tofu and self-nurturing

The past month has been 100% crazytown for me. Sarah came home to Massachusetts, so I took the week of Martin Luther King day to fly back there to visit for a week. Not content just to see my sister after a year and a half, I also managed to dart down to New Haven to see Grace, and from there we went to NYC to see Ted and meet up with Chris and Zach too. I returned to Ann Arbor for five days, only to leave again the following Saturday for the National Health Policy Conference in Washington DC.

That's a whole lot of awesome life experience packed into one month, especially if that month also happens to be the first month of a new semester. And while I value those experiences, all that activity left me feeling very drained and like my head was just spinning all the time.

Last semester I often stayed on campus until 7, 8, or 9 pm to study or work. I am definitely more productive when I just keep plugging away on campus, but a certain level of stress brings on rapidly diminishing returns in the form of me needing to sit around and do nothing for a while (an evening, a weekend, the whole of winter break) to recover. So I've settled on a gentler approach. When I'm done with classes/committments most days, I come home. I continue to work here, but I feel much more relaxed in my own home, changed into loungey clothes, in a comfy chair.

With all of this lounging, it's tempting to pop a Lean Cuisine into the microwave and keep reading. But as I mentioned in my last post, I've been cooking dinner. Real food. It's glorious. Tonight I made a Garam Masala Tofu Scramble from 101 Cookbooks, and it has reminded me the extent to which simple vegetarian food is my comfort food. I've been out of the cooking swing of things for so long, the concept of weeknight meals had begun to elude me. Now that I'm doing it again, I remember how much cooking relaxes me. Chopping vegetables is meditative, sauteeing is magical, and relaxing with the result is deeply satisfying. Mmmmmmm, tofu.

24 minutes of blogging

I started my second semester yesterday, and I'm sitting here in my health services survey class with 24 minutes of time left on my battery. So here's 24 minutes of my thoughts!

My first semester ended on a really positive note. My grades were good, but most importantly, I really saw my ability to focus and get shit done. Honestly, when I started, that was my biggest worry. As a recalcitrant procrastinator when I was an undergraduate and even when I was taking grad classes in Arizona, I became pretty convinced getting anything done was always going to be a struggle. But in the middle of the semester, something changed. I realized I wanted to be here, and that this work was important to me. I also realized that the sky wasn't going to fall if my work wasn't perfect. Yup, that's right, I'm a perfectionist who procrastinates, imagine that.

This semester is looking okay so far. I'm excited for my regression class and for econ, and less so for the health services survey class. My politics seminar has a lot of potential, and I'm oddly excited for a presentation-based class. I'm going to make the world's most awesome PowerPoints. I'm also trying to get into a class on decision-making and risk simulation stuff, in my ongoing attempt to be 70% as cool as Nate Silver. I want to learn Monte Carlo simulation!