Nine years ago, as I was preparing to leave on my honeymoon backpacking through Ireland, I asked my emotionally retarded friend Timmy the Tim a question: "Is there a good place to just sit in Ireland?" Timmy the Tim had spent several months studying abroad in Cork, so I thought he'd know all the pastoral spots. True to form, rather than answering the f-*/4?g question, Timmy the Tim laughed at me, mocked me and turned this simple question into all sorts of deprecations over the past decade. He had no sympathy for a man who had just survived year one of medical school and the traumatic year-long information upload that necessitated peace and quiet. And true to form, I went to Ireland and found plenty of wonderful places to just sit all on my own -- my favorite of which was on a high bluff just outside Dingle watching the evening sun set over the Atlantic Ocean.
I have to cut Timmy the Tim some slack. Despite his many short-comings (ginger, emotional retardation, lack of gratitude for arranging his marriage, etc.), he is a good friend. And I understand that on many levels, asking friends about good places to just sit is somewhat creepy. I ask lots of questions in this same vein to different people in my life: how do you fall asleep so easily?, what would you be doing if you had all the money in the world?, what album do you want to be buried with?, and so on. Based on this line of questioning: 1) that I am a 75 year old philosopher trapped in a 33 year old physician's body and 2) that I desperately seek to quiet an otherwise loud and chaotic mind.
I've been depositing useless thoughts in West Lawn Park now for so long that I can't be sure if I'm not repeating myself. At the risk of duplication, I'll be brief. I'm part Croatian, part Irish, part other things which don't matter as much because the Croatian and Irish genes are so dominant. I was raised in a pack of very nice but very overly-stimulated people. In my household, you didn't ask, for example, "have you seen my socks?" because the response to the question would be a loud, high-pitched rambling that did not reveal the location of the socks but did relate why my lack of awareness of my socks was allegorical to all the other reasons I was ruining the life of the person (parent, sibling, dog, etc.) whom I'd asked about the socks. Thus, you can see that my intellect is somewhat off-kilter and my self-awareness bathed in paranoia. And perhaps you might also see why I love to look for places to just sit.
Monday morning I start back to the usual grind at the office after two weeks of paternity leave. My emotions are mixed -- nobody ever really wants to go back to work but I do genuinely like my job. I'm not as concerned about the job I'm going back to which is full of diagnostic dilemmas, unsolvable problems and some (not all) rather annoying people. I'm accustomed to these stresses. My greater sadness is the departure from all the pursuits that I've enjoyed over these last two weeks. First and foremost, a new beautiful baby girl to snuggle and care for. Fatherhood is just as good the second time around. Paternity leave has also afforded me much more time with my wife and son than I normally have. It's refreshing to be fully engaged in diaper changes, grocery shopping and cleaning bathrooms at home rather than just hearing about the travails of the day over a late evening dinner after too many hours at the office. And of course, it's been nice to have my own hours to sleep, watch movies, read books, go running, listen to podcasts/sports radio/Sox games and generally do nothing if I choose. In medicine, if you want to go on sabbatical, you almost have to reproduce.
I feel like a whole person again because of the spontaneity and freedom this time has allotted. Eleven hour adventures across the Milwaukee Metropolitan Area with a two year old co-pilot don't happen amidst ten hour work days. Umberto Eco novels are not read with appropriate attention to detail on an average of six hours of sleep per night. With these aesthetic pursuits, my mind is quiet and my sleep is restful and full of leisurely dreams. Very different than day-to-day life.
