Although it’s been a minute since I left clinical practice, I still strongly identify with those who wear scrubs, work hours that are hard on the body, and engage the people and fluids that causes those in polite society to avert their gaze. The reason those people seek care in the emergency department is for variations on a theme: betrayals …
Anatomy Of A Loss
This past week marked two years since my father’s death in a hospice facility in my hometown. Mom and I marked the occasion by meeting at the cemetery to pay our respects. I’ve been replaying dad’s final hours in my mind intermittently for the past two years. He’d lost his oxygen supply when the tubing caught on a corner of …
Road Map
My wife and I attended a Halloween party this past week with a group of fellow nerds. The theme was birds, and the costumes ranged from predictable (I was one of two Big Birds from Sesame Street) to pun-filled (the hostess dressed in blue, wearing a necklace of strung together blue kitchen sponges – a “scrub jay”). It was wonderful. …
Financial Adulting
I was at game night with the fellas when one of their high school age kids joined us for dinner. Knowing a couple of us are finance geeks, she shared a budgeting exercise that was an assignment for an economics course. My enthusiasm for hearing her planned budget (how, based on an average starting salary after graduating college, she proposed …
Small Gifts
I’ve slept poorly the past week, waking to read at 4am without being able to fall back asleep. This week marked the anniversary of my father’s death two years ago. This morning, after another partly restless night, I loaded up my gear and headed to the beach. A couple of 70-something guys walking their dogs looked at me starting down …
My Kids Work Harder Than I Do
This is life in my 50s: I have a half-time job I enjoy. I go on date nights. I see friends and make an effort to stay in touch with older family members. I spend time on fitness, even as the betrayals of the body come at me in a crescendo. I have a decent amount of time on my …
Being an adult is the solution to being a child
The title of this post, a quote from the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, is one of many gems sprinkled throughout an essay by Rachel Kushner in a recent New Yorker magazine. The rather startling phrase sums up a great deal of longing experienced in youth, when the wrong hair, the wrong clothes and all the secrets you do not yet know …
Degrees Of Freedom
The mathematical concept of degrees of freedom is familiar enough to recall having studied when I got my MPH, but not relevant enough on a daily basis to remember the definition. It has vaguely to do with the number of values in a statistical calculation that can vary, affecting the distribution curve of any given statistical model. If that is …
Not On The Menu
I took a walk this week – it was perfect California summer day of clear skies and sunshine illuminating the Pacific. It was made even better by the company of a tier one friend. The friend and I both have kids applying to college, and the process is a grind. Part of what we discussed was that in high school, …
Vanguard Milestone
Back in 2016, I fired my financial advisor and moved all of our assets to Vanguard. It took just shy of 2 years of intensive reading of books and blogs (and not a little bit of chutzpah) to toughen up and assume accountability for our retirement portfolio. 9 years later, we have reached a unique and exciting milestone in our …