It has been over six months since I’ve written anything more than a rant-filled livejournal entry on the ridiculousness of my various places of employment. That’s an uncomfortable fact to face as someone who has always felt that writing was a second nature; not something I did because I wanted fame or money (which is a good thing considering my net profit from writing for the past ten years is something around $260), but something I did because it was necessary. But ever since I made the decision to reroute my life and pursue medicine, the writing has gone by the wayside.

That’s a major reason for the creation for this blog. Whatever it ends up being, I hope it will keep me hammering out ideas in the form of the written word.  Hence the title of the blog as a whole; Cura Te Ipsum; Care for Your Own Self (or something along those lines…don’t look at me I don’t speak Latin.)

According to Wikipedia (and we all know Wikipedia never lies), the phrase originates from a story in the Bible where Jesus admonishes one of his followers by telling him to deal with his own problems before casting aspersions on others. As the disciple in question was a physician, the phrase, as adapted into Latin, was adopted by the medical professions as a reminder to doctors that they need to take care of themselves before they go about trying to fix their patients.

If other people who pursue medicine are anything like myself, it is a well-needed warning. In all of her unending support for my decision to do this, my mom’s one piece of advice to me was, “You really need to find something—meditation, drugs*, anything—to keep yourself from going crazy when things get rough. Because you know how sometimes you can get…really stressed out.”

Meditation never really took, (although I’ll probably write a bit about it at some point, since I’m a big believer in its benefits; much in the same way I’m a big believer in the benefits of exercise and haven’t been to a gym in longer than I care to recall) and drugs are out for obvious reasons. Instead I’m choosing writing. Not a novel, not a great big project; just a series of vignettes, opinions and snapshots to keep my writing muscle loose and my feet on the ground.

Hopefully it will also provide some folks out there with something interesting to read, and, if I have my way, something inspirational to anyone who is thinking that maybe they want to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

*My mother would like to make it very clear that she was joking about the drugs. Neither she nor this blog promotes the use of illegal drugs as a means of managing stress.