my finances:
I've probably been doing too well with this. I've continued to track my budget on my iPhone, and I've started tracking all of my billings in an Excel file so that I can confirm that I'm being paid properly for the work I do. All of the monitoring has made me a bit obsessed with money, and I'm finding that I get unreasonably anxious whenever I spend money or drop below a budget surplus that I've arbitrarily decided is "enough". I'm hoping that the anxiety will wane as I get a better sense of my income and as I make progress with paying off my debt.
Spend time daily and weekly on keeping the apartment clean and organized:
Remember when I said "This will be a challenge. A huge challenge."? I was correct in my assessment. Cleaning and tidying have been the lowest priorities in my life lately, so the clutter and disorganization are starting to return. It's been made even worse by the fact that my girlfriend has been going through her own work transition, leaving her with neither the energy nor the motivation to help out much.
We have been doing a few things right, thankfully. We've been keeping up with the dishes and cleaning the kitchen semi-regularly, which means that there is usually space in the kitchen for cooking and eating. I've also been doing laundry every Sunday morning, so my laundry pile is small and I always have clothing to wear. I've also been filing my mail as soon as it comes in, which is keeping me more on top of bills and other important things than I usually am. So all in all, not a total failure with this goal.
Any goals that you've been working on lately? How are they going?
Have two knitting projects on the go at all times:
I've been using knitting as a way of relaxing in the evenings (when I'm not mindlessly surfing the internet), and I've made some good progress on my knitting projects. I recently finished knitting a baby sweater for a friend, and I just need to sew the hood and sleeves for it to be completely finished. Her son is now seven months old, so it's a good thing I opted for the 18-month size! I'm also almost to the end of knitting my first sock, which has been a six-month-long exercise in frustration; I may never knit the second one.
Now that I've finished knitting the baby sweater, I've essentially only got one knitting project on the go, so I need to find something else to work on. I'm thinking maybe something mindless, like a prayer shawl (maybe a Christmas gift for my Mom?), or something big, like a cozy sweater for myself. Ravelry here I come!
Cook regularly with my girlfriend:
This one has been fairly successful. We have a ton of produce from our CSA share (too much zucchini), so we've been doing a lot of cooking in an attempt to avoid wasting the beautiful organic vegetables. I also finally got our BBQ cleaned off, so we've been eating a lot of charred meat. I feel a bit like a caveman.
Read for pleasure every day:
This one got off to a very slow start due to exhaustion and my unfortunate technology addiction, but it's starting to pick up. After starting a few books that didn't hold my interest, I finally found "Chasing the Scream", which is a fascinating book about how the prohibition of drugs has led to the worldwide drug war. If you have even a passing interest in drug laws or racism or gang violence, you should read this book.
Keep up with my finances:
I've probably been doing too well with this. I've continued to track my budget on my iPhone, and I've started tracking all of my billings in an Excel file so that I can confirm that I'm being paid properly for the work I do. All of the monitoring has made me a bit obsessed with money, and I'm finding that I get unreasonably anxious whenever I spend money or drop below a budget surplus that I've arbitrarily decided is "enough". I'm hoping that the anxiety will wane as I get a better sense of my income and as I make progress with paying off my debt.
Spend time daily and weekly on keeping the apartment clean and organized:
Remember when I said "This will be a challenge. A huge challenge."? I was correct in my assessment. Cleaning and tidying have been the lowest priorities in my life lately, so the clutter and disorganization are starting to return. It's been made even worse by the fact that my girlfriend has been going through her own work transition, leaving her with neither the energy nor the motivation to help out much.
We have been doing a few things right, thankfully. We've been keeping up with the dishes and cleaning the kitchen semi-regularly, which means that there is usually space in the kitchen for cooking and eating. I've also been doing laundry every Sunday morning, so my laundry pile is small and I always have clothing to wear. I've also been filing my mail as soon as it comes in, which is keeping me more on top of bills and other important things than I usually am. So all in all, not a total failure with this goal.
Any goals that you've been working on lately? How are they going?
Monday, August 10, 2015
Habits - Home and Hobbies
As I was reading Gretchen Rubin's book "Better Than Before", I kept thinking about habits that I've recently incorporated into my life, as well as habits that I'd like to adopt. There are so many of them, most of which unfortunately fall into the latter category. Over the next few days, I plan to write posts outlining the habits I'd like to have in four different broad categories: home and hobbies, personal, work, and relationships. (Not necessarily in that order or on four consecutive days. I'll pick my topics as the mood hits me.) Because going back to work is going to make habit change challenging, I plan to do a check in on my habits once I'm two weeks in (and finished my first stretch of call as an attending).
In deciding on the habits on which to focus, I'm trying to remember that the end goal isn't to adopt good habits - it's to be happy in both the short and long term. If these habits aren't making me happier, then I can choose to drop them whenever I please. (Isn't being an adult wonderful?)
So here we go with habits in the home and hobbies category. The habits are roughly arranged from what I consider to be least important to most important.
