Into the tree

I was walking home, well to my car at least, at dusk, when I noticed the clouds and the sunset and the glint off the water under the rain. The fresh, spicy Autumn air was everywhere burning just the tips of my ears. I have to park a fair way from the bus stop most mornings and the birds were screeching in the trees - rainbow feathers falling around in a glorious blizzard of colour. I was so busy looking up and smiling at the beauty of it all that I walked straight into a tree, only avoiding hitting my face because I was carrying my books in front of me. It was very unglamorous and I doubt I looked very professional. Gazing up at the stars is not the sort of behaviour one expects from a wise and serious registrar, stressed by exams and study and long hours. But I find I can't help it.

Today I did my first lot of interventional procedures. Using both hands to steady and guide. To use my knowledge and my skills and my kick arse coordination (thanks, years of gaming!) to safely and as untraumatically as possible assist in the medical care of patients. It was such a tiny tiny thing, but snapping on that latex, and prepping and draping skin and doing something that could impact so strongly pushed that tiny little switch that lit up a whole room inside of me. I feel happy and light and excited by all that I'm learning - and I'm learning so much. There are so many amazing teachers that are happy to teach and I have to remind myself to slow down a little sometimes, so enthusiastic do I feel about wanting to understand everything.

I was in a physics tutorial yesterday and there was a concept being explained that required thinking out of regular dimensions and space and using a different space. Non cartesian planes (Poor Descartes!). And we don't technically need to know it for the exam so when asked about it our tutor smiled and said that he could explain it but that if we'd prefer, just to think of it as magic. And while I am too curious to ever just leave it at that, the explanation was no less magic for me when I understood it. I am in an area of such phenomenal discovery and advances that it is hard not to be blown away by the human achievement of it all.

Sometimes I am sad and I miss my everyday clinical life. I miss the simplicity and complexity (and the beauty of that paradox) of physically interacting always with patients. And sometimes I question why I'm here and why I'm doing this. But then days like today I am buoyant and gleaming and walking into trees. And I figure that if the sky is still so beautiful and the colours so vivid then my choices can't be all bad and I bounce a little higher with each step and keep on keeping on.