Why Do We Blog?

[From ClinkShrink]

Fat Doctor has tagged us with a Why Do I Blog meme. I happen to be up sipping coffee this morning and this is a fairly decent way to avoid going off to work, so I'll go first.

1. Because Dinah asked me to.
I think over the twenty years I've known her I can't recall ever turning down an invitation from Dinah to do anything. I've always had fun doing things with her. As far as invitations go this might be the most out-of-the-ordinary thing she's invited me to do---usually it involves cookouts or dinners or other get-togethers as opposed to the things that I invite her to do like going rock-climbing or attending lectures on human sacrifice. She's hard to resist.

2. I get a fellow geek to play with
Roy is one of the few people I've ever met who "gets" the stuff I talk about with regard to computers. He's taught me a few things, too. If something gets tweaked or touched up on our template I know where it came from and I never question it. Even better, he comments his code! God bless coders who comment (you programmer types know what I mean). And he makes good puns.

3. Blogging forces me to think about things
This has unexpectedly turned out to be a great means of continuing medical education. When I read journals now I subconsciously scan them for things that would be interesting to blog about. I'm reading medical literature with a different level of attention than I was before. And I get to learn from my co-bloggers---bless Roy for the FDA updates, and Dinah for summarizing the antidepressant study.

4. People in "free society" need information
When I go to work every day it just hits me how little most people know about the correctional world or the problems faced by healthcare practitioners there. I have a running internal debate about how much information is "too much information" but I parse it out as tactfully as I can. I may or may not blog about a near-miss incident in my institution yesterday.

5. I get to hear what other people think
I read other peoples' blogs and I like reading comments on our blog. Patient blogs should be mandatory reading for physicians-in-training. They are vivid in their descriptions of living "inside" the disease. I like the fact that we're getting more non-North American commenters and I hope that continues.

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[From Dinah]

1. Writing: I love to write and this is an avenue where I actually get willing readers and responses. Wow! And Thanks.

2. Expression: Shrinking inspires all sorts of thoughts and emotions and here I get to express my ideas and feelings here in a way that forces me to be more articulate about them than I would otherwise be, and sometimes lets me express emotions in a way that's a little more raw than my real life persona.

3. Pure narcissism.

4. Friendship: both real (as a real life endeavor with my dear friends Clink & Roy, now with My Three Shrinks podcast time) and virtual, with people interested in talking about psychiatry.

5. Expanding my horizons: I've now "met" someone whose child eats dog biscuits!
(Just teasing you, Fat Doctor!)

I want to tag: Shiny Happy Person, The Last Psychiatrist, Flea, Midwife With A Knife, and the Musings Of a Distractible Mind Doc.

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[from Roy]
1. Because Dinah asked me. (No, I wouldn't jump from the Empire State building.)

2. Creative outlet (I have a pathologic need to inflict my bad puns on others.)

3. I love hearing others' perspectives on issues that are important to me, especially folks from other countries.

4. I've always liked to share information and explain things to others, particularly about Psychiatry, which is, unfortunately, a misunderstood field, particularly as it intersects the broader field of Medicine.

5. I really do it for the ducks.