Have two knitting projects on the go at all times:
I started knitting sometime in the last year after being inspired by the many women (and some men!) at my girlfriend's church who knit. Some of them knit during the services, and many more of them knit at social events, and I was always jealous when I watched them work. Since I started knitting, I've knit three infinity scarves (one for myself and two for my nieces), as well as almost one sock and almost one baby sweater.
I love a lot of things about knitting - dreaming about projects and picking out nice yarn, watching a project slowly come together over weeks to months, and having something to distract me when I'm in a boring or awkward social situation. I also like that it's slightly subversive to be a knitting physician. Physicians are supposed to be constantly rushing and stressed and short on time, so I love the idea of doing something that is intentionally slow.
This is something that will undoubtedly wax and wane depending on how busy I am, but that's okay. Knitting projects can sit idle for a long time and then be picked up when needed. I'm choosing to have two projects going, as it's nice to have something that gives me a bit of a challenge (e.g. a baby sweater) as well as something that is purely mindless and relaxing (e.g. an infinity scarf).
Cook regularly with my girlfriend:
My girlfriend and I both have a huge love of cooking and of trying new foods/recipes, and it's one of the things that brought us together early in our relationship. We've unfortunately fallen out of the habit of cooking together recently, as my girlfriend's job has required her to stay at work until after the supper hour. I think our relationship has suffered as a result of us not cooking and eating together, and it's something I want to work on. Thankfully, starting next month her days will be ending at 5 PM, so hopefully it won't be hard for us to get back into this habit.
Read for pleasure every day:
Have I mentioned recently how much I love books? I love reading once I get into it, but I sometimes avoid it when I'm tired, because checking Facebook/surfing the internet/watching tv seems easier and more relaxing. Which it isn't; reading is definitely more relaxing than any activity involving technology. I want to maintain the habit I've developed this summer of always having a book going and of reading every day.
Keep up with my finances:
I was a bit of a financial disaster during my training. Not only did I not budget, I also did terrible things like file my tax returns late (really, really late) and occasionally miss a credit card payment. I've finally gotten on top of everything financial, including meeting with my financial adviser to figure out my get-out-of-debt-as-soon-as-humanly-possible strategy, and I want to keep it that way. To do this, I plan to deal with financial things (bills, etc.) as soon as they come in, even if that means waiting a day or two to check the mail until I have time to deal with it. I also plan to set aside time on Sunday mornings (while my girlfriend is at church) to quickly review my bank/investment statements and to do anything financial that didn't get done during the week.
Spend time daily and weekly on keeping the apartment clean and organized:
This will be a challenge. A huge challenge. I've done very well this summer at getting the apartment decluttered and organized, and I've managed to adopt the habit of doing annoying little tasks (like unpacking from our weekend camping/wedding adventure) as soon as they come up. The apartment is so much tidier as a result, and it facilitates things like cooking and reading and other fun activities. But doing tasks when they arise isn't my default setting, which means that this will be really hard to maintain once I go back to work. And my girlfriend is much more tolerant of chaos than I am, which will make it hard to get her on board!
My first strategy for achieving this is to set aside dedicated times for cleaning and tidying. On a daily basis, this will mean taking a few minutes when I first arrive home to hang up my jacket/purse and empty out my lunch container, as well as spending some time doing dishes before bed. On a weekly basis, this will mean spending some time every Sunday morning doing laundry and tackling some of the items on my to-do list.
My second strategy is going to have to be talking to my girlfriend. While I've been on holidays, I've assumed the majority of the household responsibilities, and it's gotten stuff done, but it won't be sustainable (or fair) once I go back to work. As difficult as it may be to do, we need to come up with a way of dividing up the household tasks. The big challenge for me will be accepting that we have different ideas of what needs to be done around the apartment; therefore, if I want things done better than she does, I may need to do a bit more of the work.
Hmmm....it seems like I have my work cut out for me. And this is only day one of four!
In deciding on the habits on which to focus, I'm trying to remember that the end goal isn't to adopt good habits - it's to be happy in both the short and long term. If these habits aren't making me happier, then I can choose to drop them whenever I please. (Isn't being an adult wonderful?)
So here we go with habits in the home and hobbies category. The habits are roughly arranged from what I consider to be least important to most important.
Have two knitting projects on the go at all times:
I started knitting sometime in the last year after being inspired by the many women (and some men!) at my girlfriend's church who knit. Some of them knit during the services, and many more of them knit at social events, and I was always jealous when I watched them work. Since I started knitting, I've knit three infinity scarves (one for myself and two for my nieces), as well as almost one sock and almost one baby sweater.
I love a lot of things about knitting - dreaming about projects and picking out nice yarn, watching a project slowly come together over weeks to months, and having something to distract me when I'm in a boring or awkward social situation. I also like that it's slightly subversive to be a knitting physician. Physicians are supposed to be constantly rushing and stressed and short on time, so I love the idea of doing something that is intentionally slow.
This is something that will undoubtedly wax and wane depending on how busy I am, but that's okay. Knitting projects can sit idle for a long time and then be picked up when needed. I'm choosing to have two projects going, as it's nice to have something that gives me a bit of a challenge (e.g. a baby sweater) as well as something that is purely mindless and relaxing (e.g. an infinity scarf).
