DIP

Got tackled by a cop and arrested for public intoxication today.  Cops stole the $27 in my wallet.  Such is America.

the soft

It is folly to equate reservation and weakness.

Silence is a source of great strength. ~老子

burning out

I’ve been exerting myself these last few weeks.  In addition to studying curricular material, I’ve been studying for USMLEs as well.  I’ve devoted as much of every hour outside of sleep, eating, and exercise to study.  It all came down on me today.  I’m pretty burnt out.  I need to get a great night’s sleep tonight.

free time anxious mind

I’m a pretty neurotic person despite my disposition.  My mind, when not purposefully applied (such as to study), tends towards anxiety.  As such, during my free hours, I am not usually able to relax as completely as I ought to.  I work diligently during the week towards the break of the weekend only to find myself feeling… anxious.  I think what I need here is discipline.  The discipline that I apply to my studies also needs to be applied to my time off.  Just “letting go” and letting unaccounted hours float by on facebook, reddit, and computer games just does not feel good.  It seems that, for me, both study and relaxation requires discipline—perhaps because there is a difference between really relaxing and just wasting time.

vegetarian hypocrisy

During my lunch break from study today, I skimmed over an article in the undergraduate student newspaper written by a young moralist vegetarian.  The article was an uninsightful rant about the amorality, unsustainability, cruelty of the American meat industry…  Oh the ironies of first world life.

It is not just meat, girl.  It is the coal from third world mines that heats your house, it is the oil that spills into the Gulf of Mexico that runs your car, it is an elderly migrant grandmother in China that pieces together your Macbook, it is the wood from the rain forests of Brazil that builds your house, it is the little fingers of Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand that make your bracelets, hats, and shoes.  Girl, your mere persistence, for a single day, in the capitalist hub of the world is the cause of as much suffering as any meat factory.

Girl, the ways of this world were in formation millennia before you and I—and we can not be any more or any less than what we are.  So just be thankful, be humble, and cease your preaching—for there is no congregation in all the “civilized” world that is righteous.

another’s philosophy

Couchsurfer wisdom:  Always do the things that scare you.

foreverburied

They keep turning up the intensity.  It’s non-stop acceleration towards the USMLE.

couchsurfing

Wow, just I looked at the couch-surfing profile I created almost a year ago (prior to medical school).  The way I portray myself is so… happy, open-minded, and vibrant.  It seems medical school is having an effect on me after all.  I generally consider myself to be a more stable, confident, and purposeful version of my old self, but it seems that I have also lost a few things—a few points in “living and laughing” category.   I will reclaim these.  Not right now, though.  I have to study.

old times

It’s always bittersweet leaving old friends after a visit.  “See you in a month,” I’ll say thinking about how soon it will be.  The months pass like the weeks once did.

It’s graduation season again.  Time for the beginning of the rest of many lives.