The Midnight Musing Section

Curse the nights you can't sleep because you took a nap earlier in the day. *sigh*

Jill of all trades...and a balancing act of many

There was a time in my life when studying the human brain scared the crap out of me. It wasn't the physical anatomy of it, but more the applied physiology part of it all. I know, hard to believe, now that I'm strongly considering a specialty in Neuro rehabilitation in addition to sports medicine, and automatically psychoanalyze everyone as a result of my fields as well. One thing about neuroscience that has always fascinated me is hemispheric dominance. Those who are more Right brain dominant are the artists, creative thinkers, whereas the Left dominants are more apt with math, facts/figures, and science related items. So, what happens when you're supposedly both?

I recently took a self-administered exam that was to generally suggest which side of your gray matter was more dominant, after the scoring had completed it was apparent that I was...equal... right and left brained. Talk about frustration! Here I am, a woman of science, and yet....I half wish I had pursued a career in a more creative arena. I recently commented to my roommate and her boyfriend that if I was smarter that I would have gone into music. I realize I had misspoke when I implied that someone has to be more intelligent to tackle music than a science profession, or that I was regretting my decision to pursue physical therapy. I love my work in athletic training and physical therapy, but I was blessed with a mind that likes and loves a lot of other things...

I admired those who, in their chosen profession, are ultimately driven and focused; those who have TRULY specialized. There are days I wish I was that focused in what I do. These are they who I think make the great discoveries because they don't bog their mind with irrelevant information. Maybe they do and I'm just vying after an intellectual gift that I wasn't meant to have. Maybe I'm just jealous. Actually, I am jealous. I've always wanted to be one of those people with a photographic memory who could do multivariable calculus and diff eq in their sleep while they save Africa from a starvation epidemic with some brilliant economic idea and pretty much performed any task given to them with flawless execution. Flawless. mind you.

Some might say that this impossible delusion is what drives me to force myself into experience various things, but if that was the case, I wouldn't be as ultimately happy as I am, I don't believe. (PS, blogger's spell check is faulty, it didn't recognize ulitmately as being incorrect... and still doesn't actually). I'd be in a consistently stressed state of depression from continually recognizing that I'm falling short of my ideal. Always. Perfection cannot exist in this mortal life. But we can sure as hell try...

I may be a master of none of my interests, but I think the key is not necessarily how much is instantly retained and immaculately applied, granted that is a large component, rather the heart that goes into it. This is most likely the still jealous part of me jabbering but I don't care. Barring raw, innate talent, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone you admire who didn't take an active interest in their work. They're constantly reseraching, studying, making sure information is correct and current. They analyze what's working for them, what isn't and make appropriate adjustments. They, too, have their own ultimate goal for which they are striving but weren't afraid to do what it took to go after it. (Even though I'm not necessarily referring to formal occupations, this probably could be applied to that realm to a certain extent. To me, a job is work that you don't like but it's a paycheck. An occupation isn't work, but activities that could be described as a job, but you wouldn't know it. All about the mindframe).

So how do you reconcile what you want with what you know you're pretty much given?

My advice...stop comparing yourself to others and concern yourself with culturing your own level of interest, as long as you enjoy it. As soon as you stop enjoying whatever is important to you is when you need to take a break, step back, and let the scales balance out.

The road to the exta mile is never busy...

I remember when my oldest brother had just begun college, it was when email was first making it's mark on society. We had this whole list of instructions to perform to (for the most part I remember having to hit the return key 4 times on two separate occasions - but back then I had that routine down PAT!) just to be able to send this message over some modem connection through ASU servers and on to BYU. However, as the world wide web progressed to version 2.0 from the analog green screen action we were introduced to, his emails one day had this tagline at the end: "The road to the extra mile is never busy."

This phrase struck me much like any other meaningful phrase would, but it found it's way to my soul, for lack of a better, less cliche phrase. It's curiously amazing at how true that phrase is, that the road to the extra mile is never busy, but why? What is it about putting forth that above-par effort that is so repulsive? It's true, as organic organisms who are bound to the laws and suggestions of physics and chemistry, we tend to prefer paths of least resistance. It conserves energy, allowing us to store up for more worthy and worthwhile ventures. It also keeps us out of messy matters, thereby saving the added extra resources devoted to clean-up. I'm sure there are other reasons that I haven't mulled over while sitting here, but for the time being, we'll play with these.

