Transition

So, today I ate a cheeseburger, as per my 101/1001.  And I ate a ton of sweets.  It hasn't been the best of days.  Tears, screaming, kicking (of furniture), all before 9 AM, followed by a meeting with my PI and a combined total of 5 hours of seminars.  Willpower being a finite resource, I was pretty well screwed (or so I justified eating dinner at the Great Dane with Intaglio: we split sustain-a-burger and a chocolate-nut torte, among other delicious but awful foods.)

The truth is: Grad school has been rough.  In medical school, my goal was to get As.  After I finished medical school, my goal was to get a great score on the boards.  All of my energy was focused toward each single goal; it required a lot of work and tedium, but I was capable of it. 

Now, my time is split between lab and work, at minimum 50-50.  On top of that, I'm supposed to be writing a review article, and, at the risk of sounding like Teen Talk Barbie, immunology is hard.  Which is why I'm reading papers and writing this review article, but right now it just feels like one more thing to tick off my list.  One more thing preventing me from doing research, which reminds me--the controls have been fuzzy, the cells aren't growing as fast as they should be, and no one has worked with viral particles before in our lab.  Coming home each night, my goal is always to work, or at least read, but realistically I just wash dishes, do laundry, tidy up, or wind up poking around reddit.  And then I go to sleep.  And then I get up and run, and then the day begins.

Intaglio is in the same position as me; he's gone from working on his prints full time to less than 50% of the time, as he now works in the frame shop and teaches classes on the weekend.  So at the end of the day, we're tired, we're dispirited, and we're not really in the mood to feel sympathy for anyone but ourselves.  We haven't been gentle with each other.  We haven't really been interested in each other's struggles.

We made up, but the damage to my diet was done.  Nothing to do but start fresh tomorrow (and have Intaglio take the remaining Ghirardelli squares to work).  When I disappoint myself like I have today, I often feel like that's the only thing to say.  Tomorrow I'll be closer to the person I want to be.  Just because it didn't happen today doesn't mean I can't make it happen tomorrow.  True, I suppose, but today it just feels false.  That's why there's tomorrow.

Birthday

Today began with a 10.44 mile run, carried on to a quiet day in lab and class (mostly spent doing homework, the machine I needed to separate out cells for an experiment was being cleaned), and finished with dinner on the east side.  Went home, and then made a trek to the east side for dinner.  I started out with a bbq jackfruit sandwich, while Intaglio had a  vegan "crabby-cake" po' boy.  We swapped two bites in upon realizing that the other had the better dish.  Dessert was this monster:

(That is a drumstick pie slice from Monty's Blue Plate Diner.  Peanut butter silk, whipped cream, and a layer of chocolate ganache.  It was, as you can probably tell, HUGE.  We split it.  It was still far too much, but we polished it off regardless.)

Today was also my first day of 101 in 1001.  Much to my surprise, I was already able to tick one item off my list, as Intaglio gave me a snuggly flannel robe for my birthday.  It's going...reasonably well.  I dutifully recycled all my recyclables and tracked my spending (1.35-yogurt, .9-banana, 1.25-plain popcorn, 6-bus).  As it was my birthday, I didn't stick with the one sweet per week rule (my mom sent some Ghirardelli squares and speculoos spread in a care package...you can probably guess what happened next), but such was the plan.

How am I feeling?  Pretty good.  I'm 25, I weigh 136.8 lbs, I can run 10 miles, I can grow cells.  Not too shabby.

I'm still quite nervous about emailing my potential thesis committee (I've been psyching myself up to do it for two days now), marginally nervous about the two midterms next Tuesday, and kind of wary about the food challenges ahead of me.  My goal is to eat no more desserts/sweets until next Tuesday, but this weekend is stuffed with food-laden activities.  Parties and gallery openings tend to be diet kryptonite for me: I get nervous, and I eat; I get distracted, and I eat; I prepare food, and I eat.  In the past, I've seen no other solution than to skip the party (or to go and resign myelf to gaining weight).  But now this conundrum just strikes me as tiresome.  I'm hoping that posting in this blog will keep me honest and provide me with motivation as I hack my way through the requisite 66 days it takes to change a habit.

But as I said, I'm feeling good.  Lucky to be 25, lucky to be a part of an amazing training program, unbelievably lucky to have a wonderful family, a great partner, and awesome friends.  This year will be a great one.