Happy Late Christmas!
I had a great time in New York, even though I spent most of it in Long Island miserable with cat allergies. I stayed with a friend of mine who works at Brookhaven Labs. His cats are adorable and it makes me sad that I am allergic to them.
I had a good few days of geeking out, meeting new people, and I got to spend a little of my Christmas time eating some amazing hummus and standing in Rockefeller Center. New York is definitely a place that I will return to someday.
After taking a few days off in Rockford to see some friends and recuperate a little bit, I am back on the road.
I spent most of today in Chicago at the Museum of Science and Industry, a really interesting brain playground. They had a lot of different departments and the whole place was bedecked in Christmas celebration. It was definitely worth going.
I then made the (relatively) short 380 mile drive to Massillon, OH where I am staying at the house of another friend. It really is nice to have friends all over the world.
Things haven’t clarified much further yet, but I have a feeling that I’m getting close. Ideas are flowing, and I am beginning to see past the wall of panic that I have had against me for the past year. May as well keep going.
I’m taking a little time to stay in Illinois and spend some time with some friends and their family. They have an amazing ranch house in the outskirts of Rockford.
I’ve only been here one day and it has already been an amazing one. After visiting and old college friend and getting a late breakfast, we headed out to Chicago. The first thing we did when we got there was to go to the bar on top of the Hancock Building, one of the tallest towers in Chicago. It was a foggy evening, but it was still an amazing view. I took some camera photos, but they don’t do the view justice.
We wandered around some more, visited a restaurant that I have been wanting to eat at for a very long time, Frontera Grill, but found it to be completely packed and with a gigantic waiting line. We decided to go with another restaurant that was on my list, La Scarola. It was a good choice. Excellent service, great atmosphere, great food. Even though we showed up without reservations on a very busy night, the manager offered us a makeshift table, and toasted us for the inconvenience.
We moved to a nearby cafe, my friend’s favorite hangout spot, and spent the next few hours resting.
It’s amazing how well you can fill up a day.
640 miles today. I started out in Lexington, and drove straight through to Rockford, my current pit stop for the weekend. I took a slight detour in Davenport to stop at the Delt house near Palmer College and say hi to everyone there.
Driving through Iowa was quite an experience. Everywhere I looked there was this familiarity, and at first I couldn’t place it. A little later I realized that it all looks like it was the real life location for a Calvin & Hobbes strip. Absolutely beautiful.
I’m really burnt out on thinking, and as if to reflect this, my camera ran out of power. And of course I didn’t bring the charger. I did manage to take some shots, but I will have to wait until I can find a new charger or a new battery before I can pull them off.
For now, I look forward to visiting Chicago for the first time. I am looking forward to this.
750 miles today. I spent a lot of that time rocking out to Daft Punk and listening to someone read Dan Brown’s new book to me.
Early in the day, I stopped in Salt Lake City to visit a few more old friends from school who opened up their own practice. I took them by surprise and they were pretty happy to see me and show me around. I never realized how beautiful the area is until I saw it in the daylight. A giant mountain, rising up from nowhere, taking up half the sky. It’s really worth seeing.
I had more time to think again, of course, about my relation to Chiropractic. One thing I have always felt that separated me from the rest of the students at school is that I have never felt compelled to heal the world. Everyone else around me has this powerful mission to serve those around them, to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the world, and I have never felt it in me.I certainly wish to help people, but for me it has always been about helping my friends, family and their loved ones.
As I looked back, I realized that the one constant motivation I have had has always been a loyalty to Chiropractic itself. My father was a Chiropractor, graduated less than a year after my birth. He was never able to teach me much about it before he fell ill and passed away due to a stroke, especially since I was in boarding school during most of my adolescent years. Still I held this loyalty, a conviction that Chiropractic was worth something.
I have been in Chiropractic College for over three years. I am coming to the end of the academic portion and have yet to even begin my clinical experience. I have been feeling burnout increasingly since the second year. I am scared and intimidated by Clinic, but I think that I will find something in it once I fully commit to it.
I took some more pictures while driving, mostly of the SLC mountains and the Wyoming snow-covered towns and cliffs.
Today I drove 640 miles from Yuba City, CA to just outside of Salt Lake City, UT.
Driving long distances has sort of become my thing for this year. Ever since I started regularly driving from the Bay Area to Seattle or Los Angeles, I have started to realize that, while I dislike commuting, I can handle distance driving fairly well.
When I passed through Reno, I took the opportunity to visit an old school friend of mine. We caught up on news, he gave me a tour of the place, and we had a good chat about some clinic difficulties I’ve been having. He seemed pretty happy, if not with his exact job, at least with the direction it was taking him.
Driving through the Reno mountains and desert, all covered in snow, was a beautiful sight to see. I’m really glad that I’m getting this chance to get away from my usual spots, shake up my brain a little bit and really get to work on my own concept of what kind of chiropractor I want to be when I graduate, and most of al, why I want to be that way. The good news is that some of those ideas are beginning to take shape.
Here are a couple of shots from my drive-by nature photography.
