Tell me how you REALLY feel (a.k.a., My reputation strikes again)

So the other day I'm on the phone with my mother (hi, mom!) and she says something to the effect of, "Well, since you've changed your mind again about what you want to do..." (yes, mom, I know that's not exactly what you said, but that was the general theme). I'm thinking, "Whaaaat is she talking about now?" (Yes, mom, I really do wonder sometimes.) Turns out she thought I shifted direction and wanted to be a bone doctor instead of a brain doctor - the whole D.O. instead of M.D. thing confused quite a few folks apparently. I used to wonder about that myself actually - the fact is that a doctor of osteopathy (hence, the D.O.) is not someone who focuses solely on bones, but on the body as a system. But the conversation still stuck with me, mostly because my mother did not IN THE SLIGHTEST sound surprised at what she perceived to be my fickleness exercising itself yet again.

To reiterate the point, the other day I was discussing medical school with my BFF and she said something like, "You should probably stick with a blog for more than a week before you decide to operate on people" (again, I paraphrase). She was joking (sort of), but that also stuck with me because it's true - I have crazy trouble maintaining a blog, Facebook account, or any consistent presence on the web outside of my email (which I'm not all that good at keeping up with either, actually).

Here's the thing - these are two people whose opinions are critical to what I do. OK, well critical might be a bit of an overstatement, but..."important" strikes me as a good word. I'm one of those people. You know the type. One of those annoying people who subsist almost entirely on external validation. One of those people who isn't very effective at self-motivating. One of those sad, somewhat lonely, and almost always disappointed people who looks at driven people and says, "Why can't I do that?" Not that I'm not driven to accomplish things - for instance, I'm really driven to make it to (and hopefully through) medical school - but my motivation is not often of the intrinsic type, if you get what I mean.

So the fact that my mom and my BFF jokingly question my ability to commit to this path really sounds like an "I'm not sure you can do this" to my overly sensitive, hardwired-to-fail brain. (Don't worry, guys, I know rationally this is not what you meant to say...I think.)

But I've decided that I'm going to start turning everything you know about Tara on its head, because not only do I believe I can do this without a doubt, I also am committing to sticking with this blog. GASP! I've done it, put it out there for my entire (somewhat small) Facebook community to see. So if I fail at keeping the blog, you can pretty much bet I will never make it to medical school :)

More later...

t.