jenniferhawke.com

This is my first week (out of a possible 8+) back at the books getting ready for Step 2.

I honestly don’t know how much material I’m going to efficiently get through while running around at the hospital all week, but a girl’s gotta try. Maybe I’ll find time to post my schedule on the weekend.

In the meantime, gotta keep that rod and reel in the water if I want to catch anything.

This was too long for a tweet, so I had to make a post to sufficiently de-rant.

Last September, HG Brands contacted me and claimed to be a “designer with rights to the CFL and Saskatchewan 100th anniversary”. They asked if they could use this particular photo in a promotional poster. I said Sure! I would be honoured! In return, they offered to send me some of the Rider swag that they make. Maybe a t-shirt or two for myself and my husband!? I said Sure! Even better!

6 months later, the t-shirts haven’t shown up. I think about it every once in awhile (and even sent a couple of “did you forget about me?” follow-up emails that were ignored) and am mildly annoyed. Not because we didn’t get swag. Not because they used my photo for free. Just because they offered something and didn’t follow through. Lame.

Where’s the integrity, people?

Disclaimer: We are not worried about money. Brandon has a job. Our families love us and support us. We are paying all bills on time and can indulge in fast-food or $3.75 matinees occasionally. Life is good. We are not worried about money. But…

I found something I really, really want to buy Brandon for his birthday. It’s only 9 months away and I need to sell my soul a few photos to help pay for it.

A little bit of random research into photo printing and publishing options led me to a few conclusions:

1) There are a lot of bad photos for sale online.

2) I really don’t want to add to that cyber landfill.

3) I have a sneaking suspicion every professional photographer out there dies a little inside when someone armed with a digital camera and Flickr account decides to “go pro.”

So, I had to step back and ask myself a few questions.

Would I print and hang Photos By Me on my wall? Heck, yes! I would love to have an unlimited printing-and-framing budget to add some personality to our little home.

Does that mean other people feel the same way? I’ve learned to stop believing my intrinsic view of the world is shared by many others.

Is it worth a shot to find out? With a free service like RedBubble, I’m not really sure what I have to lose. I guess stranger things have happened.

So, where do I begin?

After spending even more time flipping through my photo archives (16,000+ images in the last 4 or 5 years), I realize I am a horrible judge of the quality of my work. I like some pieces for personal reasons. I hate others without any reason. I am not trained in art. I have no idea what the difference is between a photograph that is artistically and technically flawless that doesn’t sell and other weird crap that people love to buy.

I think the last paragraph just made any professional photographer out there throw up a little in their mouth and nearly pass out while choking on fumes of disdain.

I’ve decided to take the amateur-ness of my lack of photography (or art or marketing) training out of my decision to sell my photos online. Or rather, I’ve decided to increase the amateur-ness exponentially by including all of you in the process. Yes, that’s right. YOU are going to decide which photos I upload to sell online.

Each week I will choose a different theme. I will upload 5 photos and open the voting to ye loyal readers. You don’t actually have to say “Yes! I’m going to buy that photo! Here is my money!” but if you did buy a photo from that set, which one would it be? At the end of the week, the winner will be uploaded to my RedBubble account and we’ll see if anything sells.

And since I’m making you part of the “work” process, I have to include you in the “payoff” process. For every 10 prints I sell, I will send 1 for free to a random reader/voter.

Do we have a deal?

2010 is really shaping up to be an anti-computer year so far.

I can barely bring myself to cursorily glance through email and maybe skim through Facebook before my hands are itching to do something else and my feet are already taking me in that direction.

I had a friend (hi, Christina!) tell me to “embrace it!” and not fight the flow.

So, I have a dozen unanswered email messages. There’s this Scrabble game I just can’t bring myself to finish lose. I haven’t been practicing any question banks since I passed the Internal Medicine shelf exam. I’m reading books s l o w l y. I’m watching movies. I’m learning a ton at the hospital. I’m doing lots of things and I’m doing nothing.

I’m enjoying my life away from the computer. I just wish there were more of you here with me.

Did you ever spend time in a small group of girls (maybe in a cabin at camp) and play truth-or-dare? I can think of a dozen times during such occassions I was asked to relate my Most Embarrassing Moment and a dozen times I blanked and couldn’t think of anything to say. I’m very shy and very careful about avoiding said MEM’s. But next time I’m at a sleepover, I have a story that turned every inch of my skin, from the back of my neck to the roots of hair, as BRIGHT RED as the wool Christmas sweater I was wearing on Friday.

What could possibly be that awesome? Sitting in a meeting with a dozen people (students, interns, & pharmacy techs) and having your URL show up in the browsing history while the attending searches for something on the computer.

Even more awesome? The attending clicks on it.

Later, he asked me if I keep photos of my wedding on the front page to remind me that marriage used to be a happy time.

“Well, it is still a relatively recent occurrence for me…” I responded.

“When did you get married?” he asked.

“August.”

“Oh! You probably still like him then.”

