>> In all of my whining about termination, there is apparently a sweet fruit that can blossom from this bitter tree (… sorry). The nurse simply nodded after I spoke and then she said, “Well, I think this is a good thing for our clients. They now know that not all psychiatrists are mean people, that they can have a good relationship with a mental health provider. I mean, a lot of them have had terrible experiences in the past—now they will think differently.”
Awww. That was sweet.
>> When showing someone around a city, one gets to see the city in a different light. While playing tour guide over the long weekend, I
- ran around Lake Union and then some—that’s almost eight miles, baby!
- attended the Folklife Festival and ate a ton of junk food (… mmm… funnel cake.) I last attended the festival three years ago and at that time, I wrote about a trio of jugglers. I had commented that the one wearing orange was cute. My eyes alighted with recognition upon seeing the trio… though I did not find the man in orange cute this year. Tastes change. (And though I was at the festival when the shooting happened, I was probably in line for the Space Needle at the time of the incident. Now they’re saying the shooter has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Hm.)
- saw the sun set from the top of the Space Needle. Seattle is gorgeous.
- gorged on seafood at Ivar’s Salmon House. The massive amount of food was overwhelming. We are so lucky to live in a country where there exist buffets that serve fresh salmon served in at least four ways (croquettes, grilled, smoked, baked), crab legs, prawns, fish and chips, multiple types of cheeses, seven types of fresh cut fruit, bagels, waffles, pancakes, sausages, chocolate-dipped strawberries, biscuits, gravy, eggs benedict, bacon, hash browns, chowder, omelettes, chocolate tarts, brownies, and a ton of other food items that I can’t even remember because it was just all too much. And to have the means to visit such a gluttonous place! (The chocolate chip cookie was disappointing. I have high standards.)
- visited the troll and Lenin in Fremont.
It was a satisfying way to enjoy the sights of the city before leaving for the Other Coast.
>> The Little Prince is a sad book. The only detail I had remembered about it was the drawing of the boa constrictor that had eaten the elephant (from the outside—I don’t remember the inside drawing). What a wonderful story and how true it is: ‘Tis the invisible things and those things and people we “tame” and spend time with that give meaning to our lives and experiences.
More regular posting in about a week. My exam is next Monday. (Egads!)
Time passes.
27 May 2008 | 4 comments.
I’ve Resumed Tweeting.
Last year, I hopped onto the Twitter wagon. Later on last year, I hopped off. (Or, more accurately, the Twitter wagon kept rolling and, with a blank expression on my face, I watched it roll away towards the horizon.)
With the changes I expect in the near future (it sounds like I’m talking about puberty, doesn’t it…), my current rationing of writing on intueri, and the many advantages of unlimited text messaging, I anticipate that I shall enjoy using Twitter over the next few months. Or at least derive occasional bouts of amusement from it.
You may find my 140-character literary efforts (…) at the top of the sidebar or on my Twitter page. I predict that I shall be updating Twitter a lot more than intueri, particularly for the next six weeks or so. Enjoy.
19 May 2008 | 1 comment.
One Hour of Running.
The sun rose at 5:27am this morning in Seattle. (And, yes, the sun actually showed its bright face and illuminated the colorful blooms of late Spring, the uneven sidewalks, the distant mountains, and the nearly cloudless skies.)
I started running at 5:45am. I noticed:
- a homeless man, smoking a cigarette, seated in front of a drug store. When I waved hello, his scraggly voice replied, “GOOD MORNING!” about three times as loud as necessary.
- a large white van parked askew, half on the sidewalk, half on the street, and its two occupants standing behind it, smoking cigarettes.
- a young woman, probably in her early twenties, with glasses, cutely disheveled hair, ambling towards me… and smoking a cigarette.
Conclusion: The smokers take advantage of the morning.
Ahem. To continue:
- a man standing at a bus stop, clutching a bag. I heard him before I saw him. He was on the other side of the street, but I could clearly hear him reading the timetable at the stop. He, too, was speaking about three times as loud as necessary.
- two crumpled Slip n’ Slides. (One each in front of different houses.) These were clearly artifacts from the unseasonably warm weather Seattle enjoyed yesterday.
- a station wagon that was the victim of malicious mischief: It was (very recently) wrapped in toilet paper and on the hood of the car was a large mass of… something. It could have been vomit. It could have been several pints of humus. It could have been peanut butter mixed with finely diced tomatoes. You get the picture.
