4 years and counting.

 "If you build it, he will come."

~ from the movie Field of Dreams

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Four years ago today, I started this blog. It was mostly on a whim. I knew that I loved writing and engaging and storytelling. I hoped that this could be a place to do it.

Simple as that.

Would I stick with it? Would I drop the ball and then pick it up every six months or so? Would I abandon ship altogether? I can't even say I put that kind of pressure on myself. I just knew I wanted to write. And I needed a mechanism to put these thoughts down somewhere so that I could read them.

You've heard me say it over and over again. Toni Morrison's impetus for writing her masterpiece "The Bluest Eye" is the same as my initial reason for writing this blog:

"So I could read it." 

Do you have any idea how therapeutic this has been for me? How much you coming here has brought to my life? Not just personally--but professionally. It has been a blessing that even I could have never, ever predicted would unfold this way. I'm still pretty mindblown by it all.

Someone recently asked me: "When do you sleep? How do you have time to write here like this? And live your life? And exercise? And even catch your breath?"

Hmmm. I have wondered that, too. I guess the short answer is that once I made up my mind to write, I also decided to mostly cut out television. Not all television. Just some. So mostly I write in the time that I would have been watching television. I also retreat to writing in the early mornings or when I can't sleep.

Oh yeah. I don't overthink things. Like, when telling a story, I just write. Seriously. I think about my writing mantra and then just kind of go for it. Writing forward and not double-backing to redo every paragraph. I think that's another reason I started blogging. I needed a place to write with out rules. I'm a big fan of sentence fragments for emphasis. I also needed permission to play with different styles that some journal somewhere would see and tsk-tsk.

Yep.

So most stories, I just sit down and write. I let it unfold and while I'm writing it -- either early in it or later in it -- a song almost always pops into my head. I started calling that my "mental iPod." I think life is always better with theme music, don't you?  Ha. The other thing is that the more I write the faster I write. Some of my favorite posts, though lengthy, were just passionately pounded out early in the morning with a thirty minute window of time and nothing more. Not even kidding.

The other fun thing is that my mother, Tounces, reads everything I write. She quickly texts me with major grammatical errors. So usually I just post and then. . .wait for it. . .wait for it. . . .ha ha ha ha. (At least she fills those texts with effusive emoticons.)

Lastly, I am proud of what this has become. I forgot to say that one of the other reasons I started this blog and called it "Reflections of a Grady Doctor" was because I thought public hospitals and the nation's indigent population gets a very bad rap. The hospitals are seen as scary and the people as . . .I don't know. . . just something other than what I get to see. I wanted to let people into a window of the most beautiful aspects of a place like Grady Hospital. So you notice that I don't write negative things about Grady Hospital. And you know what? I never will.

We leave hating to the professionals, remember? Ha.

It bears repeating. I am grateful for you. Grateful that you spend even two seconds of your precious time reading here. There are seventy trillion blogs saying seventy trillion things. You are busy people with things to do and crosses of your own to bear. And yet. You. You have come here over and over and over again to read and feel and think and reflect with me. You have let me indulge you with my family stories and back of the Volvo kid conversations. You have held your gags when I repeatedly referred to my husband as "The BHE" and even had it in you to refer to him as the same. You have honored my patients and my hospital right along with me and gave me your insights on the days I needed to "unpack." You have given me things to write about, think about, and teach about. And you know? I will never, ever forget the way you lifted me up when my family was crushed by the loss of my beloved sister Deanna.

And how you continue to do so.

Yeah. You. You have been wonderful. And I feel grateful. More than you could possibly imagine.

So even four years later on an early morning before hustling out to clinic. . . more than ever. . . I'm just glad to be here. And as my dear Grady elders always say. . . .

'Preciate you.

I do.

Thanks for reading. I will continue to build. And I hope you will continue to come.

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Happy Birthday, ROGD!

This always gave me goosebumps.