I Almost Let The Possible Sideline Me From The Important

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I continue to iterate as I consider my future as a real estate investor. In the culmination of a 3-part series, I’d concluded that a viable next step after I depart medicine would be directly investing in real estate. In that post, I laid out my careful plan: invest in and self-manage multifamily properties, obtain Real Estate Professional Status, claim …

Distress And Unburdening

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In the past week, there have been two deaths within my circle of friends, one of a friend’s parent, one of a friend’s child. There is grief paired with the sense that I am getting off easy. I was speaking to a mentor, a retired internist who pioneered palliative care at the academic institution where I trained decades ago. His …

Are Claim Jumpers Stealing Your Time?

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Radiologist and long-time friend to the blog Vagabond MD was recently interviewed on a podcast to describe his official transition out of clinical medicine last month. I highly recommend you allocate 32 minutes of your life to listen. Vagabond outlined different considerations in his process – ranging from coming to terms with certain fantasies for a future career that he …

Celebrating My 20K Day

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[A friend – let’s call him Mr. 20K – graciously acceded to write the guest post below after a conversation about his unusual frame of reference piqued my curiosity. I hope you’ll savor his thoughts and ruminations as much as I did.] I was catching up on some Crispy Doc the other day and enjoyed a post on his recent …

Who’s Your Mirror Friend?

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I spend a decent amount of time envisioning what I’d like my future to resemble, sometimes (unfortunately) to the point where the pondering excessively delays the enacting of said future. I begin by distinguishing between needs and wants. Being a dirtbag at heart, the needs are few. Next I factor in how I’ll need to modify my needs to meet …

Lessons In Balance From Ex-Presidents

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I’ve mentioned previously that a friend gifted me a subscription to Master Class, an online video lecture series where interesting / prominent / famous / accomplished individuals are give the opportunity to teach their craft. So far I’ve enjoyed learning negotiation skills from Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator, as well as creativity, comedy and screenwriting process from Judd …

On Learning How To Be A Novice As An Adult

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My mom is one of the bravest adults I’ve ever met because she is unafraid to be a curious novice. She retired from over three decades of teaching kindergartners, retaining the same sense of wonder and delight in exploration that characterized her students. As a result, she has experienced retirement as an embarrassment of riches in adult education. Her typical …

Service To Others As A Way Out Of Your Head

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A friend reached out to check in on me, and I confessed I’d been having stress dreams for the first time in many months due to the pandemic. He invited me to nightly online meditation he leads. I’ve never participated in anything like this, but I know and trust this friend, so I accepted his generous offer. There was a …

Is It Finally Time To Establish A Routine?

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I am an emergency physician, a member of a specialty whose foundation requires a complete renunciation of routine. It’s one of the vows we take before they teach us the secret handshake. No week can be reliably expected to be like any other before or after it. [The only exception: You will inevitably encounter a patient allergic to every analgesic …

Forty Year Old Hurtling Toward Fifty, Revisited

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In my high school and college dating days, forty year old inner me would gaze out from behind a young body subject to that young body’s impulses and drives, and ask plainly: Would I want to share custody and responsibility for a child with the person across from me? That assessment, uncommonly sober among my peers in their teens and …