"i won't let this burden bring me down"--lenka

i am currently sitting in the call room...on call. hoooping my pager doesn't go off as it has been since pretty much the moment the clock struck 5 pm, and my call duties began. owning a pager is totally NOT cool anymore. i can't wait til i can smash one against a wall. has it really been only 4 months?

i'm generally slightly, subconsciously anxious the night before my calls. i know that i must have some sort of anxiety because my sleep is always disturbed and i wake up ridiculously early. for example...today, though i wouldn't be on call until 5pm...i woke up with ease at 5am (my alarm was set for 630)...and i didn't even go to bed that early last night! if this was a one time deal, i wouldn't even notice it, but this is the way i always am...with every call. i'll be on again on sunday. i can pretty much guarantee that i'll be up by 6, staring at the darkness.

pathetic.

after a month of ob, i feel a little bit like i forgot medicine. that's not a good feeling to have. i'll leave it at that.

today i felt like a little lost lamb on one of the floors. it was chaos and my brain couldn't handle insanity. later, i realized that the nurses were changing shifts and docs were throwing in last minute orders before heading home for the day....and overall just a very bad time to be anywhere near the floors.

i think i broke my toes. there's an immense pain when i try to wriggle them. i'm just noticing this for the first time now. what's up with that? perhaps i should tell someone and they'll let me go home? i once had a med school prof tell me that she walked around with an iv in her arm because she was sick and on call and she needed to take iv antibiotics. i was like...uhhh...great...so basically you were a walking disease causing beast because you were too gungho to go home and take care of your sickness AWAY from others.

on a different note....that nanowrimo is starting on sunday. i still plan on doing it, though i'm wondering how i'll last if i have such difficulty even updating this thing! am i just unnecessarily stressing myself? sometimes i think so. what bothers me is i think i like it! ummm...since when did i enjoy stress?? what the heck? get me out of this world and back to the laid back sun and sand that i so fondly remember!

hah. it's been a while since i've been uber dramatic. that's about as much of those dramatics as i can muster right now. i'm feeling sleeping and thinking that perhaps i should take advantage of this quiet time.

oh yea...tomorrow (or the day after...though more likely tomorrow...i'll try to remember to tell you the story of an idiotic conversation i had. ugh...people)

here's to no admits!

i would like to give michigan an east coast makeover.

the end.

"cause i'm writing to reach you now, i might never reach you"--travis

i know i don't have nearly enough hours in the day to do this: http://www.nanowrimo.org/ but i really want to give it a try...and so i think i will. i'm full of excuses about everything all the time anyway...something i was lamenting about this past weekend...and i really need to change that, soooo...perhaps this will?

or not. more likely than not, after 2 days i'll find an excuse NOT to write and who am i kidding anyway? i can barely get the stuff done that i need to do for work, let alone anything extra.

hah...in a matter of 30 seconds, i have gone from fully motivated to absolutely deflated. go me. well, in any case...maybe i'll give it a start and we'll see how it goes from there. if anyone else out there is interested in trying, lemme know...we can motivate each other.

though, i promise you, i am a HORRIBLE motivator. i tend to like people doing what they feel like doing...not necessarily what's good for them.

so...new topic. i'm on my last week of ob, which makes me both happy and sad. happy because the hours suck and my sleep is all messed up and i basically feel like i've been like sentenced to this one floor and i never see anyone else during the day unless i go on an active search, which almost is just not worth it...mostly because the search is in vain...considering everyone else is also busy in their own respective parts of the hospital. and sad because i'm really getting a feel for this ob thing and it's a happy field for the most part. a lil bit of me wondered if i could've been happy doing ob for life...and then i remembered, i hate touching people in pain. and ob is ALL about pain. sure, the final outcome is all happy and stuff...but to get there...yea...not for me.

anyway...that was one thought. i could probably babble a bit more about that, but i suddenly don't feel like it. hah. i SAID, g'day, sirs.

"this doomsday clock tickin in my heart"--smashing pumpkins

woke up feeling giddy and unimaginably happy. if there is such a thing as love, i expect it to feel like this. what brought on such feelings? sleep. 8 straight hours of uninterrupted, deep, deep sleep. the world could've collapsed, and i would've slept right through it. i want to hug my last night's sleep. it's been a long time since i've been able to sleep through a full night without either being woken up either by a phone call from a nurse informing me of a patient i need to see, or the uncomfortable sort of sleep i get when i have an alarm set and am afraid i'll sleep right through it. i've never actually slept through an alarm clock...but that doesn't stop me from stress sleeping every night.

sometimes in my sleep i stress about who my attending will be the next day. what if i'm with the lady who told me to practice my knots?! what if i'm with the guy who likes reviewing through scenerios i barely remember?? what if, what if, what if? that's what my brain is full of.

went to a "pumpkin patch" today. unimpressed. i thought i'd be walking through a field and picking up these pumpkins from where they grew. i was wrong. the pumpkins had already been collected and placed neatly in rows in a small area that one could walk through. can this state do nothing right??!

it wasn't so much the pumpkin patch i cared about. i really just wanted to be outside. and i wanted to play with my camera. i guess, i did do both...even if it did not turn out quite as i had imagined.

i want to watch "where the wild things are"...who's with me?!

i really like the "?!" combo. i feel like it describes most of my thoughts correctly.

i've been asked by a couple people what the heck i'm talking about in my last post. for those who don't know...i had said i'd probably do some creative writing...and mostly it won't be full stories, but just pieces of things that i think to write. that's what the last entry was about. nothing much more than that.

wow, i'm boring. k'later.

