Recharged

• What a fantastic weekend! This weekend I went to a conference here in Victoria on Spirituality and Healing. It was great. Late this afternoon, I told a friend about the tremendous benefit of going into something like that with the opportunity to encounter people from a place of curiosity, politeness and not knowing. What I mean is that I think because I’m meeting a bunch of strangers and being polite as I chat with/get to know them and being naturally curious (some would call it nosy), I end up getting exposed to ideas that I might not otherwise. With friends that I know well, because I know their opinions on some subjects, it’s easy for me to unknowingly make assumptions about what they might say on an entirely new subject and, in my mind, even how they will likely view it. Being introduced to a topic or an idea by a group of people you don’t yet know is very freeing. Especially when your name tag just says your name (no organization) and you don’t know anyone there, you can just represent yourself. People have no preconceived notions about what your opinion or experience of life might be to date because they know nothing about you – it’s almost as if you’re forced to automatically wear your “beginner’s eyes”. Anyway, these beginner’s eyes served me well this weekend and in a nutshell, I got to soak up the wisdom of quite a few people about how to thrive in a helping profession for the mutual benefit of you and your patients.

• The weekend conference and time around it that got to spend just reflecting and taking a vacation in my own city was exactly what I needed. I feel like I just had a week or two off! And now I'm finding it's so similar to having a week off that it even includes the usual stages of procrastination associated with the night before getting back to work. Ugh. On that note, I’d better go read a little bit of dermatology before the week ahead.