So Vertiginous...

I really love the city of Tallahassee at night. Driving the city's streets at 4am makes me feel more alive. The city sleeps, but I'm awake. It's a cool feeling, the feeling that you're the only one awake in a large area. Similarly, I miss the night shift at the hospital. Walking the empty halls of the hospital make me feel alive. I love feeling like I'm one of the city's sentinels - while the city sleeps, we protect and help those in need.

I love what I do. To me, that's extremely important. I could quit my low paying job at the hospital and get back into engineering, but my heart isn't there. I was exhausted working my engineering job - my heart wasn't there and I was bored. I felt like my talents should've been used for something else, like I was wasting away my life just sitting around making somebody else more profitable. That's why I'm drawn to medicine. My driving force and motivation is to help other people, but quite a few of my coworkers just aren't there for the same reason - which blows my mind. I know that no matter how much you like a job, there are days when you just don't feel it. There have been days where I might have come in not feeling great, and was not particularly happy to be at work. But then usually something happens - you get a patient you can really empathize with, who reminds you why you do what you do. Say, a little girl with a broken arm who's terrified and in pain - and when you splint her up and reassure her that everything's okay and you can see the look in her face of relief, that makes the job worth doing. I really wish my coworkers had the same drive, the same reason for being there. What really pisses me off is when I see coworkers who just don't give a shit, day in and day out. Or when I see coworkers that do things that could put other people in danger or just in discomfort. Or when I see patients who refuse to take care of themselves and put their lives at risk.

I won't lie, I get angry at work every once in a while. If you ask any of my coworkers though they'll tell you that I'm one of the kindest, most lighthearted people there. Why the disparity? They can't see the anger that boils under the surface. When coworkers do things to tick me off, it musters up a sense of almost "righteous" anger - an anger that they're not there for the right reasons. I then reapply that anger towards doing a better job. When they won't work harder, I will. If they don't want to help me help people get better well to hell with them. I AM a team player, don't get me wrong. I just really can't stand people who are in a prime position to help their common man blatantly REFUSING to help. But no matter what those around me do, I can only be responsible for how one person acts: myself. And I will continue to do my best every single day and help my patients.

I recently watched all 14 episodes of the cancelled Joss Whedon sci-fi show "Firefly" and I have to say that I now understand the hype. The show really was an amazing show - a futuristic sci-fi show set in space with an old west feel to it. Great characterization, music, and writing all made the series wonderful to watch, and I was genuinely sad when I finished watching the last show, realizing that unless something happens in the future, I won't get to spend any more time with those characters. I was happy to see that a movie that supposedly wraps up all of Firefly's loose ends, a movie called "Serenity", is set to come out later this year. I really hope the movie does well and that somebody decides to pick up an option for Firefly so I can get more episodes. Good shows shouldn't die such early deaths. I urge everybody to watch the episodes and go to the movie Serenity. It's great stuff.

Two albums I've been listening to excessively lately have been "Funeral" by The Arcade Fire and "Satanic Panic in the Attic" by Of Montreal. Both have incredible uses of harmony, dissonance, and melody that everybody should listen to. I reccommend "Haiti" by The Arcade Fire and "Lysergic Bliss" by Of Montreal as songs to try.

In a small move towards being a medical professional, I now have a stethoscope. One of the doctors at work gave me one and while it's no top of the line model, it's still neat to have one. I used it to take a manual blood pressure yesterday. So along with getting a bunch of trauma scissors from one doctor so that I would do all his splints and getting a pharmacopedia from another doctor the ER docs at work really have been helping foster my learning of the medical process.

I don't think I'm going to be hanging out with a large group of my coworkers for a while to come. It just seems like every time we go out, some sort of drama errupts. I'm frankly tired of it, so I'm just not going to deal with it. Small groups are fine, but I'm going to avoid large groups and in particular, certain people.

School is going great so far. I've missed 5 points out of a possible 550 in my chemistry 2 class, and Biology's going just as well. Tests are on the schedule for both classes this week, so we'll see how I feel after both of those but as of writing this, I feel very well prepared and ready for each. I still have Med school dreams (especially of Duke) but I wonder how the whole thing's gonna go down. I feel confident that I'm going to get in somewhere reputible and become a great doctor, I'm just anxious over all the time between now and then.

Engineering paper is the greatest writing material ever produced. If you've ever taken notes on engineering paper, you can't go back to normal notebook paper, especially if you write a lot of mathematical expressions or graphs. I'll be the only kid in med school with the green-and-yellow paper.

I went and saw Batman Begins today, and I think it was pretty damned good. I'm looking forward to Fantastic Four later this year. Most of the recent comic-book movies have been good, but you never know (Hulk, Daredevil).

Oh, and for the first time in a while, I have a real date on Friday with one of the nurses at work. I honestly haven't been this excited about a date in a while, so I can't wait. It's been way too long, but it seems like it's been worth waiting for. My date should be a lot of fun (she's a riot!)