Contraception

"It comes down to this: if the issue is contraception, Republicans lose. The polls are clear enough about that. But the numbers do move a bit depending on how you ask the question: if it’s framed in part as an issue of religious liberty, the picture looks better for opponents of the rule. There, Republicans have an opening—if they can shift the debate away from contraception, and instead make it about the President attacking religion and the religious (and throw in a few winking hints about his personal beliefs), then they have a chance to turn this into a winning issue come November."

Oh goodness, I hope note.
Read more of this New Yorker article here.

the president

amazing quote from a patient whose orientation I was assessing today - typically we ask all patients on the neurology service every day if they know who they are, where they are, what year it is, and something to orient them to the rest of the world, like who's the president.  It's a way of assessing sophisticated brain function.  So my patient (who has a chronic neurological disease and is never completely oriented) today says her name correctly, doesn't quite know where she is, states that the year is "definitely 2020" and when I ask her who the president is, she says, "Ohhh I totally forget her name.  Let me think. It's something like Joanne.  Yeah, Joanne.  I think it's Joanne."

Love it.

Darwinian Medicine

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be"
-Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
~~~~~~~~~~~


I'm currently in my Neurology clerkship rotation - and it's totally fascinating, but I haven't been writing too much about it from sheer brain exhaustion from planning my fourth year.  Back to millions of forms to fill out and boxes to check and months to move around in my head and thinking about how to pay for all of it.  

So anyways, that's why you haven't heard about it until now.  

But this morning our Grand Rounds lecture was on migraines, and in part of her talk, the lecturer focused on whether there were some evolutionary reasons why migraines would still be around even though they cause a lot of pain.  

With migraines, she demonstrated that people who get migraines are more sensitive to their environments.  This takes the form of being more sensitive to light, to strange tastes, to strange smells - which one must admit could be evolutionarily advantageous if it means you can taste poison faster and drink less of it, or smell a toxic chemical sooner and steer clear of that cave.  She also discussed that people who do not get headaches - ever - are generally insensitive to their environment, and often have somewhat reckless behavior, which could preclude survival long enough to pass on genes.  

Her lecture was interesting, but as I was sitting there, drinking my coffee and trying to maintain focus, I was wondering if these concepts could be applied to not just diseases but all of our qualities that we perceive as negative - and if thinking about qualities this way would help me to better accept them - about myself and other people.  She offered these 5 explanations for why something that seems negative (like a migraine, or like being a worrier) could persist with evolution, despite its potentially negative consequences.  

Why Evolution Doesn't Cut Out All Negative Traits
(aka why you may have some characteristics that you're not necessarily thrilled about)

1. it's a defense mechanism 
(e.g. it literally helps with survival - not necessarily happiness, but survival)

2. it's an advantage in a conflict
- but it might not feel like an advantage in daily life

3. the trait is just too new, and it just takes time to adjust
or to realize that it's not going to work 

4. the benefits outweigh the losses

5. "design constraints" which really means you can only move forward 
(in evolution and in life)  by building on things, not backwards to erase them.  Something can dwindle and drop out with time, but it's impossible to go back three steps.  Character development is kind of like this too.

How does this apply to your character?

happiness project update

"rules for happiness: something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for"

-Immanuel Kant


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
things I have pursued that have really made me happy:

1. a hike up a mountain in the snow - and back down gliding on snowshoes!

2. driving out to visit my grandparents for a weekend

3. swimming in an indoor pool
(something about being in a bikini in the winter feels so...freeing!)

4. going out to a nearby cafe to work through some life stuff one list at a time, while sipping chai lattes

5. baking bread not straight from a recipe (cooking makes me so happy***)

6. a long run in the morning on Saturday
(even though it seemed crazy, it was the best way to start the weekend)

7. late night soccer games
(finish at midnight, shower, and try try try to fall asleep)

8. going to bed early

9. waking up on a Sunday and just reading in bed for an hour - so luxurious!

10. getting a new apartment!  (stay tuned for details)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What's making you happy in February?


***to get your creativity juices started - here are some incredible vegetarian recipes for dinner that are easy and use ingredients you probably have on hand.  Get your yummy happy on.

Valentine's Day 2012

Yup.  We went to a Bhutanese cooking class and then to our friends house where we did this:

(AMAZING!)

Happy Valentine's Day!

"Do you think I'm wonderful? she asked him one day as they leaned against the trunk of a petrified maple.  No, he said.  Why? Because so many girls are wonderful.  I imagine hundreds of men have called their loves wonderful today.  You couldn't be something that hundreds of others are."

-Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

The Selfish Years

"the 20s are your selfish years. Its a decade to immerse yourself in every single thing possible. Be selfish with your time and all aspects of you. Tinker with shit. Travel, explore, love a lot, love a little, and never touch the ground."  -Kyoko Escamilla

photo source

Things Not to Worry About

I'm a worrier.  It's true.  I think most people tend towards either anxiety or depression as they get stressed - a sort of hyperactivity versus an immobility.  I'm certainly the former.  Part of how I cope with being busy, and an outlet for my hyperactivity, is to make lists of all the things I have to do.

But this sometimes serves to stress me out as often as it de-stresses me.  

So as part of my happiness project, I am creating two lists right now:

1. a list of things that I have to think about right now 

(such as what is the cause of my patient's stroke? or what will I eat for lunch today?), and

