Making Weekends Work Better

When M and I were together, I didn't have a lot of control over my weekends.  She loves weekends with a passion even greater than my love of all things nerdy, and she would wake up by 7 am on Saturday ready to go.  I refused to get up any earlier than 9 or 10 am, depending on how exhausted I was from the week, but as soon as I was out of bed, I was at her mercy.  Weekends would be a flurry of constant socializing/eating out/entertainment, and by the end of each one, I would be as tired as I was at the beginning.

The first few weekends after our breakup were pure bliss.  I slept in as late as I wanted, lounged in front of my computer for hours, and relaxed in a way that I hadn't for years.  Not only was I unwinding from the stress of a relationship in its death throws, but I was also recovering from years of being busier than I would choose to be.  I loved it.

But...after a few weeks...I got bored.  I got used to being well-rested, and I no longer needed to spend 12 hours in a day binge watching Stranger Things while eating food from Skip the Dishes.  I found myself actually longing to spend time with other people and to do some of the activities that had previously left me feeling overwhelmed.  So in the past few months, I've been experimenting with my weekends to figure out what works best for me.  In honour of this being the beginning of the weekend, I give you some of my thoughts on how I currently plan a good weekend.

Planning social events in advance:  None of my friends are flexible.  Most of them are physicians or work similarly demanding jobs, and many of them have children, so making plans with them requires effort and time.  Where I used to always have my girlfriend to spend time with, in the past few months I've had to get used to depending on others for human interaction, which requires booking things days to weeks ahead.

Making a schedule:  If left to my own devices, I will waste time for hours (hello Twitter) before emerging from my internet fog to discover that I've accomplished nothing.  Which is not a good thing, because weekends are my time for all of the shopping/cleaning/laundry/cooking that keep me going through the week.  I feel kind of pathetic every time I do it, but for weeks now, I have been writing a schedule for my weekend, and it really helps.

I tend to write two schedules:  one of the things that I must do (social events, essential life maintenance) and one of the things that I could do if feel motivated.  This way I can adjust my activities to my energy level and to what I feel like doing at any given time.  While still making sure that I have clean underwear for Monday.

Flexible events:  As an introvert, I have a very fine line between "Wow, I'm having so much fun at this social activity" and "Dear God, please don't make me ever have to interact with another human being ever again".  Unfortunately, I can't always predict where that line will be, so some weekends three social events will be the perfect number, whereas other weekends I will be hiding under the table by halfway through the second.  Enter the flexible social events.  Things that I can do if I'm feeling bored/lonely, but that I can also back out of if I want to.

Tonight, for example, there is a movie night at the school where I take my French lessons.  It's in my calendar, and it's something I'd like to do, but it's also something I can back out of with no warning if an evening on the couch with my cats is more to my liking.  On Sundays, I also have a conversational French group, which again, I can choose not to go to if I'm suddenly feeling too socially awkward to try to conjugate verbs dans le conditionnel with people I barely know.

Meetup.com has really been great for this, as there are all kinds of events going on in my city, and most of them can be planned and/or cancelled last minute.  I've mostly just done French activities so far, but there are also knitting groups and book clubs that I'm thinking of joining.

(Is there an aware for being the most cat ladyish of all the middle-aged cat ladies?  Because I JUST WON IT.)

Exercise:  The bane of my existence, but also something that is necessary and that makes me feel better.  I have done this for a grand total of one week, but I am trying to do something physical every Saturday and Sunday.  There is a gym two floors down from my apartment, and I live on a running/walking path, so I have absolutely no excuse not to.

So that's how I'm currently doing weekends.  This weekend I'm about to head out to my French movie; tomorrow I have a very informal brunch with friends and dinner/movie with other friends; and Sunday I'm meeting my conversational group.  For "must do" things, I am getting my passport application sent in, making granola, cleaning, and doing laundry.  And for potential fun things/could do things, there's a new episode of Top Chef online, I have a pile of stuff to take to the thrift store, and there are always books.  Glorious, glorious books.

I should probably also call my mother.

I realize as I write this that I am immensely lucky to have such a flexible weekend.  I'm sure there are some working parents out there who would be happy if their weekend includes peeing in private once and getting most of their children to wear pants most of the time, and for them my weekend might seem ridiculously leisurely.  But this is entirely by design!  I spent years of my life living in survival mode as a medical student and resident who never had enough time.  Now that I have some extra hours to spare, it's time to enjoy it.

