It is with a sense of numb relief that I mark the completion of dental school in this space. My final check-out meeting was this morning, graduation is this Friday. I started four years ago, on a hot August day. I lived elsewhere then. Mykala and I weren’t married. I had no idea what I was in for. It’s no understatement to say I was a different person.
My emotional bank account has been enriched. My intellectual, interpersonal, experiential accounts, too. Our fiscal bank account has experienced a stunning downward trajectory below zero, a trend which will likely prove the most dramatic of our lifetimes. Neither of us question the value of the investment.
Lately, I’ve begun composing these journal entries as though they were letters to my children — this imagining shapes my topics but not my prose. I’ll make an exception to that, and address our future children now.
Kids, you never knew me before I had this degree. I didn’t know me very well, either. So, I learned it’s not true when someone says that “it wasn’t meant to be.” I could’ve taken a handful of times in school to mean that “this wasn’t meant to be.” I could’ve stopped, left, quit, given up, thrown in the towel and convinced myself that forces outside my control conspired against me to prevent me from reaching my goal. However, I learned a really REALLY important thing. That really important thing is this: sometimes, you only have control over your own effort, so you need to calibrate your self perception; at the end of the challenge, if you can honestly say to yourself “I did everything I could to make this happen,” then you’ve nothing to worry about. Don’t take that “everything” lightly — the entire statement descends into horrid platitude without that word. You’ll astound yourself at what “giving everything I can” can mean. “Wait, all I’ve got is this, and yet I can do all that?” Yes, you can. We set up blocks and boundaries and limits at what’s uncomfortable, but the true limits lie way, waaay out there.
You decide what’s meant to be in your life, and you make that happen. These things don’t happen by fighting against all that surrounds you, but recognizing the little switches you can flip, knowing when it’s exactly the right moment to throw all your weight against the door blocking you and your dream. You can’t move the ocean, but you can surf the breakers back to the shore.
Inspired by our uneaten bunch of bananas, which must be eaten quickly while ripe, I’m proud to announce my invention: Banana Days. Right now, it’s “Banana Days 2012”, which will last until May 4th. I’ve decided Banana Days will be annual, beginning on the first of May, ending the first Friday after. Some years, Banana Days will be poorly named, and will only be one day in length. Festive activities will be banana-based.
Recently, I realized that the problem with Facebook is that you can’t actually discuss the problems with Facebook on Facebook. By “can’t”, I mean the discourse has dropped to the lowest common denominator (Cf. “eternal September”). So, in a place where everyone is showing selected pieces of their lives to give an aura of grandeur, carefree frivolity, success, beauty, ease… there’s no time for subtlety, considered introspection, gentle humor. The problem, set in terms of one of my typically strained metaphors: if you’re staring at neon signs all day and then someone shows you a watercolor, it’s going to be boring.
The sun set a while ago and I’m sitting in the living room with the warm lights and furnace keeping away the unseasonably cool night. “Tied to Me (Acoustic)” by the magnificent William Fitzsimmons is quietly playing on the stereo. The couch is snugly in its new corner in the living room (we recently re-arranged furniture). Rain is gently falling outside, making tiny sounds on the windows. And, I know, this is sounding like a bad beginning to a dull book. But, literally, that’s what is happening right now. Forgive me the pedestrian topic and stunted prose: there’s poetry in everyday life, but I am still trying to capture that in writing.
I’m waiting for my lovely wife to come home from work. I talk with her and learn from her everyday, and she is the best luck I’ve ever had at anything, ever. As I’ve been saying recently, if happenstance is never on my side again, I’ll know it is because I used up all the luck in my life when I met my wife.
Mykala’s upcoming job transition and my student loans are both taking up our thoughts. Where will I work? Where will we live? I’d like to remain here in the city, enjoying a few years of youth, culture, and the simple life of a married couple.
For the past four years, things (WOW there’s a world outside of dental school!) have been continuing around me and I haven’t had the energy or presence of mind to engage them. I’ve kept in touch with some of my friends, and I really love talking to them and planning things to do. However, I’m hesitant to contact some I’ve fallen out of touch with. Are they interested in being friends anymore? Did they consider picking up the phone and then thought… “Nah; no thanks. I’m all set.” How do you even go about figuring that out? Is this why most friendships have an expiration date?
I’m really happy to have stayed in touch with those I have, but I just don’t know how to call someone and get this point across:
“So, yeah, sorry about the last 48 months… I’ve been really busy. What’s new? Do you still live in the state? What life-changing experiences have you had that I’ve completed missed that might make us incompatible now?”
What I’d be saying is this: “I’ve been too busy… for you.” Doesn’t seem like a good start.
I recently poured up a tooth positioner of my teeth from 13 years ago. There’s tooth 6 with a sharp, new, unworn incisal edge. As I looked at the time capsule stone model, I ran my tongue over the real thing, tracing the now-rough, worn edge of that same tooth. My bite used to be better. My teeth used to be less worn. It’s hard for me to accept that things change. Teeth. Friends. Jobs. Homes.
I know, I know. Taking pictures of flowers is easy. I need to start carrying my camera places again, to take pictures of things that are more fleeting and difficult to photograph.
