sidenote

family blend

figure 1

Just left Japan, I'm about 6 miles above the Pacific Ocean right now.

The last time I was in Japan, it was the summer before college. This time, the summer before med school. So the next time.. vacation before residency?

A lot has changed since that last time I was in Japan - I survived college and turned into a passable adult. Some combination of running, making friends, and studying did the trick. Sidenote - I think endlessly repeating this three step cycle is what turned me into a passable adult (figure 1).

Anyways, being in Japan for the first time as an adult, it's made me realize how much I'm like my family.

The most obvious place to start.

My dad, who hasn't been a huge part of my life since my parents got divorced about fifteen years ago, is an MD/PhD that loves science. He's a physician that studies and teaches Molecular Biology (my major at Kenyon), and he loves thinking about how to do good science.

Jobs of family on my dad's side:

doctor, nurse, nurse, nurse, doctor, vet, vet, vet

Medicine is in my blood.

I read a little bit of my (mom's side) grandfather's memoir, which he wrote partly because he was bored in retirement, and partly to leave advice to his children and grandchildren.

My Japanese is degrading every day.. but his memoir reminded me of sidenote. He thought incredibly seriously about life, and believed it was about people and relationships.

He loved the poem "youth" by Samuel Ullman

Tokyo, in the midst of the busiest intersection in the world

"youth is not a time of life

it is a state of mind

it is a matter of the will

a quality of the imagination

youth means adventure over ease

years may wrinkle the skin

but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.."

I would have loved to have been friends with my grandfather, had beers, and talked life with him.

speaking of which..

My cousin Satoshi and I were born six days apart. Since we're so close in age, we were paired up whenever I came to Japan. I hadn't seen him in about six years, but after sitting down for coffee.. I saw a the influence of grandfather Mouri in both of us.

satoshi and ken

He's shy, but he thinks relationships are the most important thing in the world. At the same time, he doesn't have Facebook because being so connected to the world is too exhausting.

He majored in philosophy because he wanted to be friends with the kind of people who stroke their chin hairs and ask, "Why?"

He wants to have a 9 to 5 job so he can spend the rest of his time reading, thinking, and writing his memoir.

The moral.. you can't escape your family, even if you jump continents and go to Ohio/Portland/Charleston.

From my dad's side - medicine. And my mom's side - philosophizing.

I was born to be a physician-writer.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Relationships in med school pt 2: Monday Nights

After a long day, Katie deals with her problems by talking through her day.

After a long day, I need to shower and get away from the world.

smile

One of the top 3 interesting things about marriage is that you learn an incredible amount about what makes a person tick, which is sometimes.. challenging. It’s been an ongoing learning process for Katie and I to work with each other’s extroverted/ introvertedness. One thing that’s really helped me is my Monday nights.

Back in Portland, Monday night was my Sabbath. I wouldn’t plan any social occasions, I’d come home early from work, and even Katie wasn’t allowed to talk to me. I’d get completely absorbed in myself.

During my Monday nights these are the top 4 things that produce a holy feel:

4) Drink beer – A beer definitely takes the edge off, and leaves me just uninhibited enough to write something interesting.

3) Shower – There’s something holy about showering. It probably has something to do with feeling clean, especially in humid Charleston where I always feel sticky. I prefer to shower at least twice a day, up to six per day.

i need running buddies

2) Working out – After a long day it's a relief to blow off some steam. I've been trying to analyze the benefits of cardiovascular vs strength training on stress. I generally side with cardio for stress relief, but within cardio - should I go hard? How hard? Elliptical? Run?

Sidenote - I’d love to get back into running. I should make it one of my goals in med school to pick up a running buddy.

1) Writing - Writing ranges from a self-absorbed waste of time - to a a cheap form of stress-relief/therapy - up to a surreal experience. It's like going to a place in another dimension, shaking hands with God, then coming back to communicate it to the world. Most of the time I'd say it's a waste of time.

I imagine getting back on the learning curve of school will drain on all the multiple facets of my life, so I’m trying to accumulate as many sanity-maintaining habits as possible. I consider it one of the top responsibilities in marriage to take care of myself and stay sane. These Monday nights are a prime example.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Onward and Upward

I’m sitting on a plane to Japan, officially done with my first lab rotation. That’s 11 weeks down, 389 weeks to go. To celebrate being 2.75 % done, I’m vacationing with Katie in Japan.

