Week 51
View from the houseboats
Saturday morning at breakfast, Sam casually said, “let’s see if we can get a campsite at Pantoll”. We periodically did this pre-pandemic because it’s ~20 minutes from the house so we can drive home to let the dog out if we don’t have a dog sitter (we never do, our dog is … special). I suppose I should be grateful that it’s been over a year since we had to pack to travel. Then again, I read a few pages of Bird by Bird by the campfire, and there was a line about a character saying “I could resent the ocean if I tried”, and now the phrase is resonating in my head, like an accusation.
As an aside, once upon a time Sam and I were playing the game Therapy with my dad and stepmother, and Sam had to guess which of three time intervals my father thought he would hold a grudge for. My father said, “a year, but only because eternity wasn’t an option”, and Sam said, “I chose a week because I thought Krista was exaggerating.”
Back to camping. One version of the story is that Theo was ecstatic to pack up all his stuffed animals to bring, to play in the tent, to get a map to study intently, to roast hot dogs on telescopic forks over the campfire, to eat raw marshmallows, to throw sticks in the fire, to wake up the neighboring campers with his stage whisper at 6:30 am. Another version is that after we got the campsite we spent 2 hours trying to get Theo to hike 3 miles (he thought we were just going to sit in the tent all day and was very disappointed he had to hike), 1 hour sitting in the car while he napped (very rare these days), an hour letting him watch YouTube videos of octopi while we recovered, 2 hours of packing, 1 hour of setting up when we got there, 15 minutes of sitting still and enjoying the fire, going to bed at 7pm because Theo didn’t want to be in the tent alone, getting up at 6:15, getting home at 10am and spending all day chipping away at things like airing out all the smoky gear, doing laundry, etc, in between chivvying Theo out for a short bike ride, to the playground, and finally letting him watch both Frozen movies (and listening to him sing along). Everyone’s exhausted and there are great photos. I suspect this sums up a lot of parenthood. What’s my point here, really? Perhaps just a reminder to us all that a lot depends on where you stand, on the framing, of how you interpret, experience, and remember something.
(Re)Learnings and observations
Holding space for people: Sometimes people need someone to listen. Sometimes they need affirmation that what they are going through is incredibly hard. That we still grieve months (and years) after a person dies. That parenting is hard. That sleeplessness due to parenting is extra hard. We aren’t always able to hold space for others (because it does take emotional bandwidth) but I’m glad I’m able to return some of what has been done for me over the last few years, either in individual ways or helping create communities where support could bloom.
The body keeps the score: This is the title to a bestselling book on traumatic stress (that I highly recommend – one of few nonfiction books I’ve read outside of work requirements) but it’s also a reminder that our bodies may be remembering that we’re at anniversary of the start of the pandemic, even if we’re not cognitively acknowledging it. I found this to be true after my dad died – I could judge when the monthly anniversary of his death was approaching just by how I was feeling internally. On a semi-related note, UCSF is having a series of events in two weeks, beginning at the anniversary of the start of SIP in the Bay Area, to honor the anniversary and talk about what comes next.
Anger as unacknowledged grief: For those of us who are still reinventing ourselves around the wound of a loss, beware the manifestation of grief as anger. I was reminded of this while listening to episode #131 of Griefcast this week during a run. I continue to find that periodically listening to grief podcasts helps prevent acknowledged grief from accumulating too deeply. Yet I’m glad I’ve scheduled time off next week for reflection over the week of what is not my father’s 71st birthday.
Flexing the “no” muscle: I can’t remember where I saw this phrase this week, but it was a good reminder that curating our to-do list, staying focused, is something we have to practice. I have had a few invites for new opportunities arise recently, and I really struggled with saying no to one of them. I ended up running the idea by a few different people – mentors, peers, and others – in an attempt to both get feedback and figure out why I was having trouble saying pressing send on the drafted email saying no. I suspect the real answer is that I need to do another round of envisioning what I want the next 3-5-10 years of my career to look like so that I have clearer guidelines for what feeds into that vision and what’s a distraction – because I have changed so much over the prior couple years.
Anti-racism actions: Took the UCSF Health Equity Pledge…which is I guess a start but then I re-read Dr. Vanessa Grubbs’ NEMJ piece and listen to a Black colleague frustrated by another department and reflect on the JAMA “structural racism” podcast disaster being discussed on Twitter, and wonder…pledges don’t matter if we lose the Black faculty, staff, trainees and students, we already have. One of the weirdnesses of UCSF is that there are pockets of goodness (of which I have been fortunate to mostly be in) and pockets of toxicity, and a whole lotta mix in between. Next step: completing the DEI Champion online training (part 1 of 3). As a related FYI, NIH has a new National Institutes of Health (NIH) UNITE initiative to end structural racism in biomedical research. There’s no way it has enough funding for the job ahead.
Gratitude & appreciation
On the camping trip I got 10-15 minutes to drink hot chocolate in a camp chair by the fire and read a book in the evening, and a similar amount of time to drink coffee and read news by the fire in the morning.
I motivated for a bike ride in the perfect Sunday midday weather using the trick of “I just have to go for 10 minutes and if I’m miserable I can go home” (I did my usual ride, it was glorious if slow).
Neighbors made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and shared them after Theo went to sleep Sunday.
Theo discovered Snoopy and Woodstock this week and his delight is pretty cute.
I motivated to get up early and run in the dark twice this week before 8:30 meetings …and realized that perhaps I need to be getting up a bit earlier for my sleep cycle (given that going back to sleep another day actually made for a harder morning).
It was the 8 year anniversary of my dissertation defense this week.
I discovered you can change your zoom preferences to have the audio suppress background noises – if you set it to high it apparently blocks typing and dog barks!
I worked with a colleague to start a parents-of-young-kids support channel on Teams – that remarkably had very quick engagement to add people and do some introductions!
A colleague wrote an editorial (I’m a coauthor, but she did the heavy lifting) and it got a response from the executive editor that said “thank you for such an outstanding editorial”. I’m kvelling.
Getting one of the elusive vaccine appointments
Events for International Women’s Day March 5-12 at UCSF. I’ve signed up for Dr. Arghavan Salles’ talk on While Building Your Career, Don't Forget to Build Your Family and Dr. Reshma Jagsi’s talk on Promoting Equity for Women in Academic Medicine: An Evidence-Based Approach.
Taking time off (at least off meetings) next week (granted, I realize that’s an issue with having just signed up for talks…making space to do things based on my own needs instead of the “supposed to’s”).
As before, I invite you to share how you are doing and your small goals. I also invite you to share this page with anyone you think it might resonate with.
Hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.
Krista