Cook regularly with my girlfriend:
My girlfriend and I both have a huge love of cooking and of trying new foods/recipes, and it's one of the things that brought us together early in our relationship. We've unfortunately fallen out of the habit of cooking together recently, as my girlfriend's job has required her to stay at work until after the supper hour. I think our relationship has suffered as a result of us not cooking and eating together, and it's something I want to work on. Thankfully, starting next month her days will be ending at 5 PM, so hopefully it won't be hard for us to get back into this habit.
Read for pleasure every day:
Have I mentioned recently how much I love books? I love reading once I get into it, but I sometimes avoid it when I'm tired, because checking Facebook/surfing the internet/watching tv seems easier and more relaxing. Which it isn't; reading is definitely more relaxing than any activity involving technology. I want to maintain the habit I've developed this summer of always having a book going and of reading every day.
Keep up with my finances:
I was a bit of a financial disaster during my training. Not only did I not budget, I also did terrible things like file my tax returns late (really, really late) and occasionally miss a credit card payment. I've finally gotten on top of everything financial, including meeting with my financial adviser to figure out my get-out-of-debt-as-soon-as-humanly-possible strategy, and I want to keep it that way. To do this, I plan to deal with financial things (bills, etc.) as soon as they come in, even if that means waiting a day or two to check the mail until I have time to deal with it. I also plan to set aside time on Sunday mornings (while my girlfriend is at church) to quickly review my bank/investment statements and to do anything financial that didn't get done during the week.
Spend time daily and weekly on keeping the apartment clean and organized:
This will be a challenge. A huge challenge. I've done very well this summer at getting the apartment decluttered and organized, and I've managed to adopt the habit of doing annoying little tasks (like unpacking from our weekend camping/wedding adventure) as soon as they come up. The apartment is so much tidier as a result, and it facilitates things like cooking and reading and other fun activities. But doing tasks when they arise isn't my default setting, which means that this will be really hard to maintain once I go back to work. And my girlfriend is much more tolerant of chaos than I am, which will make it hard to get her on board!
My first strategy for achieving this is to set aside dedicated times for cleaning and tidying. On a daily basis, this will mean taking a few minutes when I first arrive home to hang up my jacket/purse and empty out my lunch container, as well as spending some time doing dishes before bed. On a weekly basis, this will mean spending some time every Sunday morning doing laundry and tackling some of the items on my to-do list.
My second strategy is going to have to be talking to my girlfriend. While I've been on holidays, I've assumed the majority of the household responsibilities, and it's gotten stuff done, but it won't be sustainable (or fair) once I go back to work. As difficult as it may be to do, we need to come up with a way of dividing up the household tasks. The big challenge for me will be accepting that we have different ideas of what needs to be done around the apartment; therefore, if I want things done better than she does, I may need to do a bit more of the work.
Hmmm....it seems like I have my work cut out for me. And this is only day one of four!
Sunday, August 2, 2015
My Favourite Sound
With the weekend drawing to a close, the girlfriend and I are relaxing by spending some quiet time together on the couch. I'm sitting with my laptop on...well...my lap, and she is reading the book The Language of Baklava. In the background, last night's wedding song, You Are The Best Thing, is playing on YouTube.
As I struggle to find something from my utterly ordinary day to write about, every few minutes my girlfriend breaks out in laughter at something she has read. I love when she reads funny books, because her spontaneous laughter is one of the best sounds in the world. Pure happiness.
I am lucky.
As I struggle to find something from my utterly ordinary day to write about, every few minutes my girlfriend breaks out in laughter at something she has read. I love when she reads funny books, because her spontaneous laughter is one of the best sounds in the world. Pure happiness.
I am lucky.
Saturday, August 1, 2015
Dancing
It's 11:19, and I just arrived home from too many hours of wedding, and I'm exhausted. And I stink of bug spray. So this will be short.
The wedding was lovely - a big, spirited celebration of two young women who fell in love at (of all places) bible college. It was wonderful to see so many people from a fairly conservative religious community come together for a wedding that not everyone in their community supports. And the Indian buffet was fabulous.
What stands out most for me about the day, however, isn't something specific to a same-sex wedding. It's the dancing. After the ceremony and eating and many, many speeches, the backyard where the wedding was held was turned into one enormous dance floor, and almost everyone got up and danced. In the beginning, I managed to pass as someone who isn't terrible at dancing, but after a few songs, my energy level began to wane, and my awkwardness became apparent. I suck at dancing.
I wish I didn't. I wish I could be one of the uninhibited people who has a great time on the dance floor, instead of the all too self aware nerd who stands on the edge of the group looking uncomfortable. But that's always been me. And probably always will be.
The wedding was lovely - a big, spirited celebration of two young women who fell in love at (of all places) bible college. It was wonderful to see so many people from a fairly conservative religious community come together for a wedding that not everyone in their community supports. And the Indian buffet was fabulous.
What stands out most for me about the day, however, isn't something specific to a same-sex wedding. It's the dancing. After the ceremony and eating and many, many speeches, the backyard where the wedding was held was turned into one enormous dance floor, and almost everyone got up and danced. In the beginning, I managed to pass as someone who isn't terrible at dancing, but after a few songs, my energy level began to wane, and my awkwardness became apparent. I suck at dancing.
