Priorities

I sometimes feel a bit removed from others my age when one aspect of life is concerned; my priorities. Everyone has different priorities in life, and everyone places different premiums on things like hobby time, work time, family time, etc. Some have told me that I have the priorities of someone much older than myself. Here's a brief explanation of their assessment.

Every day, I try to wake up early. "Early" is a very relative term if chronological hour is the basis for judging early and late. The real basis for judging how "early" one rises is based on the amount of time they have in the morning before work, which should correlate positively with how much they get done before they are expected to show up for work. For example, my residency begins each day at around 6 30 am. This means I have to be ready to leave for work by 6 am. This means I have to be back from my cycling workout at latest 5 15. This means that workout has to start at 4 45 latest. This means that, on a winter morning, I would have to wake up at 4 30 in order to be able to put on all my clothes before heading out. Let's put a pin in that for a minute.

I have tried to slowly cut TV out of my life. Not because it's wasting too much time (I only watch TV when I eat, never when I have "free time" if such a thing actually exists) and not because I don't enjoy TV. I enjoy it very much when something good is on. I am cutting out TV for two reasons; 1) After one show ends, I find myself hungry for another show and 2) TV costs money. Netflix costs money, cable costs money, and streaming or downloading is illegal so I don't want to partake in it. I've decided that, for the entertainment I actually gain out of television, it's not worth the money that the actress on a TV show is being paid to make the show. I would much rather simply walk away from it.

I'm trying very hard to eat healthy. This isn't something uncommon among people of my generation, but the majority of my friends and acquaintances simply do not care what they eat, at all. They couldn't be bothered to change their diet because, for the most part, what they eat has absolutely no bearing on how they look. It just so happens that most of my friends have great basal metabolic rates. Either that or they're eating healthy without being psychologically tormented by sugar, as I was today.

I value my time tremendously. I time-manage my day down to the minute. Those times I mentioned for the morning routine in the earlier paragraph will be systematically shaved to the minute in order to gain more sleep the night before. I will start at 4 30 on the first morning and literally go through the whole day racing to complete everything before 6 am. Then I'll set a marker for the fastest time (say 5:52), and I'll get up 8 minutes later the next day and try to duplicate everything. 8 minutes of sleep may not seem like much, but when that 8 minutes turns into 20, I firmly believe it makes a difference. In any case, it's residency, I'd rather read an extra 5 pages of Harrison's and be a bit sleep deprived than have a full night's sleep and not complete my readings for the day. Peoples' lives are at stake here, I can't be wasting time with trivial things like youtube and facebook.

I'm not on facebook anymore. I quit after medical school ended (September-ish) and I never looked back. I know that everyone swears by it, but I honestly felt as though a huge weight was lifted. I thought to myself one day, say we didn't have facebook, or myspace, or twitter....how did my parents keep in touch with their friends? I then realized that my parents don't actually have that many friends, just a few (literally 5 or 6) whom they invite to house parties, and then a few (3 or 4) from work whom they call (on the land telephone) to converse with after work. It seemed so much simpler for me to just let go of people with whom I am not immediately geographically linked. My best friends are in Alberta, Syracuse and Vancouver and I still keep in touch with them, but where's the need to message the 300 people I had on my facebook account every week to constantly find out what they are doing? Letting go can be surprisingly calming.

The resident e-mailed me back with information on housing today, and the choices basically boiled down to living near the city (and away from the main hospital) and living in the suburb next to the main hospital (and away from the city). I would much rather live in the suburb. I like cycling, and the trail is right there. I plan on cooking all my own food, working out at home, and possibly re-learning how to play guitar. Why should I be concerned with going "downtown" every Friday or eating at "a nice place" three nights a week? I'm trying to slim down so I should make all my own food, and I want to save money for when I start a family one day. I'm not currently in a relationship, but I still think that far ahead, despite being 26, single, and having a whole career ahead of me. I don't deny most of my colleagues will be going downtown for entertainment, and when they do I'll go with them. I don't mind living far (~25 minutes drive) from the city, as long as I don't have to live in a tiny apartment, with noisy neighbours, horns honking etc. Suburbia will be more than enough for me.

My priorities have put me ahead of some people, and behind others, in life. Again these terms are quite relative, it depends on what you want to accomplish with your time on Earth. That's the final area where I differ from most people. I have gained a much better understanding of how little everything matters upon leaving medical school, because I understand how transient life is. This transient nature of life has enlightened me enough that I have started to make time for what I really feel is worthwhile, like writing in this blog (basically a personal journal, I don't plan on going major or public with it but if it happened then I suppose it would be a pleasant surprise) or playing guitar, eating well and exercising. There's the attitude of "excess is best, you only live once so live it up, pay for your mistakes later" and then there's my attitude, which is tough to summarize into quotes, but if I had to it would be : "Life is short. Don't make mistakes, make good choices and generate your own happiness." That is to say, if you score a 210 on that USMLE World practice exam (which I did today. Looks like I'm not backing out of the Step 3 after all, taking it April 17th and 18th) then don't think you've somehow "earned" the right to eat sugar (which I didn't). The score is an achievement and the feeling of relief that the last 2 months of work haven't gone to waste should be its own reward. The last 4 years were a living hell, and I'm going to Europe with my family to unwind from all that (going in May after my board exams) but I shouldn't need to "unwind" from residency. It will be difficult but I should not get stressed. I should get less stressed each day. I should get so proficient at blowing away stress and anxiety that I can get into any situation without raising my heart rate, without needing "down time" afterward.

I understand that few ever actually achieve these goals and maintain these priorities, but with the years I have left, I plan on trying my best to do so. That's why I sometimes call myself an "old man".