"Marble statues and glass dividers Someone is watching all of the outsiders"--jlc

the fear was one that was both undeniably real and stupid and it would take only the nonsense vows of a semi-drunk to face it. i don't care if greater beings exist, i just want to know what it IS that draws the fearless from their 2-dimensional, black and white lives to cry out in mercy. where's my need to cry out? why don't i yell for forgiveness and pray up at the sky like my answers will rain down on me at any minute?

and why can't i make my way to the single place where a pacifying solitude is supposed to be given? it's a stupid phobia, i know. the type you never grow out of now matter how hard you try.

behind those colorfully painted windows of saints with forgiving faces and mothers with peace in their eyes are gray, stone walls with death on every side. morbidly lifelike, who are the psychos who take the time to create such an accurate description of a gruesome death? and worse, who are the crazies that decide they need to be hung up for the world to see? i've spent more time studying the crucifixes and the man hanging, nailed to a wooden cross than listening to the sermons up front. it becomes an obsession for that hour or more, eyes fixed on the blood droplets that no one can see and trying to understand the tranquil face that should be crying out in pain and agony.

singing hallelujahs, fists in the air, knees on the floor, beat yourself up because your sins have already been paid for. listen to the man in front of the pulpit, behind the stand, his eyebrows knit together in anger. he hates you and he forgives you because he can and because it gives him something to do. you should respect him, but it wouldn't hurt if you feared him, and things can get only better if you obey him.

those are the lessons i've learned. they became my reasons for hating a world full of extremists and non-extremists. each criticizing and neither listening. both afraid of being sucked into the other's world of lies and distortion. each believing he's more open and understanding than the other, but neither caring to let the words of the other sink in deeper than the skin. words bouncing everywhere, the confusion grows. confusion so thick fills the air and pokes at your eyes and like with the stinging of peeled onions, opening them becomes more and more difficult.

a drunk forgets his fears and only half thinks. a drunk tries to find the answers to everything he doesn't understand even if it requires facing his worst fear. churches--my worst fear. the memory of climbing the dark stairway of my preschool. one end brightly lit, and the sound of my classmates laughing, screaming, playing filling my ears, but with every step up and away, i get closer to the solemn, gray room where nobody exists and eyes watch you from every wall and every window. it's impossible to enter the bathroom without stopping to stare at the man pinned up against the cross. covered by only a stone sheet, he looks almost as though he might smile to himself, remembering some secret that no one else knows. it makes me shudder if i look at him too long but most times i can't stop looking. there's this overwhelming dread that he'll move or talk or even, worst of them all, smile.

but here i sit, over 20 years later. even with the church filling up steadily, i shiver because i know i'm stuck in a situation i can't get out of. every sunday, i attend mass. why? it's what my drunken senses told me to do. i don't expect to find answers. i expect to overcome a fear, and in the process find that peace and that solitude that i hear so much about.

"fake a smile and you sigh"--guster

i like moments. i like reading books and figuring out what i think would be the exact moment the author came up with story. i like watching movies and deciding which scene the director visualize which made him/her approach the movie as was done. i always keep this to myself (mostly because i don't believe it to be a very interesting topic of discussion...but also, i really don't care to hear anyone else's opinion on the matter), but i s'pose if i were intently (and freakishly) watched while reading a book or watching a movie, one would be able to know when i think i've got it figured out.

i like moments in life too. okay...i take that back. i don't like moments in life. i'm not talking about moments like the time dad put his hand on your shoulder as a quiet sign of his new-found respect for you. i mean moments like when you say something like "probably" to a patient and suddenly you see he trusts you a little less, or like when you blurt out a random thought and watch a face completely become stone before it can fall, or when you ask a kid who is mommy's sister, and you see a light just click and suddenly family makes sense to her. each is defining in its own way...each dealt with in its own way...but mostly those are the things i remember.

and really, this post is boring and random and so what? as i've been trying to sleep here on my couch, i've been looking out at the rain and the trees and thinking of moments...of shifts in eyes and curls of lips. thinking of gasps of realization, and sighs of relief. reading people and coming one step closer to understanding their individual characters. though many of them i'll rarely or never see again, i feel more complete when i'm through...and that's always kind of nice.

(note: the lyrics above are from an old guster song called "mona lisa" which is also one of the reasons why i was thinking about all of this. heh)

(note 2: i was thinking about changing the name to my blog. i'm not sure "burgher joint" cuts it anymore. one problem is that now the address to the place is under that name, which i guess is not a big deal at all. if anyone is for or against this idea, please let me know. in the meantime, if i can think of something else, i'll do it...otherwise it stays until i find something else that seems to fit better)

"Don't you know you might find a better place to play"--oasis

a change and a much needed move. i feel a commitment coming on. it makes my stomach churn. commitment doesn't make me feel safe and secure. it makes me feel suffocated and nauseated. like...what if i don't want to do this anymore? one more thing with my name on it is out there. should i even be thinking about this so thoroughly? why did it take me 5 minutes to decide my sign name? why did it take me another 10 minutes to decide that i would keep the title from my old blog?

i know it's too much thought, but it's not going to stop me from thinking. i get to start something new. it's a fresh start...a clean slate. and it'll be my same old voice (though somewhat hoarse and unused), but that's still new to you. and i hope you like it and i hope i like you (yes, i'm talking to the site).