Blogger Friends Got Ideas!

Yesterday, after my Alter Ego, Cranky Giraffe, posted about my son’s crazy little love letter to his newest idol, Lady Gaga, an old old blogging friend tweeted it, with an idea that maybe he could meet her!  I know the likelihood of it being re-tweeted by anyone other than myself is pretty low… But who cares!  It’s still awesome!

Sarah, you’re awesome and hilarious!  I was hoping for a response to his letter so that his little heart wouldn’t be broken by not having his leading lady care about his feelings and her impact on him.  But OMG!  What a freaking lifetime experience that would be for a little autistic, too sensitive, anxious little boy to have: To meet the first person, aside from his mother and his therapists to make him feel like having anxiety and being different is okay.

Dare to Dream, right???

(Just a reminder that I am also blogging regularly as the Cranky Giraffe… so move on over and follow me there too!)

It’s Been a Long Time…

“It’s been a long time since I came around
Been a long time but I’m back in town
And this time I’m not leaving without you”

~Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga)

I know I haven’t been here blogging for quite a long time (almost a year and a half…), but there was something about blogging that just didn’t satisfy me the way it did before.  If you’ve followed my blog for  a while, then you know I used to have a different blog before.  I missed that blog and I was always just a little bit angry that I couldn’t have it back.

Lately, after lots of self exploration, acceptance, healing, and reflection, I decided I can have it back.  And most importantly, that I shouldn’t turn my back on anything that is ME or MINE because someone else felt that they could take it away from me.

So after all this thought and reflection, I have decided to go back to my old blog: I re-opened it and somehow, over the next few months I will be finding a way to fuse my two blogging personas back into one.  This also means that anyone who did not follow me from my old blog can actually see the other part of me… the part of me that got torn and criticized, and the part of me that I ran away from.

I’m not sure what the form of my blogging will be in the coming months, because not only do I have to figure out how to navigate it, I also have my final residency board exams in a few months and studying for those takes up most (read: all) of my time.  So, check out my old (and becoming new again) blog here and also, forgive me for my extended hiatus!

The Common Sense Problem

The airplane seat map shows that the emergency exit row seats are considered “less desirable.” It’s a little ironic since they come with extra leg room, even if they don’t recline (really, who needs to recline 2 inches when you have two extra feet of leg room?). I think the real reason they are less desirable is because you need to put up with the irritating, non-sensical “rules” imposed by passive-aggressive flight attendants.

I just finished a flight where I was sitting in one of these rows. I opted to bring a crochet project with me into my seat. This project consists of a small canvas bag with 3 small skeins of yarn and a blanket square measuring less than a foot in length. Do you see it there, in that picture? That little white and blue canvas bag stuffed amongst my carry on luggage and safely stowed? Why is it safely stowed, you ask? What a great question!

Apparently, since it is a “bag,” it must be safely stowed. And there cannot be any loose articles AT ALL in the emergency exit rows – which means I also cannot keep the bag stowed under the seat in front of me and stretch the yard out to my seat because it creates a safety hazard. So the very friendly flight attendant stooped above me patiently as I tried not to roll my eyes while simultaneously stowing my safety hazard.

Perhaps I would have been less appalled by this stupidity if the other people in my row were also expected to stow away their loose articles (which happened to not be in bags). The person immediately beside me enjoyed taxi, take-off, and landing by playing games on his rather large “handheld device” (because a large iPad with an attached keyboard is not actually a loose object that poses a safety hazard). The person sitting beside him, on the isle, continued to read his fairly thick novel for the entirety of the flight (because again, a large hardcover book with point corners does not pose any kind of hazard).

The logic here is really lost on me… how a small, soft canvas bag carrying less 8oz of yarn poses more of a safety hazard in my lap, in the emergency exit row, than both a large iPad and a hardcover book is completely non-sensical. In fact, it goes against all common sense.

However, the rules are the rules, right? “Small handheld” devices are allowed to be used during all parts of the flight. Everything else has to be stowed. So be it.

I’m interested to see how they expect me to stow my 17 month old lap-toddler on my flight to Orlando this weekend… oh wait… that’s not against the rules, is it?

Hiatus Reveles

If you’ve ever lost yourself  amidst the chaos of daily life, then you might understand why I stopped blogging.  There was a long stretch of time where I felt that the person I use to be was missing, or maybe stolen… and that was the person who loved to blog.  I gave up when the posts I wrote felt forced (you should see the number of drafts collecting dust in that folder) and blogging wasn’t fun anymore.  That person who opened up her soul to an online world of similar soul searchers was slowly choked away; It started with the abrupt demise of The Cranky Giraffe and culminated with the realization that I no longer wanted the life I was living.