A fellow student asked me if he should erase the browsing history of that computer after the meeting. I said no and laughed. What am I going to do? Run around the hospital and erase the browsing history of all the computers? I have no idea who was reading my site from the 10th floor, but it didn’t really matter. It wouldn’t have been as embarrassing if it hadn’t caught me by surprise.

I just don’t do well with spontaneous put-Jen-on-the-spot occasions. I am an introvert after all.

I’m sorry.

I picked up a small side job writing 400-500 word articles for a search engine company.

Finally! An opportunity to become a financially contributing member of our little family! They’re paying me $9 per article which isn’t much, but sure is better than a kick in the pants. However, I have been spewing out junk for them and finding I’m all blabbed out when I come here.

So sue me.

I have a few posts on the stove and hope to rediscover my mojo after the Internal Medicine shelf exam (tomorrow) and an unexpected 3-day weekend. Score!

This photo is from the inside of my very own snowglobe on Christmas Eve. We got 14 inches of snow in less than 12 hours.

My next two wishes are for Brandon to kick butt on his exam on Wednesday and for us to win the $1.22 million Powerball lotto today.

Please, please, please! I hope Santa isn’t off duty yet.

“It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends.”
~ Unknown

I wanted to thank the following ladies for upping to the holiday cheer quotient around here:

Jillian – I curled up in bed with a cuppa cocoa last night. I have been drooling over the latest homemade bottled Christmas gifts on your blog.

Laurie – The cards are beautiful. I am looking forward to thinking up occasions to mail them in the new year.

Joanne – So much oatmeal, so little time! YUM! Thank you for rounding out the food groups in our holiday snacking plans.

You gals rock. Thank you!

Brandon and I were watching some random sports channel (as we usually do) during lunch yesterday. The Wooden Classic was on and 99-year old legend John Wooden was speaking. I was initially impressed and then drawn in by his eloquence and poise.

Wooden’s Pyramid of Success describes one of the huge reasons I like to watch sports. Competitive sports bring out the best-of-the-best. Individuals are rewarded for sacrificing personal goals for those of the team. There is no ceiling for hard work. It is the most literal example (other than farming – hello, Saskatchewan!) that I can think of where you physically reap what you physically sow. Work harder and you will be better.

The Pyramid is a concrete embodiment of the often intangible ability of superhuman athletes. Athletes at any level succeed on a rather vague recipe of work ethic, confidence, inherent talent and skill. But what makes one player better than another? Where do The Great Ones like Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan come from?

Industriousness and enthusiasm are the cornerstones to success. You’ll notice skill and confidence aren’t initial building blocks. They come only after you have developed friendship, loyalty, initiative, alertness and self-control.

These lessons apply to medicine too. Start by working hard at what you do and loving every minute of it. Make friends. Pay attention. Study when you might rather do something else.

With a lot of faith and patience, you will succeed.

————
*image from The Official Site of Coach John Wooden.

I mentioned on Twitter a little while back that I saw my first real, live, pulsating brain in the OR. I was watching a craniotomy on a woman who had fallen and hit her head the week before. She was bleeding and clotting too much for the space in her skull to handle. Her brain had shifted almost 18mm over the midline. The neurosurgeon cut out a hockey-puck sized piece of skull, carefully sliced and folded back the thick leather-ish brain casing and scraped, sucked and flushed as much blood out as he could. He then inserted a plastic drain tube and fitted the circular skull piece back in place.

The procedure was super cool. The patient recovery was astonishing. Brain surgery is nothing short of miraculous.

The surgery was emergently scheduled at 5pm on a Friday. A most inconvenient time of day for the operating floor that was in the process of cleaning up and shutting down. Also extremely inconvenient for the neurosurgeon who was meant to be on a plane to some convention on the sunny west coast. Bummer.

While we waited for them to prep the OR and patient, the neurosurgeon spoke candidly with us as he flipped through images of luxurious cars online.

“I was young and stupid when I chose neurosurgery,” he said. “If I had it to do all over again, I would marry my family instead of my job.”

This morning, I was reminded of that conversation when I read this post on Mothers in Medicine. It’s one in a series of “A Day In The Life” written by women doctors from a variety of specialties. This neurosurgeon mom finishes reminiscing about her day with the following paragraph:

Start wiping away tears as I think about what I’ve just written. I used to love my career, but I am realizing how sick and tired I am of this workload – of not seeing my family, not being ready for holidays, using weekends to catch up on charts… of being dumped on by partners and pushed around by insurance companies. I can’t remember what I used to do for fun, and I can’t figure out why I’m still getting out of bed for this, day after day. Why would anybody want to have a day like this, or worse, 5+ days a week? I know, it’s supposed to be hard, and the culture of neurosurgery is to suck it up and avoid asking for help, because that’s a sign of weakness. Maybe my fellow residents were right after all, and I’m just lazy. Maybe I just need to finally reconsider my options and decide whether this has devoured enough of my life.

Back to the neurosurgeon at our hospital: “I tell every single student I see that if there is anything, ANYTHING in the whole wide world that you can be happy doing other than medicine, do it.”