Holiday Post#1

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and it’s been an even longer while since I’ve made a holiday post. It was two years ago when I  wrote about my first Christmas Caroling experience, as well as how happy I was to receive a gift in the form of a self-help book from Urban Outfitters. Since then not much has happened.

The holidays have just continued to lose their glamour ever since I grudgingly acknowledged that Santa Claus doesn’t actually eat your cookies and drink your milk (both of my parents are lactose intolerant I’ve just been sending them to the bathroom every Christmas morning for 10 straight years).  But there is one thing I started this year that’s made things a little more exciting, and that’s preparing thoughtful, not just practical gifts.

So there’s a girl now, and one of the many things I have to thank her for is that she’s made the holidays that much more enjoyable. One thing she made clear to me in the beginning of our relationship was that giving and receiving gifts were the main ways she expressed and felt affection. Getting her a gift was really the first time I went out and searched for something with the mindset that I wanted to make someone else happy. When it comes to possessions, I’ve always thought of them in a very pragmatic viewpoint, mostly in terms of longevity, frequency of use, and price. Rarely do I buy anything, and when I do I think on it for a considerable amount of time. In the past when I gave gifts mostly out of the pressure of an obligation, my main priority wasn’t making the recipient happy, but rather avoiding their disappointment. That mindset lead me to buy gifts for people in the same manner that I would buy things for myself. People say it’s the thought that counts, and I still put in a lot of thought, just not the kind where the thought is towards the recipient’s happiness.

When I got her that first gift, I knew she would be happy. But just how happy she would be, and how emotional I would feel seeing her reaction caught me completely by surprise. I’ve given plenty of gifts in the past, but nothing I’d felt upon the actual giving really compared to that moment. So despite all the cliches, it seems I’ve been missing out on Christmas for the past couple years with my lack of appropriate gift-giving.

I know my parents are much more reserved around me than my girlfriend, but hopefully this new spirit of giving and fewer glasses of milk make Christmas more enjoyable around the house this time around.

Back to School

My time working in the dental division of a public health center is over. A couple of things I learned (details of the clinic omitted):

1) Stay Busy: When I didn’t have a job, I often dreamed of the kind of work where prestige, income and benefits would come easy with little to no effort. Life with the parents flowed nicely and with no real desire to accomplish anything except comfort, easy was at the top of my priorities. After spending a good half of the 12 weeks having nothing assigned to me by my supervisor, I realize idling at work is a guaranteed way to go insane, lose any sense of self-worth, and eventually lower your standards for everything else you do in life. Plus, after reading articles discussing the amount of people who have 8-5 jobs that require them to do absolutely nothing, not even to look busy (Thanks Obama), I can’t help but feel terrified at the prospect. Funny how often times we worry about being overburdened with too much work when the exact opposite can be just as awful for your health. But there’s a definite bright side. Before the internship, I had never felt such a strong sense of initiative. I’m proud to say none of my time at the internship was wasted, though it very easily could have been. Observing the system at work around me and drafting my own projects to further investigate my observations kept me occupied and I learned more than I could have by just following instructions. Sure, much of my learning wasn’t academic but I got quite a bit out of it. Having nothing to do at work is as close to pure misery as I’ve ever been, and I guess that’s all it took to develop some self-motivation.