- a large tree adorned with three yellow ribbons tied around its trunk.
- another tree from which dangled a plastic bag filled with more plastic bags. A hand-written sign underneath the bag requested that dog-walkers assist in keeping their lawn clean.
Conclusion: Trees are useful for communicating information.
More:
- an elderly woman wearing a reflective orange vest, squinting from the light filtering through the trees into her wrinkled face.
- a not so elderly woman sitting on her stoop, talking on her cell phone. She didn’t acknowledge my wave.
- a fluffy black cat skittering across the sidewalk upon spying me approaching it.
- the newspaper man (we apparently don’t have newspaper “boys” in Seattle; furthermore, all these men drive beat-up sedans) throwing the Sunday paper towards houses… only to realize that he may have missed, thus requiring him to walk up to the house, locate the errant paper, and toss it onto the steps.
- several lean men wearing brightly-colored, tightly-fitting clothing on their super-slim, nearly silent road bicycles.
- one older woman sitting in a coffee shop, staring out the window (not at anything in particular; she looked like she was staring at something in her memory).
- two white ghosts, who, upon approaching them, were actually two nuns, who, upon approaching them even closer, were actually probably Somali women dressed in flowing white linens.
I won’t mention all the flowers, the snow-capped mountains, the shimmering lake, etc. Amazingly, that’s the “usual stuff” here.
I stopped running around 6:45am, after completing a little over six miles.
I know, right? Who runs for an hour? When I started running about a year ago, I would have never anticipated that I would run six miles with this kind of gusto. In many ways, running has changed my life: I’ve learned a lot about patience, setting goals, pacing, the patterns of the morning, and mastery. I eat better (though cookies remain a weakness), I feel better, and, though I have not lost weight, I have gained definition. And though “run six consecutive miles comfortably” was never on my “Things to Do Before I Die” list, I now confidently know that I can run the entire loop in Central Park with ease. And that’s definitely something I want to do before I die.
We all subscribe to the illusion that we have control over our lives. Our awareness of this illusion shifts with contexts, time, and experience. I don’t dare suggest that we have absolutely no control over our lives… though I certainly don’t think that we have total control over our lives.
And during those occasions when we feel in less control than we’d like, it helps to pursue those things that we can control. Accomplishing things, even if seemingly insignificant, helps us feel better (whatever “better” actually means). Believing and witnessing that we are effective lifts our moods. Try it.
There are all the things I don’t want to do (study for my exam, figure out how to ship stuff a cross country, etc.) that currently and insistently demand my attention. And then there are all the things I would like to attend to (find a place to live in New York, spend time with The Beau, etc.), but I cannot as circumstances are disagreeable. And then there are the details that cause me sadness: Saying good-bye to my friends, finishing up my clinical duties here, leaving this beautiful city, etc.
So, instead, I run. Because I can.
That also explains why I write.
18 May 2008 | 4 comments.
Four Ways to Approach Any Problem.
1. Take steps to solve the problem or leave the situation forever. The question people most frequently ask me is, “How are you?” After that, it’s “Have you found a place to live in New York yet?” (Seriously, that question is directed to me at least once a day… and that has been going on for the past two months. At least.)
No, I have not yet found a place to live in New York. Yes, I am currently taking (seemingly glacial) steps to solve the problem by getting my papers together, soliciting friends for advice, looking up suggestions online, scouring advertisements for apartments, investigating brokers, and planning out how I plan to hunt for my wascally apartment.
Another option is to leave the situation and live somewhere else entirely where the monthly rent for studio apartments aren’t comparably priced to 492 gallons of milk. Or 421 gallons of gasoline. Or five nights in a fancy hotel. Or over twenty months of unlimited New York City subway rides.
2. Change your thoughts or emotions about the problem so that they are in service of your goals. I am further developing my skills in distress tolerance and patience with this quest. Those are useful life skills. I’m building character. I know I will find a place to live; I just don’t know when. I will also be able to advise friends in the future should they decide to relocate to New York. This is also a short-term problem in the grand scheme of things; once I sign a lease, this experience will be a long-lost memory. Probably because I will actively block it from my consciousness.