What do you have planned for the weekend?

How I Feed Myself

I am obsessed with food.  I watch Top Chef religiously; I spend way too much money in restaurants; and when I am unhappy, a surefire way to make me happy again is to feed me good food.  That being said, I hate the fact that I have to feed myself regularly.  I'd far rather eat five really amazing meals per week than have to deal with the tedium of three meals a day, seven days a week.

Tonight, I was driving home late from a long Monday in my inner city clinic, when I realized that I was far too hungry (HAANGRY) to finish making the beef and barley soup I'd started yesterday.  There were a few things in my freezer, but I was not feeling virtuous enough to eat lentil soup or bean-packed chili.  I wanted something tasty.  My initial impulse was to go to McDonald's, but I haven't been back since my nieces informed me that there were 17 ingredients in their fries.  (I was under no illusion that McDonald's food was healthy, but I though that at least their fries were potatoes fried in oil and salted.  Nope.  I was 17 kinds of wrong on that one.)

So I decided to stop at the store.  And what I was really craving was pizza.  I could've just picked up a frozen pizza, but I've mostly been cooking at home lately, and as a result most processed food tastes like cardboard to me.  So I picked up some pita bread for crusts, along with pizza sauce, cheese, canned mushrooms, and pepperoni.  And 1 hour and 15 minutes after I pulled into the parking lot, I pulled six of these out of my oven:

(Only five are shown, because one was in my stomach by the time the photo was taken.)  Once again, the light is terrible (no natural light after 5:30!), but the pizza is super yummy.  Look closer...

Mmmm.  Given that I have five leftover pizzas to freeze, this works out to about 12 minutes per meal for shopping and cooking time.  And that's probably a bit of an overestimate for how long it took, as I spent the last 15 minutes or so sitting on the couch eating my pizza while the remaining pizzas baked.

So this is how I feed myself:  batch cooking.  I am absolutely not going to come home every night and cook for myself, but I am happy to cook big batches of food and freeze leftovers.  Whenever I hear someone say that they don't like leftovers (like my mother), I look at them like they've just grown a second head, because leftovers are my entire cooking strategy.  All hail leftovers!

(Yes, I recognize that pizza is not the healthiest dinner.  When I eat the leftovers, I'll probably invest a bit of extra time into making a salad or some veggies to make it healthier, which will likely stretch the pizzas even farther, as a whole pizza is a lot of food on its own.  With a big serving of veggies, I can probably get ten meals out of the rest of the pizza.  Also, I generally eat pretty healthy food, so I figure that on a day when I am tired and grouchy and just want to eat a quarter pounder washed down with liquid sugar, a homemade pizza is probably acceptable.)

What is your cooking strategy?

How To Not Let Twitter Take Over Your Life

This is going to be a short post, because I stayed late to finish all of my work tasks from the day, and all I want at this moment is to eat a bowl of peanut butter chocolate ice cream and read "Health at Every Size".

(Ironic combination?  Maybe, maybe not.)

I joined Twitter less than a month ago, and at the time I was completely oblivious to its addictive potential.  I assumed it was going to be roughly equivalent to Facebook in terms of being a time sink, but hahahahahahaha.

(That is the sound of the laughter of any regular Twitter user.)

Twitter is literally an infinite time sink.  Unlike with Facebook, where you're somewhat limited by your number of friends and how often they post, there is no end to the rabbit hole of Twitter.  Finished reading all of the tweets from the people you follow?  Click on their lists of followers and find more people to follow!  And then their lists!  And their lists!  I actually forgot to go to work on Monday because I was so caught up in reading just one more thing...

I.  Forgot.  To.  Go.  To.  Work.

(Thankfully I came out of my haze only about 15 minutes after I was supposed to have left, but OMG.)

As I am typing this, I can see a (1) displayed next to the word Twitter on my Firefox tab, and my hands are itching with the desire (neeeeed) to see who has tweeted.

(Didn't resist.  It was Canadian musician Veda Hille posting a picture of a dinner party.  Sure am glad I didn't miss that.)

So, want to know how I don't let Twitter take over my life?

I have no idea.

Help.

Parkinson's Law

Subtitle:  Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

Just over a year ago, I wrote smugly about how I had gotten caught up on all of my tasks at work and about how wonderful it felt.  At the time, I fully intended to keep up with everything, always and forever, so as to keep the wonderful feeling going.

