One of the major benefits of blogging is the world of curious, like-minded people it has helped me connect with over the years. I realize that curious can mean either exhibiting interest in the surrounding world or being a specimen so unusual as to elicit curiosity from others. Both definitions apply to this crowd.
I began writing during the golden age of physician finance blogs - a time where it felt like a new physician finance voice emerged online every other week. If you have any doubt, check out my graveyard, which while choked and overgrown with weeds (i.e., forgive me for not updating it), shows just how many peers once existed in this niche.
Like the fragmented statue of Ozymandias overseeing a desert wasteland, you might get a whiff of a former giant in this realm, but unless you meet them at a conference or hear them speak at a FIRE gathering, you won't experience that magic firsthand.
There's something special about finding your tribe during the coming of age of a particular class of bloggers. You create social opportunities to get to know the neighbors, making any excuse to bring over the equivalent of a 1950s welcome committee fruitcake. You celebrate the milestone when another little guy who started when you did succeeds beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
The proximity to buzz and success is exciting, but it fades in time. What remains are the fewer than a handful of kindred spirits you have continued to correspond with over the years.
If I were to assess the ROI on this blog, the greatest payoff has been a few enduring friendships via correspondence. For nearly a decade, I've had the opportunity to weather the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with a close cadre of invisible friends.
It's a weird feeling - you've never met someone yet you've both endured the experience of dropping your oldest kid off at college, losing a parent, adapting to the loss of your professional identity as physicians and being vulnerable during the losses and victories of middle age.
Those experiences, when shared via email, can lead to meaningful friendships.
I say this because I'm now making plans to find an excuse to deliberately meet up in person with one such invisible friend. What happens when I meet this Vince Vaughn to my Owen Wilson? Will it turn out more like Dumb and Dumber?
Doubtful. We know one another too well, and are both willing to dive deep to ask those questions about what our new sources of meaning, purpose, service and connection to community will be as we enter this next chapter of our lives.
There's something about having a fellow traveller that makes the road less lonely and more convivial.
Let us now praise middle-aged dads and their online bromances!