3. Accept both the problem and your response to the problem. As I am currently about 3,000 miles away from New York City, I cannot do anything about securing an apartment right now. And since there is nothing I can do right now to hasten my acquisition of shelter, there’s no real value in getting stressed out about it. I accept that anxiety grips me with its cold, steely fingers from time to time, but I am coping. (Blogging helps.)
4. Do nothing and remain miserable. Contrary to popular practice, ignoring a problem will not make it go away. (Usually.) This option, however, is arguably the easiest, since it involves minimal effort. Change is difficult.
(Seriously: If you are connected to someone in New York City who is seeking an apartment tenant—a landlord, a broker, someone who is looking for someone else to take over his/her lease—please send me an e-mail. I’m exploring all of my options, even if the yield will likely be low. We cannot reap any harvest if we do not initially sow any seeds.)
(I know, my aphorisms are not helping my case.)
12 May 2008 | 5 comments.
Men and Women.
One of the more favored instructors was teaching Sunday school that morning. He was married and probably in his early forties, though, since we were all in the throes of puberty, we thought that he was already rather old.
He spoke to us about fidelity in relationships.
“So what do you do if you’re married and you see a pretty woman? Is it a sin to look at her?” a precocious junior high student asked. We all giggled with embarrassment.
“Well,” the instructor stalled. A big, toothy grin crossed his face. His mouth seemed disproportionately sized to his jaw. “Being faithful to your wife or husband is important. However, God does make some people really handsome or pretty.”
He paused for effect. We all looked at him, breathless. What is he going to say about cheating eyes???
“When I see a pretty woman,” he finally said, smirking, “I look at her, praise God and think, ‘AMEN!’, and keep walking!”
It’s the way that he said “AMEN!” that made us all laugh. It’s as if he was cheering at a football game.
He had just picked up a styrofoam cup brimming with black coffee from the counter. Though young—he was probably in his late twenties—his stooped posture suggested that he felt much older. He turned around, took a sip from the cup, and scanned the crowd with his dark eyes.
He was looking at my face when I noticed him. Like a roaming butterfly, my gaze quickly left his face and flitted to other faces in the crowd. I was looking for a specific individual. This man was not the object of my search.
“Hey,” he said as I approached. My eyes returned to his face, which now sported a playful smile. Having captured my attention, he extended his arm and held out the cup of coffee to me. “Can you hold this for me for a second?”
I automatically took the cup of coffee from his hand and examined its contents: serpentine, grey wisps of steam floated from the warm ink within the small white cup. When I looked up, I saw that he was lazily stretching his back. He continued to smile at me.
“I’ve got back problems,” he commented. After raising his arms up in the air, he asked, “So… what brings you here?”
“I’m looking for someone,” I replied, realizing that this cup of coffee was actually a leash.
“Oh—but not me?” he continued.
“No,” I answered. I extended my arm and held out the cup of coffee to him and asked, “Would you like your coffee back now?”
It was actually a command. Please take your coffee.
He looked at me, pouting. “Just because I’ve got back problems doesn’t mean I can’t make you a very, very happy woman,” he commented.
After shooting him a dark look, I unceremoniously placed his cup of coffee back onto the counter so he could retrieve it.
As I walked away, I heard another man kindly offer, “Here, I’ll hold your coffee for you.”
“I don’t want you to hold my coffee,” the young man impatiently answered. “Hey, excuse me, miss—yeah, you—can you hold this for me for a second…?”
A note to loyal readers of intueri: Posting shall be (really) spotty between now and June 2nd, 2008. You may astutely wonder, “What’s happening between now and June 2nd?”
Well. Let me tell you: Lots of transition.
In addition to managing the details of my relocation to New York City, getting rid of or otherwise selling most of my material belongings in Seattle, spending quality time with my dear friends as my tenure in Seattle rapidly dwindles, slogging through online orientations and documentation for my next job, and tending to the other details in life, I am studying for my psychiatry board exam. My exam date is June 2nd.
The amount of reading and studying I do is inversely proportional to the amount of writing I do. And though I need only pass the exam, my study habits aim for doing well on the exam. (At least I know I’m overly compulsive.)
Thus, feel free to send warm fuzzies and good luck juju (…?) to me between now and June 2nd (particularly on June 2nd). I anticipate posting shall return to the pre-studying frequency once the exam is out of the way.
Thank you for your continued readership and patronage. :)
10 May 2008 | 8 comments.