I think I may have lasted a month.

Inevitably, I got behind during a busy time at work, and then I never seemed to have enough time or motivation to get caught up again.  So for most of the past year, I've left work every day knowing that there were piles of charts and long to-do lists waiting for me the next morning.

For me, the worst part about never being caught up isn't the overwhelming feeling of always having too much to do:  it's the terrible lethargy that comes from doing the same thing over and over again without seeing any progress.  There is nothing quite as demotivating as signing off on a letter, only to be greeted by 50 other letters that need signing off.  For the past year, work has felt like a neverending slog through the same neverending tasks.  Day after day after day.

A few weeks ago, I had a brief but welcome break from the teaching and presenting and administrative duties that fill my non-clinical time.  And I thought to myself "Now!  Now is the time to get caught up again."  So I took the extra time I had and phoned every last patient and dictated every letter and signed off on every chart.  For the first time in way too long, I was caught up.

And I've stayed that way for the past three weeks.  And once again, it has felt amazing.  I feel a little burst of joy every time I open my letter queue and see the words "You have no new letters to sign off".  Or when I look at my empty inbox.  Or when I look at the folders in my desk, and there's absolutely nothing in them.

The second best part of being caught up is that I've regained the efficiency that I had lost.  When I have just a few tasks to do, I can plow through them quickly, knowing that I'm going to get the satisfaction of being done, once again.  And it's much easier to let go of my relentless perfectionism when I know that it's standing between me and being caught up on everything.

The absolute best part?  I get a bonus day off today because I'm done everything!  I was finishing up my tasks yesterday, and I realized that there wasn't anything that needed to be done today, so I didn't have to come in for my usual catch up day in the office.  No dreaded Thursday paperwork day.  I've taken my car in to get the winter tires removed (just a wee bit late), gotten a haircut for the first time in eight months, and now written a blog post.  Next is lunch and then reading for fun.

Life, for this moment at least, is good.

(If you are hating me and my smugness right now, please note two things:  1)  I start two weeks of call on Monday, which is going to destroy everything I just wrote about; and 2) When I say I'm "done everything", I am ignoring the paper I need to write and the CV I need to update and a number of other longer-term tasks that will forever be on my to-do list.  No matter how efficiently I work or how late I stay, there will always be something left to do.)

2017 - The Year of Saying No

I suspect that I'm not the only person in medicine who is a people pleaser.  Since elementary school, I've always been very academically successful, and the resultant praise from teachers and relatives has given me a lot of pleasure and personal satisfaction.  Going to medical school and becoming a doctor took this to the next level, as suddenly patients and even strangers were regularly praising me for the work I did. 

The big problem with getting so much validation externally is that you start to be dependent upon it.  You need people to tell you how important you are and how no one else can do what you're doing.  And so you constantly seek ways to keep that validation coming.  You say yes to giving one more presentation or fitting another patient into your clinic or teaching one more tutorial.  Even when you don't really want to be doing any of those things.

Over the past few months, I've been feeling depleted, as I keep telling my partner.  I've been feeling overwhelmed by work; I've been having difficulty sleeping; and I've been hit with a bone-weary exhaustion that reminds me of my residency days.  I had hoped that a recent trip to a cabin would fix things, but four days away just wasn't enough.  I'm tired. 

And despite this, people keep asking for more.  Start a research project.  Do more training.  Teach another academic half day.  More, more, more, when all I want to do is stay in bed with my cats.  It has reached the point where I feel anxious not only when my pager goes off, but also when my inbox pings, signalling the arrival of another email asking for my time and energy.

So this year, I'm going to learn to say no.  Thank you for the opportunity, but that isn't my priority.  My priority needs to be finding balance, a level of work and engagement that I can happily sustain for the next 20 years, not saying yes to every single request that comes my way.  I need downtime and sleep and yoga classes and running and home-cooked food and time with the people I love, not another item on my to-do list.

No.

It sounds straightforward, but it goes against the very essence of medical culture.  Physicians pride themselves on being able to work a 28-hour shift and then go climb a mountain on their post-call day.  Medicine is the North American worship of busyness and achievement taken to the extreme.  Saying no means being inadequate and not measuring up to the standard.

