Displaced
Today I am feeling a little displaced. Having to split up my existence between home and [Teaching hospital] is making me lose touch with all that is familiar when I still haven't made myself comfortable in the new environment. I'm in no-man's land these days. When I am home, I try to reconnect with friends but I've realised people lose interest in you unless they can see benefit for themselves in socializing with you. When my friends know that I am not going to be in town most of the time, they try to find others to create bonds with. And thus, our bonds weaken a little each time I leave. At [Teaching hospital] I feel displaced because the work and domain are unfamiliar to me and so I find it hard to talk to people who are talking about medicine and healthcare. And I am too new there to expect people to take much interest in me, especially socially. So here I am, home this weekend but feeling like I don't belong here.
Today intueri said something on her blog that got me thinking about an aspect of my life that I have avoided facing for a long time. And that is the fact that I am terrified of weekends, holiday, and vacations.
Being an only child, I had always been very comfortable with spending time by myself. As a kid, my parents would leave for work and I would entertain myself with books and music for hours. I never had to seek company to be happy. Moving to a totally different country drastically changed that aspect of my character. After moving to the US in 2004, I turned into someone who is extremely uncomfortable with spending time alone. I tried very hard to find friends and socialize and seemed to be happy only in the company of others. I think it was my way of dealing with being so far away from home and my parents who I am very close to. The positive aspect of this was that I made a lot of friends in my work-life and became the 'party-animal', the one who got invited to all the social gatherings in the department. However, inspite of the perks of being the 'popular one' I hated losing the ability to be happy in my own company.
For a long time, years actually, I struggled every weekend trying to find things to do. I would need to plan my weekends days in advance so as not to feel panicky on waking up on Sat morning. I would mark things on my calendar for Sat and Sun and call people first thing on Sat morning to set up events for the rest of the weekend. Doing laundry and cleaning alone on Sun mornings depressed me no end. The other thing that contributed to this hate for being alone was that I lost my enthusiasm for reading. I've blogged about this before, but the gist of it is that graduate school requires me to read so much crap that in my free time I don't look forward to reading. I rather want to do something physical like exercise, cooking, driving, traveling etc.
I realized that moving to another country and starting graduate school gave so much to reflect on (both because of the nature of graduate education and because of all the free time on my hands which was earlier spent with family) that I went from an action-person to a reflection-person. This imbalance of action and reflection in my life makes me loathe to spend my free time alone, reflecting.
In the past few months, I have found myself becoming more comfortable spending time with myself. I have slowly managed to wean myself off the dependence on friends to have a good time on weekends. But still sometimes on a slow Sat evening, the fear of having free time and nothing to do hits me. That's when I desperately call everyone I know (and no one picks up their phone because they have a 'life' on weekends) and then I resort to writing blog posts like these. Thank God for weekdays, and work.
Today intueri said something on her blog that got me thinking about an aspect of my life that I have avoided facing for a long time. And that is the fact that I am terrified of weekends, holiday, and vacations.
Being an only child, I had always been very comfortable with spending time by myself. As a kid, my parents would leave for work and I would entertain myself with books and music for hours. I never had to seek company to be happy. Moving to a totally different country drastically changed that aspect of my character. After moving to the US in 2004, I turned into someone who is extremely uncomfortable with spending time alone. I tried very hard to find friends and socialize and seemed to be happy only in the company of others. I think it was my way of dealing with being so far away from home and my parents who I am very close to. The positive aspect of this was that I made a lot of friends in my work-life and became the 'party-animal', the one who got invited to all the social gatherings in the department. However, inspite of the perks of being the 'popular one' I hated losing the ability to be happy in my own company.
For a long time, years actually, I struggled every weekend trying to find things to do. I would need to plan my weekends days in advance so as not to feel panicky on waking up on Sat morning. I would mark things on my calendar for Sat and Sun and call people first thing on Sat morning to set up events for the rest of the weekend. Doing laundry and cleaning alone on Sun mornings depressed me no end. The other thing that contributed to this hate for being alone was that I lost my enthusiasm for reading. I've blogged about this before, but the gist of it is that graduate school requires me to read so much crap that in my free time I don't look forward to reading. I rather want to do something physical like exercise, cooking, driving, traveling etc.
I realized that moving to another country and starting graduate school gave so much to reflect on (both because of the nature of graduate education and because of all the free time on my hands which was earlier spent with family) that I went from an action-person to a reflection-person. This imbalance of action and reflection in my life makes me loathe to spend my free time alone, reflecting.
In the past few months, I have found myself becoming more comfortable spending time with myself. I have slowly managed to wean myself off the dependence on friends to have a good time on weekends. But still sometimes on a slow Sat evening, the fear of having free time and nothing to do hits me. That's when I desperately call everyone I know (and no one picks up their phone because they have a 'life' on weekends) and then I resort to writing blog posts like these. Thank God for weekdays, and work.
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