A lot of people don't pay attention to an election until the last few weeks leading up to the vote. I probably could have learned everything I now know about McCain and Obama in two months. But instead, I've been following them for two years.

Why? Maybe I should concentrate on other things. It may seem like the most important thing in the world at times, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm glued to the New York Times political blog and Politico.com for the wrong reasons.

Bush won in 2000 and I cried out of a genuine sense of grief and frustration. He was the wrong person and he was going to fuck things up. And sure enough....

And then Bush won again in 2004 and I fell into a depression, demoralized by the fact that so many people had come out to vote for him because they felt a pressing need to vote against gay marriage. Rove had used me as bait and I felt as helpless and used as a worm on a hook.

But my life didn't end. It got better. I'm enjoying school, Drew and I are doing better than ever, and I honestly have very few complaints about my life.

Why, then, am I so completely consumed by this? Every phone call with every friend or family member has to touch on the latest campaign news. Drew and I know every day's poll numbers. We fret over every signal of any slight possibility that Obama might not win.

I'm not accomplishing anything by doing this. Bush's failures weren't my failures and Obama's success isn't going to be my success. At least not directly. I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm feeling so stymied right now by med school (I want to get out there and actually accomplish something) that I'm subconsciously tuning out some of my own responsibilities and pretending that somehow an Obama victory will be a reflection of my own hard work. It sounds a little nutty, but you should spend a day with me and you'd realize how completely wrapped up in this thing I've become.

I want to live in a more progressive, open country. I know wanting him to win and working towards that goal isn't a total waste of time or anything. But, honestly, I need to tune it out every once in a while.

We watched Meet the Press this morning; McCain didn't say anything we hadn't heard him say a hundred times before. We could guess his responses before Brokaw finished the questions. That's because McCain isn't talking to us. We're not undecided. We should get back to work. If I'm not going to phonebank for Obama today then I shouldn't incessantly check gallup.com. It's pointless.

So I'm swearing off the following things:

- Drudge Report
- Polling data
- MSNBC clips online
- "The Caucus Blog" on NYTimes.com
- the current electoral map
- electoral maps from the last forty years
- Politico.com
- Crooksandliars.com
- Sarah Palin jokes

If I want to do something useful I can pick up the phone and try to convince people to vote for Obama. Otherwise I should really be studying about lung diseases.

 

Yesterday I led a tour group on campus with three other med students. I like the other tourguides, and we tease each other quite a lot. So as we were introducing ourselves to the group of tourists (i.e. applicants) I needled one of them about the way he was introducing himself. Typically we tell them certain things about ourselves, and he had left out some stuff. "He's a bit of a dictator," one of my classmates said, referring to me. People laughed in that way that let me know that it was a funny-because-it's-true kind of statement. I got redfaced and thought "But he didn't introduce himself correctly."

Now I'm sitting in the library and there's a guy eating an apple and I want to rip it out of his hand. I can't stand listening to someone eat while I'm trying to concentrate. And he's eating it super s-l-o-w-l-y. Each bite takes him a good 3 seconds as he breaks the apple's skin with his teeth, pauses, and then tears off a big piece. Pauses again. Closes his teeth around the piece. Pauses. Chews again. He obviously thinks he's being quiet. But he is not. He's being ten times louder than he would be if he just devoured the fucking thing.

As I was weighing my options, I remembered my embarrassment at being called out for being bossy. So instead I decided to take a break from studying and write this. Back to work now.

 

1:53pm Time to start studying. I sat through a couple good lectures and a couple boring lectures this morning. Now I have to re-live the boring ones by listening to them online because I didn't learn much the first time around.

I'm doing 2-1/2 hours and then going to the gym. Yes. That's what I'm going to do. And then I'm going to do 2-1/2 hours more before I go home. Let's see how this works out.

Current mood: sweaty. But I look cute in this sweater and don't want to take it off and just wear the white tee that's underneath.

2:54pm: Only semi-successful so far. I went to the hospital cafeteria for some coffee. I'm still optimistic about my ability to review four lectures before I leave here tonight.

Drew has decided to spend Christmas with his family this year. We're supposed to alternate years (this year it was Thanksgiving with his family in Los Angeles and Christmas with my family in Missouri). But he's already been to Missouri twice this year, his niece and nephew are growing up so fast (they're 5 and 6, I believe)... oh, and his parents are flying the whole family to Maui for Christmas. So....

Current mood: insanely jealous.

4:28pm: Okay, still only semi-successful. Now what do I do? Do I sacrifice the gym so I can study longer? This is why studying makes me hate myself. I just can't focus like I should. I'm so tired by the time I get to the library in the afternoons. I've stopped several times to write emails. Ugh. I've only really put in 1 hour and 20 minutes. Grrrr....

Current mood: disappointed.

7:19pm: Back at home now. I went to the gym. I'm a bit dizzy now, but I ate some cereal (dinner of champs) and now I'm thinking I can get back into it. If I had a good 3, 4-hour run I'd be in okay shape. If I could do five hours I'd be golden.

Current mood: hopeful.

 

I'm in a rut I'm trying to break out of. A school rut. A schedule rut. A rut that doesn't allow time for blogging. But I'm making time now.

We have our big cardio exam on Friday, for which I am ill-prepared. An understatement, for sure. It's difficult to study for cardio, because a lot of the heart's disease processes seem very straightforward. I mean, atherosclerosis... I know what that is. Heart attacks... I understand those. But of course I don't, really. It takes a lot of motivation to get into the nitty gritty of each thing. Also, I'm just kind of lazy.

As the student leader for our school's LGBT group I helped organize a community-service project for this weekend's Outfest celebration. We gave hepatitis vaccinations. There were three med students and one faculty advisor (an infectious disease doctor who is also our group's advisor). It was pretty nice, because eleven students ended up volunteering. I scheduled everyone for ninety-minute blocks. None of us had ever given a shot before, so that was pretty exciting/terrifying.

My first shot went great. My second shot went great. Then Drew came and I gave him a shot. I hadn't screwed the needle on tightly enough, so I think probably only 75% of the vaccine actually made it into his arm. The rest dripped onto his chair. He was sweet, though, and didn't call me out on it in front of my classmates. For the fourth shot I wanted to be sure that didn't happen. The guy was very nice, and as he and I were chatting I screwed the needle on as tightly as I could. But then I couldn't get the cap off. I pulled and pulled and when I finally managed to pop it off, I stuck the needle into my thumb.

It hadn't been exposed to any blood yet, so don't worry. I had just pulled it out of the wrapper seconds before it went into my hand.

The guy said, "Whoa, careful there." I looked at the syringe and the needle was all bent. "Well, I guess we'll call that a loss," I said as I threw it into the sharps container and got another needle. The guy laughed, I gave him his shot with a fresh needle and that was that.

However, later I got a little freaked out because I realized I had come very close to making a huge mistake. I chose not to use the needle I'd stuck myself with because it was bent. Had it not been bent, though, I may have given this guy a vaccination with it. BUT IT HAD JUST BEEN EXPOSED TO MY BLOOD. That would have been an insanely stupid thing to do, and had I made that mistake it would have been entirely because I was nervous and unsure of myself. Those excuses aside, that's exactly the kind of thing I hope I never, ever do. Scary.