Get a Life

A little while back, okay maybe two weeks ago, I ran into a friend and had my first opportunity to have blogger shop talk. Later Caleb recommended an article about being a better blogger which he had found helpful. I was not so much surprised as heartened by the article when I read it. It made me think about why I'm doing this blogging thing. I originally had the notion this would be an outlet for me to share pithy medical stories. I didn't even understand my title or subtitle. They just happened. The blog has evolved if I can use such a dramatic word for something this embryonic into just what it apparently always meant to be. Now that I look at it I realize that the name is so obviously medical because that is what dominates my life and the subtitle reflects my desire to take as good care of myself as I do of my patients. As it turns out the blog has been quite personal and lately I have grown to really resent it when I don't have enough time to post anything. The article Caleb recommended was full of concrete advice that boils down to "get a life". If you want to blog something somebody out there might enjoy reading: get a life. This is a really good idea. This is also, as it happens, what I have been long struggling to have and to do. I had a life once. It had books and people and places in it just like the lives I'm always trying to help my patients have. Medical training is a gruesome process and has a tendency to take young people who've never actually had a life and turn them into people who are incapable of having one. I had a life before med school and I miss it. But, it is damn hard to fit it back into the little tiny hairline cracks that are all that remain outside of my professional persona. Thank god this silly little blog thingy that was supposed to be more of the same: ie me the physician rejected that notion and has become about this human who happens to be a doctor.

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