Enduring In The Face Of Fog And Decay

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It’s that time of year. From our deck, we watch as a wall of fog rolls in from the Pacific Ocean, enveloping every structure in it’s path and reducing visibility to the point where it’s a struggle to render the features of houses across the street. This is a J.R.R. Tolkien, Sauron’s massing armies type of fog. Cycling through it …

What Happens At WCI CON

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[Disclosure: If you register for WCI CON 21 using this link, I make a modest commission at no cost to you.] Enrollment has begun for the upcoming Physician Wellness and Financial Literacy Conference 2021, offered every 1-2 years by the White Coat Investor. I was a speaker at the 2020 convention, which took place in March and coincided with the …

Hanging Onto A Sunday Morning

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I am lying in a pool of sunlight with a newly arrived New Yorker, reading an article about virtual assistants and luxuriating in the warmth and the light of LA. There’s a quality to the light that attracted and kept John Baldessari living and working in Los Angeles, and while the quote from him I’m thinking of escapes me the …

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Ivory Tower

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Back in training, my fellow residents and I gulped ladles full of Kool-Aid from tenured professors who ruled an impressively pedigreed land of job security and underlings to perform scut. For readers outside of medicine, scut refers to the small and annoying tasks involved in routine patient care. Examples might include drawing blood at specific time to test levels of …

Support The Doctor We Wanted To Be In Our Med School Admission Essay

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I’ll keep this short and sweet. One of my medical heroes, Dr. Rick Hodes, was interviewed on the White Coat Investor podcast. Rick is a Jewish medical director working with Catholic nuns at the Mother Theresa Mission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, caring for sick destitute patients including Ethiopian Orthodox Christians and Muslims. Together they model the world as it should …

My Workouts Revolve Around Alternating The Sites Of Pain

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Yesterday, I awakened early and cycled my usual route: 8.9 miles of early uphills followed by exhilarating downhill coasts taking in the broad sweep of the Pacific. I returned home in time to enjoy breakfast with my wife, then took up a spot on the couch that is perfectly aligned with the sun’s autumn path to enable me to soak …

Docs Who Cut Back #23: Dr. F

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Dr. F is a high-achieving female physician whose impressive academic pedigree launched her on a prestigious academic trajectory at the outset of her career. She took the unusual step of pivoting away from academia, relocating geographically to an area that was more in tune with her lifestyle goals, and creating a business that evolved into an entrepreneurial exit strategy from …

Diversify Your Sources Of Joy

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The New York Times recently ran a piece of schadenfreude entitled, “The Digital Nomads Did Not Prepare For This.” The author takes a swipe at the professionals who departed the U.S. for international destinations to transform the pandemic into an opportunity to #livetheirbestlife. Gloating over others’ plans gone awry turns out to be the subtext of the article. Great pleasure …