I wish I didn't. I wish I could be one of the uninhibited people who has a great time on the dance floor, instead of the all too self aware nerd who stands on the edge of the group looking uncomfortable. But that's always been me. And probably always will be.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Inclusion/Exclusion
My girlfriend is part of a very tightly knit church community; I, as an atheist, clearly am not. In the beginning, we thought that this might be a major issue in our relationship, but it hasn't proven to be nearly as problematic as we had feared. The other church members have been almost universally welcoming to me, despite the fact that their faith does not officially sanction same-sex relationships (and is certainly not in support of same-sex marriage). I've eaten meals with church members, cuddled their children, and even attended a few services without bursting into flames. All has gone very well.
Occasionally, however, issues do arise. One of the biggest has been the issue of "small group", which is a group of church members who meet every few weeks to share a meal and discussion of their faith. This is a major social and community event for my girlfriend, as well as for her family, with whom I've grown quite close over the past year and a half. Because the group members discuss things that are going on in their lives (including personal struggles and disappointments), the events are closed to "outsiders" to encourage openness and honesty. Which means that I, the atheist, am not invited.
And sometimes this feels hard. It's difficult to be excluded from something that is so central to my girlfriend's life, especially when all of the other family members (including my girlfriend's new sister-in-law) are automatically included*. And yet, aside from my relationship to my girlfriend, I don't really have a right or a reason to be there. I'm certainly not going to contribute anything to the bible study, and it would only be awkward if the group offered to pray for me after I told them of something difficult in my life. I don't quite know whether I should just accept the status quo, or force myself on a group to which I may not even want to belong.
Any thoughts?
*Not to mention the food I'm missing out on. Perogies! Farmer's sausage! Baking in all its myriad of forms! These people are amazing cooks.
Occasionally, however, issues do arise. One of the biggest has been the issue of "small group", which is a group of church members who meet every few weeks to share a meal and discussion of their faith. This is a major social and community event for my girlfriend, as well as for her family, with whom I've grown quite close over the past year and a half. Because the group members discuss things that are going on in their lives (including personal struggles and disappointments), the events are closed to "outsiders" to encourage openness and honesty. Which means that I, the atheist, am not invited.
And sometimes this feels hard. It's difficult to be excluded from something that is so central to my girlfriend's life, especially when all of the other family members (including my girlfriend's new sister-in-law) are automatically included*. And yet, aside from my relationship to my girlfriend, I don't really have a right or a reason to be there. I'm certainly not going to contribute anything to the bible study, and it would only be awkward if the group offered to pray for me after I told them of something difficult in my life. I don't quite know whether I should just accept the status quo, or force myself on a group to which I may not even want to belong.
Any thoughts?
*Not to mention the food I'm missing out on. Perogies! Farmer's sausage! Baking in all its myriad of forms! These people are amazing cooks.
Friday, June 12, 2015
Things I Learned on My Vacation (Most of Which I Already Knew)
Today is my last full day in New Brunswick, and I've snuck away to the sitting room for a few minutes of silence. In other parts of the house, my almost-90-year-old grandmother is playing classic show tunes on the piano, my aunt is spinning tales while chopping a seemingly endless pile of vegetables, and my Mom is laughing at my aunt while frying 5 pounds of scallops* for Coquilles Saint-Jacques. While I know that these are the sounds of life and love and family, I do find myself pining for the relative quiet of the one-bedroom apartment that I share with my love (and two asshole felines).
As it's almost the end of my trip, rather than recount the details of my travel that are interesting to no one but myself, I thought I'd share a few observations that I've made in my time away from home.
1) I hate being away from my girlfriend: She stayed back at home because of work (and being hesitant to meet all of my family simultaneously at a wedding), and I have missed her every single day. I miss rolling over to stare at her in the morning, waiting for her to wake up so that I can cuddle with her and tell her my dreams. I miss coming home to her at night and hearing about her day. I miss spending way too much time cooking supper with her and then being too lazy to clean up the kitchen afterwards. I'm clearly smitten.
2) I am unquestionably an introvert: My Maritime family is large...and loud. There is always someone around, and they are usually moving at top speed within a cloud of noise and chaos. As much as I love them, my introverted self has found it a bit overwhelming, and I've had to hide away from people on a regular basis. My Mom and I spent three nights alone at my grandmother's cottage, and I could feel myself recharging in the stillness and quiet.
3) I pack too much stuff when I travel: I had planned to go more minimalist and pack only my medium-sized suitcase (from a set of three), but my Mom asked me to bring out the largest one so that she could "bring some stuff back with her". No longer constrained by space, I found myself throwing in all kinds of things I was never going to use - a second dress (getting me into a dress for a wedding is miracle enough), a fourth pair of shoes, multiple pairs of dress pants. It's ridiculous, especially because we've changed location five times in ten days, and I've had to carry the stupidly heavy suitcase up and down multiple flights of stairs. In the future, I'm bringing one outfit and washing it in the sink every night.
