Everything Good Happens After 30

This is an excerpt from the book I'm currently reading: If you have to cry go outside and other things your mother never told you by Kelly Cutrone. I've just turned 26 but for some reason reading this put me in a good mood. I've had a lot of fun and experienced so much life, however my 20s is (and will be) characterized by lots and lots of hard work and instability. It gets old and I definitely don't want to be living like this forever. Most of my friends my age are "settled" by now, but I've chosen to take a different path in life that although has been a fun ride, the pressures and the uncertainties it comes with is just wearing me out.

I'd like to think that by the time I'm 30 I can start really reaping the benefits from the seeds I have worked to sow in my 20s.

According to Cutrone, here are ten other things to look forward to after you turn thirty:

1) Salary Increase. Hell Yea! Depending on what I choose to do I'd either just finished my residency or already have been working for a year.

2) After having gone through a plethora of designers for clothing, it's time to step it up a notch and charge headlong into the land of overpriced luxury accessories, where I hope you'll encounter some of the same landmarks I did: Globe-trotter, Asprey, Louboutin, Vuitton, Bulgari, Hermes, Roger Vivier. Knowing me I'll be very excited over this one. Some people love painting, some people love photography, some people love cooking, I love fashion!

3) A baby. If you want one. Once me and my future hubby's jobs are stable I will want one. I'll also want help. Ideally it would be a mother or mother-in-law but a nanny might have to do. I don't want to give up my career I'd prefer find the perfect balance between motherhood and being a productive achiever in my field.

4) The desire and the emotional wherewhithal to date three men at the same time without remorse. This one is obviously not for me. As a Muslima, I'm looking forward to being committed to ONE man.

5) Vacations outside the USA sans youth hostel. HELL YEA! I love traveling but I'm always looking for the budget ways to go such as looking into off-peak times and pricelining everything. I'm looking forward to being able to comfortably see parts of the world.

6) Self-control. This is the time when we ride the lion; the lion does not ride us. Like Durga, we sit on top of it and enjoy the ride. I just hope this one is true. If it is that would be an amazing thing especially where weight loss and spending habits are concerned. I can definitely say that the ability to exercise self-restraint and not giving into every whim and indulgence has improved as I've gotten older and more mature, and that's a very liberating feeling.

7) Property ownership, or maybe just your own apartment. I've had my own apartment, and the man in my life has been fortunate enough to experience property ownership in his mid-20s. I do have a very cute place, but I am looking forward to getting to remodel, furnish, and decorate my own place the adult-way and not the broke-student way. Definitely something to look forward to!

8) The ability to buy your own muscle car, if you want one. Not really
into cars that much, I'm happy with the one the Baba gave me. I'd trade this perk for vacations and designer clothing.

9) Decrease in overall paranoia and hysteria, which leads to... At this moment in life that sounds like the best thing to look forward to out of everything in this list LOL

10) Better sex. Definitely better sex. Yet to experience this one so this doesn't apply to me either.

Just keep Swimming Just Keep Swimming Just Keep Swimming

I don't know how some people can do this. They keep going and going and going. You don't soee any apparent signs of the pressure taking its toll on them. You don't hear them complain or grunt. No matter what they're always in class, on time, in dress code. You don't see them downing coffee cup after coffee cup nor do you spot them nodding off in lectures. They're completely calm during their patient examination checkouts as the preceptor is assesing their every move. They just do it!

Me on the other hand. I'm totally spent. I turn to Nemo for valuable advice: Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming swimming. We swim, swim, swim. ...

on brain farts and such

I'm having the biggest brain fart right now. I'm done! that's it neuroanatomy will not stick. It's really frustrating to realize how limited your human mental capacity actually is. The final is Friday and I have borderline grade. I pretty much have to pass the exam to pass the class, but my brain kind of decided to shut down. It's probably my protective survival instant that's kicked in...."hibernate" or "explode".

A person can only take so much before things start to crack. Quotes like "impossible is nothing" and "where there's a will there's a way"are such lies. Clearly those authors didn't go to med school.

I went from being a ball of walking panic to "I don't give 2 ishs" mode. I'M DONE!

I miss having a life.

My Birthday Goodies!

When you get older you kind of stop expecting gifts on your birthday, the celebration is more in the gathering. So in that sense this particular birthday was a pleasant surprise :)

Included were books, chocolate-covered apples, and Saints gear....it couldn't have been more collectively thoughtful at the moment!

Hopefully the great start is indicative of the rest of the year. I just feel it in the air that 2010 is going to be a good one :)

Not the best looking, but the best tasting FATOUSH!

