Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Physician Wellness & Life Design”
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
We all have some crazy in us, and finding a constructive means of channeling it is often what separates the person ordering the meds from the person receiving them. I’ve referred in the past to pathology with utility, the concept that an obsessive trait placed in the appropriate context can function as a superpower that yields superior performance. I’ll be …
Life-affirming experiences come in a wide variety of contexts, often in the least likely places. Those I savor most tend to be when eccentrics stay true in their chosen form of expression. I was looking back through old photos (a past time I’ve come to appreciate during COVID) when it triggered a delightful memory. It pertained to a bit of …
There are certain quirky discoveries that delight you to the core, the mere thought of which continue to bring a giddy smile to your face because of how endearing they feel. This morning, listening to a podcast on the short drive home from a dawn patrol session at my local break, I sank my teeth into a delicious new morsel …