4) I need very little to be happy: My vacation has included lots of exciting things, like trips to Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg, a tour of an artisinal distillery, and many fancy meals out. My favourite moments though? Waking up to the sounds of shorebirds outside my bedroom window. Cuddling with my cousin's adorable one-year-old daughter. Lying on the couch where my grandfather used to nap every day after lunch. When traveling in the future, I need to remember that it's the simple things that I most enjoy.
And now the doorbell has rung, bringing another group of relatives into the home. Time for me to make nice and play the extrovert for a while**.
*The scallops were supposed to have been taken home with us and eaten over weeks to months, but there was a malfunction of the system to keep them frozen, so instead we're binge-eating scallops. Life is hard.
**I was going to include photos, but I think my Mom will kill me if I hide away any longer. A photo post is coming soon!
As it's almost the end of my trip, rather than recount the details of my travel that are interesting to no one but myself, I thought I'd share a few observations that I've made in my time away from home.
1) I hate being away from my girlfriend: She stayed back at home because of work (and being hesitant to meet all of my family simultaneously at a wedding), and I have missed her every single day. I miss rolling over to stare at her in the morning, waiting for her to wake up so that I can cuddle with her and tell her my dreams. I miss coming home to her at night and hearing about her day. I miss spending way too much time cooking supper with her and then being too lazy to clean up the kitchen afterwards. I'm clearly smitten.
2) I am unquestionably an introvert: My Maritime family is large...and loud. There is always someone around, and they are usually moving at top speed within a cloud of noise and chaos. As much as I love them, my introverted self has found it a bit overwhelming, and I've had to hide away from people on a regular basis. My Mom and I spent three nights alone at my grandmother's cottage, and I could feel myself recharging in the stillness and quiet.
3) I pack too much stuff when I travel: I had planned to go more minimalist and pack only my medium-sized suitcase (from a set of three), but my Mom asked me to bring out the largest one so that she could "bring some stuff back with her". No longer constrained by space, I found myself throwing in all kinds of things I was never going to use - a second dress (getting me into a dress for a wedding is miracle enough), a fourth pair of shoes, multiple pairs of dress pants. It's ridiculous, especially because we've changed location five times in ten days, and I've had to carry the stupidly heavy suitcase up and down multiple flights of stairs. In the future, I'm bringing one outfit and washing it in the sink every night.
4) I need very little to be happy: My vacation has included lots of exciting things, like trips to Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg, a tour of an artisinal distillery, and many fancy meals out. My favourite moments though? Waking up to the sounds of shorebirds outside my bedroom window. Cuddling with my cousin's adorable one-year-old daughter. Lying on the couch where my grandfather used to nap every day after lunch. When traveling in the future, I need to remember that it's the simple things that I most enjoy.
And now the doorbell has rung, bringing another group of relatives into the home. Time for me to make nice and play the extrovert for a while**.
*The scallops were supposed to have been taken home with us and eaten over weeks to months, but there was a malfunction of the system to keep them frozen, so instead we're binge-eating scallops. Life is hard.
**I was going to include photos, but I think my Mom will kill me if I hide away any longer. A photo post is coming soon!
Monday, June 8, 2015
Dykes at Weddings
I’m
currently in the beautiful maritime province of New Brunswick for my cousin’s
wedding, which took place last Saturday.
As an unmarried, queer, almost middle-aged woman, it’s inevitable that
any wedding will evoke a lot of emotions and self reflection in me. This one was different for me, however,
in that I’m now more than a year into a long-term relationship, and the
girlfriend and I have started to dance around the topic of having a wedding of
our own.
What struck me, as I made the inevitable comparisons between my cousin’s relationship/nuptials and my own, was how much shit my cousin doesn’t have to deal with because she happens to be in an opposite-sex relationship. For example:
By simple virtue of being born straight, my cousin is privileged to avoid the relentless background noise of worry that my girlfriend and I live with because we’re queer. And we live in one of the best countries in the world to be LGBTQ! As of July 20 this year, it will have been ten years since our government legalized same-sex marriage. I can’t fathom what it would be like to live in a country in which it isn’t legal to be married, or worse, where one can still be imprisoned or killed for happening to love someone of the same gender.
(A photo of the Same-Sex Marriage "Cake" at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights)
What struck me, as I made the inevitable comparisons between my cousin’s relationship/nuptials and my own, was how much shit my cousin doesn’t have to deal with because she happens to be in an opposite-sex relationship. For example:
- When discussing her life with someone she works with or has just met, she doesn’t have to make a split-second decision about whether the person will judge her or consider her to be immoral based on her relationship.
- When posting photos on Facebook, she doesn’t need to screen photos of her and her partner to make sure that they won’t offend her conservative friends, whom she loves in spite of their ignorance and bigotry.
- When planning a wedding, she doesn’t have to worry about whether or not she can get married in the church in which she was raised and baptized and which she attends every week.
- When inviting people to her wedding, she doesn’t have to worry that people will refuse to come because they disagree with her “lifestyle choice”.
