Eric Grey

Kids, do your accounting correctly right from the start

Take it from Uncle Eric. I have only one thing to say about this wreck of a Saturday. Quickbooks wants to kill me. Photo evidence :

It's almost 6pm. On a Saturday. I'm at the office. Get it? Unlinked song of the day, Freeze up by Operation Ivy.

Sent from my iPhone

Something's happening here

Today, today, today. It's one of those days that just feels absolutely puking full with possibility. One of those days where I want to stay up all night until it all gets born. On my way back to the clinic, I had my headphones in and was listening to this song:

"I broke the surface so I can breathe, I close my eyes so I can see, I tie my arms to be free."

But then that was followed by this song:

"If there's something inside that you wanna say
Say it out loud it'll be okay"

So, it's just that kind of day. I find myself thinking a lot about Quickbooks, accounting, shamanism and the importance of treating chronic digestive complaints. I find myself simultaneously free and bound, and absolutely ok with the idea that this contradictory state is likely to be with me until I die.

Today (and some other days)

Predictably, I didn't have the time or energy to post on my birthday "weekend." We were at Edgefield, we had a tremendous time, resolved to take more mini-vacations... there were a number of hilarious asides I could share, but I'm supposed to be working. You know, so I can take more vacations. ;)

One observation : while I was sad to say goodbye to endless leisure, I really wasn't that sad to enter back into "real life." My students make it easy to enjoy teaching, and I really love seeing patients. So, there's that.

Today, I'm working on balance. See, there are a lot of things I want to do, some of them I am committed to doing. My recent reentry to the world of gyms and working out shows me how easy it is to establish a new habit. The problem is always on the front end, contemplating it. Once you get going, it seems stupid that it ever seemed like a problem.

So, there are a number of important "life areas" I want to attend to - starting now. My puzzle is where to fit them in and how to get them on the same easy roll as my workouts. See, there's one element to the ease of putting workouts back in my schedule that I've left out in my explanation above. I figured out the best case scenario, and then implemented it. For me, I have to workout first thing in the morning - before I do anything else. It has to be the absolute first place I go when I leave my house or it simply will not get done. I also have to have a pre-established routine read to implement, or I'll feel aimless and skip it.

The same needs to be true of the rest of the things I'm trying to add to the mix. Unfortunately, these things are by no means as clear and clean. They also don't have nice little symbolically oriented spaces (ie gym) readily at hand. Or do they? To be continued...

Song of the Day : Salt Water Sound - Zero 7

Image of the Day : My totem - the Red-tailed Hawk

33rd year project

I started my birthday with a 6am workout and sauna with my dear friend Christopher.  What a start!  Reflecting on my last several years, surrounded by superhot steam, I realized that I suffer from one serious problem - a terrible memory.  Let me qualify that by saying that I have a terrific memory for herbs, herbal formulas, patient details, random trivia, scientific facts and so on - but not so for my own life.  What I do remember are things that I marked in some way - usually through photos, music or something similar.

Juggling

My friend Liz, who blogs (I won't link to her just cause I'm not sure she's cool with it) just put up an awesome Youtube video to encapsulate her life at the moment (the Hawaii 5-0 intro).

Well, this is mine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8f8drk5Urw

Self censorship and would you shut up already?

It's bizarre the extent to which we all censor ourselves. I should be fair, though, and say that I'm really talking about myself (it is my blog, afterall). I do believe that some self censorship is ok, even expected. I mean, no, that haircut looks GREAT on you. No harm done. If I were to inform the universe about half the things that go through my mind on a daily basis, not only might I be committed, but I'd also just be modeling terrifically bad form. Narcissism to boot.

But, I have this blog, see. I like to talk about things. But it weirds me out how many different people read it (family, friends, colleagues, students, patients, strangers). I realize that my life is pretty compartmentalized. There are certain things that some of you know, and other things that the others know. Only one person really knows the whole story, and she doesn't read blogs - haha.

Anyway, there's something that's really been bugging me and it seems like this public forum is a good place to work through it. Why? Because it involves most of you.
---

I'm a religious person. There's just no way to get around it. I wasn't born that way, I wasn't raised that way. I was raised to have a general respect for everyone, and to think for myself. I've been working both of those angles for almost 33 years, and it's working out pretty well for me. I can't say I witness a lot of either from even some of my nearest and dearest friends. Especially around the topic of religion.

Look, I know that religious people have done some screwed up things in the world. But, really, haven't lots of people? Haven't meat eaters and Democrats and bisexuals and tennis fans and just about everyone done some pretty crazy stuff? And, really, when you look at the root of a lot of issues, isn't it the love of MONEY and the obsession with possession that lies at the root of most really bad stuff? Anyway, is that even the POINT?

I know a lot of religious people. They are among the most tolerant, loving, open, funny and - yes - good people that I know. They are doctors (of various kinds) and teachers and gas station attendants and hippies and commies and computer programmers and authors and artists and cashiers and, you know, all the rest of the stuff. They are gay and lesbian, straight, bisexual, queerish. They have kids and don't. They have various political affiliations.
Are they always good? No. Are you? Do they always have their best foot forward? No. Sometimes they slip - they walk their path with all the integrity they can muster, and sometimes a bad day just gets too bad. They slam doors. They make assumptions. They speed in school zones.