And Medicine doesn't always listen to no.  A few weeks ago, I was emailed a request to help someone out with a presentation.  My stomach sunk when I read the email, because it was something that I really didn't want to do, even if I had had an abundance of time in which to do it.  So I sat on the email for weeks, debating the merits of saying yes versus no, until I finally got up the guts to sent a polite email declining the request.

The response?  Within seconds, a return email that basically said "Can you do part of the work for me?".

No! 

I'm still completely flabbergasted by the response.  Why is my attempt to protect my happiness and my time not respected?  Why am I expected to say yes to every request that comes into my inbox?

Learning to say no isn't going to be easy.  It's going to mean letting go of the need for other people to tell me how wonderful I am and what a good job I'm doing.  It's going to mean letting go of the belief that if I were just better, just like every other physician, that I would be able to say yes to everything.  It's going to mean ignoring the blogs of the overachievers, who have a medical practice and children and exercise daily and cook healthy food, and setting my own standards for achievement.  Because ultimately no one cares about my happiness as much as I do.  And no one else in Medicine is looking out for my well-being as much as I am.

Evening Routines

OMDG posted today about her challenge with evenings, which got me reflecting on my own evening routine since starting back at work.  When I was on holidays, my plans for my work evenings were very ambitious - cook tasty dinners with my girlfriend, clean the kitchen, take care of housework/paperwork, exercise, and read stimulating and erudite books.  Shockingly, the reality has been somewhat less impressive.  Despite not actually working that hard yet (I'm only working about half-time at the moment), I've been coming home mentally exhausted every day, and I haven't been able to motivate myself to do most of the things I would like to.

Currently, my post-work schedule looks something like this:

1)  Arrive home and dump all possessions (lunch bag, purse, backpack, jacket) in the front hallway.  Ignore voice in the back of my head that tells me that I should be putting things in the spaces I created for them.

2)  Cook dinner with my girlfriend.  This varies from spending 2-3 hours making an elaborate dinner (we love cooking) to BBQing hot dogs and eating potato chips from the bag.

3)  Spend way too much time on the computer.  Facebook, blogs, news, repeat.  I haven't mastered the art of turning off the computer when there is nothing good left to look at, so this eats up a lot of time.  On a good day, I write a blog post of variable quality.

4)  Watch something on Netflix with my girlfriend.  Lately we've been watching Human Planet, which is actually a decent and not entirely mind-numbing show, so it could be worse.

5)  Look at the stack of library books on my coffee table.  Decide it isn't worth the effort.  Possibly watch another Netflix show, usually of lower quality than Human Planet.

6)  Feel progressively more exhausted.  Resist the urge to go to bed like a reasonable human being.  Repeat item #3.

7)  Realize it's past my bedtime.  Rush around trying to make a lunch, pack my work bag, feed the cats, and do anything else that needs to be done.  (Feeding the cats is the only thing I consistently accomplish before bed, and that's only because they meow at me.)

8)  Finally get to bed much later than I should.  Realize that eight hours of restful sleep has become an impossible dream.

9)  Lie awake staring at the ceiling, regretting all of the things I didn't do.

This is something I need to work on, because evenings make up a lot of the quality time I have for myself and my girlfriend outside of work.  Looking back on this time of my life, I don't want Facebook and Netflix and a cluttered apartment to be my most vivid memories.

How happy are you with your evening routine?

That Wasn't Horrible

When I was planning my schedule a few months ago, I thought that I would "start off easy" by being on the consult service for the first two weeks and only doing one or two half-day clinics per week.  I spent months (and months and months) on the consult service as a fellow, so being on service as an attending shouldn't be all that different from what I was doing before, and it guarantees me a minimum income to help with the bills that have piled up after seven weeks of vacation.

The only problem with my plan?  I scheduled my first clinic for the morning of my very first day.  At the inner city clinic where I've only worked twice and therefore am unfamiliar with pretty much everything (like the bloody EPR).  The clinic with the very complicated patients who actually require time.

In the end, my two-and-a-half-hour-long clinic took four hours, followed by a full hour of charting and paperwork.  Amazingly, I stayed calm throughout it and didn't once cry or freak out.  And it was actually (dare I admit it) a tiny bit of fun.  My nurse is absolutely amazing with both me and my patients, and she was the main reason why I didn't go insane when my clinic ran horribly over.  It also helped that there was nothing pressing on the consult service, so it was okay that I showed up at the other hospital at 3 PM.

Maybe this attending gig will be bearable after all.