Wasting Time

Being generally lazy, I have mastered the art of doing nothing. I can spend the entire day in bed, sleeping, scribbling, reading books I've already read before. This time, I guess I've raised my expertise to a higher level - I can spend the entire day, mindessly staring at nothing, my mind blank, with no thought at all.

This is a very surprising transformation, I believe. When I was in high school, I remember starting everyday with a fixed schedule, a list of things to do, with tick boxes to boot. And I would spend the entire day meticulously accomplishing what I had planned. Now, I'm the exact opposite. I spend days painstakingly avoiding the things that ought to be done. For some strange reasons, a planned task is more difficult to do than those that just spring up during the course of the day. Thankfully enough, bursts of passionate efforts at catching up save me, even fooling some people enough to believe that I'm actually a workaholic.

The only witnesses to my dazed state: portraits of the great men who went before me.

Chairman's Office, Department of Medicine, PGH.

Dismal. Squalid. This is where people survive some of the most inhuman of sufferings.
But oh, how I will miss it. Ward 3, PGH.


A perfect shot of the perennial problem. Anyone willing to adopt them?
(great photo c/o Dr. Mark Vicente)

Today is another slow day. And it's been a very long time since I've had a fit of passionate, workaholic rage.

This is my first duty in the last set of SHO duties before I finally step down from my job as chief resident. My office table is a mess. I have a feeling there is so much to do but I can't even identify those tasks. My schedule book is empty. Schedules are for the careful and the organized, not for us crazy people who move in bursts of passion.

So in between signing RIVs and MSS referrals, I sit and just stare. Sit and just stare. Hoping that somewhere, there must be one, a thing, a person, a vision, a purpose, whatever, that would be strong enough for this soul, to get it moving again.