Sidenote - this raises the question, how much bigger do we get with the celebrations? After finishing year one, dog? After finishing year two, kid? After finishing the program, house party headlined by Walk the Moon, K’naan, or Danna Nieto’s future band?

Anyways, here are two quick things I learned in the pre-M1 summer lab rotation:

1) I love science.

I sometimes forget that.

For my first lab rotation I worked with Phil Howe. His lab studies how cancer spreads all over your body.

yeah, I'm about 30% from the line

The upside - Phil lets his students roam free, which is daunting, but I wanted that freedom more than anything.

I wanted to find a lab where I could put myself to the test and see if I was more Kobe Bryant or Paul Pierce. Sidenote - The breakdown: both guys think they’re the best player on the court. Kobe has five rings and is a top ten player all-time. Pierce has a couple rings but isn’t quite a historic player. There’s also the possibility that I’m Jamal Crawford –same confidence level as Kobe/Pierce but 2.75% as good.

I love comparing myself to basketball players.

The downside – it’s a huge pain to pick an interesting scientific question, there is SO MUCH BS out there.

I spent the summer scouring the cancer literature, following big-time researchers on twitter, and talking bullshit with scientists to figure out which scientific questions are actually interesting.

So far.. I have no idea. Good thing I have 389 weeks until I can get a real job.

2) Taking time off between undergrad and med school is CLUTCH.

I’ve always been young for my grade. I couldn’t drive until my senior year in high school, and I didn’t turn 21 until my senior year of college! But I met my three MD/PhD classmates, and they’re all straight out of college. A part of me is jealous that they get to start two years before me.

At the same time, here’s what I did between graduating Kenyon (June 2010) and starting at MUSC (May 2012).

good times

Moved to a city, Portland, OR, where I didn’t know anybody

Learned to ride a bike

Leased my first grown up apartment

Got married to the most beautiful woman in the world

Started writing/launched sidenote

Ran two marathons – Portland by myself, and Eugene with my friend Amulya

Lead two bible studies

Visited (on leisure) DC, NYC, Philly, Denver, San Francisco, and Worland, Wyoming

Those two years were crucial for my long-term survival. I was lucky in Portland to pick up hobbies like writing, and to start a family with Katie. Hopefully that’ll keep me from my biggest fear – being a boring student whose entire life is med school.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Imaginary Coffee Date pt 1: Metzger/Noguchi

I wanted to start a series of posts where I exchanged emails with a friend on a topic we would usually bullshit about over coffee or beers.

Basically, I wanted to copy Bill Simmons:

Hope you like the first one. And let me know if you want to have an imaginary coffee date posted on sidenote!

lauren and I, repping UNC blue

Lauren Metzger and I met at Kenyon College five years ago, we were breakfast buddies. Lauren is currently an MSW student at UNC-Chapel Hill, and is a top notch triathlete. In about a month, Lauren and one of my best friend’s Kaleb Keyserling are getting married! She made time in her busy wedding planning schedule to have this email chain with me:

The topic: what we miss about Kenyon.

Ken: There's a lot I miss about Kenyon - the convenience of living in Hanna and walking one minute to class, healthy all-you-can-eat meals at Pierce, but #1 is a sense of purpose.

I woke up every morning knowing I had to get up for 8:10 AM class, so I got out of bed and got to work. Post-college it’s real vague. I could be in lab at 7 AM. I could also go in at 10 AM. Odds are my boss won’t care, and I definitely won’t be seeing any report cards.

Lauren: Two things stood out to me - the first, food! I miss walking into the dining hall and having so many options at my finger tips. Not having to grocery shop and having local food was great- loved the turkey burgers! (I think those were local)

The second thing I miss are the people and structure. The xc team was such a source of stability, something I could always count on. I miss having teammates to run with. I could have enjoyed the people more if I had let myself. I was so worried about doing well academically and I think I was also a little socially anxious - worried about rejection.

xc teams are apparently models of structure

Ken: I totally agree - there's so much pressure to do more and more. I know I sacrificed several relationship for grades or to pile on more extracurriculars. That said.. I don’t regret it. As much as I love relationships - if I hadn't made those sacrifices I wouldn’t be in med school, and I can't imagine not being a doctor.

