There's nothing like writing a blog post every single day to make you realize how routine and uninteresting your life can be. Today was a typical Thursday: go to work, get lots of paperwork done (I have no clinics on Thursdays), go to my French class, come home. I have to give a presentation tomorrow at 7 oh-my-God-it's-too-bloody-early in the morning, so I also had to spend part of my evening running through the presentation. Always fun.
The act of daily blogging is reminding me of how little extra mental energy I have in my life. I am not overly short on time, as I tend to leave the hospital at a reasonable time most days, but my job exhausts me mentally. After a full day of high-stakes decisions and endlessly talking to people, my highly sensitive, introverted self is worn out. Going to a French lesson and practicing a presentation and writing a blog post is about as much as I can handle in an evening, and I haven't done any of those things particularly well today.
I have huge respect for the people* who come home from a long day of work and then have to care for children. I am honestly really glad that I've never felt a strong desire to have kids, because I think I would lose my mind if I had to come home to whining and disobeying and all of the many secretions that children produce. (One of my friends with kids described her house this week as a "tsunami of diarrhea". Shudder.)
And...that's it for me. Daily blogging is helping me to generate lots of ideas for blog posts, but it isn't leaving me with enough drive to write a long one, so some of those will have to wait for once this month is over and I have more time for things to incubate. For now, this will have to do.
*Not to be too sexist, but I will say especially the women. Because in most households, those are the ones who bear the brunt of everything family/household. For those rare men who are doing their 50% or more, well done.
Showing posts with label Tired. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tired. Show all posts
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Sunday, January 8, 2017
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
Goals - Looking Back at February and Ahead to (What's Left of) March
This post is a little late. I've been scrambling a bit to catch up on everything that didn't get done while I was in Montreal, and I've been feeling a lot of end-of-winter blahs, so the blog has been a bit neglected.
I set three goals for myself for February: Work out three days a week; go see the psychiatrist, and go out with friends/family twice a week. How did it go, you ask?
Recycled February goal: Go to the gym three days a week.
Nope. Didn't happen. I went a few times at the beginning of the month, and then sleeping in seemed more appealing than exercise (as it always does), and I stopped. I think I've hit the dreaded point where I no longer believe that I can be successful at this goal, so I'm not even making an effort. I'm not sure what it's going to take for me to get exercising again, but I do genuinely want to find a way to make this a regular part of my life. I commented to my girlfriend yesterday that I'm happier and more relaxed when I exercise, and she looked at me as if I'd just said that the sky is blue and responded "Um. Yes."
Second February goal: Don't chicken out and skip the assessment with the psychiatrist.
With this, I was fully successful. Not only did I go to the initial assessment, but I also went to three follow up appointments to convince him that there wasn't something seriously wrong with me and that I just wanted some help learning better coping skills. (Aside: I have never been asked about drinking, drug use, and suicidal thoughts as many times as I was in those four sessions with the psychiatrist. Apparently physicians only seek help when things are terribly wrong, and I'm a bit of an anomaly for wanting some preventative mental health care.) Having passed the psychiatrist's test, I'm now awaiting the availability of a psychologist who will do some cognitive-behavioural therapy with me.
At some point, I will write a whole post about my experiences with this and about physician mental health in general, but today is not that day. For the thoughts of another soon-to-be physician on this subject, check out Kay's blog Premed Post-Mom.
Third February goal: Spend time with people I love. At least twice a week. The girlfriend doesn't count.
Yes! I did this*! Apparently if I set fun goals for myself, like go out for dinner with my favourite people, I can achieve them. Over the course of February, I did the following:
This goal was a good one for me, as it reminded me that, as much as I love my girlfriend and her people, I get something unique from spending time with my people. My family and my long-term friends know me and love me in a way that my girlfriend's people don't, and that connection and understanding are central to my happiness. As an introvert, I am more than able to meet my need for time spent with other people through my girlfriend and her extroverted social life, but it is still important for me to maintain my own social contacts.
The main downside to this goal was that it completely wiped me out. In addition to the activities that I did with my people, I also spent a lot of time with the girlfriend and her people, and it was simply more than this fragile introvert could handle. By the end of the month, all I wanted was time in my pjs on the couch with my cats. Which is pretty much how I've spent all my free time in March so far. Also...all of the eating out was expensive. My eating out budget is usually ridiculously high, but in February it was about 50% beyond what it usually is.
