1st Progress Post

So as of right now, I feel like things are progressing slowly. But that is to be expected as I have really set a bunch of goals without having a clear idea of how I am going to achieve them. I'm confident that things will iron out and I will be able to eventually get into a routine. Right now, just reading what I just wrote, I can see that my blog will be quite dry if I keep writing like this. An unstated reason for me blogging in addition to simply documenting the year and making myself accountable to something for motivation was to also improve my writing skills. I mean, my writing is crap. It's so mechanical, scientific and simply uncreative. I think by writing often (i.e. blogging), I'll have to improve somewhat...right?

OK, so research....this has been really tough so far, but I'm just starting as of yet. Basically, my research for the year is going to be retrospective studies using these huge inpatient databases (some state level, some national level, either way, thousands of patients with thousands of fields for information) to look at hospital treatment outcomes. So the good thing is that it is many projects and it will give me the experience of simply coming up with interesting ideas and seeing their results relatively quickly. Right now, however, my knowledge about this stuff is minimal. We will be using SAS to analyze these data and that inovlves learning a programming language. Now, it's not possible to learn an entire programming language relatively quickly for someone like me (i.e. no programming background). But I need to learn enough of the basics and concepts so that I won't require too much help. Additionally, I need to learn biostatistics. I got a great book called Intuitive Biostatisitcs that I'm trying to pound through as fast as possible, but the days have been slow and progress has been minimal. My goal right now is to just work hard and finish a project as quickly as possible. I'll learn SAS as much as possible and, hopefully, I'll have the opportunity to be productive. Ultimately, I want the experience of coming up with an idea, using the database and SAS to analyze the results, write the abstract and submit it to a meeting, write the manusrcipt, present at the meeting, and then push the manuscript through for publication. That's the goal. If I can repeat that 2 times, then this year will be wildly successful!!!

As far as keeping my life in order organizationally, I've decided to make my calendar electronic. I will enjoy updating it and therefore, I will likely review it. So, I will be using Google Calendar for now. Ultimately, I'd like to purchase a smart phone to hold some medical software and my calendar/email/personal tasks. That way, I'll be able to carry around the calendar with me. For now, I found a great application called Remember The Milk and it has been awesome tool for a to-do list, though I'm having trouble getting it to interact with Google Calendar the way I'd like it to. Basicallly, the key to a good organization system is the weekly review. That's the most important part in David Allen's Getting Things Done and I think for the next few weeks I need to be consciously consistent in reviewing. If I can do that, then I should be able to get into the habit and will be able to define my actions and have a system that will let my thoughts fall out of my head and into a place where I don't need to think about them and can review them in a timely manner.

My Exercise Goals: I will start soccer this Thursday!! I will be on another Free Agent team as I am signing up by myself and that likely means that we will lose every game this season by a sizeable margin, but hey, I'm gonna get better at soccer and I will have fun and I will get in shape. Hopefully in September, I'll be able to join one of the medical school teams. Rowing will start this Sunday morning. Hopefully I will make it.

This Friday evening, I will be going on a salsa cruise in the boston harbor. The more I dance, the better I'll become. I'll write all about my experience with ballroom dancing (only Salsa for now) at a later time as this post is already getting prohibitively long.

OK, so cooking...I'm learning slowly. I think my goal for the summer is to cook one serious meal per week, most likely on a weekend night. The goal of this will be to simply try, not necessarily to make something edible. If it is edible, then yay!! I'm taking one day cooking class about meats with Helen Rennie in mid August and I think that will really help me. I'll write about that when the time comes. So at least that's going right now...

OKAY, that's it for now. Looks like I have something sort of planned in each facet of my goals for the year. I'll probably end up adding goals and doing other stuff and most definitely will end up not achieving or simply giving up on a bunch of goals, but this is where I am right now.

PHEW...that took much longer than I expected. Hopefully, I'll get better at this.