Category Archives: Health

Choose Your Fun

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NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

IT’S BREEEAAD!!!  Sometimes.  I am now well and truly obsessed; by the end of tomorrow I may have baked six masses of sourdough in five days.  So far I’m 2 for 4 to call them actual ‘loaves’, and the next two don’t look particularly promising, sadly.  But I am having so.  Much.  FUN!!! 

The last two posts read a little heavy, I think?  And yet in writing them I felt light.  Why is that?  Maybe because each day this past week I have had something to look forward to:  Something creative, rewarding, experimental, tactile, and sharable/social.  I joined three sourdough groups on Facebook this week—they are awesome!—full of such supportive, encouraging, knowledgeable, and generous bakers, not to mention positively mouthwatering photos!  They inspire and give me courage to keep trying, joyfully, despite repeated failures.

Looking back, what do I generally find fun?  Painting, volleyball, public speaking, pottery, TRX/HIIT, medicine…  In all of these funs, maybe it’s mostly the community that makes it so?  Team (sports and speech, medical)?  —Of course, it’s the people.  …No, it’s the relationships.  Wow, back to that again—I guess it really is my Why.  Duh-HA, again! [cosmic laughter]  It’s been 18 days—if you’ve read each post this month, have you also noticed the many recurrent, looping themes?  “If it’s important, it will be repeated…”  Seriously, and not just in one karmic lifetime, I think!

Okay, so now I know what’s naturally fun for me. But here’s a more interesting question: How do I choose fun when it doesn’t come naturally? Mount Laundry demands to be scaled. Clutter Demon dares me to slash and dismember its corpulent, multiplex potbelly. Tedium City chases back taxes from days or weeks (months?) of neglect. Just as we can choose our suffering, we can also choose our fun—turn slogging into surfing. Dance music and audiobooks help a lot, and of course going/doing with friends! …Also timeboxing: I can do anything for 15 minutes! And if I can elevate my mood to start, that just makes everything better anyway.

In that vein, I leave you with Daughter’s discovery whom I love, a college student in Wyoming who makes one minute videos of vintage recipes.  May B. Dylan Hollis lift you and give you some fun today!

The best of Sven yet

Stay Connected

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NaBoPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

My friend Liz is amazing.

We met just as I was leaving my last practice 7 years ago, and I knew right away I had to grow this relationship.  She is an elder sister in the profession—a wise, compassionate, generous, empathic, smart, thoughtful, and loving physician and teacher.  After I had the privilege of presenting to her and her amazing colleagues on physician burnout (really, they schooled me that day), Liz showed me the inner world of primary care in a correctional facility.  We toured incredibly aged buildings.  Liz explained the frustrating limitations of working in a jail environment and the difficulties arranging optimal follow up when detainees are released.  But most of all, she showed me what true, deep respect for every person’s dignity, no matter how vulnerable, looks like.  Holy cow, I will never forget that day. 

Liz is also a deeply spiritual person.  She wrote the chapter on spiritual resources for Jewish healthcare professionals in Judaism and Health.  After our day together at the jail, we kept trying to meet again.  I wanted to learn more about Judaism and how she lived it—personally, professionally, and in community.  But my kids were little and the weather was bad on the nights we planned to meet, or something would come up, or- or- or…  It just never worked out.  But as physicians of deep faith, we both always knew we would connect again someday.

We kept in touch all these years mostly through occasional emails, and then YAY Facebook, especially the Physician Moms Group!  By far the most valuable thing about social media is sharing photos and reading life updates.  It really makes you feel like you’re in your friends’ lives up close, going through all the ups and downs, sharing joys and sorrows, witnessing from afar.  When I posted recently about a freak out I had over Daughter’s anaphylactic food allergy, Liz reached out.

We met in her neighborhood, which happens to be my old college stomping grounds.  We walked all over campus and caught up, shared stories, commiserated, and bonded, just like we always knew we would.  I got a copy of the book with a bonus printout of her favorite poem, “The Seven of Pentacles” by Marge Piercy.  I will return the love with my favorite book of poems so far, To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue. 

The space between us, indeed.  So near, just across town, yet so far, 7 years, and yet so near still, always connected in spirit through the years, light and strong, like dental floss or fishing line… We stayed connected, patiently, faithfully, knowing that divinity operates on its own schedule, and that when we could finally meet again, it would be powerful and lovely. 

And so it was.

It will not be another 7 years, this we know.  And it was well worth the wait.

Rest

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NaBloPoMo 2021:  Do Good, Kid

Sometimes it’s just too much.

Perhaps you are familiar with the involuntary shut down?  Physical, mental, functional—the body knows what we need, even if the mind flouts it.  The body usually wins—it puts us down despite our resistance, denial, hubris, masochism, or whatever.  If we’re lucky, nothing that bad happens—we crash for a day or so, sleep, lounge, mope, release.  The family, office, social circles get along without us for a little while.  Then, recharged and refreshed (at least partially), we’re back at it, careening on the path toward burnout yet again.  When will we learn to pace ourselves?  To build in rest and recovery to our hamster wheel life?  If we thought of ourselves as elite athletes, whose utmost well-being are valued so highly, how would we treat ourselves differently and better?

The brain, which constitutes 2% of body weight, accounts for 20% of our daily energy expenditure…. So this exhaustion I feel, how much is of body, and how much of mind? Why does it matter, when they are so inextricably interdependent? How fascinating, this sensation of mental exhaustion, which manifests bodily in no uncertain terms, and yet is fully distinguishable from its physical counterpart—or is it? I feel the somatic deceleration first, then look up wearily and sense the mental blackout approaching on the horizon, a fuzzy dark cloud. I invited it by staying up too late and accepting too many invitations; by challenging myself with too many curious, fascinating! amazing! projects. It’s a recurring pattern I have yet to break, or at least balance a lot better–duh-HA! [cue cosmic laughter]

No wonder I seem to write about it repeatedly in November, though this year I’m getting to it earlier in the month than in 2016 and 2019 (see links above), teeheeee… Not sure if that’s a reassuring and/or ominous sign? I keep hearing something telling me right now, get off the computer, OMG get to bed, SLEEP! It’s like an incessant earworm… “If it’s important, it will be repeated,” they told us in medical school. Blahahaaaa (okay now I’m getting slap happy)…

So I will listen, finally, and sign off tonight with a slackish post.  Tomorrow and every day coming is another chance to practice making healthier choices.  I’ got the exercise thing down; my eating is definitely coming around.  Woohoooo, progress!  But sleep, GRRRRR.  …I’ll get there.  Maybe we can only slay one dragon at a time, after all… but not if we’re sleep deprived!