By simple virtue of being born straight, my cousin is privileged to avoid the relentless background noise of worry that my girlfriend and I live with because we’re queer. And we live in one of the best countries in the world to be LGBTQ! As of July 20 this year, it will have been ten years since our government legalized same-sex marriage. I can’t fathom what it would be like to live in a country in which it isn’t legal to be married, or worse, where one can still be imprisoned or killed for happening to love someone of the same gender.
Ranting
aside…I have to admit that there were also a lot of positive things about my
time at my cousin’s wedding.
First, she was married in the United Church, which has an established
history of performing same-sex marriages and even ordaining gay and lesbian
ministers. As we entered the church,
I noticed that there was a Pride triangle on the door, as well as a sign
indicating that the church was a safe space for gays and lesbians. During the service, the minister
replaced the usual statement that “marriage is a union between a man and a woman”*
with “marriage is a union between two people”. These were seemingly small details that none of my relatives
noticed, but as someone who has spent most of her life feeling alienated from
the church, it meant a lot to me.
Second was
my family. I don’t see this branch
of my family very often, as we’re separated by many kilometers that require
expensive plane tickets to cross, but they were still incredibly welcoming to
me. Almost every one of them asked
why my girlfriend hadn’t come (pesky job), and many of them extended an
invitation for the two of us to come and visit together in the near
future. There wasn’t a single
moment of awkwardness, except for the time when I was showing family photos on
my camera to my grandmother (who doesn’t know about the lesbianism or the
girlfriend), and we came to some photos of the girlfriend.
“Oh! Who’s that?” she asked.
*crickets*
Apparently there
are still a few awkward discussions about sexuality in my future.
*I think I
have my wording wrong here, but my Google search for the correct phrase yielded
a list of mainly Christian websites discussing the immorality of same-sex
marriage. Because I like to not be
crazy and angry while on vacation, I decided not to follow any of the links.
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
The Mechanics of Budgeting
Liana left some interesting questions in response to my previous post about budgeting, and I thought I'd turn my answers into a blog post, as I think budgeting isn't something we talk nearly enough about, especially in medicine.
There's a common perception that physicians don't need to budget. The assumption is that we will all make a shitload of money over the course of our careers, thus enabling us to buy whatever giant homes and ridiculously overpriced cars and designer handbags we desire, without any thought to how much things cost. In reality, we often start our careers with a shitload of debt (approximately $200,000 in my case*), and after more than a decade of training (16 years for me), we may not want to work as hard as is required to earn a shitload of money. So budgets are good.
In my case, I started the budgeting process by figuring out how much I was making and how much I was spending on "fixed" expenses (rent, utilities, insurance, parking, housekeeping**, etc.). I then figured out what my financial goals were - specifically, to pay the interest on my line-of-credit every month, to save $500 per month for retirement, and to not spend more than I was earning. I then entered everything into an Excel spreadsheet, and I was left with a certain amount of money per month for all of my "variable" expenses (groceries, travel, eating out, clothing, cats, etc.).
To track my "variable" spending, I use an iPhone app called "Visual Budget". I chose this one because it doesn't link to my bank accounts, and it's pretty user friendly. It also allows me to create multiple "accounts", which enables me to separate my spending into different categories. It's taken me a while to come up with a good way of dividing up my spending, but my current (pretty good) setup is as follows:
1) General Expenses: This is the account I use for all of my day to day expenses. It is set up to give me a daily "allowance", which is all the money I can spend on food, entertainment, etc. Every time I buy something, I immediately record it in the app, and the cost is deducted from my "allowance". Anything that I don't spend gets carried over to the next day, allowing me to obsessively track all the money that I'm not spending.
2) Vacation: Kinda self evident. I give this account a monthly "allowance", which accumulates until I decide to buy plane tickets or book hotel rooms or do other fun things.
3) Time Off Fund: After much internal debate, I decided to reward myself for finishing 16 years of training by giving myself seven weeks off from work. Unfortunately, I don't have a generous benefactor, so I actually have to fund this on my own. I was initially planning to dip into my line-of-credit to pay for this, but as I get further along the path of debt repayment/financial responsibility, the thought of increasing my debt becomes more and more appalling, so I decided to save up for my time off instead.
I give this account a weekly "allowance", which I generated by decreasing the "allowance" on my General Expenses account. Every once in a while, I throw in some extra money from my General Expenses account if I've been particularly frugal and accumulated some surplus. I'm currently on track to be able to fully cover my expenses during my seven weeks off, which makes me irrationally proud of myself and my ability to not spend money.
And that's it. The mechanics of my budget.
Initially, sticking to a budget was hard, as I was transitioning from a life of carelessly indulging in everything my heart desired (ooooh....$100 dinner at my favourite tapas restaurant....yes please!) to actually behaving like money is real. I felt really deprived by not being able to buy whatever I wanted, and I got stressed out when I needed to make a large purchase. (Such as cat food. One of my cats has a skin condition that only gets better with $60/bag cat food, and I have a minor heart attack every time the cat food runs out.)
*Ugh.
**Yes, I am a spoiled "rich" person who has a housekeeper. I love it, and it is one of the last expenses that I would ever cut from my budget.
***The girlfriend is an expert at this. Give her flour, milk, eggs, and cheese, and she'll make crepes or quiches or any other number of amazing things.