March's really vague, non-SMART goal:
For a while I was thinking of not setting a goal for March, as I'm mostly just feeling tired and in need of a break, but then I came up with something that I think I can do even in my tired state, which is kind of, but not really, a goal.
In March, I want to make more of an effort to recognize what I need and to meet those needs.
(See? Vague.)
For essentially all of my medical training, I didn't think much about what I wanted or needed. There was always a long list of things that I absolutely had to do, so I just focused on getting them done, regardless of how happy or unhappy I was doing them. Thankfully, things are different now, and I have much more flexibility to do the things that are important and life-giving to me. Or, on a smaller scale, to simply do the things that make me calmer and happier from moment to moment.
While I could've tried to make this a defined goal, I've intentionally left it nebulous because the things that I need vary from day to day. Some days I need to retreat from the world and be with my cats, while other days I need to socialize and connect with the people I love. Some days I need to be stingy with my budget and save for the future, while other days I need to be self-indulgent and enjoy the results of my hard work. Some days I need to work less so that I can get enough rest and relaxation, while other days I need to work more so that I can get shit done and stop stressing about it. Different days, different needs.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
*Technically I only did seven things instead of the eight that would be required to have gone out exactly twice per week, but I'm still counting this as a success. In part because I achieved the spirit of the goal, and in part because one of my friends bailed on dinner plans at the last minute, so I can blame her for falling slightly short of eight.
I set three goals for myself for February: Work out three days a week; go see the psychiatrist, and go out with friends/family twice a week. How did it go, you ask?
Recycled February goal: Go to the gym three days a week.
Nope. Didn't happen. I went a few times at the beginning of the month, and then sleeping in seemed more appealing than exercise (as it always does), and I stopped. I think I've hit the dreaded point where I no longer believe that I can be successful at this goal, so I'm not even making an effort. I'm not sure what it's going to take for me to get exercising again, but I do genuinely want to find a way to make this a regular part of my life. I commented to my girlfriend yesterday that I'm happier and more relaxed when I exercise, and she looked at me as if I'd just said that the sky is blue and responded "Um. Yes."
Second February goal: Don't chicken out and skip the assessment with the psychiatrist.
With this, I was fully successful. Not only did I go to the initial assessment, but I also went to three follow up appointments to convince him that there wasn't something seriously wrong with me and that I just wanted some help learning better coping skills. (Aside: I have never been asked about drinking, drug use, and suicidal thoughts as many times as I was in those four sessions with the psychiatrist. Apparently physicians only seek help when things are terribly wrong, and I'm a bit of an anomaly for wanting some preventative mental health care.) Having passed the psychiatrist's test, I'm now awaiting the availability of a psychologist who will do some cognitive-behavioural therapy with me.
At some point, I will write a whole post about my experiences with this and about physician mental health in general, but today is not that day. For the thoughts of another soon-to-be physician on this subject, check out Kay's blog Premed Post-Mom.
Third February goal: Spend time with people I love. At least twice a week. The girlfriend doesn't count.
Yes! I did this*! Apparently if I set fun goals for myself, like go out for dinner with my favourite people, I can achieve them. Over the course of February, I did the following:
- Took my nieces to see a play about Harriet Tubman
- Organized a gathering of medical friends to try out a local restaurant promotion
- Drove to the country to visit my bff from medical school
- Went to my Mom's house for dinner and to help her move furniture
- Went to dinner and the theatre with my Mom
- Met up with a friend from grad school in Montreal
- Breakfast at a shitty new restaurant with my Mom
This goal was a good one for me, as it reminded me that, as much as I love my girlfriend and her people, I get something unique from spending time with my people. My family and my long-term friends know me and love me in a way that my girlfriend's people don't, and that connection and understanding are central to my happiness. As an introvert, I am more than able to meet my need for time spent with other people through my girlfriend and her extroverted social life, but it is still important for me to maintain my own social contacts.
