April 2020: Check-in
The last 3 months have been very strange. Medical school started with a bang, filled with a flurry of socialising, learning and developing routines with increasingly familiar faces. Then just as routines were finally setting into stone, lockdown happened and everything crumbled, leaving a large, gaping hole where familiar pillars once stood. In light of everything, this quarterly check-in post will aim to inject a little bit of stability into this COVID chaos – as usual, I’ll aim to answer the following 3 questions:
- What was good?
- What wasn’t so good?
- Goals for the months ahead?
The Good
1. Writing/reading
With practicals and clinical placements being cancelled, time has been freed up for hobbies outside of medicine such as reading. A total of 11 books were read over the last 3 months, with highlights including The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu, The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson and a re-read of When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. There were some stunning passages in these books and my Evernote document for book notes recently passed the 1000-word mark, filled with ideas I’ve loved or found interesting. While 11 books comfortably meets my goal of reading a book a fortnight from my January check-in, I’m sure I could read more if I dared myself to and so I will.
A natural output of reading is writing. Over the last 3 months, I’ve transitioned from writing fortnightly posts, to weekly posts, and now bi-weekly posts every Sunday and Thursday which has been a lot of fun. It’s such a privilege to be able to mould fleeting thoughts into something tangible and share these random insights with others. To this day, it still amazes me that some people seem to enjoy them.
Since we’re in the middle of what will no-doubt become a major historical event, I’ve also found stability in doing Morning Pages, a journaling method involving writing 3 pages of anything that’s on my mind in the morning. It’s amazing what you can find if by digging around in your head and one day, I’m sure it’ll be nice to look back on these thoughts.
2. Running
Due to an Achilles injury in March, I’m not any faster than I was this time last year. However, I’ve come to love running a lot more thanks to reading some books on running, particularly one called 80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower. Despite it sounding like a huge scam, this book transformed the way I thought about running faster which is essentially this: run slow to run fast. Through these principles, I’m currently running injury-free, beginning to notice improvements in my times and most importantly, am enjoying running more than ever. Even though I’m not any faster than last year, I’ll count that as a big success.
The not-so-good
1. Nonurgency
One of the dangers in lacking a rigid structure is the illusion that you have more time than you really have. In addition with Parkinson’s Law (work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion), this leads to some seriously unproductive days. Since lockdown, my motivation for doing anything remotely difficult has plummeted, now leaving me an embarrassing amount of lectures behind schedule and developing dangerously lax habits such as gaming and binge-watching TV shows. While I don’t think these activities are necessarily harmful, a part of me knows I could be using this rare period to try new things, expand my knowledge or develop stronger relationships. Alas, the internal struggle continues.
2. Doubts
I was contemplating putting this into the ‘Good’ section of this post but after some consideration, I’ve decided to write this here. The last few months of uncertainty have provided many opportunities to question some of the narratives that I’ve accepted over the years. From fairly mundane ideas of running regimes to religious doctrines that shape my identity, many of the beliefs I’ve held have come under scrutiny. This has resulted in some pretty dark moments and frankly, I’m more troubled as a person. It feels as though there’s a battle between a skeptical, trouble-making entity and an innocent, truth-seeking child within me, with both sides refusing to give in. And while I know re-examining one’s beliefs from time to time is healthy, it’s also terribly exhausting.
On a random and lighter note, if the materialists are correct, then these chaotic monologues are just the product of bizarre quantum mechanics doing its thing. I find this hilarious and insane at the same time.
Goals
- Read 4 books a month.
- Develop a consistent sleeping routine.
- Figure out how to deal with my internal doubting warzone. Any suggestions are appreciated.