One morning in Barcelona

“Eric, no puede dejar su bici aqui!” I hear, barely conscious. Rinaldo, my diminuative landlord, is tromping around my little flat having a hissy fit about the bike I bought yesterday. I pull the blankets over my head and hope he will go away. Only three days ago I was banging out overnight ER shifts in the hole known as Newburgh.

It has to be early, right? I think I was drinking last night. There’s light outside. My watch says 11 am. My Spanish class starts in two hours. Oh, yes, I was in the bar. Gran Foc, just off Plaza Catalunia, burnished brass and crushed red velvet. Antony was playing the trombone, and Martin was on the guitar.

My housemate, Berta, walks into my bedroom. She’s a German girl here in Barcelona studying in the university. “Don’t worry, he’ll get over it. Want some breakfast? I’m making tea.” She disappears into the kitchen, only a few steps from my bed.

Ugh.

Lessons learned from the sabre-toothed squirrel

Complete and total dedication to a task, with no thought of danger or self. Utter satori of purpose.

I have much to learn from the saber-tooth squirrel.

What should I do with my life?

I'm having the hardest time trying to figure out what comes next in my life. I've been through so many hats: priest, writer, teacher, doctor. I feel like I've lived several different lives.

Now I'm living the somewhat enviable life of a pensioner or trustafarian, with a stable medicine gig that allows me to work only a week every few months. I'm like a recessionista without the anxiety.

I'm getting ancy. Now what?


I've considered a number of different choices for my future career/life:

Adventurer! - learn how to kitsurf/climb mountains/track wild boars/etc and go around the world being bold, foolish and attractively useless

Volunteer! - build schools in Asia. Clinic in South Africa, or here in California.

Writer! - write down my innermost thoughts on a regular basis, publish occasionally, wear a black hat, perhaps start smoking?

Filmmaker! - nuff said. Documentary films about medicine. Narratives about anything.

Doctor! - go back into fulltime medicine. Become director of an ED, or hardcome academic medicine. Do a fellowship in Critical Care or Pediatrics.

Student! - go back for an MBA, PhD in Literature or hardcore science, MFA in creative writing. Or just take general ed courses in art, literature, history, quantum physics, etc.

Dilitante! - do some combination of the above very casually. - this is currently what I'm doing with my life, to greater or lesser success.

All of them seem equally engaging, but I'm having trouble choosing. It's what I call the 'tyranny of freedom', which is both wonderful and overwhelming at the same time. It's been fantastic to really examine my priorities and what I want out of life. They include, in no particular order:

Friends
Creative outlets
A girlfriend
Sensual delights - food, sex, beautiful surroundings
Play
Work - something worthwhile, fun and hopefully lucrarive
Adventure

I hope that all of you know the joys and horrors of this kind of freedom. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

Thumb-wrestling with death

Mrs. Mayer was big, flushed and sweaty in a red mumu stained with vomit. She was having the big one.

She asked God to watch over her family and closed her eyes. The monitors screamed as she lost her pulse. Her heart rate idled down. Her heart was failing. She had made her peace.

I limped over to her stretcher and ground my knuckle into her breastbone. Hard. Her eyes popped open in pain and I gave her the eye.

"You're not going into the light yet!" I shouted at her.

Yes, I actually said it.

I threw the kitchen sink of medications at her and called in the specialist. An hour later, the cardiologist sucked a clot out of her coronary artery and she survived.

A few days later, it was a little tyke breathing like a hummingbird until his lips were blue. He had the million mile stare like he was giving up. I hit him with intravenous steroids, adrenaline and antibiotics until he pinked up and screamed his fury at me. Before that, the diabetic coma in septic shock. And so on.

That was last week. Now I'm typing away in a little cafe in Budapest, drinking an espresso with Bacardi and ice cream...

...wondering if I'll ever be able to give up the life I've left behind. I've been a teaching doc so long, giving residents the glory of the save, that I'd forgotten what it was like to thumb-wrestle with death.

Can I give it up? Am I a living stereotype, addicted to the rush?

The Secret to Eternal Life and Shameless Plugs

Tiffany and I made this short strip, so it's worth another plug.

Was posted on Val's comic book blog: An Occasional Superheroine.

Probably best laid out on Tiffany's blog.

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

I'm sitting in the old town square of Prague, a little after midnight. Lamplights shine bronze and blue against the grand black church which looks as it it was carved from volcanic rock and boiled in history. Teenagers drink beer at tables in the outdoor cafes. Tourists stalk delicately underneath the clock tower, waiting to pounce with Nikon-fu at the miniature dolls that pop out and dance at lunar intervals. A parade of drunken Russians wield flags and song celebrating a soccer victory.

Here I am, typing away on my little computer, a million miles from the life I've left behind.

I have escaped the rat race. I have been working my tail off for the past ten years on the little hamster wheel of modern life: work-car-work-house-work-marriage-work-children-work-death. Now I'm ready to reinvent myself.

We'll see what happens.

Bring back the dinosaurs

Facebook addiction? Give me a break.

Social network withdrawl. American Idol. Obesity and sedentary lifestyles. Depression. Modern day ennui.

All cured by bringing back the dinosaurs. How could you be depressed because your-boyfriend-doesn't-love-you-as-much-as-he-loves-GTA4-
and-you-eat-becase-it-hurts if you were being chased by a Velociraptor?



Think about how much better life would be? No more three hour phone calls from your mother complaining about your father not taking out the trash? No more telemarketers: they'd be eaten first. As proven by Jurassic Park, T-rex prefers lawyer two to one over the leading other brand of white meat.

Think about it.