And then you have those who don't mind expending the extra energy. What is it about being around those who don't mind taking the extra time that almost makes you, the regular Joe Shmoe, mildly guilty, or envious, jealous, or resentful of that other individual? I guess it depends on how we value our time and involvement in a project as it's compared to effectiveness. We tend to put more time and effort into things we value and have an interest in, whereas those other items and projects that are left over get assigned a lower level on the priority totem pole, leaving them at the mercy of superficial attention. To be fair, though, it would be near impossible to give everything in our lives equal amount of attention.

But we can sure the hell try.... Why? Why not. I guess my biggest problem with peers being lackadaisical when it comes to helping one another. One of my interests is people. I love people (everyone has a story to tell), and I can't remember a time when I didn't really like people. Yes, I know there are those out there who feel the exact opposite of me on this topic, but hear me out and allow me to make a case for improved quality of civil service. At the root of it all, people need each other (sorry, Bon Jovi). It doesn't necessarily matter for what purpose, but, again, at the root, I believe it to be psychological. In this particular time when we're the most psychologically distant from those we don't know, I believe many of our problems, both personal and social, could be mediated, curbed, remedied, what have you, by the simple investment of time and genuine interest. That man next to you in the street is your brother whether you like it or not, and in the end, each other is all we've got. The least we can do is take care of one another.

Yes, it may take some time out of our busy schedules, but the road to the extra mile is never busy... and I believe the potential benefits, while not assured, to be worth the effort.

To one it was given 5 and to another 3....

What is it about the experiences that we don't have that make them so attractive? The proverbial greener grass, I suppose, but at the same time, I can't help but be curious. I'm curious to what about each of our lives that warrant certain people to experience certain things and others not. Additionally, there seems to be more ways to skin a cat when it comes to learning a central concept. In my short-sighted view, I cannot help but relate my life to this case.

For instance, a good friend of mine was recently told by a significant other that it was time they go separate ways after being together for nearly 2 years and it's been evident that it's hit my friend very hard. He's been muscling through it, but I've coached enough of my friends through relationship endings to know better. I've always found a bit of irony when I find myself in a well-worn confidant seat in that I've never been in a long standing relationship and, in theory, I should be the last person anyone turns to for understanding, sympathy, and salving advice. Maybe it's because I just happen to be standing there at the time, who knows, but at the same time, what is a love lost but nothing more than a lost friend. And I know lost friends.

I've always wondered what my friends were suppose to have learned from failed relationships. I believe everything happens for a reason, for our own profit and learning if you will (and I will). For everyone it's different with every episode, for some it's to learn respect, for others, it might be to gain emotional strength, and for yet another it might be to learn to be selfless. But, if I may be selfish for a moment, I can't help by wonder why I've never had that luxury. Everytime I express this sentiment, I'm consistently told that I'm lucky, but is that true? To never have that banter with another human being, to never have a broken heart....it almost seems to be part of the quintessential human experience to have your heart broken at least once.

However, while I cannot sympathize, I can empathize. I may not have a resume for matters of the heart, but I do have a resume for interpersonal relationships. And as I said before, what is love lost, but nothing more than a lost friend. Love comes in many forms, and the purest form, the kind that lasts forever, I believe is a combination of them all. In my profession, I don't just treat musculoskeletal conditions, I treat people. It's on that basic level that I maintain everything should exist, and that is how I treat my patients and athletes. I treat them as a person, and is that not how a friend treats another friends, or a lover treats a significant other?

So I guess the moral of the story is that I should consider myself lucky... and yet I still wonder about that other patch of grass...

and for those of you who are still curious, I've never had a relationship because the timing has never been right. My education and my work present a daunting exterior to prospective suitors - someone like me is not for the faint of heart. I've always remained open to the challenge and the opportunity of devoting myself to just one person, however, there are some lessons I still need to learn apparently before I am granted that privilege. And it is a privilege.... never treat it like it isn't. Until then, I devote myself to the people I am called upon to mend...

Hope for the pack rats

I know I shouldn't be writing this, but I am anyway. Over the past few days, I've been thinking about how I don't really keep records of my life in traditional ways. I've tried journals, believe me, but I just can't keep them. I'm insanely lazy when it comes to documenting my existence formally, and I use to make the excuse that my being a pack rat does that for me anyway. It's true, I keep just about everything. There are those out there cringing at the very thought of all the stuff that I've accumulated, but I can't help it. I'm a sentimentalist, it's my way of showing what I've done and where I've been (sort of), it helps me remember past times, and it's bailed me out of some sticky situations (like when I was applying to PT schools - THIS IS WHY YOU KEEP YOUR SYLLABI!).

