Tag Archive | transitions

“Please, Picture Me, In the Trees”

(Apparently, I can’t stop naming my posts after Taylor Swift lyrics, and so, I’ll post the lyric video for “seven,” the song this comes from, at the end of the post).

IMGP6957eCAMP_ORKILA_ROAD_ORCAS Lately, I’ve been dreaming of Orcas. The island, not the whale. And the metaphorical sense of dreaming. Daydreaming. Yearning.

With my whole med school life falling apart, all I want to do is go to the woods. Work on my writing, music, podcasting, work on work (I’m looking for work in the wake of all the school fallout) and have trees and water as solace and spiritual recovery, because nature connection is my spirituality and I feel like starving a little without it.

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“You’re Not My Homeland Anymore”

Sep2

SPRING 2021 UPDATE to this post from September 2020: I’m going back to medical school. We got a new dean who’s willing to work with me (a low bar, I know) and she genuinely seems pretty great and really invested in the disability part of the job). We’ve sorted out some tricky issues (rural rotation, EHR access, rotation planning). It’s still an ongoing process, and still has a lot of battles currently and looming ahead, but at least for now, I’m back. I missed medicine a lot, and was also kinda bored out of my gourd even with tons of projects going on, so all that plus the new dean and I’m a student again, as of April 26.

You might say “I come back stronger than a ’90s trend.”

Also, my coming back doesn’t negate any of the absolute BS that led to my leaving, and so with that, I leave you the original post, unabridged, below:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Or “So I’m Leaving Out the Side Door” Part Two

Since this post is a sequel to that one, I’m posting the lyric video again.

In “exile” from folklore, Taylor Swift and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver are singing to and about an ex-lover. For me, the song has taken on a totally different, personal meaning.

It’s held steady as my favorite song on folklore (with many others way, way up there, at this moment the next closest has to be “the lakes”) because the whole concept of exile seems to fit my life right now. Even if it’s (semi) self-imposed.

For me the you of the song isn’t an ex, isn’t a lover, isn’t a person at all.

It’s medical school. It’s medical training as a whole. It’s the medical education industrial complex.

“So I’m leaving out the side door”

I’m leaving medical school.

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The Artist’s Way Reflections – Preview Digression on Spirituality

Aug26

Orkila winter 2 This post is off-schedule, a day before launching the first post focusing on a chapter of The Artist’s Way. It wasn’t planned, but I went on such a digression about the Introduction part of AW that I decided to pull it out and make it its own post so it wouldn’t distract from the post about the week.

So, some thoughts on the introduction, and reflection on spirituality in my life:

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“So I’m Leaving Out the Side Door”

Aug7

This morning, I did a thing. It has to do with what is for now still unsayable but which came up a lot in this anguished post earlier this week. This thing I did is a huge step towards being able to talk openly about it, which I’m dying to do.

This song was playing at the crucial moment of doing the thing, and that’s where the title for the post comes from. Even though my situation is so different from what Taylor Swift and Bon Iver are singing about, everything feels like it fits. It’s my current favorite off of folklore, and I don’t think that’s an accident.

Lines that stick out for me at the moment, aside from the one used in my post title include:

“you’re not my homeland anymore”

“you were my town
now I’m in exile seeing you out”

“second third and hundredth chances
balancing on breaking branches”

and the one line I always want to scream along with the perfect bridge of this song

“I gave so many signs”

Spoiler alert: The sequel to this post, “You’re Not My Homeland Anymore” is now live and spills all the tea on this cryptic post.

Until next time,

-April

The Artist’s Way Reflections – The Basic Tools: Morning Pages

Aug6

MPs In The Artist’s Way, aka AW, a book I’m blogging about weekly, one of the first thing that the author, Julia Cameron, introduces is the practice of Morning Pages. As far as I know, this is also true for subsequent spin-offs and sequels. Morning Pages are the cornerstone of all her work on discovering, recovering, and reconnecting with creativity.

So, that raises (not begs) the question of what are they and why are they so important. Morning Pages are simple at face value. When you wake up, you’re supposed to write three pages of long-hand writing, about anything you damn well please. The keys are that they’re supposed to be in the morning, they’re supposed to be long-hand and they’re supposed to be private–even you yourself aren’t supposed to look at them for awhile.

The morning part of it is to clear your head, dump out all your little thoughts and worries and random tidbits floating in your head that otherwise could nag at you for the rest of the day. And morning because maybe when we’re still groggy, there’s less self-censorship. That’s part of the privacy aspect, that they’re never to be shown to anyone because once they are, the other person’s judgements come in, and so do your own.

To that point, though this is probably a story for another day, I did once have a boyfriend who told me, drunk off his ass when we were in a fight, that he’d read mine and then made fun of me for things I’d written. Fun freakin’ times.

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Jumping Back into the Blogging Ring

Jul22

When I started posting again in April, as April, I thought I’d come back quickly to regular blogging. Yeeeeeah, about that. Clearly that wasn’t the case.

I’m going through some major life upheavals, and though I won’t go into it now, I plan on posting about it on here at a later time. Right now, a lot of it is still under wraps, kept off of here and off of my social media, but as things move forward that will start to shift.

There’s just a lot to work out and through and I’m really in the shit right now.

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