Further Blogging Musings

I started off one of my Family Medicine interviews in a very interesting way.

"I noticed you were a blogger and I must say, I was disappointed." He paused to drink in my reaction and his eyebrows furrowed as he continued in a very somber tone. "You haven't blogged in a few months!"

"Well, I have been busy interviewing," I confessed. "Plus, I would not want to blog about a specific program only to have it come back to me in a bad way."

"Exactly. I thought that I could comment on your thoughts about interviews in the hopes of bringing up a point of awkwardness."

I thought to congratulate him on doing just that, but we moved forward from that point... but he did make me think more about the frequency of my posts as well as the content itself.

One of the things that has made blogging difficult for me has been the way I have spent my free time.
My blogging dropped off precipitously when I started a relationship with a special someone (with a p-value of <0.0001! I like to joke) and when I decided to blog, it quite often turned out to be "catching up on blogs" rather than "writing cool and fun content for my own blog." Sadly, my comments on other blogs dropped off with the exclusive use of Google Reader for my blogging needs. It does a splendid job of offering me text content, but a terrible job in helping me reach out and become a part of a virtual community. I put myself in the position of observer alone, having all of these amazing bloggers teach me about fascinating clinical cases.

I have been afraid to post things of personal interest.
My posts of late have adopted more of a neutral tone and lacked personality. Tossing back the curtain of "pseudoanonymity" by attaching my Real Name to this blog and revealing its presence to ALL of my potential residency programs made me meek. I have been afraid to say anything that may offend, provoke or be of any real interest, to be quite frank. This has made me think of the Happy Hospitalist and his "crap or not, here it comes" attitude to posting. Despite the fact that I often disagree with his philosophy and politics, he does occasionally have an excellent pearl or two to share... the rest are just his opinions.

And I certainly do not live up to my pseudonym if I am afraid to offer up opinions of my own, as ill-informed, naive, idealistic, fluffy bulshytt as they may be.