Yet, at the rate of accumulation I'm currently proceeding at, I'm going to end up like my father. Not that I don't love my father, believe you me, I am my father's child (in many more ways than one), but there just comes a time when there is too much stuff to go through. When I feel so fed up with the stuff that I have, I wish I was more judicial and pragmatic as my mother (and just so you know, I'm as equally like my mother as I am my father - it's the price I pay being the baby of 3 kids, the older 2 are 7-9 years head of me, respectively). So you can see where my internal torment arises from, lol. Yet I can't bring myself to throw certain things away. I guess it's because I have this looming fear that I'm going to forget. I hate forgetting. I've been forgotten by my peers a number of times when I was growing up and I vowed that I would never do that to someone else. As a consequence of that vow and also being a very visual person, I need physical things to help keep me on track with that goal, a goal that has expanded beyond interpersonal relationships to every other aspect of my life.

I guess keeping things also feeds my other pseudoly subconscious fear of never being known. For example, the only way anyone outside of my athletic training program would have known that I had been there and performed as well as I did (or at least think I did) would be if you looked at the injury treatment records, a few select game films or talked to my CI's. At the same time, I get slapped with examples that my fears are silly and superficial ( like when I hear about former athletes still asking for me to treat them).

What is it about being forgotten that bothers me? Why do I even care so much? I guess I just want my progeny to know that they're ancestor lived. Some may never get the chance to know me, and I want them to know that they had a good example to look to, and from whom they might have gotten some of their traits. *smirk* It may also have to do the fact that I draw most of my identity from my relatives. I had a cool experience this summer where I was finally introduced to two sections of my family that I had only heard about but never met. The first being my biological grandfather's side of the family as a whole. Due to some poor decisions on my grandfather's part, he's never been apart of my life, and as a consequence neither have my great uncles and subsequent cousins on that side, until my great uncle "Shorty" passed away out in Dallas area. Consequently enough, his funeral coincided with my family's trip to see my brother out in Dallas, so we had the opportunity to attend. That was probably one of the sweetest, most self-defining occasions of my life, as I came to know a man who I wish I had known in this mortal life - what a good soul he was, and what he had meant to my father. Also, that man's children and what good people they were, and that it was only my grandfather who was the only "bad seed" so to speak. I had cousins! This probably isn't as exciting to some people, but when you come from a relatively small family, it means a little more.

Also, consequently, I had the opportunity to meet my father's father. The man that I had never known and was discouraged to ask my father about...he was nothing more than a man to me. We were cordial to one another and that was about it. It was weird for me to look at him and think this is my grandfather and to not have any sort of attachment come flooding over me like I do when I think of my mother's father, and even then he passed away when I was 12. The last thing I need this to turn into is a sob story about the lack of male authority figures in my life, but at the same time, it explains so much of me...

Due to my birth order, I've had to come to know many of the people in my life through their writings, their possessions, records, pictures, scraps of paper, knicknacks, and stories! My example for this comes from my great aunt's funeral I attended to support my father's mother out in Safford, AZ. My grandmother came from a fairly large family in the Pima, AZ area, which is a large farming community. A number of her siblings stayed local or in surrounding smaller towns, and since my grandmother moved to the valley after she married, that's another section of family I had never really known. I met some at a family reunion back in 1997, but I was 13 and who are we kidding, I barely remember meeting anyone. (I also realize now that everytime I lose a relative, I gain about 15 more at their funeral). But to get off that tangent, for my grandmother's family, I had only known them through stories and letters and a few pictures. It was a treat to finally put faces with the names I had so often heard from her. Meeting my great-aunts and reintroducing myself to the great-uncles and the various cousins was different - I formed attachments that day, ones that I didn't even know about until months later. (My great aunt Elouise later told my grandmother in a phone call that I was the first person in a long time who had just treated her like a human being when I met her - a great source of pride for my grandmother for one (I'll explain another time) but also for me, as that comment was a measurement for how I treat people I barely know).

I get jealous of those who still have their great grandparents living and have both sets of grandparents with lots of cousins to bend upon, but at the same time, I wouldn't wouldn't change much about my family... only that I wish we all lived much closer to one another so I can hear the stories on a more regular basis and feel the love and safety more often.

Moral of the story: it's okay to be a pack rat...