The main downside to this goal was that it completely wiped me out. In addition to the activities that I did with my people, I also spent a lot of time with the girlfriend and her people, and it was simply more than this fragile introvert could handle. By the end of the month, all I wanted was time in my pjs on the couch with my cats. Which is pretty much how I've spent all my free time in March so far. Also...all of the eating out was expensive. My eating out budget is usually ridiculously high, but in February it was about 50% beyond what it usually is.
March's really vague, non-SMART goal:
For a while I was thinking of not setting a goal for March, as I'm mostly just feeling tired and in need of a break, but then I came up with something that I think I can do even in my tired state, which is kind of, but not really, a goal.
In March, I want to make more of an effort to recognize what I need and to meet those needs.
(See? Vague.)
For essentially all of my medical training, I didn't think much about what I wanted or needed. There was always a long list of things that I absolutely had to do, so I just focused on getting them done, regardless of how happy or unhappy I was doing them. Thankfully, things are different now, and I have much more flexibility to do the things that are important and life-giving to me. Or, on a smaller scale, to simply do the things that make me calmer and happier from moment to moment.
While I could've tried to make this a defined goal, I've intentionally left it nebulous because the things that I need vary from day to day. Some days I need to retreat from the world and be with my cats, while other days I need to socialize and connect with the people I love. Some days I need to be stingy with my budget and save for the future, while other days I need to be self-indulgent and enjoy the results of my hard work. Some days I need to work less so that I can get enough rest and relaxation, while other days I need to work more so that I can get shit done and stop stressing about it. Different days, different needs.
I'll let you know how it turns out.
*Technically I only did seven things instead of the eight that would be required to have gone out exactly twice per week, but I'm still counting this as a success. In part because I achieved the spirit of the goal, and in part because one of my friends bailed on dinner plans at the last minute, so I can blame her for falling slightly short of eight.
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
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?
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?
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Saturday Night Reflections
Sometimes I'm an idiot.
I know from almost 38 years of living as myself that I don't enjoy being overly busy. I can handle a lot of busy - I've survived four years of medical school and five years of residency - but my preference is always for a slower, more manageable pace. Which is why it was idiotic of me to 1) arrive home after being away for five weeks at 8 PM the night before I had to go back to work; 2) agree to do call the weekend after I returned; and 3) agree to adjudicate an exam all Saturday while also on call. Add to this the fact that I have three presentations to give over three weeks, and life has been too busy lately. And I've been a miserable grouch of a person as I've struggled to do too many things in too little time.
All of these things could've been avoided. I could've (and should've) taken a stat day off after returning from holidays to unpack the car and wash the massive amounts of laundry. I could've switched my weekend of call. I could've said that, no, it isn't worth giving up a weekend day to earn a little bit of money when I'll be a full-blown attending in a few months. But I'm an idiot.
I need to remember this when I start working as an attending this summer. I need to remember that I need sleep, and time to clean my apartment, and quality time with my girlfriend. And all of these things are more important than earning a bit more money, no matter how big my line of credit may still be*.
Remind me of this when I'm tempted to say yes to an extra weekend of attending call.
*I've got a post brewing about the massive line of credit from hell. Stay tuned.
I know from almost 38 years of living as myself that I don't enjoy being overly busy. I can handle a lot of busy - I've survived four years of medical school and five years of residency - but my preference is always for a slower, more manageable pace. Which is why it was idiotic of me to 1) arrive home after being away for five weeks at 8 PM the night before I had to go back to work; 2) agree to do call the weekend after I returned; and 3) agree to adjudicate an exam all Saturday while also on call. Add to this the fact that I have three presentations to give over three weeks, and life has been too busy lately. And I've been a miserable grouch of a person as I've struggled to do too many things in too little time.
All of these things could've been avoided. I could've (and should've) taken a stat day off after returning from holidays to unpack the car and wash the massive amounts of laundry. I could've switched my weekend of call. I could've said that, no, it isn't worth giving up a weekend day to earn a little bit of money when I'll be a full-blown attending in a few months. But I'm an idiot.
I need to remember this when I start working as an attending this summer. I need to remember that I need sleep, and time to clean my apartment, and quality time with my girlfriend. And all of these things are more important than earning a bit more money, no matter how big my line of credit may still be*.
Remind me of this when I'm tempted to say yes to an extra weekend of attending call.
*I've got a post brewing about the massive line of credit from hell. Stay tuned.
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