2) Communicating to Patients: How do you get people to keep up with their oral hygiene? From my experience, people aren’t great at looking into the future, and with that kind of shortsighted approach to teeth, it will always be too late. These days, everything to do with a dentist appointment can be equated to massive sums of money. So all too often, a patient comes in for the first time, dentist tells them how to take care of their teeth, the patient tries but lacks the foresight to follow through, comes back, needs immediate treatment, and ends up complaining about the price plus the dentist’s lack of care. It’s not the patient’s fault. Sure both parties can hear what the other is saying but the most essential part, the call to action, isn’t being communicated effectively. In most offices I’ve seen, the dentists focused on increasing public oral hygiene often ask the question “what is the best way to deliver a sense of urgency to people who aren’t on top of their oral hygiene?” But I think that may be the wrong approach. Scaring people won’t work. Sure, you can post picture of rotting, decaying, blackening teeth all over the walls. You can raise your voice whenever it comes time to explain the outcomes of forgoing treatment and maintenance.  But the patients might start off strong for about a week, then have a long day at work and end up not brushing that night.  They’ll wake up without any pain in their mouth, then forget again one more time, and it still won’t hurt. Pretty soon the routine has been dropped and we’re back to square one. It’s like setting your alarm clock on a table far away. It might get you to come out of bed the first time, but after that if you’re tired enough, your mind will adjust and even Spongebob’s massively amplified alarm won’t be able to wake you up. Instead of playing off people’s fear, which can only last if they’re consistently reminded of the unpleasantness (which is difficult when you don’t share a roof with a dentist who cares for you), why don’t we just stress how easy it is to do? Emphasize the ease in which brushing and flossing can be completed no matter where you go. Emphasize the ease in which brushing and flossing slips into the daily checklist of eating, showering, and sleeping. Emphasize the ease in which brushing and flossing can be done well in such a short amount of time. I have yet to see clearly how much weight that kind of mental approach would hold, but I’ll keep it in mind.

3) Chain-of-command: Good management requires that the boss keeps accountable for all of the actions of his/her direct subordinates. The boss delegates duties, not responsibility. Unfortunately, under stressful situations up top, good management is hard to practice, and shit begins to roll downhill. And when shit begins rolling down a hill, it picks up a bunch of other stuff that might have seemed alright at first, but is now covered in shit as well. With a big ball of shit that gets its very biggest at the very bottom of the chain, being an intern isn’t exactly an ideal position to hold in such a situation. An additional difficulty is figuring out how to introduce a change in an established workplace. The chain-of-command is a great structure for stability and organized efforts, where everyone’s held accountable for a fixed set of events, but can act as a terrible hindrance to effective change for an organization, no matter what position you hold. Resistance to change is inevitable, and fighting for it requires skillful navigation, continuous negotiation, and stubborn determination. It forces you to really question yourself as to the true motivations for the change, and how badly you want to see it happen. Why do you want this to change? Are you putting the interests of the company first and actually trying to increase its efficiency? Are you trying to introduce a change that will put you in a position to move up the chain? Or do you just enjoy being the smartest kid in the room? Understanding the chain-of-command can seem like a common and mundane theme, but I can already tell that life can really suck without learning to resolve that conflict. Just ask the characters from The Wire.

4) Communicating to Patients pt. 2: You haven’t witnessed true fear until you’ve seen a dental patient in pain who has no idea what the hell their dentist is telling them at the moment. If a patient’s last three consecutive words have been “What?” during an explanation of his/her treatment plan, then maybe it’s time to skip the jargon and start making sense. I’ve noticed that when it comes down to just fixing the pain/problem, patients really don’t pay much attention to your vocabulary. They’re concerned with your ability to tell them what’s wrong, give them a clear set of options, and help them make a decision, all in layman’s terms. So there’s really no need to voluntarily share that academic information with patients without a request.

5) Commuting is Dangerous: Respect for my parents and every other working man and woman in the suburbs has grown tenfold, who have to drive for at least 90 minutes twice a day moving at an average speed of 30 mph. Plus, these three months of having to share 6 lanes on the highway with morons who are undeservedly certified to drive has cost me my life (no hyperbole in use here) more times than in all my 19 years of life combined. I’ve seen a fender-bender from every angle possible, and sometimes the automobile’s version of sodomy is just as terrible to witness as the real thing. The paranoia that ensues after seeing it happen to so many people is even worse, and some days I look towards the rear-view mirror more than the windshield. Hopefully I’ll have the resources in the future to avoid long commutes to work, and reduce time wasted throwing my life into the hands of strangers who I only communicate with through a vehicle horn.

