Happy Monday guys! How was your first weekend of fall? I myself am very happy about the return of boots & tights weather and spent a good portion of my time outdoors.
Saturday involved a trip to the LowLineon Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It’s a really cool exhibit that gives a taste of what the proposed underground park could be like. It runs until September 27th—definitely worth checking out if you have time this week!
stealth photographer caught me totally unaware
egg-white omelet with spinach, tomato, mushrooms, and goat cheese
Brunch nearby also happened. I love the idea of adding omelet toppings on top of the omelet…no awkward flipping required!
After walking around lower Manhattan (and taking a quick nap), I made my way to Williamsburg for Emma Straub’s Hollywood Variety Hour at Public Assembly. The event, part of this weekend’s Brooklyn Book Festival (I think?), featured author Andrew McCarthy, musician Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields, blogger Maris Kreizman, and This American Life‘s Ira Glass. Sunday afternoon, I actually spent a few hours at the festival, where I got to enjoy the crisp weather and some excellent people-watching in Brooklyn Heights.
After a week spent seeing ICU patients, it was good to get out of my own head for a little while. When I saw my astrologer back in early March, she mentioned that in the fall months I’d likely find myself surrounded by death and dying, to put it simply, that I would develop a deeper understanding of pain and suffering and, on the other side of the coin, healing. No shit. This was before I’d told her about the internship, and I remember feeling kind of relieved that, well, duh—hospitals are full of death and dying! It took away a bit of that fear of the unknown.
But yeah…this rotation is kind of heavy. I try not to be that asshole acting cranky in the company of people fussing over things like hardcover editions, but it’s been tougher than I generally care to admit. To deal with feeling extra irritable and emotional (even after adjusting for PMS), I’ve been making time for Things That Work like yoga and writing and quite alone time so I can just, like, decompress (and do my goddamn homework—not to sound all Holden Caulfield or anything).
I know that this is also part of the learning experience—how to go into these settings and come out at the end of the day and go about the rest of your life without feeling all disillusioned or pissed off at someone blabbing about where to get the best cocktail in Paris or whatever. Still, I’m looking forward to when this part is in the past tense and I can talk about how valuable it all was.
Hey, one week down, only two more to go! And a weekend in between that I already have fun plans for! Six months ago, my nutrition support rotation was just this abstract mess of “OMG how the f*** am I gonna do any of that stuff” taking up real estate in my brain. Now that I’m actually in it, it’s kind of neat to see how much I’ve learned so far.
How did you spend your first weekend of fall? What works for you when you’re going through a challenging time?