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Here I am again, looking Forward, Backward, but never down at my feet. I have been sooooo nostalgic this week. I think watching HBO's Treme series is doing it to me. And then, of course I went and watched Warren Miller's annual ski film and Utah is all over it… What about here and now? The problem has been, and continues to be, I don't much care about the here and now. I'm perpetually unimpressed with my surroundings.. And why? It feels like nothing is ever as good as it "was." It's an age-old problem, right? This is not a new story or concept. My problem is… sometimes it really "is" as good as it gets. I think the times I am reminiscing about in New Orleans are really what life is all about. They are real. It was such a great time and place when I lived there. And the same thing with Utah. The thing about Utah was.. Residency was so horrible, and I missed New Orleans so much… but sometimes Utah really was "the best." Being up on a m...

I finally decided to brave the bumper-to-bumper traffic I've resigned myself to since moving to Seattle and persuaded myself that it's time to get out. I moved here, time to see some of it. After browsing various websites with event and music listings and coming up relatively devoid of any interest in anything, I decided to go out with a friend out to the "Neptune Theater" to listen to a band. It's a college scene, decent band, great people watching. After paying the exorbitant "$15 cover" that is so standard for crappy live music out West, I entered a pretty cool setup for a show. It's an old theater that that has an interesting history, http://stgpresents.org/neptune/history.asp. The walls and bathrooms have stained glass depictions of Neptune. It's a great space. My friend and I settle in to my standard behavior at this point… which is, establish a vantage point in an inconspicuous place and watch. Instantaneously, I felt like an alien to...

1. "I love old people and people who are dying because they practice total sincerity and total honesty, like you." -s 2. I always wondered why anyone would ever go into psychiatry… Then I had a recent rotation. Rounds lasted 2 hours. Total. And they were fascinating. And they help people. On their schedule. Then they called it a day about an hour before lunch. 3. Hacer pinta = to play hookie. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=play+hookie . A day in which liberty is taken upon oneself to exclude themself from school or work obligations while, most likely, pretending to be sick or having a death in the family. Usually this time is spent with a significant other (i.e. hookie for nookie ), a sports activity (i.e. golf or play station), or just plain sitting on ones ass all day editing & writing definitions for modern slang words over the internet. Commonly referred to as " play ing hookie ". 4. After 18 months, I think I can adjust to living anywhe...

I got to thinking about the concept of finality this week for an odd reason. I was talking to my grandma on the phone to wish her a Happy Mother's Day. She's doing well and we were just catching up, but the conversation pulled with an irresistible magnetism toward Paw.. I didn't want to talk about him, so I was frustrated with myself, but it's so hard not to. She mentioned that she's doing OK, but gets sad. "It's just so final," she says. For some reason, that sentence really resonated with me. It's so true, but I haven't really processed it in that sense. It's easy for me to mourn and then live on, because I rarely saw Paw Paw in his last year of life. But it's much harder for me to really let go. It's been sort of interesting as I've moved away from home to fully grasp how my relationship to home has changed and morphed. In some ways, my relationships and places and people have been and will remain more or less the same, bu...

it strikes me as i am trying to contemplate this odd decision that rather than deciding between job types and geographical locations, I am actually almost trying to decide between becoming two entirely different people. After all, what defines a person more than what they do day in and day out for years at a time… Does anything define who a person is more than what type of work they do, what occupies their time, what they do in their time off? One thing I have learned from my extreme diversion from home to Salt Lake City is that, while I am still myself in many basic respects, I have changed dramatically by virtue of this work and my surrounding environment. The things I do and they way I spend my time have been altered in such a significant fashion that it will be an enormous change of self to simply go home…and a similar change to go away to start again. Strangely, it will be almost the same degree of change in either direction… I have become so many of the things I have alw...

Paw Paw, A Tribute Joseph Angelo Angelette January 11, 1929 - March 5, 2011 "Have you ever heard a joke so many times you've forgotten why it's funny? And then you hear it again and suddenly it's new. You remember why you loved it in the first place." Will Bloom, Big Fish Today's Friday, March 11. Which means if I had gone to visit Paw Paw 1 week ago, he would have been alive and I would have surely heard at least 1 more story and 1 more joke… My memories of Paw Paw are all about the stories and the jokes. When I think about him, I think about Paw Paw being extremely strong-willed, stubborn, intelligent, and an absolute brilliant story teller… There have been so many occasions when I have sat down, resolved to write down the stories and jokes Paw Paw has told, and the same number of times I realized how inadequate I was for the task. Some people just have a presence and a sense of timing that is impossible to replicate. He was that kind of man. T...

I have a lot to do. I have some projects to complete, decisions to make. I have to find a job. Decide where to live. What type of job to do. I have an inbox that is always full of crap to deal with. I always have 10-20 more notes to write. I am completely apathetic about the whole thing. All of it. Shrug. Apathy. So naturally, I am trying to self-diagnose my affliction. The most likely diagnosis is depression/anxiety and this makes perfect sense. My abdomen was in such a tangle of horrible - i mean terrible - abdominal pain at the end of my clinic session today that I thought I might have to do the unthinkable…. go to a doctor. I couldn't even stand up straight anymore. But thankfully, I pushed through and did something much more productive and useful… Yoga. Just think, I could be in a CT scanner or under the gooey eyes of an ultrasound probe right now racking up thousands of dollars of expenses. I maybe could have even gotten shot up with some narcs. Thank goodness I know better...

So i'm laying here thinking with my green tea and some music. A familiar pattern.. Having the luxury of time to think happens to me in cycles, as most things do.. I'm off tomorrow. Hallelujah. I have a lot of random and unorganized things on my mind lately, but none have been all that significant or clear, so they have all been limited to my bulging, pester-ridden journal.. The journal that I'm sure would prefer I find better things to do with my time.. Also, as a rule, I have much less time to write about stupid crap in the Winter. I am playing in the snow. Leave a message. I'll call you back when I have time. See you in the Summer. Dear Journal, I am merely writing for courtesy's sake so that you don't feel neglected. But there are things.. Things on my mind. I have a hard time with these moments that make you think, is this really "it"? Is this what my life is? They happen to me all the time. I've thought about this a lot and realize that I and...