6) Few Number of Males in Community Health: Being the only guy in a group of 10 women has its perks, even if they are all married and most have at least two kids. Many have vocally expressed their appreciation of my fresh perspective (from a gender standpoint) in the workplace. I’ve never felt manlier in my life.

So I’ve learned a lot  but don’t know if I’m any closer to becoming a dentist.

Encore

I’ve been playing the clarinet in an ensemble since the 4th grade, but it wasn’t until high school that I began to take my clarinet studies seriously. Since then, I’ve been making a greater effort to increase the size of my audience by notifying those important to me about my performances. It’s rewarding to have those who care witness the final product after so many hours of work. Sometimes my anticipation got a little out of hand, in that during the actual concert, I would forgo the standard free-for-all warm up to strain my neck searching every square inch of the audience for those I had invited, before the stage lights snapped on and the shadows swallowed up the sea of faces. I’d feel disappointed when I couldn’t find them among the crowd, but their absence was understandable. My peers were busy with their workload (high school is a busy time), my parents found it difficult to break away from work, and my private teacher frequently had his schedule booked at the same time as my concerts, but they all tried their hardest to attend. I never let the lack of my desired audience get in the way of the euphoria following a stellar performance, but I’ve always enjoyed post-concert receptions, and the sharing of good feelings between family and friends that come with them.

Now that I’m in college and away from home, the audience that I grew up with can no longer attend my concerts. Last week at my Wind Ensemble concert, however, I found that I’ve acquired a new audience. A minute before the performance began, three friends I’ve made in college walked in and made their way towards the front. I struggled to remain professional on the stage without showing my teeth in a smile that I just could not control. It took me about thirty seconds to recover from my bubbliness. Once I settled down, I looked up from the ground to see an entire line consisting of about twelve other friends walk in single file and join the three from before, filling up nearly half of an entire row in the concert hall. What started as a fleeting anxiety passed to make way for a full appreciation of their presence, and I could not wait to start playing. I understand that there are reasons for the increased turnout now compared to high school, such as the increased freedom in college as well as the close proximity between residence halls and events on campus, but I’ll still remember the swirl of excitement and gratitude that I hadn’t felt in a long time. Hopefully there are more to come.

 

In Retrospect,

Now that I’ve had time to reflect, I can not help but feel mortified at the quality of my last post. Erasing it from the blog has crossed my mind a number of times, but I’ve decided to leave it as a reminder of the unlimited potential I have to produce unbearable prose. I’ve always favored long sentences over short ones, but wow those just never end. I’m not entirely certain of the post’s main idea, but it draws similarities to what I’d churn out during forced 10 minute “free-write” sessions in high school English. And what the fuck is a beta (Actually, I put a considerable amount of thought into that title. Unfortunately, it’s only relevant if understood as the tenth~ definition down on Dictionary.com).

I tripped up on a new app called “Hemingway,” which allows the user to copy and paste their writing into a textbox and the program color codes phrases that can use some work: yellow, the sentence is hard to read; red, the sentence is very hard to read; blue, an adverb should be removed in place of a stronger verb; purple, replace the word/phrase with a simpler one; and green, an instance of the passive voice should be changed to the active. The program then assigns an overall grade from 1-25 based on the clarity of the writing. The smaller the score, the better. “Hard to read” can be interpreted as “long.” After all, the app aims to promote the style of writing we commonly associate with the iconic Ernest Hemingway: bold, understated, and concise. Though I don’t like to think that the app’s evaluation of my “beta” post prompted me to repent, it definitely hurt my feelings in a way strangely reminiscent of farting in public during a silence. Despite my emotional response, I realize that so long as I have complete control over my writing, my sentences can be as obnoxious as any line from William Henry Harrison’s Inaugural Address.

I don’t know too much about Hemingway, but I read The Sun Also Rises during my senior year of high school and I think I’ll read it again. High school killed all the excitement in leisure reading and I’ve only recently picked it back up.