2. a list of things that I really DON'T have to think about right now 

(such as, what am I doing for my fourth year this upcoming June).  

It's amazing how much worrying and energy I put into things that either aren't really in my control or I just haven't reached a point where I can actually do anything about them.  So instead I have a lot of unproductive worrying about them, when I could be using that energy to better pursue happiness.

I know you are now appreciating that this last paragraph actually was in list form.

The truth is, I absolutely love lists.  

Every time I have tried to ban lists from my life, because sometimes I can convince myself that they contribute, not take away from my craziness - my life only suffers for it.  And so I always come back to them.  It's destiny, really.  I come from a family of list makers and organizers of all sorts.  One of my grandfathers has a chalkboard where he has diligently kept track of the comings and goings in his house for the week ahead for over 60 years.  Another one of my grandfathers has an office full of binders, each divided into topics he finds interesting or people to whom he wants to pass on articles.  Both my mother and father have several different types of notebooks/journals that they use for various purposes.  My sister has given me the best title for a To-Do list ever: The G.S.D. list (stands for Get Stuff Done - or whatever you want the S to stand for).

But this list - this What Not To Worry About List - actually came from my dad and his research into practices of highly successful people (being one himself, he knows quite a bit about it).  Turns out, one of the best lists ever is a Not To Do Right Now List.  I can actually feel my brain relax as I write things down.

Apparently my dad and I aren't the only people thinking like this - on a new blog I stumbled on (interesting, all about lists), there's a list by F. Scott Fitzgerald in a letter to his daughter about what to worry about and what not to worry about.  I'm copying it in full because I love it (even though we may have slightly different lists, F. Scott and I), but you should also check out the blog itself.  So many great lists!

Without further ado, F. Scott Fitzgerald's Things to Worry About:

Things to worry about:

Worry about courage

Worry about cleanliness

Worry about efficiency

Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about: 

Don’t worry about popular opinion

Don’t worry about dolls

Don’t worry about the past

Don’t worry about the future

Don’t worry about growing up

Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you

Don’t worry about triumph

Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault

Don’t worry about mosquitoes

Don’t worry about flies

Don’t worry about insects in general

Don’t worry about parents

Don’t worry about boys

Don’t worry about disappointments

Don’t worry about pleasures

Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about: 

What am I really aiming at? 

How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to: 

(a) Scholarship

(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them? 

(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it? 

With dearest love,

Daddy

(Source: F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters) 

What's on your list of things to worry about and things not to worry about?  

Are there some things that can be moved from the former to the latter?

project happiness

"it is easy to be heavy; hard to be light"

- GK Chesterton

I have a confession to make: February is my least favorite month of the year.
Not because of Valentine's day, which I actually always enjoy, but because it's always the thick of winter - when there's not really great snow, but it's still pretty cold, when the sun is still coming up too late and setting too early for me to see much of daylight, and it's far enough from the Christmas/New Years holidays as well as far enough from spring (break) activities to make everything feel like a total drag.  

I have been known to say that the best thing about February is that it's very short.

But not this February.  Because despite the fact that my whole life is up in the air, that half of what I own currently lives in my car, that the manfriend and I only see each other from the hours of 4am to 5am when he crawls into bed after Peds night call until I get up for Neuro inpatient, that I probably talk to my friends LESS than I have maybe ever before in my life - 

this February I have decided to make into my own little Project Happiness

(along with this fine lady here)

how does this work you may be wondering?

well admittedly, I got the original idea from a book my mom lent me over the holidays called The Happiness Project.  then I stumbled upon a tear-away calendar created by the same woman on super sale at the bookstore (because of course, it's February already).  

I haven't actually read the book yet but from what I gather from her website and the introduction is that it is basically a call for living life in a way that brings you happiness and joy.

What a concept, huh?

To do this, I am actually pursuing things that make me happy.  Both by DOING THE THINGS that make me happy but also by ASKING MYSELF WHAT MAKES ME HAPPY.  It's like a soul searching exercise and a party in one. 

Things that I have been PURSUING 

(as in scheduling, planning, thinking about, choosing over other things) 

that make me really happy:

1. going to see the Artist and bringing in homemade Aztec hot chocolate - a new movie that has (almost) no talking in it.  I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like it, but it just seemed so INTERESTING it seemed worth checking out just to get a new part of my brain working.  turns out it's not only beautiful, thought-provoking, but laugh-out-loud funny!

2. scheduling a Bhutanese momo making cooking class with the manfriend

3. joining a pick-up soccer league - even if it means I rush straight from work

4. taking a yoga class before going out to dinner with friends

5. cooking, cooking, cooking delicious food

6. buying the NewYorker at newstand prices this week (read, 6$!).  And I just love love love it.

Questions I am asking myself about happiness:

1. What is my perfect ordinary day?  How can I add components of that kind of day to my every day? 

2. What makes me feel accomplished in a day?

3. When do I need a break?  What are the ways I like to relax?

4. How can I enjoy the people in my life best?

5. What do I want my life to be like this year?  Not just in a global way but every day?

What does your own soul searching reveal?  

What sorts of things can you do to not just think about but actually PURSUE happiness?