Thoughts on work/play balance, post-Kenyon?

Lauren: Interesting - I was reading an article about women sacrificing top careers for family (which is a huge complex relationship). The balance is very tricky.

Post-Kenyon, the distance between friends only grows! You can't just text them and say "hey middle ground coffee?" It becomes "hey can you buy a plane ticket to come see me for a weekend that may already be really busy and sorry I forgot you can't afford that plane ticket...."

lauren and kaleb

It was nice to have friends so close, but now everyone’s all over the country. It’s so much effort to keep in touch, and let’s face it - I like to be lazy and think my life is way busier than it actually is.

Hmmm, career success....it depends on the field. Medicine is hard, I was talking to kaleb about how he’s going to balance spending time with his family (a.k.a. me) while being a doctor. Don't think we’ve figured it out yet.

I know my balance will come with a flexible job, like academia, being a student all over again. I HATE unpredictability. I felt like everything was so predictable at Kenyon. So structured in a way that I miss.

Ken: Yeah, and we’re back to the structure. It’s weird that our favorite thing about Kenyon was structure.. sometimes it felt like there was no structure and everything was a blur. Or maybe that was just us going at blur speed within our structured schedules. Either way, good times at Kenyon.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Top 5 Medical Memoirs

I love all kinds of books, but I devour medical memoir. It feels like talking life with my future peers, friends, and self. So, I thought I’d compile a list of my top 5 medical memoirs :

Where I read in Wyoming

5) Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande, 288 pg

“People underestimate the importance of diligence as a virtue. No doubt this has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems.”

One Sentence Summary – Intangibles that are important in medicine.

Gawande is a believer in intangibles, and Better is about the intangibles crucial for medicine – including diligence, personableness, and honesty. He tells anecdotes of historical medical accomplishments like the polio vaccine, and of current medical struggles like getting doctors to wash their hands.

4) Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation by Sandeep Jauhar, 320 pg

“That guy on the boat, looking up at the hospital. Do you know what that guy is thinking? I should have been a doctor.”

One Sentence Summary – Sometimes hilarious/always honest account of internship.

"I should have been a doctor."

Jauhar, a former physics PhD student that changed paths to medicine, chronicles his internship year at a NYC hospital. Rather than describing all his great doctoring moments, he takes an introspective look at his struggles with medicine. It was refreshing to see that a real life doctor still has doubts.

3) The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese, 368 pg

“Within your secrets lies your sickness.”

One Sentence Summary – A ode to a friendship between two struggling men.

Verghese also wrote an NYT bestselling novel, Cutting for Stone, and works at Stanford Med as an advocate of the doctor-patient relationship. Previously, he worked in El Paso, where he bonded with his co-worker, David, over a shared love of tennis. Verghese was going through a divorce and David was recovering from a drug addiction, so they both relied on their relationship to anchor their unstable lives. Verghese’s sharp understanding of human emotions is impressive.

2) Walk on Water: Inside an Elite Pediatric Surgical Unit by Michael Ruhlman, 340 pg

“You cannot lie in this work. There are so many people in this world who have no idea who the fuck they are.”

One Sentence Summary – Psychoanalysis of peds cardiac surgeons in the pursuit of greatness.

Road to greatness?

Ruhlman, a journalist, spends a hectic year following a pediatric cardiac surgery team. Peds cardiac surgeons fit the surgery stereotype to a T - they know nobody else can do what they do, and that lives depend on their hands. He really studies the personalities that make up the team, and figures out what makes them tick.

1) Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Paul Farmer/Tracy Kidder, 352 pg

“I’m going to build my own fucking hospital. And there’ll be none of that there, thank you.”

One Sentence Summary – inspirational read of doctor in Haiti.

Farmer is a doctor bringing healthcare to rural Haiti. I am forever indebted to Mountains, a book that gave me an idol.

I struggle with the tensions of a Kobe-like competitive edge with my desire to help people, and in Farmer I saw an idol that balanced those tensions. He’s painted as a selfless demigod, but I saw a cocky young doctor that fed off the rest of the world doubting him. He believes it is his individual responsibility to save Haiti.