The app is clearly imperfect but serves as a good way to check if your sentences might be getting out of hand. It’s also a lot of fun, and can waste your time as easily as an episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” Though I try to avoid it, I find a guilty pleasure in having others evaluate my work without them realizing who it belongs to. Not to say I shy away from direct constructive criticism, but accepting it with grace is not an instinct of mine. Whenever someone criticizes my work, tears immediately well up in my eyes and my initial impulse is to cry. Fortunately, I’m able to maintain my composure, dry my eyes out through excessive blinking, and calm myself down so that I can listen to the comments being made. I’ve always thought of accepting criticism as a form of moral courage. It stems from a will to overcome an injury to our pride in an effort to appreciate the value of tolerating others and improving ourselves. I wish it were easier.

Similar to Louis C.K. and really the rest of humanity, most of my life consists of moments where right after they occur, I promise myself to never tell anyone about what just transpired. Sticking to these promises has become a bit harder since I began maintaining a blog, but hopefully nothing too awful slips out.

Beta

After viewing four seasons worth of episodes, The West Wing stands as one of my favorite television show of all time. Some of its most inspiring scenes focus on the Communications Department of the White House, specifically Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), White House Communications Director; Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), Former Deputy White House Communications Director (Seasons 1-4); and Will Bailey (Joshua Malina), Deputy White House Communications Director (Seasons 4-5). The discussions they have with their staff on the most effective delivery of the President’s (Martin Sheen) personal message to the public strike me as amazing considering the sheer number of forces they must take into account, including inflexible deadlines to keep their promises, specificity of detail to prevent media misinterpretation, tactful wording to prevent offending parties who play a part in other parts of the political agenda like the passing of a bill (unless for political reasons), and eloquent speechwriting to enhance the President’s image as a capable intellectual, all without alienating the citizens of America by sounding like the “smartest kid in the classroom.” Sure, the show is fictitious but those scenes represent a select population, a group of people around the world who have the ability to express their thoughts on a subject matter with enough confidence to make a statement people can be proud to rally around, while also practicing enough sensitivity to maintain some semblance of unity across the plurality of ideologies.

I find writing especially difficult because it takes far too long for me to organize my ideas and feel satisfied with my work, often discouraging me from offering a conclusion. Even these “Snippets” are eating up much more time than I expected. The desire for improvement is there, but the frustration continues as my disorganized thought process and lack of complete confidence forces me to consistently hover over the “Backspace” key and reread nearly every single line after I just finish typing it into the computer.

For now though, I’m just glad to be inspired.

Grounded

I’m really losing sight of what this blog is about. It originated from a desire to express feelings following an upsetting breakup, and after that first post I’ve merely written spontaneously in inconsistent intervals, ranging from one day to 1.5 months, resulting in a grand total of eight posts over the course of five months. Near the beginning of my blogging experience, I prepared to combat the inevitable apathy I am feeling at the moment by adding a thematic component to my blog in the form of music reviews (Music Notes), yet I have failed miserably in that regard. Lack of motivation to confront my insecurities has hindered the progress towards my original goal. However, a music review of the album Hush (1992) by Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma will be ready in at most two weeks (This is more for me than anyone else)

My loss of words often occurs in conversation as well. Not all of the time, but enough for me to reevaluate how little I have to talk about. I find my silence curious because I’ve experienced and am currently participating in a number of activities that involve plenty of potential talking points suitable for any interesting exchange. Perhaps I don’t feel impassioned enough to share them with my peers, or I simply anticipate their lack of interest. Then again, I’ve always been a fine listener. Other people tell me their stories, and I provide satisfactory commentary back to them, and so far it has worked well. I’m not sure why now of all times I find myself concerned with telling my own stories. Not that my storytelling is awful, but I wouldn’t mind expanding my role in various social settings.

Improve Yourself

At this moment, I have a gag book entitled How to Be Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps) on the right-hand side of my desk. Not once in my life did I expect to claim ownership of a product from Urban Outfitters, but there’s a last time for everything.

