Below you'll find a list of all posts from January, 2021
A friend reached out to check in on me, and I confessed I’d been having stress dreams for the first time in many months due to the pandemic. He invited me to nightly online meditation he leads. I’ve never participated in anything like this, but I know and trust this friend, so I accepted his generous offer. There was a …
I am an emergency physician, a member of a specialty whose foundation requires a complete renunciation of routine. It’s one of the vows we take before they teach us the secret handshake. No week can be reliably expected to be like any other before or after it. [The only exception: You will inevitably encounter a patient allergic to every analgesic …
In my high school and college dating days, forty year old inner me would gaze out from behind a young body subject to that young body’s impulses and drives, and ask plainly: Would I want to share custody and responsibility for a child with the person across from me? That assessment, uncommonly sober among my peers in their teens and …
Birthday morning – I’m up before the house at 6:30 am, take my morning constitutional, and then it’s out the door by 7am to catch the tail end of the most recent winter swell. The water is frigid. There are only three surfers and a guy on a surfski spread far apart along the sandy shorebreak as several 3-4 foot …
Humans are curious creatures. We like to regard ourselves as being internally consistent while the reality is far messier. For evidence, look no further than our investments. Or as the artist formerly known as Dr. Moneyblogs is fond of quoting: Don’t tell me what you think. Tell me what you have in your portfolio. -Nassim Nicholas Taleb Many personal finance …
I show up for the morning “hot zone” shift and check in with the lead nurse in the ED. Of 60 potential clinical spaces (accounting for every gurney, chair, and our fast track area), 29 are occupied by boarders – patients admitted to the hospital who remain in the ED either because there are insufficient beds upstairs in the hospital …
Distance learning during COVID has meant coming to terms with the disappointment of public schooling that fell short. It was a perfect storm. Some teachers adapted skillfully, while others were quick to use the pandemic as a reason to pursue a watch-the-video-do-the-worksheet abdication of direct teaching responsibilities. Sitting in front of a screen all day is not rewarding (perhaps my …
It wasn’t deliberate. As a birdwatcher who’d been less than avid in recent months, I thought it time to double down on a pursuit that seemed made for a quarantine. I’ve always had a shameful secret among birders. I suspect I am the lone birdwatcher who has visited Costa Rica without spotting a resplendant quetzal, a dubious distinction that I …