Holiday Objectives

Like any good, know-what-I-want-and-how-to-get-it ex-Chinese school student, I'd set a clear and attainable to-do-list over the holiday, and have been for the large part sticking to it excellently. My objective this summer (besides the mandatory dissertation) was to do absolutely nothing. I've been chided by Mum and Dad over this, and usually I don't have the patience to explain things when I'm being prodded, so let me clarify.

As I explained to my Dad, I'm coming to the realisation that my holidays (and free time in general) are going to grow shorter, and with them my opportunity to do little things like sleeping in late or staying up all night listening to music while browsing endless streams of wikipedia pages. I know that in my first ever blogpost (here), I denounced anyone who ever sat on their arse for not doing something to (cheesily) "save the world". I kind of still believe that, but then again this is me now, and I'm not as capable of the manic intensity which I summoned to write essays on till the sun rose, or jump into a fountain in the middle of Leicester at 4am (long story).

I've been worn down a lot, not so much by work, but by the realisation that the work will never ever end, and that the workload will only increase as time goes on. I've no option to stop either - it took me a whole lot of time and money to get into medicine, and once you've bought into this game you have to keep playing till you retire, die, or get cleaned out. Don't get me wrong, I love medicine and can't imagine myself doing much else - but then I'm starting to wonder - if all my time and effort will be given to saving your health, where does that leave the little things? When will I have the time to sit down and chew through a book because I like it, rather than peer at tiny letters in the index section to answer a question about Wegener's Granulomatosis or Angina Pectoris?

The answer, is that until I make consultant (which is a very very long time away, if I even get there), I have between now and graduation to enjoy every sliver of time I get - whether it's by blasting my brains out with computer games or enjoying a cup of tea and staring out of the window. And I intend to use that time fully, not to get sloshed (because that's temporary stress relief at best) but by truly relaxing, drawing pretty pictures of nothing while my brain wanders. I want the option of staying home and drawing a picture instead of getting sloshed at a party, because a party doesn't give you relaxation but excitement, and it's hard to summon the energy to be excited about everything all the time. I've touched on this in a previous post, but now I've finally put my finger on the missing part of the puzzle - relaxing.

So, the things I enjoy doing and intend to do more of over the next month:

• Gaming
• Dancing to a good beat
• Banter with friends over Malaysian food and iced lime juice at 2am
• Sketch art
• MSN conversations
• Wikipedia
• Blogging and blogsurfing (yay!)
  
• Swimming
• Books! Lots and lots of books!
  
• Music and reorganising my iTunes library (now that I have a good set of speakers, thanks Kav for opening up this new world to me)
• Casual internet chess
  
  

  I guess doing "nothing" actually is pretty time consuming!