So much like the question of good places to just sit in Ireland, I'm now asking myself: "isn't there a good balance to be had in life?" Maybe there is, but I haven't found it yet. My daily American life is not a jigsaw of 5000 tiny pieces, but rather 10 or so pieces to a macro puzzle -- but the pieces don't fit together well. 24 hours in a day, during which I'd like to:
-spend time with my wife and young children
-engage my wife in adult conversation after the kids go to bed to remember that we are married rather than just parents in partnership
-be a good, compassionate and dutiful physician at work
-exercise to maintain health and body habitus
-read my medical journals to stay current in my knowledge
-work on side projects to improve the educational aspects of my job
-listen to the White Sox game
-be outside in nature as much as possible
-read great books on a daily basis
-keep my house in good repair
-write
-keep up correspondence with many good friends and family
-really get into a television series
-throw the league ball with friends
-just sit (on my front porch, on the shores of Lake Michigan, at Comiskey Park)
But 24 hours in a day, 10 spent at work, 6-7 spent sleeping, the rest spent keeping the kids going and the house from falling apart, not much of this happens. A great day involves taking the kids for a walk (that gets to the family thing, the nature thing and is kind of a surrogate for just sitting). I generally close my charts for work while listening to the Sox game. For the most part I pay other people to keep my house in good repair because I'm not handy and don't have time to learn. I have a rotation of friends that I try to call at least once a year, usually while in the car between destinations. I read for pleasure most days, but usually like 6 pages at a time and thus make it through a book each month. Writing is limited to the blog (or "blah-g" as Timmy the Tim's wife that I set him up with would say). Is there such a thing as the chaotic aesthetic?
Okay, end complaining (which the above both is and is not). I get it. I'm really, really lucky for all that I have. My government isn't waging chemical warfare on me, I can take my son to the neighborhood playground without overwhelming concern that we might get shot and there's food on the table and a roof above my head.
Occasionally I get so whiny about the lack of hobbies and non-medical intellectual pursuits that I work-up crazy scenarios in my head in which I pull every extra shift I can now, save a big pile of money by eliminating all wasteful spending (vacations, going out to eat, buying Shaft movies on DVD) and then retire as soon as possible to a sleepy life of aesthetics. Then I quickly realize that I sound like a fire-breathing dragon and I give up that notion. Ultimately, I settle into the reality that I can make small changes in my life from time to time but that I simply need to learn to be happy with what I have.
The short answer is that there's not a balance to be had. There are choices to be made. I can't simultaneously be Cliff Huxtable and Erasmus of Rotterdam, as cool as that would be. But I can be Slider K. Shaftacular, man with a soul and a family. If I can arrange my life such that when I walk out the backdoor, my son says in his crushingly cute two year old voice "Daddy get my bike" rather than "Daddy go to work", I'm probably doing the best I can.
I have to cut Timmy the Tim some slack. Despite his many short-comings (ginger, emotional retardation, lack of gratitude for arranging his marriage, etc.), he is a good friend. And I understand that on many levels, asking friends about good places to just sit is somewhat creepy. I ask lots of questions in this same vein to different people in my life: how do you fall asleep so easily?, what would you be doing if you had all the money in the world?, what album do you want to be buried with?, and so on. Based on this line of questioning: 1) that I am a 75 year old philosopher trapped in a 33 year old physician's body and 2) that I desperately seek to quiet an otherwise loud and chaotic mind.
I've been depositing useless thoughts in West Lawn Park now for so long that I can't be sure if I'm not repeating myself. At the risk of duplication, I'll be brief. I'm part Croatian, part Irish, part other things which don't matter as much because the Croatian and Irish genes are so dominant. I was raised in a pack of very nice but very overly-stimulated people. In my household, you didn't ask, for example, "have you seen my socks?" because the response to the question would be a loud, high-pitched rambling that did not reveal the location of the socks but did relate why my lack of awareness of my socks was allegorical to all the other reasons I was ruining the life of the person (parent, sibling, dog, etc.) whom I'd asked about the socks. Thus, you can see that my intellect is somewhat off-kilter and my self-awareness bathed in paranoia. And perhaps you might also see why I love to look for places to just sit.