There's a common perception that physicians don't need to budget. The assumption is that we will all make a shitload of money over the course of our careers, thus enabling us to buy whatever giant homes and ridiculously overpriced cars and designer handbags we desire, without any thought to how much things cost. In reality, we often start our careers with a shitload of debt (approximately $200,000 in my case*), and after more than a decade of training (16 years for me), we may not want to work as hard as is required to earn a shitload of money. So budgets are good.
In my case, I started the budgeting process by figuring out how much I was making and how much I was spending on "fixed" expenses (rent, utilities, insurance, parking, housekeeping**, etc.). I then figured out what my financial goals were - specifically, to pay the interest on my line-of-credit every month, to save $500 per month for retirement, and to not spend more than I was earning. I then entered everything into an Excel spreadsheet, and I was left with a certain amount of money per month for all of my "variable" expenses (groceries, travel, eating out, clothing, cats, etc.).
To track my "variable" spending, I use an iPhone app called "Visual Budget". I chose this one because it doesn't link to my bank accounts, and it's pretty user friendly. It also allows me to create multiple "accounts", which enables me to separate my spending into different categories. It's taken me a while to come up with a good way of dividing up my spending, but my current (pretty good) setup is as follows:
1) General Expenses: This is the account I use for all of my day to day expenses. It is set up to give me a daily "allowance", which is all the money I can spend on food, entertainment, etc. Every time I buy something, I immediately record it in the app, and the cost is deducted from my "allowance". Anything that I don't spend gets carried over to the next day, allowing me to obsessively track all the money that I'm not spending.
2) Vacation: Kinda self evident. I give this account a monthly "allowance", which accumulates until I decide to buy plane tickets or book hotel rooms or do other fun things.
3) Time Off Fund: After much internal debate, I decided to reward myself for finishing 16 years of training by giving myself seven weeks off from work. Unfortunately, I don't have a generous benefactor, so I actually have to fund this on my own. I was initially planning to dip into my line-of-credit to pay for this, but as I get further along the path of debt repayment/financial responsibility, the thought of increasing my debt becomes more and more appalling, so I decided to save up for my time off instead.
I give this account a weekly "allowance", which I generated by decreasing the "allowance" on my General Expenses account. Every once in a while, I throw in some extra money from my General Expenses account if I've been particularly frugal and accumulated some surplus. I'm currently on track to be able to fully cover my expenses during my seven weeks off, which makes me irrationally proud of myself and my ability to not spend money.
And that's it. The mechanics of my budget.
Initially, sticking to a budget was hard, as I was transitioning from a life of carelessly indulging in everything my heart desired (ooooh....$100 dinner at my favourite tapas restaurant....yes please!) to actually behaving like money is real. I felt really deprived by not being able to buy whatever I wanted, and I got stressed out when I needed to make a large purchase. (Such as cat food. One of my cats has a skin condition that only gets better with $60/bag cat food, and I have a minor heart attack every time the cat food runs out.)
(I represent 10% of my mom's "variable" expenses budget.)
Over time, though, sticking to a budget has gotten vastly easier. I've started to figure out which expenses are necessary (food, gas, personal hygiene items), which items improve my quality of life (budget travel, eating out at less expensive restaurants, hosting pot lucks at my apartment), and which items I can entirely live without (cafeteria food, cable tv, books that don't come from a library, silly $5-10 self-indulgent purchases that add up really quickly). It's actually become an entertaining challenge to see how much fun I can have for little to no money, or to come up with the tastiest meals possible from the leftovers in my fridge***. I expected that sticking to a budget would be an act of white-knuckled self deprivation, but in reality, it has opened me up to all kinds of things that make my life better. If anything, I'm happier for having less money to spend.
*Ugh.
**Yes, I am a spoiled "rich" person who has a housekeeper. I love it, and it is one of the last expenses that I would ever cut from my budget.
***The girlfriend is an expert at this. Give her flour, milk, eggs, and cheese, and she'll make crepes or quiches or any other number of amazing things.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Welcome to an Adult Relationship
The girlfriend and I had a fight recently.
We don't fight often. We have good communication skills, and we get along very well with each other, so our fights are few and far between. When we do fight, it's usually about trivial things - our first big argument, for example, was over whose recipe we were going to use to make paneer.
We don't fight often. We have good communication skills, and we get along very well with each other, so our fights are few and far between. When we do fight, it's usually about trivial things - our first big argument, for example, was over whose recipe we were going to use to make paneer.
(Mmmmm....paneer)
This time, however, it was a legitimate fight, as is bound to happen in any long-term relationship. While I won't go into details about the argument, I will say that it resulted from me bottling up my feelings for a very long time and then dumping all of those feelings out on her in a span of about ten minutes. Perhaps not the best way of dealing with things.
The whole experience made me realize that I'm really bad at this whole relationship thing. My earlier relationships were so dysfunctional, and I was so emotionally unattached to the people I was dating, that I never bothered to learn how to communicate with a partner. Now that I'm very emotionally attached to the person I'm dating, I'm discovering how hard it is to talk about difficult things with someone you love. I want so badly for things to always be good between us that I ignore anything that isn't good, up until the point that I can no longer contain it. Which doesn't work very well.
