For years, I envisioned creating a blog. I often wrestled with what to talk about or discuss. Since high school, I have referred to myself as a poor writer. It was a self-inflicted wound. I told myself I had nothing to say or worse, that I didn’t know how to say it. Why would anyone listen to me? I created a blog with no content. No words, no entries. A website owned by a doctor that didn’t really exist. How could a non writer put together something interesting? How could I balance this with the million other things I should be doing. I have a full time hospitalist job, and a deep desire to be a great father and husband. I told myself I didn’t have time to write. I was just another cog on the hospitalist wheel.
Then I found Jean-Paul Sartre. He famously argued that existence precedes essence. I realized that if I wasn’t writing, it wasn’t because I lacked time. That’s the bad faith or the lie we tell ourselves to escape our own power. Humans are condemned to be free. This thought initially seemed like a burden, but for a burned out hospitalist, it became a jailbreak. If I don’t have time to be creative or write, it is because I am letting the schedule of being a hospitalist, the stress of raising a family choose for me. If humans are truly condemned to be free, why concede my power to the hospitalist schedule or other entities? My freedom IS the power to choose.
I generally hope this blog post and this blog in general serves as an act of rebellion. I want it to serve as a reminder that I (I really mean we) am not a cog in the hospital wheel. I am human. Every second I spend in the hospital, I choose to be there. My freedom isn’t a gift; it’s a responsibility. It is the power to choose. If I can choose to manage a hypertensive crisis at 3:00 AM, I can choose to hop on my PC and write at 10:00 AM. I can choose to be creative. I can choose to write this blog post.
I can choose me.