Crispy Doc

We’ve had a couple of major knucklehead moments among the men in our household this past week, and they are remarkable enough to be worth noting – we’ve earned the public shaming. The first belongs to my son. A month ago, his all frosh high school team overcame the odds to beat an all-star senior team in the school trivia …

A friend and I took a walk on a perfect spring afternoon, the first of the season where I wore shorts outside.  During the course of our conversation, my friend inquired about my definitions for what it means to be an introvert or an extrovert. My friend built his definition on whether being around large groups is experienced as depleting …

It’s now three and a half years since I left clinical medicine and leapt at the opportunity to put my population health hat on for an administrative position within the hospital system that I’d devoted my clinical career to. What does my life today look like? How have I navigated going from what was 6 shifts per month to a …

I am fortunate to count among my friends a few people outside of my cohort. One older friend is a physician colleague I’ve known, liked and trusted from my prior life in the ED. We grew closer as we worked together in administrative roles over the past several years. This friend has known financial success and now pals around with …

The liberal arts undergraduate eduction is dead; you must know what you want to be by age 16. This is what you might conclude from looking around at the friends of my high schoolers. A couple of kids have been doing bench research in a lab for two summers, something I did not have the preprofessional stamina to pursue until …

This is the reality of hitting your peak earning years: every step you take toward autonomy, flexibility and balance comes with a very real opportunity cost. That cost is the largest you will ever consider paying. Last night was Game Night, and over the usual beers and taunting, a fascinating conversation developed. One of us (a non-MD; I am the …

A month ago I read Die With Zero, a book that has made the rounds and achieved equal popularity with both the FIRE community and the Silicon Valley tech bros. I was intrigued by someone who could attract what are often regarded as fairly disparate communities. A word about the author, Bill Perkins – I first encountered him as an …

My dad grew up very close to his first cousin. They caught crabs together along the shores of Matanzas, Cuba, where they shared a childhood. They tied razor blades near the base of their home-made kites and flew them in fierce competition with other neighborhood children. If you cut another’s kite string, you got to keep their kite. My dad …

Last night was date night, and it brought back memories of a younger and more vibrant time that it feels we are on the cusp of returning to. On a friend’s recommendation, we attended a live show of Mortified, a national phenomenon (with an eponymous podcast) where writers and artists “share the shame” of reading their actual high school diaries …

This decade of life has revolved around coming to terms with betrayals of the body. Following the first year of the pandemic, I sold my both my beloved surf kayak as well as my stashed in bushes on the beach workout kayak because the lifting and loading was taking a toll on my back. In comparison to many people I …