Lost in Beantown in a Silver Punch Buggy; and, Why I Blog

Ordinarily I would be using this blog to vent about the day I had today at work, where I spent over two hours trying to manage someone who was trying very, very hard to die on my table.

But I don't want to write about that stuff today.

I just want to curl up in my little blog, my writing home, my very own little piece of space-time, and RELAX. It really is home-y here for me; I feel like each post, whether I'm writing one or re-reading one, is an easy chair in which I can snuggle up or stretch out and just enjoy my rambling thoughts, spread them out in front of me like little treasures bought at a fair, and see if I can make sense of them at my own pace.

This home-like feel of one's own blog is one of the things that Anali and I talked about yesterday when we met each other for the first time and had lunch - and not the lunch we were expecting to have!

Our blog meet-up had a pleasingly comical aura about it as we navigated through what might have been discouraging setbacks and re-framed them as celebrations of serendipity. First of all, it was POURING rain. Secondly, Anali's usual parking garage was temporarily closed, so I jumped into her adorable silver beetle and we drove around for a bit scouring the streets for parking, but no luck. We wound up in a now-unfamiliar area of Summer Street that has been built up considerably over the last few years, and somehow found ourselves parking at the waterfront Westin hotel, unsure of whether they even had a restaurant! How ever did we get there (they did have a restaurant: Sauciety, "an American grille"), wind up munching salad from charming, lop-sided bowls that looked like they were offering us their little morsels of radicchio and chicory, then sampling a dessert called "cappuccino intrigue," from our original plan of lunching at a tiny Boston coffee shop in the financial district?!

So there we were whipping out our picture-taking machinery to snap photos of the food. At last, someone who not only doesn't scoff, but also understands! It was wonderful to be able to have a conversation with another blogger, especially one like Anali, who is every bit as sweet as I pictured. I started blogging almost a year ago because I was inspired by Hilda's blog and needed some place to explore this oboe adventure. Then it became that "room of one's own": a place for me to enjoy retreat and expansion at the same time, to learn about medicine, faith, the arts, my own responses to what goes on around me, especially when in "real life" it's often hard to strike up conversations with people about very esoteric elements of those things, like oboes and anesthesia!

When I got home I did a google/blog search using the terms "why blog" and came up with some interesting results, examples of which include the posts here, here, here, here, and here. I thought about why I blog, and about some of the things Anali and I talked about. I decided I'd explore my own motivations for blogging with a list of my own:

Top 10 Reasons Why I Blog

10. To keep in touch with family and friends

9. Narcissistic tendencies. I am opinionated. I enjoy sharing my opinion, venting my frustrations, telling my stories even if they only matter to me, etc.

8. Self-expression feels emancipating (and is cheaper than therapy!). Ditto above (I enjoy sharing my opinion, venting my frustrations, telling my stories even if they only matter to me, etc.)

7. Who can I talk to about anesthesia, besides other anesthesiologists?

6. Who can I talk to about oboes, besides Kyoko and fellowkyokostudent?

5. To remember certain special moments.

4. Blogging is versatile. Journalism or journaling? Tool for school project, or fundraiser for a good cause? We pick.

3. I enjoy the interactive nature of the medium. It's intriguing to exchange thoughts with others across the world.

2. Learning about things like archaeology, photography, molecular psychiatry, waiting tables, monastic life, almost anything you can think of, is totally cool - especially through the creativity of others.

1. Writing is FUN! I write for the sheer pleasure of it, even if no one's reading (which is totally how I thought this blog would be, although I guess there are some folks reading it after all!) :)