View from the Houseboats

Happy Lunar New Year. Every morning our house has been full of the sounds of the lion dance drumming, which my (very white) son adores. As a houseboat-dweller, I like that this is the year of the Water Tiger, a year for expanding knowledge and wisdom, new adventures and change. It sounds auspicious.

Thursday was apparently the two-year anniversary of the first COVID+ positive patient being admitted to UCSF. I did the math and realized I’ve been working from home full-time in the pandemic a third of the time I’ve been at UCSF, or half the time I’ve been on faculty. For some reason this makes me feel more compassionate towards my own resistance to change as UCSF begins to make plans for the loosening of omicron-related restrictions and return to working onsite in March. We, as a group of people, have such diverse pandemic experiences and emotions; compassion and curiosity are going to be important during upcoming transitions.

This week’s email is coming late because I overscheduled myself with meetings and deadlines without realizing it. Friday felt like a dead sprint. Both Sam and I have been more tired and/or have been working in the evenings; we fell out of our habit of after-Theo-bedtime cardgames and conversation. I’ve taken these as evidence that I’m attempting to accomplish than is feasible in a (n overscheduled) workday. I’m proud to report that writing that sentence made me pause and take time to cancel standing meetings to enable PTO in March and April. I also proactively blocked off thinking/writing time by creating self-appointments that say “no meetings” (since apparently I fail to honor “writing time” self-appointments). Writing and thinking time is essential to my soft-money researcher role, especially because I am working on papers and a grant or two right now. There’s not enough flex in my life as a parent with a young kid get work done nights and weekends (without a major toll on my family and self) – it really needs to get done during the day.

Speaking of parenting, in the last few weeks Theo has gotten quite exacting in his artwork and frustrated when he can’t manifest what he’s imagining on paper. In my reactions to his frustration (and reams of discards), I’m trying to validate his feelings and also teach him the variety of ways artists manage this common problem – making many attempts, putting aside and revisiting later, using sketchbooks for practice, etc. I’m also trying to think of ways to re-use all that paper – perhaps as scraps for notes. Meanwhile, I too am frustrated with my inability to make my research papers and essays live up to my vision for them. This coming week I’m taking a mini-writing retreat (e.g. I blocked half a day each day for writing) to do some catch-up and to make some attempts and failures at getting some new ideas on paper.

Gratitude

• Three days of hiking in the sun with friends or Sam in a row

• Actually making it to the park to play baseball and soccer with Theo and Sam and my mom on Saturday

• A vase of sunflowers that coordinates nicely with the art behind it

Interesting things on the internet

• Grand Rounds at UCSF by Dr. Justin Bullock about research informing equity in medical education and his own experience

• Resources for coping, including with the transition to the next phase of pandemic life and 5-minute videos about resilience and wellness

• Wendy Mac’s TED talk on The Art of Paying Attention and an article about her and Draw Together (I haven’t yet convinced Theo to watch but I adore)

• The Radical Woman Behind Goodnight Moon

• Deep dive on the upcoming EUA for Pfizer vaccines for kids under 5

• Electronic surveillance and dementia

• An op-ed from a colleague on how the pandemic helped prepare her to cope with her father’s death

• Another essay recommended to me about a father’s death

• YouTube series on “Contextualizing Care”

• Vegetarian noodle recipes we anticipate trying soon

• An OnBeing podcast about asset-framing that is making me re-think the structure of some essays