I am alive!

Indeed, This posting does not come from beyond the grave.  Though if I were dead, the first thing my ghostly self would not be doing would be to hop on this blog and churn out a Pulitzer nominee.

So, Terry is correct.  I need to get back into the writing side of things.  But if you have followed this blog for any amount of time, you would see that...wait for it...

I am the worst blogger this side of New York.

There you have it.  This blogging takes some serious time, chops, ideas, and worst of all, motivation.  It is a funny thing, to have to conjure up motivation to do a hobby.  Jeesh, if all hobbies required such devotion, would there be any repose from the dredges of organized employment?

Before you go thinking I am retiring from blogging, think again.  The fact is, blogging is fun, albeit challenging.  But who stands down in the face of a challenge?  My dilemma is that blogging sometimes reminds me of work.  Not that it is work, but rather, that it reminds me of my job.


In quite a different approach to thinking about this, one would have to get an idea of what I do and how I think of my job.  I love my job, and I think I am quite good at what I do.  That is especially beneficial for each patient I see along the way.  No one wants to see any doctor that isn't good, or doesn't want to do what he is doing.  But there is something about the way each day progresses that can make it feel like actual work and not just taking care of people.

If you follow me, it is that each patient is separate unto him/herself.  There is no carry over.  Each case is unique.  What I take from each is the mastery of knowledge that I put into similar situations and gain experience to continue practicing.  That is why each doc gets better with time and practice.  One has to practice (a lot) to get better.  This applies to nearly everything imaginable.

But since every patient is separate, there is a feeling, or rather, the lack thereof, that the greater good is not accomplished.  This is as difficult an idea to convey as it may be to understand.  In my spare time, I look for project types of hobbies.  I look for things that take a long time to complete.  I do not try to do small tasks.  That is too similar to working, or patient care.  One can break down the work day into thinking about it like this.  I have 21 patients on the schedule today.  That means I have 21 small projects to work on.  I have 21 projects that each will take me 20 minutes to complete.

So when I am not at work, I do carpentry.  I build cabinets, shelving, consoles, new kitchen in 2013, and so on.  These are PROJECTS.  Man alive, they are so different from what I do on a day-to-day basis.  One project may take me 20-40 hours to complete (the kitchen took about 6 months).  20 minutes cannot compare to the satisfaction I get when I look at what I have accomplished.  There, sitting before me on the garage floor, is a thing.  A thing that I built, with my own hands, that was not in existence before.

Before I go rambling about carpentry, I better dial it down and refresh.  So blogging is like work.  There is a blog that takes about 30 minutes to write.  And then you post it and it stands alone, separate unto itself.  But story-storytelling is more like the projects I so covet.  Writing my book was liberating and gratifying.  I got to write down all of those ideas and twist them and spin up a tale.  Again, when I finished with it, I had something that I was proud of.

I think I have done it.  I think I made the connection of why it is that blogging is a challenge for me.  I sometimes find that a re-dedication is in order for things.  I will make a pact with myself, from time to time, to think of ways to enhance my job and surpass patient expectations.  I will try to do that same thing with this post.

I would hate if they changed the name of the blog from: Three Dudes, One Blog to Two Dudes and One Innocent Bystander.