What they share (and I share with them) is a thorough commitment to getting to know God. Please don't run screaming. It's really not that big a deal, ok? Get over it. God God God God God. I don't know what that means. That's sort of what I'm trying to figure out. But I do know that since I started on this path, four or five years ago, I've become a more tolerant person, a person more willing to listen to all sides of a story. Because I'm trying to learn from some pretty intense examples - the examples I find in the holy books of my tradition. Do those books always make sense? No. But, then, I'm glad I've got Marcus Borg.

If you are triggered by Christian language and so forth, I suggest you pick up one of Marcus' books. Anyway - none of this is the point. There are bad religious people out there - people not following the examples that are really, really in those holy books. People who take the language and twist it. People who have decided that religion is an excuse for them to stop thinking, to fill their hearts with hate and to trample all over the rights and lives of good people.

You trashing religions, or religious people with broad generalizations and small minded language does nothing to help anything. It's your right, of course, and I will do nothing to take that from you. But know that it's hurtful, and it's stupid. Religious people and their detractors both need to do a little more listening, and a whole lot less talking.

Eric Grey
Episcopalian, mostly

best contemporary lyrical lines, Part 1

Atmosphere - Get Fly (second half)

society becomes jealousy
intimacy becomes intensity
say it with a smile like it’s meant to be
and all of a sudden BOOM American family
and I could tell when you’re mad at your past
because you tend to take them turns just a little too fast
I could tell how you pushed your foot on the gas
that you already knew that you was gonna finish lastslow it down and take a little time
to look up at them clouds with that fake silver lining
up in a tree knowin damn well you’ll never reach the top
but you don’t stop, you keep climbing
well O-K it’s settled
no more nights in this weed and thorn infested meadow
uh uh from this day forth only forward I pedal
get the memo I’m cutting the strings Geppetto
shuffle the cards and let’s argue
rooted in between the computer games and cartoons
stop it watch us all get lost
between God and a shot of scotch
let’s get fly

(Slug is a genius - do you see what he just did there?)

Midnight in her eyes

I have this playlist that mixes the Black Keys, the White Stripes, some newer Sonic Youth, the Shins, the Kitchen Syncopators, Beck, Dinosaur Jr and a couple of contemporary French rock-ish bands. It makes me clean the house like you wouldn't believe, and gives me faith in the future of music. For what it's worth.

Haha

Funny to see, in my inbox, "Mayor Sam Adams now following you on Twitter!" My mayor! Following me! I'd be flattered if I didn't know he was following everyone even remotely affiliated with Portland. :D

Time is a terrible master

My email inbox is overflowing - it hasn't been that way in months, maybe years. My physical inboxes are in a similar state. My GTD system is still there, but congested and partially non-functional in a way that I thought it never would be again. This is an alarm. It's like pain in the body, just a signal. Something to get me thinking in a different way. Something to remind me. I'm just not sure what it's reminding me of, right now.

One of the rarest commodities in my post-school world is time. This seems, maybe, like a ridiculous thing to say. Everyone is short on time, right? No big deal. Well, it is to me. I've always been busy, but something has changed. School builds in time for sitting and contemplation. The work you do is also pretty infinitely malleable - you can put more here, less here. Post-school life isn't like that. Patients need to be seen. Now. I'm now seeing patients in Corvallis, and one cannot deny the existence of the 100 mile drive. I thas to be done. The more patients I get, the more they send me communications (by email, mail, phone) that require attention. No way around it, gotta answer. I don't make time for myself, and thus the "little things" don't get done. Emails sit in the box too long, bills get paid later than usual, scheduled blog posts don't get edited in time, herbal formulas get sent out too late. My weekly review gets skipped. I don't take time for meditation, for walks in nature, for simple time playing games with the family. These things seem so small at the time - but they add up, and they drag down, and they make life mere drudgery. It's the little things that make the big things work.

It turns out that I just need time. I need time to sit. I need time to think of creative ideas. I need time to respond accurately and compassionately to my patients. I need time to take my daughter to the bookstore. I need time just to sit, to stare into space, to think of nothing, to do nothing. Maybe not everyone needs that, but I do. I work so hard when I work that I need time to do... whatever. In school, that was much, much easier to come by.

Why is it that we sacrifice the best things in life, or the most important things (time with friends and family, relaxation, exercise, slow food, etc) in favor of things that add relatively little value to life? Maybe it's a Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing. The administration of a business, the marketing for patients, the voicemails from insurance companies - these seem more critical to survival, and everything else is going to have to wait. But, I don't buy that. Building the life that you want takes intention. It takes putting the brakes on some things, and letting other things flows. It may mean downsizing. It may mean downgrading. It may mean upsetting people sometimes, because they want you to be in the same crazystream they find themselves in. They don't think you're serious if you're not bleeding out of your eyeballs from the stress of it all.

I'd rather not be serious. I'd rather live my life with time to notice the subtle variations of grey in the stormclouds floating by. I'd rather spend time cultivating herbs, drinking in their elixirs. I'd rather take the time to linger in bed with my partner, sleeping in just a little too late - yet not rushing and freaking out afterwards, negating all the great energy generated.

It's just so, so hard to remember that.