The result is that I will work like a dog. There's a steak in front of me and I'm viciously running toward it. Nothing stops me from my short term goals and nothing will prevent me from my ultimate goal of being a physician, travelling the world, affecting public health policy for the better, researching clinically RSD, and teaching medicine.
In the meantime here is where my life is:
The last few days I've been skittering around Madrid like a madman but...I'm on top of things. I know the flea markets and tapas haunts. Mostly, I keep to myself because I prefer my thoughts to a lot of thoughtless people...
My work gives me a lot of facetime with people and allows me to get that connection that everyone desparately needs. It also lets me practice whatever educational psychology I'm learning at the time. For instance, I'm learning the process of accessing learning on the subconscious level. Mostly I try to associate an expression, movement, or tone with a particular phrase or construction.
I spend a lot of time working out, making good food (I've been on a Mediterranean salad kick lately), and looking at schools.
The ice is breaking when it comes to my schools...I have waited and tried so hard to get into whatever school was worth biting. I feel like my mind is itching to learn something challenging and new. Although I challenge myself by learning a bit of Kaplan USMLE practice exercises...I am yearning to be back in that community.
At the same time I have challenged myself to wear ticking clocks.
I have worn a watch since Alison gave me one my junior year of high school. It's on my left wrist. It covers an ink mark that reminds me that I am going to die at some point and that every moment should be cherished.
That tick. tick. tick. reminds me that I need to be effective and moving...or moving toward enjoying life. If I am not it's as though the motivational speaker from Dexter season 5 is speaking to me:
"That's the sound of your life running out..."
Every second is accompanied by the realization that my consciousness in this world is finite and enabled only by the neurons and carbon atoms in this particular configuration. My experience in chemistry shows me that entropy is going to win... in the meantime I'm rooting for the underdog...my reality.
Back to Madrid: I will never forget teaching at Ramon y Cajal. The stress of that situation and ongoing pressure of having a job that requires me to be continuously sharp and maintaining a face of composed interest has made me a better person.
There are the adventures too. I am running myself ragged with these trips. In the next few months they are going to be bigger and more involved than in the past.
For this week, however, I am saving up for a camera. I think that it's finally time to relate my experience to other people. I have seen sights that many people will never see. The emotions are mixed. Some of them elicit a gasp and a smile...others draw out a sustained smile. Some sights get nothing. I nod. That's it.
All this time has made me realize that it's really the people that mean anything to anyone. I knew it when I had this decision in the first place. There was a pleasant year before me in Athens, Ohio with a good girl and a stable income. Instead I chose to trek over here and do things I never dreamed of. The outcome is, as most things that I look at, exactly what I expected.
The unexpected part of this adventure is this: I never thought that the depth of my analysis and thought has come to the conclusion that it, in and of itself, is a hinderance. The life without questions is death in disguise...but analysis is paralysis. You can think or move. My game is now to internallize and make a reactive rather than responsive state in which I am myself purely in a moment.
I'm listning to 69 love songs about to go to the gym. A bit scrambled, but this is a snapshot of what I'm thinking at the moment. I anticipate attending SGU in the summer.