Today, I admitted to someone that I used to blog.  It hurts when I say “used to.”  She asked me why I stopped and I didn’t have a good answer.  Maybe I did have a good answer for why I stopped: “Because I wasn’t anonymous anymore and I lost my mojo and I was unfairly judged.” But the real reason was because I wasn’t the person I used to be.  I was sad and lost, and I wasn’t recovering.

In obeying the rules and expectations from some external force, I watched as my very essence slipped through my own fingers.  However, I grasped the last fray before it was completely gone; as if I could see in slow motion that the last piece was falling to the ground.  What started as an epiphany has progressively blossomed into a path of courage, strength, and disobedience.  I’ve let that last fray grow back and intertwine through my fingertips and up to my chest.  I breath it into my lungs and pump it out through my body.  I feel like I am finally recovering.

I’ve found myself called back to the blog.  I’ve found myself called back to many things I used to love and I have slowly been re-discovering the person I am (not used-to-be).

Daily Post

 

A Break From Authenticity

Last night I picked up my copy of Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly. This book has been sitting on my shelf, unread, for almost three years.  My mandate to begin “Living Authentically” started shortly after I read Brené’s earlier published book, The Gifts of Imperfection. Since moving, starting residency, and having another baby, my goal to read Daring Greatly kept getting pushed to the bottom of my list.  Within the midst of my current existential life crisis, I decided it was time to pick up the book and stare Wholeheartedness right in the face.

I didn’t even get through the prologue before realizing that I no longer live, or even embody, the qualities of wholeheartedness and authenticity.  Maybe I used to, but in the struggle to keep up and keep going, I’ve let these important aspects of my life fall to the side.

Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection

~Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

The one thing I know for sure is that right now, I have no clarity of my purpose.  I am filled with fear and disconnection from my life and my purpose.  I feel confused and I lack direction because my viewpoint on life is clouded by outside expectations, judgement, and comparison.  My internal dialogue is lost and disguised by everything that defines fear and vulnerability.  These definitions were very well delineated by Brené Brown in The Gifts of Imperfection and I know that reading that book changed my life.  I blogged about that change on the old blog and I will find that post to re-post here in the coming days.

Ironically, The introduction to Daring Greatly literally reminded me of these imperfections and what needs to be shed from my life:
1. Letting go of what people think
2. Letting go of perfectionism
3. Letting go of numbing and powerlessness
4. Letting go of scarcity and fear of the dark
5. Letting go of the need for certainty
6. Letting go of comparison
7. Letting go of exhaustion of a status symbol and productivity as self-worth
8. Letting go of anxiety as a lifestyle
9. Letting go of self-doubt and “supposed to”
10. Letting go of being cool and “always in control”

Each of these ten imperfections, every single one of them, comprise the mental roadblocks that I am struggling with right now.  These imperfections are preventing me from committing to the decisions I am faced with in my life today.  I need to lean-in to my fears and rediscover my vulnerabilities.  I need to embrace them and re-discover my own authenticity

 

Queens Don’t Fail

 

 

“Like A Queen” ~Constance Hall

Last week a friend of mine from medical school send me this snapshot from a book she’s reading: Constance Halls, “Like A Queen.”  She felt that this sentence embodied me.  Just the day before I told her that I was considering a specialty change.  I confessed that one of the feelings holding me back was that of failure.  In my mind, switching means failure.

The past few weeks have been a challenging time for me.  For years now, I have thrown around the idea of changing specialties in medicine.  Initially, the idea started because I struggled greatly with my work life balance: there is no room for family life in a surgical residency.  When A. was diagnosed with ASD, I took some time off and realized that I needed to give more to my family.  Despite that, I tried for a long time to convince myself that as long as I loved my job and enjoyed what I did while I was at work, the sacrifices at home would be worth it.  I honestly believe that, even now.  However, as more time goes by, I wonder if I really do enjoy my job as much as I tell myself I do.

Lately I find that I haven’t been as interested and engaged in my work.  I do my work and I take care of my patients, but I haven’t really been enjoying myself.  I wake up in the mornings dragging my feet and I spend a large proportion of the day waiting for it to come to an end so I can get home to my family.  Surgery is technically challenging and pleasurable, but I don’t feel passion when I am in the OR – Just a sense of obligation.  My call shifts are becoming more and more onerous, especially as they stack on top of each other: all I want to do is sleep.  When I think ahead to the heavy rotations, the year of being chief resident, and the studying that is going to have to happen, I cringe.  I know that not too far from now, I will have to neglect my family even more than I do now for an entire year if I want to pass my board exams.  And, I just don’t think I’m willing to make that sacrifice.

