My best training decision this season

During my first year of residency, my fellow interns and I would say that having 10-12 patients one could actually have time to think about their disease processes and make academic, doctorly decisions about their care. Within 12-15 patients, we'd just be managing; 15-20 patients was damage control; and >20 patients we'd just be putting out fires.
For this last week of training, I was short on fire extinguishers. Being on call brought more than the usual middle of the night calls and emergency operations. I was also going away for the weekend to visit my family. A combination of poor planning, unexpected hours at work, my tremendous resentment of those hours spent at work and not at home with Kevin or training, and my too slowly recovering Cankle made for a training week of low volume and high disappointment. After feeling terrible about not making even HALF of my workouts for the week, I got on a plane to JFK and left it all behind.
I don't see my parents, my brother, sister-in-law, and nephews nearly enough. We were all gathering at my brother's home for my nephews' birthday party. Then my parents were leaving for Thailand for 6 weeks. A birthday party for 2 toddlers with a life sized Elmo (yep, my sister-in-law hired an woman who dressed as Elmo for the party) can be singularly repellant to those without children. Nonetheless, I had a wonderful time hanging out with my family and even did the hokey-pokey. I had planned on running while in Queens, but urban running is alot like playing Frogger with cars and other pedestrians. I managed to run 30 minutes while the babies were napping, but it was obvious that my planned 2 hour run should be at Central Park. Instead of taking a 50 min subway ride to Central Park to run on Sunday, I decided to spend time with my family. It was the best decision I've made about training this season.
One of the greatest joys I've had and continue to have since "growing up" is getting to know my parents, brother, and childhood friends as adults. I love them because they're family and long time friends, but if they weren't, I'd still want them in my life. For that I consider myself infinitely fortunate and blessed.
So I'm back home and back to my routine of work, train, sleep, repeat. I feel more connected to those I love and more grounded to the what is most important to me. Not much has changed here at the homestead; and I didn't find more fire extinguishers by going away. Instead, I think I've become more flame-resistant--not to put out fires, but to walk through them.