(no subject)
Tabula Rasa (1/2)
Two days ago, I got into medical school.
***
I haven't been sleeping much at all since then. What little I've had was uneasy and short, punctuated by surreal nightmares that left me waking up covered in sweat. It's almost as though a strange cocktail of hormones has been released into my bloodstream. I'm sleepless but running on all cylinders, awake despite the insomnia and tearing through days with an absence of purpose that sickens me.
Call it a mini-vacation. Or prison. Your call.
Work is nonexistent; my research protocol has been written and I am waiting to meet with my mentors before a final copy is submitted to an ethics committee. I spend hours reading at my desk, on the couch in the living room, propped up in my bed with a pillow at my back. I go for runs in the freezing weather outside and wear polypropylene tights and a wool balaclava when the temperature dips into the 'teens. When it's too cold to go running or the sidewalks are iced over and dangerous, I spread a thick towel on the wood-panel floor and do push ups to The Black Keys. I watch movies - Medicine for Melancholy, Summer Hours, Conan The Barbarian; no thoughts to the future save those to kill time until the next hospital shift.
It feels like summer vacation. More specifically: summer vacation during the gap between high school and college. That time was, like this one, filled with the security that I would soon be going to college and didn't need to worry about the present. I spent a lot of time on the beach, played more Goldeneye than was healthy, and quietly left the house in the small hours of the morning to hang out with my first semi-serious girlfriend. When I wasn't slacking off I remember being really, really bored.
***
So: Maybe lostcosmonaut is onto something when he wrote about writing things down and then those things actually happening. So, like him, maybe all I need to do is write down Give me something to do, Cincinnati in an eye-poppingly large font and my days will be filled with events. Manna from the heavens and all that.
At the very least it could get warmer.
Two days ago, I got into medical school.
***
I haven't been sleeping much at all since then. What little I've had was uneasy and short, punctuated by surreal nightmares that left me waking up covered in sweat. It's almost as though a strange cocktail of hormones has been released into my bloodstream. I'm sleepless but running on all cylinders, awake despite the insomnia and tearing through days with an absence of purpose that sickens me.
Call it a mini-vacation. Or prison. Your call.
Work is nonexistent; my research protocol has been written and I am waiting to meet with my mentors before a final copy is submitted to an ethics committee. I spend hours reading at my desk, on the couch in the living room, propped up in my bed with a pillow at my back. I go for runs in the freezing weather outside and wear polypropylene tights and a wool balaclava when the temperature dips into the 'teens. When it's too cold to go running or the sidewalks are iced over and dangerous, I spread a thick towel on the wood-panel floor and do push ups to The Black Keys. I watch movies - Medicine for Melancholy, Summer Hours, Conan The Barbarian; no thoughts to the future save those to kill time until the next hospital shift.
It feels like summer vacation. More specifically: summer vacation during the gap between high school and college. That time was, like this one, filled with the security that I would soon be going to college and didn't need to worry about the present. I spent a lot of time on the beach, played more Goldeneye than was healthy, and quietly left the house in the small hours of the morning to hang out with my first semi-serious girlfriend. When I wasn't slacking off I remember being really, really bored.
***
So: Maybe lostcosmonaut is onto something when he wrote about writing things down and then those things actually happening. So, like him, maybe all I need to do is write down Give me something to do, Cincinnati in an eye-poppingly large font and my days will be filled with events. Manna from the heavens and all that.
At the very least it could get warmer.