The Countdown is ON

Written 08/15/2012:

I find my lack of commitment to my own bloggery rather offensive.

I have no excuse for it.

How many times in a given week do I hear myself think, "Oh, man I gotta blog about this!" There are so many good stories to record and remember. I've had the privilege of meeting some tremendous people, and I have found some remarkable humor in the most mundane of cases, but there is an overriding obstacle to writing.

Apathy.

Because, quite frankly, when one is done seeing patients, doing rounds or closing a surgery, one then has to go home and study, proofread residency essays, organize and schedule 4th year rotations, find housing and transportation for all of those rotations, approve dean's letters or just micromanage life. I'll add that during this time, the house goes unkept. Laundry done at a minimal level just to get by. Exercise that is not incorporated into daily commutes is forgotten. Food that requires more than 10 minutes of foresight and/or preparation is omitted. Meh, I don't actually *have* to eat tonight, I find myself thinking when faced with the necessary task of going to the store. Hard boiled eggs, grapes, graham crackers and Kashi are delightful staples.

Oh, right, I've also been packing and moving in preparation for a year of homelessness.

And so, when it comes to actually sitting down and logging into Blogger to write, I find that the only Pie Heaven I want to entertain is one that is in my face. I give minimal, possibly zero, fucks. Le sorry.

And yet, somehow during this time, I have managed to cultivate laughter, watch a full season each of BBT and Breaking Bad and read for fun--even if only for 5 minutes each night. When I actually sit back and observe my own comings and goings, I am unable to see how I pull these things off.

I write this from seat 15D on US Airways flight 319, bound for Philadelphia. So I have approximately 5 hours during which I give many fucks about writing, because it's a blessedly blank span of time. In the next week, I will take my final board exam during my medical school training, having passed the previous four. I will see Philadelphia for the first time. I might just fancy a train ride to Manhattan one day. I will reunite with 3 pals from my class.

Then the crazy sets in. Here's a succinct summary:

Aug/Sep = Endocrinology, Lansing, MI (MSU)
Sep/Oct = Hem/Onc, Lansing, MI (MSU)
Oct/Nov = Gynecology/Oncology, Baltimore, MD (Sinai/Johns Hopkins)
Nov/Dec = Infectious Disease, Amarillo, TX (Texas Tech U)
Dec/Jan = Breast surgery, Savannah, GA (Mercer School of Med)
Jan/Feb = Outpatient IM, Napa, CA
Feb/Mar = who the hell knows??? Emergency med somewhere in CA.
Mar/Apr = General Surgery, Long Beach, CA
Apr/May = Europe vacation
May 17, 2013 9:30am = GRADUATION, Pasadena, CA

The countdown IS ON.