Blogging Vacation

So, as I went back to full-time med school after finishing my master's, and finished up my residency application, I listed this blog as one of my "hobbies." Apparently something about claiming "ownership" freaked me out, or I was just busy, and I entirely got out of the habit of blogging. I kept bookmarking links and sticking them in a "bloggables" folder on my Firefox toolbar (and even opened a "bloggables2" folder, since the first one was so full), but I could never convince myself to actually sit down for the handful of minutes it might take to throw together something. The longer I took off, the more obligated I felt that my posts had to be really good, and few bloggers with real lives have time to make every post really good.

So, I tossed and turned, and almost decided to throw Sparkgrass to the wolves. It's hardly a community anymore, as Zuck, Pepper, and Geoff are swamped interns, and Kyle has finished up his Oxford thesis, and, while his personal blog is wonderful, he's just not as interested in the sorts of things that fit here. So, it's just me. And applying for residencies has brought, front and center, the idea that some day pretty soon, folks are going to be calling me doctor. That nauseates me, in an appropriate way. As a med student, your goal is to learn, and make the lives of the people in front of you feel better as they navigate the system. You learn how to be a decent colleague, and learn a very special kind of responsibility. At least, you're supposed to learn a special kind of responsibility, and I think I am doing so, but some of your colleagues make you wonder if they ever did. As a person that someone calls doctor, you're somebody who makes binding decisions for somebody's daily health. If someone feels like they're going to throw up, or sedated, or agitated, that might be because of the meds I proposed as their best bet. If you give a shit about the lives of the folks in front of you (and I certainly do), that's a huge deal.

I'll have patients googling me someday soon, and they'll find this site. That's weird.

I've missed a lot of world-changing events in my vacation from blogging; S-CHIP, Larry Craig, and a new Radiohead album all come immediately to mind. I'm not sure I had anything intelligent to say about any of these things that Ezra Klein or Matt Yglesias didn't say before I even heard the stories.

So, Sparkgrass is here to stay. But I have to acknowledge its limitations, and my limitations. I'm probably going to find a new, more anonymous blogging home sometime soon (a few offers on the table) where I'll get much more exposure than a personal, blogger-run site can offer. But I have to wait for S-CHIP to blow over. There are way too many people who either a) know more about health policy than I do, or b) simply THINK they know more about health policy than I do, but blather on and on and on, for me to hop in the debate there.