On day 19/21 (yesterday), I somehow forgot to write a blog post. I spent my day finishing off Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle", after which I rushed to get takeout shawarma and pick up my girlfriend from work in time to go to an outdoor movie in a local park. Amidst all the fun, I forgot entirely about blogging.
Now that the 21 days of consecutive blogging are almost finished, I'm forced to address the question of "What next?". On the upside, over the past few weeks I've felt much more engaged with the blog, and I've found myself drafting posts in my head while doing dishes and other tedious activities. I've also written a few posts that I've been happy with, including parts one and two of my thoughts on money, as well as my post about so-called road bump opiates. On the downside, it's been difficult some days to find the time to blog, and I've often found myself crawling out of bed after 11 PM to whip off a quick (and often uninspired) post. Some of my worst posts ever have resulted from this forced writing.
I may keep up with the daily blogging for a while just to see where it goes, or I may revert to blogging less frequently. While the ideal blogging frequency is probably less than daily, I worry that if I lose the regular habit I may stop doing it at all. Which would be a loss for me - I love the record of my thoughts and activities, the feedback from commenters (even if I don't always find the time to respond), and the sense that I'm perhaps sharing something that will be useful to the next generation of medical students/residents.
I guess we'll see. If you're a blogger, how do you balance regular blogging with all the other things going on in your life? For everyone - what would you like to see from this blog as I start life as an attending?
Even though I don't blog daily, I still sometimes have a hard time keeping up high-quality posts, and I definitely notice a dip in site visits when I write posts that are more about just getting a weekly post done than about turning out something well-crafted that I really care about. Nevertheless, with the weekly deadline I set for myself, I do find that I am forced to continue producing, and that both keeps me motivating and keeps me improving.
ReplyDeleteI've enjoyed all of your posts so far and haven't been able to detect any that are "just getting a weekly post done".
DeleteI used to blog so much more during the preclinical years of med school (probably due to incredible procrastination). I try to blog 1x/week now, but honestly, grad school is not terribly exciting....
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see you write regularly! I really enjoyed reading your blog and any of your insights-whether it's medicine, money, how you feel about whatever, anything! I love your writing!
Thanks for the positive feedback! We'll see what happens with the blogging.
DeleteI hope you'll keep writing! I made my medical blog private when I became an attending. I just started to feel like it was too hard to balance confidentiality and writing. Even when I was writing about totally made-up cases, I worried a patient of mine would see themselves in the post and that it might eventually lead to problems.
ReplyDeleteI post on my other blog about every 2 weeks. It's much more general, there's no medical posts, but the posts do take a lot of work as they're usually photo-intensive.