I’ve blogged a few times about my approach to blogging (Ex: Who Am I Blogging For?, My Photography-Blogging Relationship, Blogging For Myself), but it’s not until recently that I have been able to clarify why I have been blogging every single day for the last half-year.
The answer is simple: It helps give me an of identity as a writer.
You see, one downside of retiring fully from clinical practice is that I entered an identity no man’s land.
I am a physician, who has seen well over a hundred thousand patients, still with active medical licenses and specialty boards, still reading journals and doing some medical advisory consultancy work, but I am no longer in the thick of things. I am watching the game—the healthcare game—from the sidelines.
I need to get off the sideline and change fields so I can start playing again. And the new game I want to play? Writing. But the tug of my prior identity is strong. It’s hard (impossible?) to turn off that part of myself, and I am not even sure I should. (For example, when I changed career paths from an engineer to a medical student, I didn’t lose my ability to think like an engineer, I just added to it, but truth be told, even that was rough sailing at first, and the gap between engineer-doctor is smaller than the gap between doctor-writer.)
And that’s why I blog every single day. Because if I blog (write) every single day, and if I journal (write) every single day, and if I work (write) on my two book projects (one fiction, one non-fiction) every single day, and if I read books on writing, trying to improve my craft every single day, then I know I am a writer.
It doesn’t replace my identity as a physician. But it does expand it.