Summer refresher

I'm just beginning properly writing my secondaries for MD applications now, and nervously awaiting the downpour of emails that will surely (hopefully) come after the holiday weekend. However, I won't be writing about that here.

In the past few weeks, I've begun noticing some less-desirable attributes about myself and my surroundings. Particularly, I am annoyed/disgusted by the state of my apartment, and how generally, I tend to clutter up my work and living areas. Not to say I'm a hoarder, but I surely don't need to hold onto all my past midterms. Same thing goes for the various small things hanging around my desk. I'm at home right now, but when I return to my apartment tomorrow, I'll have to do a very thorough cleaning.

More seriously, I am inattentive to the cleanliness of our apartment. One roommate is fastidious and tends to keep to her own room, but another roommate and I have neglected to keep up the tidiness of our space. We left the apartment in a pretty bad state when the semester ended, and I still haven't gone through and cleaned out the fridge, which surely has some kinds of rotten vegetables and mold in it. I'm being honest here.

Dirty dishes, dirty floors as well. I try to clean around the apartment more often this summer, since clutter and dirt stress me out, but I need to make it more of a habit. In general, I have a lot of things hanging around the apartment that I should just toss or sell, and once August rolls around, I'll make a serious effort to sell off my old textbooks. Of course, that's not the most egregious contributor to the mess, but that's an actionable goal.

Next, I'm unsatisfied with my diet, exercise habits (or lack thereof), and schedule. Towards the end of the semester, I was less diligent with cooking, and ended up throwing together some meager and unhealthy meals. Lately, my boyfriend and I have been making a greater effort to cook more and actually enjoy food. I may have mentioned this before, but last semester, I both looked forward to and dreaded mealtimes: I would not be hungry, but then again, nothing I made tasted good. He's recently demonstrated his superior cooking skills, so here's hoping I learn something from him.

In the same vein, I want to start going to the gym. Last semester, I was flattened by boxing tryouts, and swore that I would work out to get in better shape. I was hoping to be actually put into an intercollegiate fight this year, but in general, I should increase my level of fitness. My goal is to run < 7:30 mile, increase my flexibility, and try lifting. More broadly, I'd like to get in the habit of exercising regularly. I do have a phobia of looking stupid in front of people at the gym, but if it's my boyfriend telling me I'm doing something wrong/have bad form/some other gym critique, I'll be more confident trying.

And finally, I need to go all-in for secondaries. I want to allocate more of my free time to fiction writing and seriously cut down on dead internet time. Wake up earlier, exercise regularly, eat healthier, drink more water, go on more hikes, write more articulate and intelligent secondaries, hang out more with old friends, etc, etc.

That's all for now.

*** Not really. I changed a tag from MD cycle 2015 to MD cycle 2016. This is because I plan on matriculating in 2016.