Things I'm Bad At.

At Thanksgiving this past week we were talking about how patients lie - well, one of my friend's brothers who is a psychiatry resident was talking about how he's pretty sure all his patients lie. And he is likely right.

And my thought was that we all edit our narrative to reflect how we would like to be perceived.

And now a couple days later I was thinking about how blogging is just an extension of that - I get to publish only what I'm okay with the world seeing.

For example, I was home watching TV almost the entire day on Thanksgiving. It was great, and then we went to dinner in the evening and it everyone was welcoming and it was really nice.

But if I were to pick a photo to share from the day I would probably pick these:

From the walk we took on the Bosque in the afternoon. Instead of the one on the couch.

Because I would rather make it look like I'm an active productive person as opposed to a borderline agoraphobic TV-addicted resident with a penchant for marathoning Gilmore Girls and lying still whenever possible.

So I decided to write this post about things that I do poorly because I want to be at least a smidge real over here.

So here we go.

I end sentences with prepositions. And start them with "and."

I'm not kidding I really do. And sometimes I do it on purpose like I mean to. I do.

Once when I was an intern a senior was editing my progress note and I ended a sentence with a preposition. This girl was a real gem: a great doctor but not so great at supervising people - rude, unkind, typically much too brusque at giving feedback, lots of interns cried etc. She was writing edits on my paper and of course recognized the preposition at the end of this sentence. It was not a glaring error but I don't deny it could have been phrased better.

So she proceeded to write "grammer" next to it. And I didn't say anything.

And so I end sentences with prepositions but I'm a great speller and I am great at recognizing irony. I carried that moment with me the whole rest of the day with every nit picking correction she gave me.

See, while we're making a list of things at which I'm bad, it's important to recognize the positive.

I'm bad at cleaning.

I'm really bad at cleaning. I'm great at picking up and at organizing, I'm awful at cleaning. I'm awful at recognizing when something needs to be cleaned. I'm awful at dusting, scrubbing, vacuuming, I'm not very good at taking out the trash. I'm pretty bad at sweeping unless it's right in the moment and I've smashed glass every where - I'm pretty good with that kind of thing.

I'm terrible with directions. If I'm indoors I will get lost within 2 turns. If there are no clear landmarks I'll get lost in a city quickly. Here we have big mountains in the east which helps but I still need more than my two hands to count all the times I've turned the wrong way.

I'm bad at eyeliner. That smudged smoky look? Sure. Definitely what I was going for.

I'm bad at any sport that requires making a goal/basket/touchdown etc. If I have to handle a ball and run at the same time I'm out. That's just asking me to trip and break an ankle. Or hit you in the face with this ball.

I'm unapologetically bad at waiting for a time the rest of the world agrees is appropriate for Christmas music. Nope. October. You can't stop me.

I'm not great with plants. Oh the plant graveyards in my wake were we to gather them all up. Once I even killed a cactus. And a bamboo. And a plastic one. 

I'm bad at doing nothing. I can watch TV, surf the Internet, play stupid phone games etc. with the best of them but if you ask me to actually calm my brain or be reflective or still it's really tough. And because I'm really not intentional about this, I'm pretty sure I'm getting worse.

I'm bad at nails. The whole painting and letting dry process is mostly beyond me. No matter what I do it always smudges. That's the primary reason I wear light colors, it's not that I actually like them better, it's that they show the disaster less.

I'm bad at letting go. If I screw something up I'm bad at moving on - it will ruin my next several days. 

I'm bad at keeping in touch. I value a lot of people that I don't see regularly anymore and being super awkward at talking on the phone and not much of an email or letter writer I just kind of mostly don't keep in touch. I want you all to know I miss you though. 

Im bad at walking quietly. It does not matter if there's not a single creaky spot on the floor, I'll end up tripping and crashing into something. It's great when I go to examine patients at 7 AM when they're sleeping. I'm sure they love that.

I'm bad at eating less than the whole pint of ice cream. I do not care what the label says, that is an individually portioned container and I will eat it all in one sitting.

I'm sure there are more.

Ask my sisters. Just kidding don't.

But I hope you can relate to some of these things I'm bad at and as usual,

Thanks for reading, see you soon.