So, does that mean I need to change my goals?  Or am I just experiencing a bad case of burnout?  Maybe a little bit of both?  Is this really a good time to make a change in career paths?

I feel dissatisfied at work and I feel like I am falling short as a caring and engaged mother when I am at home.  I know, for certain, that these two feeling are not exclusive of one another.  Together these feelings play into a vicious negative-feedback cycle: I dislike my job because of how it affects my family life, and I feel guilty about what happens to my family because of how much I commit to my job.  Inadequacy in all aspects of life make for an unhappy life.  Despite all of this dissatisfaction, I feel frozen and unable to make a decision on how to move forward.  Staying in the same place, expecting things to get better feels like the wrong decision.  Yet, committing to change, admitting that I’m not happy, and taking a new path is frightening and feels like failure in disguise.

All these thoughts, ideas, and stressors have caused havoc in my mind.  Just a few weeks ago, after decideding to move ahead with the change, I felt empowered and giddy with excitement that I was taking control of my life.  That excitement has now completely dwindled away to leave only more anxiety and fear over the decision.  I fear that I am making this decision for the wrong reasons and that one day I will regret not “sticking it out.”  But I also fear the perception of failure.

I know I could finish this if I tried (and if I wanted to).  But is it what I really want?

 

A Different Decision

We face decisions everyday.  Some are those types of decisions that are made without even thinking: Starbucks coffee? Pants or shorts? Dinner in or dinner out?

But what about those decisions that feel impossible to make?  Those decisions that seem to have no right and no wrong choice? Each choice is equally good and equally bad… So the decision becomes an impossible one to make.

Or maybe there is a clear right and a clear wrong to the decision, but you are just unable to elucidate which is which.  There are those times when the wrong decision feels like the right decision and you get fooled into making the wrong choice.

Has this happened to you?

My maternity leave is coming to an end.  I specifically chose to only take 5 months of my full year leave because I didn’t want to put myself too far behind in my training.  I don’t want my surgical skills to wane, I want to write my exam on time, I want to stay with my cohort of colleagues, and part of me misses work.

The trade-off: I could spend a whole 7 more months at home with my kids.

I don’t feel ready to go back.  The time I have had off feels like it has been stolen from me because I’ve had to deal with work problems while I’ve been off.  We are losing our nanny and my husband doesn’t want a new one; therefore, our childcare situation going forward is rather precarious.  I feel, deep down inside of my soul, that going back to work in two weeks is going to cause my home/family life to spin out of control.

Lately I have been thinking more about extending my leave and taking off my full year.  The reasons I made the initial decision haven’t changed, but I feel like priorities have shifted.  Despite this shift, I find this decision is still impossible to make.  There is no clear right or wrong, and the advice I get from everyone I talk to is the same: Do what’s best for you and your family.

Unfortunately, I feel like what’s best for me and my family is not very clear right now.

Wednesday Morning Cappuccino

Here before me sits a perfect cappuccino…  Made with espresso from my Nespresso coffee machine, hot whipped cream frothed with my milk frother, and poured into my beautiful Le Creuset cappuccino cups.

My blogging absence can only be explained by the simple fact that I have been engaging in my life more wholeheartedly.  I’ve come to realize that my time at home is limited and quickly coming to an end.  I’ve been taking the time to notice and appreciate the small things – like this delicious cappuccino that has become a regular part of my morning, or the beautiful, emphatic smiles I receive from baby El when she sees me for the first time in the morning, or even just reading a book or working on my puzzle.

My last blog post was about how my life felt like it was falling apart; how I felt that I lacked clarity and understanding about what I was doing and direction I was taking in life.  Circumstances haven’t changed, but I feel that my efforts to slow down, live in the moment, and experience life wholeheartedly have made me step back and accept life for what it is.  My career is demanding and unyielding at the moment; but I can do it.  My kids are a handful and they pose some difficult challenges; but they love me unconditionally and loving them back is the best gift I can give them.