I can’t say it’s a particularly good book, and I haven’t learned a great deal from reading it. My father walked in on me skimming through the pages, took the book from my hands, read the title, and laughed on his way out. Now whenever I see him during our inevitable encounters within the household he’ll make some snide remark on my lack of personality, or whatever character traits I must not have to possess a book written for such desperate people.

The book was actually a gift from a good friend I met this year. She’s apparently a big fan of irony, and made sure to point that out when she gave me the book in the form of a Christmas present. I was not expecting such a gesture, but I like gifts, especially humorous ones. I can’t say I will read it often, nor will I carry it around with me, but I’ll remember when she gave it to me and how glad I felt to receive something based on our friendship. The fact that I received the book right after I returned from caroling just added to the positive feelings.

The theme that continues to resurface in the book is getting out of one’s comfort zone. Apparently when you feel uncomfortable, people tend to find you more interesting. I can’t say I feel too comfortable right now, due to what has happened to my voice. I recently attended a holiday themed house party with many of my friends from high school. When a small space (like a house) suddenly fills up with a large number of people (thirty to forty college freshmen) the volume escalates at an alarming rate. My voice lacks range in all aspects, and therefore I find it difficult to make myself heard in conversation within such a noisy setting. At these events, it’s necessary for me to get out of my comfort zone and speak loudly to be heard, and now the aftereffects are causing me some slight pain in the throat. If I don’t give the effort, people tend to say, “What?” with an amusingly confused expression on their face for most of the conversation, and I really do hate repeating myself. I somewhat enjoy parties, but my body limits my ability to make the most of such opportunities, similar to how it reacts during exercise.

I’m finding it difficult to wrap this one up. Happy Holidays.

 

I Love to Sing

For the very first time, on the Monday night before my last final on Tuesday, I went Christmas caroling. I had known about the 7:00 A.M. final long before I knew about caroling, which to be fair was a much more impromptu event. Despite some pretty scary warnings directed to me about the potential hazards of caroling in sacrifice of study time for the final, I decided to go have fun. There were six of us, all male. We had tried especially hard to convince some of our female friends to carol with us, but when the time came to perform they were either busy or nowhere to be found. Then again, the car was much too cramped to fit more than six bodies, much less female bodies.

One of us, a talented guitarist, brought his instrument to add some musical quality to our caroling. Our repertoire included “Rudolph,” “Deck the Halls,” “Feliz Navidad,” and “Jingle Bells.”  We printed out many more songs than there are on the list, but quickly found that we could only sing those four without faltering. We left at around 8:30 and returned at approximately 10:00 (If any of you decide to go caroling, try going earlier). Here’s a brief overview of the night.

House One

The ringleader of our group was showing the most excitement. In fact, he was so excited that he rang the doorbell, not a standard practice in Christmas Caroling because it doesn’t give the resident too many options. When the man finally poked his head out of the door, our group acted as if we weren’t expecting him to acknowledge us, and we stopped midway through the song, only to pick it back up in a staggering manner.  After we ended, an exchange of Christmas-time formalities took place and we left, finally escaping the uncomfortable encounter. A rough start, but gone were the pre-game jitters.

House Two

We improved. When we finished, the mother clumsily clasped her hands together against her breast and encouraged our progress by calling us a “blessing.” Regaining our motivation to spread the happiness of the holidays, all six of us wished her and the children a genuine but uncoordinated “Merry Christmas” and set off for the next well-lit residence.

House Five

We began singing “Deck the Halls” with gusto, and in the middle of the first verse detected movement on the stairs. All six of us looked up from our music in fervent excitement, but had fortunately learned our lesson about distractions and managed to continue singing at our steady volume. A blurry image of a middle-aged man approached the door, stared at us through the glass, and without hesitation dismissively walked away. Right when we finished with the “Fa la la la la” sequence of the first chorus, the conventional silence that follows was filled with a clear, “Fuck You,” from one our members, which resonated relatively well compared to his singing. We left as quickly as we could, but not before reprimanding the unruly member with stinging flicks to the ear, which must have felt extremely painful due to the convenient 30^o weather.

