Happy One-Half Birthday, Mister Playing Doctor
Six months ago I started this thing and, going over my missives, all I can say is, hope you brought a book.
Good lord, what a boring, pretentious piece of overripened tripe this is.
I should apologize for my occasional thoughtless intimacy with the esoteric. Like a drunken office party where I spent fifteen minutes with my arm around Chris from accounting and suddenly thought, ‘Have I said more than two words to Chris in the entire past year?’
But there are reasons for this awkward intimacy.
Nine years ago, when I first moved to South Beach, I was riding in a white Corvette convertible down Ocean Drive and said to the driver, ‘I’m having such fun and this is the kind of thing that I would normally eschew.’
‘You would normally what?’
I soon learned to eschew words like eschew. Working in restaurants in South Beach, my vocabulary continued the trajectory toward Simpletown. I suppose that was some of the impetus for med school. I was a bit bored and needed stimulation: In South Beach, I learned the distinction between exciting and interesting.
Med school and becoming—playing—a doctor has been successful for me. It’s been both interesting and exciting. I spend time better understanding the minutia and intricacies of medicine, trying to figure out how to communicate both the simple and the complex to people whose lives can, literally, depend on grokking what I am telling them. I spend a great deal of time thinking about straight forward language and high impact metaphors that will help get those concepts and instructions across quickly and effectively.
So this is my escape from that vernacular. This is my escape from manipulating concepts that have medical sequelae, and instead playing with concepts that simply tickle my psyche. This is my reclaiming aspects of my brain that have languished. And maybe it's excising parts of my head that have fattened.
So here is your cake. Thank you for your indulgence.
Good lord, what a boring, pretentious piece of overripened tripe this is.
I should apologize for my occasional thoughtless intimacy with the esoteric. Like a drunken office party where I spent fifteen minutes with my arm around Chris from accounting and suddenly thought, ‘Have I said more than two words to Chris in the entire past year?’
But there are reasons for this awkward intimacy.
Nine years ago, when I first moved to South Beach, I was riding in a white Corvette convertible down Ocean Drive and said to the driver, ‘I’m having such fun and this is the kind of thing that I would normally eschew.’
‘You would normally what?’
I soon learned to eschew words like eschew. Working in restaurants in South Beach, my vocabulary continued the trajectory toward Simpletown. I suppose that was some of the impetus for med school. I was a bit bored and needed stimulation: In South Beach, I learned the distinction between exciting and interesting.
Med school and becoming—playing—a doctor has been successful for me. It’s been both interesting and exciting. I spend time better understanding the minutia and intricacies of medicine, trying to figure out how to communicate both the simple and the complex to people whose lives can, literally, depend on grokking what I am telling them. I spend a great deal of time thinking about straight forward language and high impact metaphors that will help get those concepts and instructions across quickly and effectively.
So this is my escape from that vernacular. This is my escape from manipulating concepts that have medical sequelae, and instead playing with concepts that simply tickle my psyche. This is my reclaiming aspects of my brain that have languished. And maybe it's excising parts of my head that have fattened.
So here is your cake. Thank you for your indulgence.
Posted @ 7:09 AM
3 Comments:
4/19/2005
Anonymous writes:
dan writes:
hot babe writes:
On Sunday I used the word "parlance" on Lincoln Road. When the listener said "Parlance?" I thought my mistake was using that word. I realized later my mistake was noticing a local language phenomenon and finding it interesting enough for comment. Remember: Don't just dumb down the language; dumb down the ideas too.
4/19/2005
"High impact metaphors"? Sure does sound exciting. Like some type of extreme sport. You have a way of making things that aren't normally interesting sound exciting. Happy half anniversary.
4/19/2005
Happy half birthday to your blog. And for the record, I don't think everything you write is "a boring, pretentious piece of overripened tripe." Some of it's mildly entertaining.
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