Wrapping things up

As an exercise it is quite a unique project to try to tie up all the loose ends in your life. The scenario is one where you put your life in pause for about a month and you have to leave it in a shape that is able to survive the pause without everything falling apart. It's not as trivial as it sounds, in fact. It's surprising how many todo-items one can have in a life and not really recognize it, and the rate at which new ones appear is even more amazing. One thing I've learned in the past few weeks is to just say no to things that I do not have time to do.

My personal project over the past years has been one which is reaching is culmination in about a week and a half and carries the name of orthognathic surgery. To summarize briefly for those of you who are not aware of the types of oral and maxillofacial surgeries, the purpose of the operation is to move the upper and lower jaws around to create a better fit. The motivations are primarily medical and secondarily cosmetic, although it is by no means a vanity affair due to the long time and quite a bit of pain associated with the process.

I personally classify facial surgeries amongst the most risky surgeries. The basis is in the fact that people create their self image based to a decently large degree on their face. If you look at images of people's bodies with faces covered, it is fairly difficult to determine who is in the picture. And when you wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, you should always recognize yourself. But when you start changing things about your facial structure, the affects are enormous, especially on a psychological level. You may still recognize yourself from the image in the mirror, but regardless of how small the change, you're still not fully able to comprehend that it's you in the mirror. That sort of happened during the last surgery a bit over two years ago. And it will happen this time, too, with the exception that the changes will be slightly bigger.

But as an exercise in humility, I do warmly suggest taking part in operations like this. It does get you thinking quite a bit about who you are and how you define yourself. The positive part is that according to academic studies, the cosmetic enhancements afforded by the surgeries are also often very positive and while in Finland, you can also get the state to subsidize the otherwise very expensive process to a very large degree.

As for wrapping things up, I guess I have quite a way to go still. For some odd reason I'm still accepting more action points at work and I just noticed that I will not have the time or the energy to do all the exams that I had planned for this exam period. But regardless, I think that I will be able to get a satisfactory closure to this chapter by the end of next week. After that it'll be painkillers and golf for quite a while.

And on a completely different note, Nanda got my portrait finished recently and I'll be getting it to my flat in a couple of days. Hurray!