New Year Stew

 Hello, I am back again. 

I was thinking about New Year Resolutions the other day. I don't typically make resolutions, or at least not concrete ones. The only one I can truly point to as a NY resolution and say it stuck is back around 2015 when I said I was going to start flossing my teeth every day. Still going strong. 

 I'd have to scour through my old entries and journals, but I suspect I've made other resolutions in prior years. Probably related to writing. The Person doesn't particularly "believe" in NY resolutions. His thinking is, "Why does it have to be on January 1? You could do it anytime." 

True. Now that I think about it, 2022 was the year I started forcing myself to run on the treadmill for 30 min in the morning on the weekends. So far, that one has been sticking fairly well, since I won't let myself shower or eat until after I get my butt in the gym. But I feel like there's something psychological about January 1 being a reset button that feels momentous and worthy of the occasion. 

Which leads me to my current state of mind: stewing. 

My schedule has been a bit lighter this year, which means more time to get lost in my head. Less weekend calls, less sleepless nights dealing with acute leukemias. I came to the conclusion:

I am extremely adept at using work to procrastinate writing. 

I do it all the fucking time, because the work never ends! There's always clinic panels to be pre-charting, research papers to be reading, Qbank questions to be studying. In fact, I've gotten better and better at it over time because there's more work to do. So clearly, the issue here is that I need to carve out time. 

The urgency of this matter is partially driven by the fact that my peers were popping out babies left and right in 2022. There were at least seven co-residents who are either expecting or had babies last year. I saw Graydyl and her partner recently, and they were also talking about babies and how S froze here eggs. I recently had a Facetime video chat with my close friend E from Duke who just her baby about 3 months ago, and while the baby is extremely cute, he would also cry every 10-15 minutes and E was constantly patting him and feeding him throughout. 

I do eventually want children, but the thought of losing my current luxury of freedom and time, waking up every 3 hours to handle a crying baby that I can't ignore the way I occasionally ignore the cat... It's a life-changing thing that I'm not sure I am mentally ready to accept right now.

(Also side note, E was telling me things like how when she started looking for daycare when she was 18 weeks along, it was ALREADY TOO LATE because apparently the top daycares are booked up 1.5 years in advance, which means PEOPLE ARE RESERVING DAYCARES WHEN THEY'RE NOT EVEN PREGNANT YET, WHAT IS THIS NONSENSE. We're already joking about how we gotta get Baby Boy of Destiny into the illustrious TJ so she doesn't have to pay high school tuition.)

Anyways, back to the issue -- I've been trying to brainstorm what is the best method to get a habit of writing to stick. I need something concrete that is a very clear Yes/No, in terms of whether it was accomplished, or else I'm never going to do it.

• Word counts don't work for me.
• Time-based goal would probably work better. Maybe 1 hour per day.
• But when would be the ideal time? I normally wake up around 6:30am in order to leave work by around 7:15. Maybe if I try waking up at 5 or 5:30am. I have a hard time focusing at night after work. Blergh. 
• I can probably use the Forest app to track, especially because I need something to force me to get off my phone. 
   

The further I get into my medical career, the more writing has faded from the foreground. I used to be thinking about writing constantly. I built my ego around it. Over time, I've lost faith in my skill. I've had to do a lot of soul-searching about why I torture myself with this when nobody is forcing me to do it. 

Alrighty, gotta bounce. Time to go do my morning run.