If anything, I have realized the need to temper my expectations.  I need to slow down and accept my life and the situations I am presented with as they are.  So far this has been working.  Hopefully it will continue to work well as live moves forward

Unravelling

She sat at my kitchen table with her foot resting on the chair and her knee pulled up to her chin.  Her blond hair perfectly placed in a messy bun, juxtaposed against my un-purposed messy morning hair.  We planned a coffee date for first thing in the morning, after she dropped her kids off at daycare.  We picked my house because the baby likes to sleep late.  She had a lunch date with another friend later that day: she was trying to fit in as many visits as she could.

“What can I get you to drink?” I asked as I instinctively placed a mug under the coffee maker. “Coffee?”
“No thanks, just water,” She replied. “I’m changing the way I eat.  No coffee, nothing processed.  I want to make my body as strong as I can.  I’m getting ready to fight this.”
I wasn’t sure if she wanted to talk about it.  I said I was going to take her lead.

We met the year before at Taekwondo.  Her oldest son was in my youngest son’s class.  For weeks we would sit and talk about the superficial realities of life: Work, kids, husbands, weather… Slowly, our friendship developed and we would occasionally meet up outside of the gym.  I’m always happy to make new friends.

“So, when did this all start?”
“Remember back in February, when I had pneumonia?”

She was gone for weeks from Taekwondo, I remembered.  She came back and it seemed to take ages for her to fully recover.  When the snow started to melt, I ran into her in the neighborhood, walking with her husband and two boys – it was the first time I had ever met her younger son, who wasn’t more than three.  We vowed to have a playdate with the kids once the weather was a little nicer.

“The chest pain never went away, so they did an x-ray and they found two spots.  I had a biopsy.  Then I had a CT scan.  Then they wanted a PET scan.”
I listened intently, trying not to ask too many questions.

A few months ago we all went out together for a friend’s birthday party.  Our friend was turning 33.  Just like me… and just like her.  We joked that 33 would be the best year; it had to definitely be better than 32! And we toasted to that, them with their wine glasses and me with my diet pepsi (since I was pregnant and all).  We vowed to have more get-togethers after that – but we didn’t

“They found a few spots in my hip bones and in my leg bones.  I’m going for my first appointment with the oncologist on Wednesday.”

Wednesday was my birthday.  There would be not be another toast to 33 on my birthday.  No this time.

“I’m going to tell her that I don’t want timelines and I don’t want numbers.  I’m going to beat this.  I know I will!”

I painted a reassuring smile on my face and placed my hand over hers.
“Of course.”

I waited until she left to feel the sadness and the heartache – for her and for me.

I don’t think I could ever be so strong if I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Lung Cancer.

 

Clarity

After the confusion that came from the somewhat cryptic gift from an ex- friend, there is now clarity. 

I spent a few days thinking about how I wanted to react to the receipt of this gift. I agreed with the comments that many of you left: it was not enough of a gesture to warrant any response. However, after going back and forth on how I wanted to respond, and evaluating how I felt about the situation, I decided to send a simple “thank-you” email.  My decision to do this was primarily based on my feeling and desire to be compassionate, if nothing else. And, when I said a simple thank-you, I am not exaggerating: 

Thank-you for the recent stridebox you sent. I hope you are doing well. 

I figured this response was simple enough to let her know that I received the gift and that I was “open” to whatever attempt she was making at reconnecting with me. 

By sending this thank-you, I feel like I was still leaving things in her hands. I was also sure that I wasn’t holding out hope that things would go in a certain direction. I really wasn’t sure what to expect after sending the message.  That was two days ago. 

Today I received yet another email from the company’s customer service department.  They explained that there was some kind of “migration error” and that my address was accidentally printed on a label during their monthly subscription process. They apologized for any confusion or inconvenience that their mistake may have caused. 

So, it turns out that Kay didn’t send me that gift… 

Initially I was angry at the company for realizing this error a few days after I inquired about it and thy causally replied that it was send at a gift.  But then I began wondering why they would have “investigated” the situation further… It made little sense. But I guess if Kay was just as confused about my thanking her for something she never sent, she likely also contacted them to sort out the situation. And, instead of contacting me herself to say she didn’t send it, she relied on the company to do it for her. 

I guess I could be mad at the company for their mistake… I could be angryat myself for being the one to break the silence after so long. However, I’m taking this as an opportunity to claim clarity over the situation. I no longer have the question or uncertainty over what this might have meant. Furthermore, I have also likely received some reinfocent over where she stands in relation to our old friendship: she has no interest in having any contact with me, even if it is something as simple as clarifying some kind of small mix-up. 

This is definitely another level of closure that I needed, despite the passage of time. 

(Although I will say that the universe has a twisted and delusional sense of humour…)