I've studied for 4-5 hours this morning. Doesn't feel like I've gotten very far. I always seem to get caught up in the details, and then I worry that I'm not moving fast enough. I don't think it's a good idea for the med student to blow past the details, though. Right? That seems wrong.

I'm hiding in the bedroom now so Drew won't know I'm taking a break.

I haven't showered yet nor have I brushed my teeth. Is disgusting, I realize.

Now I have to go cultivate my enthusiasm so that it is greater than my fear.

 

Is it possible to go through an entire day only dealing with meaningful things?

I guess a day of studying family medicine (on which I will be tested in nine days) would fit that bill. Every bit of information you learn (or re-learn because you forgot it the first time around) is [sorry, just as I was writing this very meaningful sentence I got an email from Jana regarding Taylor Swift and I had to respond with a critique of Lindsay Lohan. So that answers that question. It is not possible, for me at least, to go through an entire day only dealing with meaningful things.]

King Lear is sitting on my desk. Maybe I should memorize a scene as a form of punishment.

I'm seriously not trying to be cute. The cuteness of what happened in paragraph two makes me want to erase this whole fucking thing. Honestly... I'm trying to get rid of artifice in my writing. I also don't want to be pretentious about high and low culture. It's not about that.

It's about the fact that talking about celebrities doesn't enrich my day in any way. I mean... I'm not sure that Shakespeare can, either, but he's universally praised as having had such deep fucking insight into the human mind (Harold Bloom's book about Lear has the subtitle "The Invention Of The Human"; that takes me back to my college days. I eat that kind of crap up). Seeing as I have not a single ounce of faith in God, I need to find something besides Perez Hilton to feed my mind. I've always had this idea of Shakespeare -- that if I could get around to reading the core plays I could see the world through those characters... I could see the archetypes all around me and somehow that would change the way I think about life. I worked for a film director back in 2000 who had me send a fax to MGM in which he quoted Macbeth. It was 50% crazy paranoid rant about how there were evildoers all around him... but he was also partly right to be paranoid. He saw the people around him through the prism of the play and I thought "Wow. I should re-read that." Of course I never did.

I've been thinking about this clip a lot over the past few days.

Drew and I were watching it together over the weekend. Later, when I tried to bring it up in conversation, he admitted that he hadn't really listened to what she was saying. "The whole time we were watching that I was thinking, 'What can I glean from this wise old woman?' And then I didn't hear a word she said."

I'm not sure she's saying much that's helpful... but I like her voice and something about her seems so wise and calm and reassuring. I'm going to try to take her advice. But it's hard to go about your day with that much self-awareness. I guess that's her point. That it takes work. You have to train yourself to be enthusiastic instead of fearful. Ironically, I usually try to get my energy from caffeine. And caffeine feeds anxiety which takes me right back to fear.

 

I want to read more.

I want to run more.

I want to sleep longer.

I want to have more sex.

I want to spend more time with friends.

I want to spend less time on the internet.

(That last one would probably make the first five possible).

I'm studying in the library today. Feeling bad about my general lack of focus for these past months. What am I doing?! I hate these shelf exams at the end of each rotation; they're good, I guess, in that they force you to read every night. I just haven't nailed one of them yet and I've already taken three. The honor society inductees were announced yesterday; only four from my class of 170+ and I knew my name wouldn't be on that list considering my dwindling test scores during second-year. Still, it lit a fire and now I'm determined to get back to studying with the intensity I had when I started school.

I'll start running next week; Mom and I are training for a marathon. That should help.