Monday morning I start back to the usual grind at the office after two weeks of paternity leave. My emotions are mixed -- nobody ever really wants to go back to work but I do genuinely like my job. I'm not as concerned about the job I'm going back to which is full of diagnostic dilemmas, unsolvable problems and some (not all) rather annoying people. I'm accustomed to these stresses. My greater sadness is the departure from all the pursuits that I've enjoyed over these last two weeks. First and foremost, a new beautiful baby girl to snuggle and care for. Fatherhood is just as good the second time around. Paternity leave has also afforded me much more time with my wife and son than I normally have. It's refreshing to be fully engaged in diaper changes, grocery shopping and cleaning bathrooms at home rather than just hearing about the travails of the day over a late evening dinner after too many hours at the office. And of course, it's been nice to have my own hours to sleep, watch movies, read books, go running, listen to podcasts/sports radio/Sox games and generally do nothing if I choose. In medicine, if you want to go on sabbatical, you almost have to reproduce.
I feel like a whole person again because of the spontaneity and freedom this time has allotted. Eleven hour adventures across the Milwaukee Metropolitan Area with a two year old co-pilot don't happen amidst ten hour work days. Umberto Eco novels are not read with appropriate attention to detail on an average of six hours of sleep per night. With these aesthetic pursuits, my mind is quiet and my sleep is restful and full of leisurely dreams. Very different than day-to-day life.
So much like the question of good places to just sit in Ireland, I'm now asking myself: "isn't there a good balance to be had in life?" Maybe there is, but I haven't found it yet. My daily American life is not a jigsaw of 5000 tiny pieces, but rather 10 or so pieces to a macro puzzle -- but the pieces don't fit together well. 24 hours in a day, during which I'd like to:
-spend time with my wife and young children
-engage my wife in adult conversation after the kids go to bed to remember that we are married rather than just parents in partnership
-be a good, compassionate and dutiful physician at work
-exercise to maintain health and body habitus
-read my medical journals to stay current in my knowledge
-work on side projects to improve the educational aspects of my job
-listen to the White Sox game
-be outside in nature as much as possible
-read great books on a daily basis
-keep my house in good repair
-write
-keep up correspondence with many good friends and family
-really get into a television series
-throw the league ball with friends
-just sit (on my front porch, on the shores of Lake Michigan, at Comiskey Park)
But 24 hours in a day, 10 spent at work, 6-7 spent sleeping, the rest spent keeping the kids going and the house from falling apart, not much of this happens. A great day involves taking the kids for a walk (that gets to the family thing, the nature thing and is kind of a surrogate for just sitting). I generally close my charts for work while listening to the Sox game. For the most part I pay other people to keep my house in good repair because I'm not handy and don't have time to learn. I have a rotation of friends that I try to call at least once a year, usually while in the car between destinations. I read for pleasure most days, but usually like 6 pages at a time and thus make it through a book each month. Writing is limited to the blog (or "blah-g" as Timmy the Tim's wife that I set him up with would say). Is there such a thing as the chaotic aesthetic?
Okay, end complaining (which the above both is and is not). I get it. I'm really, really lucky for all that I have. My government isn't waging chemical warfare on me, I can take my son to the neighborhood playground without overwhelming concern that we might get shot and there's food on the table and a roof above my head.
Occasionally I get so whiny about the lack of hobbies and non-medical intellectual pursuits that I work-up crazy scenarios in my head in which I pull every extra shift I can now, save a big pile of money by eliminating all wasteful spending (vacations, going out to eat, buying Shaft movies on DVD) and then retire as soon as possible to a sleepy life of aesthetics. Then I quickly realize that I sound like a fire-breathing dragon and I give up that notion. Ultimately, I settle into the reality that I can make small changes in my life from time to time but that I simply need to learn to be happy with what I have.
The short answer is that there's not a balance to be had. There are choices to be made. I can't simultaneously be Cliff Huxtable and Erasmus of Rotterdam, as cool as that would be. But I can be Slider K. Shaftacular, man with a soul and a family. If I can arrange my life such that when I walk out the backdoor, my son says in his crushingly cute two year old voice "Daddy get my bike" rather than "Daddy go to work", I'm probably doing the best I can.