I don't know why my fatoush isn't photogenic. Trust me, it was like amazing! Probably the best I had and this is coming from a salad-a-holic. I've been making this regularly like 3 times a week since I first made it a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you guys for your suggestions on my previous fatoush post. I cut up the typical vegetables (no onions for me though. Romein NOT iceberg lettuce) along with avocado cubes. In a separate bowl I mixed the following:

fresh lemon juice
salt
chopped garlic
chopped fresh mint
fresh thyme (za3tar)
olive oil

I mixed this dressing mixture with my veggies. Then I mixed in just a little bit of goat cheese. Then when ready to eat I topped it off with the Whole Foods pita chips. Not the kind in a bag with the rest of the chips, but the kind they sell in the plastic container in the bakery section.

DELISH!

I almost forgot it was my birthday.....

I was too distracted having a panic attack (as I usually am the evening before a major exam) until my roomie came to my room at midnight to sing me Happy Birthday. So began the train of text message which always make me smile. I turned 26 today!

I only got 3 hours of sleep thanks to an 8 AM killer exam, but alhamdulilah it went well and I just have to make it through the rest of classes so that I can enjoy an evening dinner at a beachside restaurant with about 10 of my favorite people in this city. My intuition says I will be getting some things in the mail soon, we'll see. After that it's back to reality-the books that is!

Of course it would be much nicer if I was home now with my family and friends, or if my cutesy futesy could be here....but alhamdulilah for everything I have so much in life to be thankful for.

The practice of getting back up on your feet.......

.....is much easier said than done.

I either despair and surrender a little bit too easily, or I simply have way too much on my plate for a single person to handle. One or the other just has to be true because this can't be normal everyday life stuff. Maybe it's a little bit of both.

Academic-wise this semester I've been doing "okay," not great and not too bad...until 3 weeks ago. 3 weeks I totally bombed an exam...and I mean did like really bad. It didn't feel good to perform so horribly. This isn't undergrad...it's doctor school and they fail people out. It's a race just to keep up sometimes.

So instead of moping around or having a panic attack I decided to do what any type A -minded person would do: Identify the problem and do something about it! The bad number was enough to motivate me to want to work extra hard and make 90-somethings on the next exams (I have exams every single week). So I pretty much studied my ass off for the next test. I spent ten hours on a saturday studying...10 whole hours! I'm talking minus the breaks too. I spent even more than that on Sunday studying and woke up before the crack of dawn on Monday to do a final review. At that point I had pretty much studied more for that exam than any other test this semester. I felt on top of the world and so ready to go out and conquer.

The outcome? it was HARD! but I was relieved when everyone else thought it was hard too. However, when the grades were posted I couldn't believe that despite all of that hard work I boasted about, my test grade was still below the class' average. I mean I didn't do bad on it I still got a B, but it was 3 percent points below the class' average and I'm pretty confident I studied more for that test than the average person in the class.

Again I decided that I won't freak out, I'll identify where I went wrong and I'll do something about it! The next exam we had was rumored to be the hardest exam we will have to take all semester and I was determined to prove myself. I joined a hard core study group for it and actually started preparing for it like 2 weeks before the exam. ALOT of hours went into preparing for that exam. I just took it this past Friday and no joke it was pretty brutal however I felt good about it. I identified the tricks, eliminated the distractors, knew all the formulas I needed to know, and beat it....or so I thought!

I spent the morning after smiling until the answer key was posted during lunchtime . My content was quickly replaced with panic as I was comparing my answer sheet to the posted key and putting a red X where I missed a question. My hands started shaking and I couldn't even bring myself to count how many I got wrong and calculate my grade. I handed it over to my friend to do who then announced to me my grade in a sympathetic tone. To say that I was devastated wouldn't be an overstatement.

I wouldn't be so upset right now if I didn't work so hard. My confidence in my abilities is questionable, my sense of self-control and discipline shaken, and the fear and anxiety has set in. I'm trying to be positive and remember to just put my faith in God, but I feel like I've been knocked off my horse too many times too close in proximity that I really just need a little bit of time to get back up. Unfortunately life doesn't always give you that option.

So in the meantime I've been faking being ok hoping that at some point while following the same routine the calmnesss will come back and settle in on its own...and it's actually starting to. Today I've been feeling better than yesterday and even had some spurts of energy and motivation here and there. I've taken it upon myself to do some major organizing of my notes and desk and it really helped declutter my mind. I know that if I do well on this week's test I'll feel awesome. There is a brightside. The worst is over and I still have a passing average in that class. Plus, the Saints did actually win the Super Bowl!

So I think I'm starting to climb back up on that horse again.