alone again

This is my first week in Victoria; I arrived Saturday afternoon after an enjoyable but all-too-short dimsum with the pharmacy gang and Julianna's other friends (she has more than two!). It was good to see everyone and to catch up a little bit, but I sometimes wonder how strong the friendships are based on the effort level that I see. It doesn't mean that we're not friends, but it begs the question of how important I am as a friend to my friends. So basically, I was feeling lonely for most of that last week in February.

This depressive thinking continued onto the ferry ride. It was actually quite fun (but incredibly expensive) to travel to Victoria with just my parents. I bought the second book in Stieg Larsson's series and read that. However, as the car left the ferry, I started becoming more excited about the fact that I would be in Victoria for two months. It's not the end of the world. Rather it's a chance to live by myself, work hard, study hard, and explore a little bit. Instead of musing about the strength of my friendships and missing the camaraderie I have with lots of the pharmacy students at UBC.

Geoff and Yuma, who I am staying with, are incredibly nice people - part of a trend of people in Victoria, as I will learn. They are also not very neat and very sharing with their stuff, which suits me just fine. The Safeway pharmacy I am working at is also staffed with nice people. I find the workflow often inefficient, but then again, I'm not the pharmacy manager, so I don't worry about that too much. I find that sometimes I lack motivation (eg. to wake up in the morning) because there isn't much that particularly attracts me to the pharmacy. However, upon reflection I can come up with at least a few high points for each day where I felt that I provided good counselling that was above and beyond regular expectations.

So far, living by myself has been good (although not great). I am taking pretty good care of myself with regards to food and sleep. I can continue to work on the other initiatives I set for myself (one regarding exercise-related health and two others I think I'll keep to myself). I have also worked out a study-schedule for PEBC/OSCEs with Stephanie.

This wasn't intended to be a particularly substantive blog entry. I feel as if I am putting my personal life (and even my reflections of meaning or personal goals) on hiatus for a bit, and just trying to keep myself oriented, so that I can go to work every morning and be productive.