It’s after midnight and I need to get up in time for a 6AM shift at the hospital tomorrow, or I guess more accurately later today. The wife is out of town. The kids are asleep in the bed as I make sure to angle the computer away to keep the light off their faces. What in the world compelled me to start a blog under these conditions?
I suppose it’s from a deal I made with myself to stop chickening out and just do it. Perhaps I should come up with some grandiose idea about having a record of my thoughts for my children to look back on and realize their old man was more than just their old man. Perhaps it’s an escape from the grind of work where all day I long I focus on helping others and barely give a minute to help myself. Perhaps I was inspired by my wife’s success on her alternate business outside of her primary job and wanted to spread my wings, too. Mostly, I think I’m doing this to disprove my most fervent doubter: myself. There are only so many times I can go to Google and search for “should I start a blog” and read and re-read the same advice and recommendations from people who took the plunge. I think I just got fed up with stepping up to the edge of the diving board without jumping in. Maybe in this sleepy state I convinced myself to yell, “Cannonball!” and went for the big splash.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve enjoyed writing but never pursued it through an avenue to be seen by others. My college years coincided with the rise of high-speed internet and everyone getting access to everyone else. The whole “blog” thing was a fad I was intrigued by but kept shutting myself out of while wondering who would want to read what little old me wrote? My mind would steadily wander in those moments, kind of inexplicably, to my eighth grade English teacher who continually praised every essay I handed in. His favorite, and possibly mine, too, was some cockamamie story I came up with about the death of Julius Caesar, the required 8th grade Shakespeare book where I grew up, but from the perspective of a ’20s noir cop, an Edward G. Robinson voiced character who wore a tunic and had a fedora with a magnifying glass. I still smile at the thought of it. I don’t quite recall how the story went but I remember sitting in the computer lab full of those new oddly shaped Mac computers with the funky colored backgrounds and typing away. More vividly, I can recall my teacher handing me back the paper with a high-grade on it and commenting how it was such a clever idea. It was that sense of validation that something that came out of my brain could spark an interest in someone else’s head. So now that I’m about 25 years older, I figure I ain’t getting any younger and I need to scratch that itch to see if I can spark someone else’s interest through my words.
I don’t have a theme in mind for this blog – mostly just thoughts that wander through my head, commentary on what it’s like to be a dad to my amazing kids, a husband to my amazing wife, a working physician dealing with the stress of juggling it all. Maybe I can dabble in my thoughts on sports or movies or delve into my Disney fandom. Politics? Eh – I’m just starting out here, think I’ll save that for later before I risk losing half my potential audience right off the bat.
The title of the site will make sense in time; no reason to show all my cards on the first hand of the night, right?
I hope you’ll join me back here again as I build up my content and, hopefully on the same trajectory, my confidence. I’ll be here. After all, I ain’t going anywhere since I’m surrounded by bears.
Surrounded By Bears 