I'm lucky that the girlfriend is understanding and that she is much better at communicating with me than I am with her. It's almost like she's an adult or something.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Long Weekend Plans
Thanks to everyone who responded to my recent question about how to respect my girlfriend's privacy when blogging. As I read each comment, I thought "Yes! That's it!", despite the fact that each response was very different from the others. I guess there are multiple ways of handling this issue...I'll let you know when I figure out which one I'm going to use.
But now, time to look forward to my four days off with no pager and few responsibilities! What am I planning to do, you wonder?
1) Haircut: Not glamorous, but so necessary. My previous hairstylist, whom I loved, moved away almost a year ago, and I've been trying to find a good new one ever since. The last one I tried definitely wasn't a good one, and I'm really looking forward to someone undoing the damage she did to my hair. Here's hoping tonight's stylist is better.
2) Cooking: The girlfriend and I both love to cook and bake, and we have some epic plans for the weekend. Wareniki with schmaunfat, scalloped potatoes, and no-knead bread top the list.
What is wareniki with shmaunfat, you ask?
Mmmmm. They will take forever to make, but it will be worth it.
3) Family: Tomorrow night is dinner with the girlfriend's family, and Sunday night is dinner with mine. I felt very cut off from family while I was away on elective, so it will be nice to have some extended time to get caught up with them and reconnect.
4) Read: I stopped at the library on the way home from work today and picked up two new books, which I am looking forward to reading in my pajamas (probably while cuddling a cat or two). The first is Adult Onset, by Canadian author Ann-Marie MacDonald. This novel tells the story of a gay woman who tries to come to terms with her difficult childhood while caring for her own young children. I started reading it a few months ago, but gave up because I had reached the due date. It's a bit on the heavy and depressing side, but I'm willing to plod through to the end because Ann-Marie MacDonald is a good writer and because there just isn't that much good LGBTQ writing out there. (Or is there? Anyone have any good suggestions for me?)
The second book, which I may or may not get to this weekend, is Complications by Atul Gawande. I don't know much about it, other than that it's written by a surgeon, but I'm hoping it'll tide me over until the book of his that I really want to read (Being Mortal) is available.
5) Rest: I took two days off sick with a cold this week, and I am still hacking up a lung, so I am hoping that in the midst of baking and celebrating and being busy that there will be some time to sleep and recover. Wishful thinking?
What are you planning for your weekend?
But now, time to look forward to my four days off with no pager and few responsibilities! What am I planning to do, you wonder?
1) Haircut: Not glamorous, but so necessary. My previous hairstylist, whom I loved, moved away almost a year ago, and I've been trying to find a good new one ever since. The last one I tried definitely wasn't a good one, and I'm really looking forward to someone undoing the damage she did to my hair. Here's hoping tonight's stylist is better.
2) Cooking: The girlfriend and I both love to cook and bake, and we have some epic plans for the weekend. Wareniki with schmaunfat, scalloped potatoes, and no-knead bread top the list.
What is wareniki with shmaunfat, you ask?
Mmmmm. They will take forever to make, but it will be worth it.
3) Family: Tomorrow night is dinner with the girlfriend's family, and Sunday night is dinner with mine. I felt very cut off from family while I was away on elective, so it will be nice to have some extended time to get caught up with them and reconnect.
4) Read: I stopped at the library on the way home from work today and picked up two new books, which I am looking forward to reading in my pajamas (probably while cuddling a cat or two). The first is Adult Onset, by Canadian author Ann-Marie MacDonald. This novel tells the story of a gay woman who tries to come to terms with her difficult childhood while caring for her own young children. I started reading it a few months ago, but gave up because I had reached the due date. It's a bit on the heavy and depressing side, but I'm willing to plod through to the end because Ann-Marie MacDonald is a good writer and because there just isn't that much good LGBTQ writing out there. (Or is there? Anyone have any good suggestions for me?)
The second book, which I may or may not get to this weekend, is Complications by Atul Gawande. I don't know much about it, other than that it's written by a surgeon, but I'm hoping it'll tide me over until the book of his that I really want to read (Being Mortal) is available.
5) Rest: I took two days off sick with a cold this week, and I am still hacking up a lung, so I am hoping that in the midst of baking and celebrating and being busy that there will be some time to sleep and recover. Wishful thinking?
What are you planning for your weekend?
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Privacy
I started to write a post about the ups and downs of living with someone, but as I started to write the back story, I realized that I was sharing a lot of information about my girlfriend that she might not want the world to know. I then tried to remove anything that she might consider sensitive, but it left me with a very vague, watered-down version of a blog post. Which I hate. When I read someone else's blog, it's the details that make it interesting and bring the stories to life.
I don't want those details to be missing from my blog.
Clearly, this is something I need to think more about (and probably discuss with the girlfriend). For those of you with significant others, how do you share what's going on in your life without violating your partner's privacy?
I don't want those details to be missing from my blog.
Clearly, this is something I need to think more about (and probably discuss with the girlfriend). For those of you with significant others, how do you share what's going on in your life without violating your partner's privacy?
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