There’s not as much to write about the rest of the houses, but they were all extremely fun. My first time Christmas caroling with a boys’ choir was wonderful, an instance where I wholeheartedly enjoyed the company of everyone I saw that night.  

And that was my first music review.

Let Us be Honest

I follow four blogs all run by people I know personally, but I wish they would post more frequently.

I’m not exactly in good standing to be making such demands, considering how little I contribute by posting once every 17 days, as well as failing to deliver on promises to post music reviews, but I do enjoy and miss reading what they have to say. However, I understand how busy schedules do not provide favorable conditions for the time-consuming process of optional blog writing. Needless to say, I miss old friends.

For a social settings update, I’ve gotten to know everybody on my floor fairly well. Unfortunately, similar to some of my peers back in high school, they seem to misinterpret much of what I say. Thanks to a couple of sources, I’ve managed to catch a few circulating phrases used to describe me which include “extremely blunt,” “hard to approach,” and “has a douche sense of humor that works but would never be appropriate for anybody else.” Upon hearing this list, I felt unsure yet guiltily smug. Such comments do feed the part of my personality involving the self-centered attention whore that I am. I’ve always wondered if my mannerisms are a result of a desire to hear other people gossip, which would put me under “fake.” The importance of genuinely expressing myself remains high on my list of priorities, but I cannot deny that public perception will continue to have its presence no matter the circumstances. Despite such influences, I do attempt to dictate the causality of my actions by ensuring my personality lead to my smugness, rather than the other way around. My intentions are to make new friends, and since my intentions were not clear, I really do need to adjust my attitude.

I am making progress. One month ago, a certain someone told me, “I really would like us to be friends, Thomas, but I get the feeling you don’t share my sentiments.” One month later, we’re sharing a Netflix account. A close friend circle is in the making.

High Five

I attended a pre-dental meeting today and the topic was the dental school interview. Our guest speaker is a member of the interview committee at UTHSCSA, and he made sure of reminding us to invest in a manicure prior to our interview (if we are so lucky as to receive one), and a pedicure as well just to complete the package. He emphasized how patients want smooth, clean hands probing their oral cavity, and anything less would be disrespectful. Understanding the importance of presentation, I made sure to present my own set of hands to the man after the meeting, and he worried for me. Since the summer until now I’ve been picking up on a heavier load of manual labor and it’s shown in the form of hardened calluses, scratched nails, peeled skin, and faded palms. Lotion hasn’t helped as much as it has helped the rest of my body (San Antonio is scarily dry compared to Houston. Humidity has its benefits) and so I told him the details and he recommended I try my best to achieve as soft hands as possible.

I’ve always wondered what women find more attractive: rough or soft hands. Honestly, I like my rough hands.

In high school, any guy possessing such softness would be fawned over for a solid ten minutes while every girl in the class would be sure to firmly press their bodies hands against the elastic smoothness of his perfectly preserved palms.

I fail to remember a time where my hands were ever of that consistency. Prior to living in Texas, I lived in Syracuse, New York and maintained a sizable garden with my father for most of my childhood. Gloves were necessary but often a hindrance and yard work developed into a weekly activity, taking up most of my Saturday afternoons. I never had a passion for gardening itself, just a satisfaction that arose from almost mindless manual labor and the active use of my hands to make a finished product. My home in Texas did not have a garden that required substantial effort to maintain, and the increased time I began spending on school allowed my hands to rest. I really didn’t do much work with them at all. They became softer, and nearly lost all traces of past efforts.

That last paragraph just oozes of ego. But still, rough hands are sexy. Such a surefire sign of a working man is something I’d put in a Top 5 list, along with sharp cheekbones, a solid jawline, a monotonous voice, and thick eyebrows.

Music review is still a piece of work. I’m deciding on a format that I can use consistently.