January was not an overtly productive month for writing. It was, however, fairly productive for thinking.

Contrary to what I had posted at the end of December, I have decided to write a book.

I anticipate that this will take a while.

I’m focusing on the posts I produced during my internship and residency. That was, in retrospect, my most prolific period. For good reason, too: Those training experiences were novel and it was an exciting, if not stressful, period of my life.

There are several remarkable things about this blog at that time:

I shared a lot about myself. Sadly, this changed with time. Back then, I did not censor myself as much as I do now. I don’t know if this censorship occurred as a result of training, aging, or something else entirely, though I can say with confidence that, for me, the fun of writing declined as my censorship increased. Fear has a way of killing creativity.

The interactive aspect of the blog was also fun. I still had comments open at that time and, looking back now, I am even more grateful for the kind words people left for me. Some of those individuals apparently still read this blog. Some of them chose not to identify themselves, but did describe themselves as physicians who were either farther along in their training or already well into their practices. And some of them were simply compassionate people who chose to leave encouraging words for me when I “shared a lot about myself”.

When I closed comments down, writing online lost much of its appeal. I liked (and still like) connecting with other people (score one for “social media”). I did not like (and still dislike) inflammatory comments from anonymous individuals who threaten to harm me because of my profession and use my blog to (mis)inform other readers that my true intentions are to kill people.

Not that that bugs me or anything.

I learned from the posts and the comments. The lessons I wanted to learn stuck and the traits I wanted to cultivate have come along. Writing publicly makes one accountable to one’s intentions.

Somewhere along the way, I came to believe that I don’t have much to contribute to the “medical blogosphere” (do people even use that term anymore? am I dating myself?) or to the blogosphere in general. My heyday has likely passed, though perhaps I should re-evalaute both that assumption and my potential contribution (if any) to “medical blogosphere”.