Life Imitating Art and Other Adventures in Self-Care

Oh hi!

I'm now a bit over a month into my internship.  It has kept me incredibly busy, and has quickly become a 50-hours-per-week commitment.

Yep.

That being said, I am incredibly relieved to report that so far, it seems awesome.  My colleagues are great, both settings I'm working in are really interesting, and I have some exciting trainings to look forward to.  While the schedule is pretty unforgiving and I'm woefully underpaid, those things are true of any internship.  I therefore feel incredibly grateful and fortunate that the algorithm seems to have acted very much in my favor.

While I have a lot of things to be thankful for and, in an earnest attempt to stay true to my goals for this year, I have been actively reminding myself of all of those things, this schedule is grueling.  Grad school really does have a knack for upping the ante each successive year by pushing the limits of how much work a student can handle, and this year is far from an exception.  As a countermeasure, I have endeavored to engage in active exploits of self-care to avoid Catastrophic Intern Burnout (aka CIB).

Fig 1: CIB in action.  Not pretty.

I thought I might share some of these exploits with you.

Exploit 1: Beach Please

Through a series of unexpected events that worked out in our favor, Fiancé and I were able to steal a little family-and-beach time at the beginning of the month.

I've always felt a strong draw to the ocean and had felt very low on ocean time this summer, so I was so glad to snatch a few more seaside days out of the summer before it ended.

Exploit 2: ALL THE APPLES

To celebrate my birthday earlier this month, Fiancé and I went apple-picking.

After a gorgeous drive north of our fair city, we arrived at a sweet farm teaming with families eager for early Autumn rollicking. 

There were also free wagon rides!!

We picked (most of) a half bushel of yummy, beautifully-colored apples.  We only picked (most of) a half bushel because a half bushel is a lot of apples and there are only two of us and a half bushel is SO MANY.

Full disclosure: Not our apples.

Exploit 3: ALL THE ANIMALS

Finally, as a birthday present, Fiancé procured tickets to a showcase of domestic breeds of dogs and cats.  Very predictably, it was AMAZING.

It was basically like "Best in Show" (2000).

But REAL.

I mean this with 100% love and without even a hint of mockery: this might have been some of the best people-watching I have ever experienced.  

Please note: the bull terrier dog show victory commemorative tattoo.
(Not commemorating the bull terrier pictured.)

There is something extremely delightful about the sub-population of humans who devote so much of their lives not just to animals, but to one very very very particular subtype of a subset of animals.

I am so fascinated by the fact that there are people who will dedicate so much of their lives to that dog.

Or, as the case may be, that cat.

But really, who could resist those little alien faces?

It was the most fun ever.

With the other tasks I have ahead of me this year and many long work weeks to come, I know it might be a challenge to keep up with regular, semi-ambitious activities of self-care.  But sometimes sleeping in isn't enough to fill your energy coffers, and an adventure is truly the needed remedy.

I'm glad to share these experiences with you, and hoping I'll have more to share soon!

{Heart}