So anyways, that’s my top 5. Let me know if you’ve read any good ones. I’m currently reading Samuel Shem’s House of God.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Top 3 Med School Goals

I came across an old Google Doc, “Year Goals 2010.” I set three goals to accomplish during my Portland life:

beers

1) Have good friends in Portland – check

2) Get in med school – check

3) Fall in love again - check

PDX goals - dominated

After this good omen I put my top 3 Charleston goals on paper:

#3) Make good friends in Charleston, then drink beers and talk shit about life.

Token goal for my life. I have a theory that my wheelhouse of relationship-building is “camaraderie through suffering.” This describes med school/residency to a T. I’m still planning on being super intentional, just in case. Plus, I need to make Sidenote famous.

#2) Move on to a big pond/match at Boston Children’s Hospital.

At the end of med school there’s a process called The Match where each med school graduate gets matched with a hospital to undergo clinical training. The brief explanation: each graduate ranks their favorite hospitals, each hospital ranks their favorite graduates, and a complex computer program matches everyone up. It’s kind of like the NBA draft, needlessly complicated and surely fixed.

Sidenote – If cancer is cured in my lifetime, I desperately want to be there. I’m convinced it will happen where brilliance and passion are fused, but I’m not sure where that is.. I assume it’s a big pond. All I know is I haven’t seen it. So I’m hoping to catapult myself from Charleston to a top pediatric hospital.

Four years ago, I spent spring break shadowing an intensive care specialist at a pantheon pediatric hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital. I rounded with the smartest residents in the country, we reviewed mysterious cases nobody else could solve, I watched a peds cardiac surgeon nonchalantly cut open a four day old infant’s chest. It was awesome.

a hot pond

The best part?

The attending was a Kenyon alum. It’s a sign, I swear.

I want it.

#1) Be a good husband.

I know the gunner side of me will come out in med school. A part of me really wants to crush med school. I want to violently shove it down the throats of all those top ten schools that rejected me.

At the same time, I’ve watched enough Scrubs (every episode at least three times) and read enough meaning-of-life books to know happiness does not come from matching at a top hospital. Sidenote – my top 3 meaning-of-life books + conclusions:

some great meaning-of-life reads

3) Walk on Water by Michael Ruhlman – Life is about pushing yourself for other people

2) Home Game by Michael Lewis – Life doesn’t make sense and you just have to accept that you can’t win

1) The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons – the secret of basketball, is that it’s not about basketball. It’s about avoiding the temptation to believe it’s all about your own stats. Sidenote – I really need to write another post about this book.

Anyways, I do better in life with a goal-oriented outlook, so I hope the prospect of The Match will keep me entertained during med school. At the same time, I hope to remember that life isn’t about matching at hospitals, it’s about investing in relationships, especially with Katie - since she just drove across the country to hang out with me while I write blog posts.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Relationships During Med School pt 1: An Intro

katie

A little over a year ago, I was considering getting engaged to Katie. I asked one of my similarly pre-med friends what he thought, and he told me:

"No way! Med school is too big of a strain on a relationship. I’ve heard of so many couples breaking up during med school, it seems like too much of a risk to go through a divorce, or have a marriage really suffer. I’d only do it if I had a super solid stable relationship going into it."

top 5 moment from the wedding

It’s an interesting point, and one well taken. Except for the part where I still got married. Documented here in my #1 most popular post: Pre-wedding running diary.
Anyways, the point remains that relationships are stressful during med school. Sidenote - if you believe what med students tell you about med school, it’s the equivalent of Vietnam crossed with giving birth, except more intense. Realistically, it’s probably like an overconsuming full-time job. Work 50 – 60 hours a week and struggle not to think about it at home, but it’s not quite running through jungles and getting shot at, and it’s probably manageable if you think about it.

If I want to keep going down this track of hypercompetitive academia, it only gets harder. A few years ago, I worked in a lab at Harvard, where I mostly worked with one of the junior faculty, Dr. Liang. He was a fairly recent MD/PhD graduate that was trying to start up his own lab, and he told me about the interview process he went through at Harvard. Dr. Liang had concerns about the stress that a competitive environment might place on his family. The department chair gave him this advice:

“The second wife is always happy.”

The whole medical/research career track isn’t exactly family friendly.

science in action

But like any difficult task, it can be done. There are neurosurgeons with healthy family lives and HHMI lab scientists known for prioritizing their kids' soccer games. I want to know how they did it, so I’m going to write a series of posts throughout my time at MUSC analyzing relationships during med school – primarily Katie and mine. Hopefully this will become my third book.

Sidenote - the first two:

1- token memoir of internship, aka rip-off of Sandeep Jahuar’s Intern.

2- running interview with me on my cross-country road trip publicizing my first book, aka rip-off of David Foster Wallace’s Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

This is already getting long, so I’ll leave you with a question I’ve been wondering about.

Is it easier for a power couple – both med students – or a couple where only one is a med student?

My answer: it depends on the stage of life. During med school, it’s easier for a power couple since they experience all the same things, study together, suffer together, etc, but after med school, ESPECIALLY after residency when people start to transition from a “school” to a “real life” stage of life, it progressively gets easier for non power couples.

Anyways, I welcome your opinion on this.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Tell your friends about me.

The REAL reason I want to go to med school

One of the many place I pretended to care about people.

I have several friends going through the med school admissions process this year. Just having finished it, I am extremely worried for their mental health.

The process is a lot of acting. There’s a vague template that med schools want, and there’s unbelievable pressure to dress in suits and say cookie cutter snipits to please the all-powerful admissions committees.

In order to appease such bureaucracy, I wrote a post last year [link to med school personal statement here] that evolved into my med school personal statement. To summarize: I want to be a doctor because I had been privileged and given the opportunity to flourish, so I wanted to lead a life where I could give other people that same chance. Medicine seemed perfect – I could turn people’s lives around.

The personal statement is part of the reason I want to be a doctor, but it’s also the “best sounding” reason. Now that the powers-that-be have signed my acceptance letter, I can give you the top 3 REAL reasons why I chose med school:

#3) The results are tangible. In the lab, I constantly struggle to sustain intrinsic motivation through countless failures. SO MANY long days are meaningless. The clinic provides a lot more extrinsic motivation – patients come in, you try to help them, rinse, repeat.

#2) My favorite show growing up: Scrubs. I'm hoping if I become a doctor I will become JD from Scrubs – over-the-top introspective, selfishly cares too much about other people, slowly develops as alpha male. So far it's working. I seriously debated for at least seven minutes the pro/cons of putting this as #1.

Sidenote – Sandeep Jauhar wrote one of my favorite medical memoirs, Intern. Jauhar used to be a physics PhD student, but decided there wasn’t enough meaning in PhD research so he changed tracks to med school. The book is about his intern year, the first year of training after medical school. It’s infamous as the hardest year of medical training, and Jauhar writes a hilarious and honest record of the year.

He describes one scene when he and the fellow interns are burnt out and giving all the wrong answers on rounds. The attending physician walks them over to the window, and points to the river, at a guy looking up at the hospital. He says:

“That guy in the boat, looking at the hospital, do you know what that guy is thinking? I should have been a doctor.”

#1) The scene struck a cord with me because the #1 reason I want to be a doctor is that I need my life to have meaning - I never want to be the guy in that boat. My life is a never-ending balance of comfort and meaning. Whenever life gets too easy I always question if my life is meaningless, and whenever my life is involved in too much stuff I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of sanity.

Sacrificing time and mental sanity sucks, but I would rather struggle with burnout than meaninglessness.

Sidenote – this desire to have a meaningful life is the #2 reason why I got married, but that’s a whole different post.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

The Consequences of Caring

yeah, I had long hair once

"And there are those who give with pain, and that pain is their baptism."

- The Prophet, K Gibran

Years ago, I was involved in competitive athletics. You might be surprised because I’m as skinny as a straw, and not like the ones you see in milkshakes, more like the ones you see in cocktail drinks, and you self-consciously wonder, “Is this to stir with? Or drink from? I’ll just watch what everyone else does.” Seriously, I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.

I used to run cross country for Kenyon, and five years into my competitive career I had a Steve Nash moment. Sitting in front of my locker. Another track season over, ending as usual in disappointment. I had come a long ways from where I started - I was a legitimate member of a collegiate cross country team, but I couldn’t help but remember a legendary running quote:

“To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift.”

I understood that my body had athletic limits, but it haunted me to consider that I could give more. Before I could put the period on the running chapter of my life, I had to confront the edge of my limits.

That summer I lived in semi-isolation in Wyoming, and totaled over 1000 miles. A previous post. It was a daily ritual to run upwards of 20 miles. It was also a daily ritual to question what the f I was doing.

When I got back to Kenyon, I had a pantheon cross country season. I shattered my personal bests and walked away from that season knowing I had given my best. But after a few weeks of sitting around, watching everyone else gearing up for indoor track, I knew I wasn’t ready to go back. I decided to train by myself and take a break from running. Mentally and emotionally, I was burnt toast. I never had another great running moment again.

kind of looks like the gel took a poop

I’m currently training to become a scientist. I love my job, but there are moments when my head might explode.

The two hardest parts of science:

1) It’s all behind-the-scenes, so it totally depends on my intrinsic motivation. All of my long days at the bench are only the first step for clinicians to come up with novel treatments. Is this doing anything for people?

2) Experiments go wrong all the time. Some weeks I literally accomplish nothing. Shouldn't I be sitting at home and watching funny youtube videos instead?

This past week was no good. I messed up my own experiments. I messed up my co-worker’s experiments. A lot of stuff went wrong, and it’s a daily ritual to question what the f I’m doing.

For now, I love science, and I know caring about it gives me an edge. I’m in the lab early. I’m in the lab late. I obsess about doing everything right. I study all the little ticks that make baller scientists baller. But I know that same edge that gave me one great cross country season is the same edge that burned me out on running forever. I could see myself watching one last gel leak, not so calmly walking away, and never looking back.

“The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.”

- The Razor's Edge, epithet

See you on the other side,

from ken

Inspired by my writing idol Bill Simmons “The Consequences of Caring”

The Champagne of Beers

“Watch where you’re FUCKING driving!”

Standing in the middle of a crosswalk, I threw my hands up as a car cut me off.

I’m tired.

I’m tired of walking back and forth to the freaking store. I want a car.

Of course, I had to pick out the heaviest possible groceries – whole wheat flour, plain yogurt, dried beans, six-pack of Miller High Life.

My back hurts. This can’t be good for me.

Sidenote – one of my top 2 influences is David Foster Wallace’s This Is Water, a commencement speech he gave at Kenyon. Sidenote-within-a-sidenote – the other, Mountains Beyond Mountain. Anyways, This Is Water is about two young fish swimming in a hurry. They run across an older fish that asks, “Howdy boys, how’s the water?” The fish continue on their way, but after a minute, one of the younger fish asks the other, “What’s water?”

I loved the connection to Kenyon, I loved what DFW stood for, and I loved his edge, so I gave This Is Water to all my groomsmen as a wedding gift. I’ve been emailing with one of them about the significance of the book. For me, it boils down to the word, “This.”

“This” represents the act of pausing and seeing the water around us. The currents flowing, krill swimming, whales giving chase.

Sidenote2 - I read a couple of Bulls/Lakers/future-Heat coach Phil Jackson’s memoirs. My favorite was Sacred Hoops, a great read about the intersection of spirituality and basketball. What I took from it:

The 90’s Bulls said the Lord’s Prayer before every game. I figured if it worked for the Bulls it would work for me, so I’ve been saying the Lord’s Prayer every time I shower. I imagine it helps me in the same way it helped the Bulls. Obviously, life gets tough for everyone - even the Bulls had tough losses, but at their core they were twelve guys that wanted to go down in the history books. With the Prayer, Jackson gave the team a few precious seconds to remember that they had to push through the struggle, and keep playing their game.

That’s why the best part of This Is Water, is “This.” DFW knew the tough moments in life were the most crucial - that’s where the battle between good and evil exists. But sometimes, the hard part is noticing when we’re engaged in that battle. Sometimes it’s about taking that second to see the battle.

After a grueling walk I made it home. I slammed my sweaty clothes in the laundry basket, still pissed off about everything.

I wish I could just buy frozen burritos like my roommates. I wish I could drive to the store like them.

As I turned on the shower I remembered.

This is water.

No, wait. I walked to the fridge.

This is beer.

Shower beers. Ah.

See you on the other side,

from ken

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

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