Just to write

So much has gone in my life in the time that I've been away from this blog that I'm no longer sure what I've written about here. But at the risk of repeating myself, I was just thinking about what one of my high school English teachers once told me; "If you want to be a writer, you have to write." It was in the context of a conversation we were having about how to find inspiration. So I was thinking about that, and here I am. Once again. Not sure if anyone is going to be reading this, but it doesn't really matter. I'm here. Just to write.

It was about a month ago now that My Love (ML) and I took our first real vacation together. I mean real in the sense that it was enough vacation that we really started to forget how long we'd been gone from work and our day-to-day life groove. We had the kind of time spent on vacation where it seems that possibly, just possibly, we might not go back to those "real lives" of ours.

One souvenir of the trip that I'm sure I'll have for quite a while is my first tattoo. It was done by Hippie Pops (HP), a man I'd not seen in far too long. Now I hadn't planned on getting a tattoo at all, but like so many good things in my life, it seemed to just sort of happen and I feel like a better person for it.

I got in touch with HP just a few days before ML and I were to arrive in San Francisco. He was working and invited us over to his tattoo shop to say hi and maybe figure out what to do later. Of course, at the end of his day he had a little bit of time in his schedule and that planted the seed in my mind.

Something I admire about those with tattoos is of course the ability to commit to something in life. If only it's just a small amount of extra pigment in the skin, you know that tattoo wearing people will at least be decisive about something.

There have been a few things I always thought I'd want to get, but the only thing in life I've been through worthy of a tattoo is to commemorate my getting out of medical school with my degree.

To that end, I'm now sporting a caduceus on my shoulder. You know, the winged staff with the double helix of snakes. The purists of course would have you believe that the rod of Asclepius is the true Greek symbol of medicine. And they would be right. The caduceus more formally got its start as the Wand of Hermes and is classically a symbol of protection for travelers, tricksters, and gamblers. It's a symbol associated with knowledge and eloquence. It's actually got a pretty fascinating history. Most people just think it symbolizes the medical field. But it really doesn't. So I like that. Most of us are many things to many people though initially defined by first impressions. And I think I found a good symbol to represent that part of me. Plus HP is just a fantastic artist, so that helps.

Happy New Year 2010

If whenever I have a birthday, I get a little bit depressed and pensive, then every New Years I get a little happy and hopeful. I know that it's a little bit contrived, but it's just the way that I feel. So much possibility for the future. My resolutions for 2009 were to write more and to be more honest. To that end, I started this blog. Which I think helped me a little bit to do both. As for this year, I went pretty modest with the goal of drinking more water. What could possibly go wrong with that? Anyways, for my first post of the new year, I get to write about one of my friends with whom I go way back; I'll call him Not Crazy (NC).

Anyways, NC and I met back in my sophomore year of high school. We went to high school together, we went to college together, we shared a ton of misadventures together. December 13th of 2009, NC's parents called the cops on him, he was taken in and got a 5150. As I've previously worked in a psychiatric inpatient facility in California, I was well aware that the 5150 is a 3-day involuntary hold, which can be upgraded to a 5250, the 30-day involuntary hold. I don't know exactly what NC said or did but he got that upgrade too. So lucky him, he got to spend Christmas and New Years in a loony bin. Or so I thought. I got to see him the day after New Years and I found out that he was actually staying at a "clean living" home. He seemed all right. I was out in Los Angeles with My Love (ML) and went to see NC with ML and a couple of other mutual friends. Walking in to visit felt a little like Buckner walking back into Shea. The layout was pure frat house. However, the difference was that instead of kegerators and beer-pong tables, there were all the hallmarks of 12-step programs. Lots of coffee, ashtrays, and friend of Bill W. literature scattered all around. Having regularly attended 12-step meetings in the past, I knew the scene very well. We were told to have a seat in the lounge and that NC would be right out. It took maybe the longest 5 minutes of my life sitting there and waiting. I wasn't sure if I was going to get the NC that I knew so well, or someone waxing manic, talking a mile-a-minute, or possibly a haldol'ed out shell of a former human being. Luckily, the person who emerged was NC, just like I remembered him. He said that he was actually in the middle of a class and that we should come back in about 20 minutes. We went to the burger stand across from the house, had some snacks and in 20 minutes NC came outside and we sat outside the house catching up.

This wasn't quite what I was expecting. Being on a 30-day involuntary hold, NC wasn't behind any locked doors. He could have just strolled out to the car with us and rolled away it seemed. But for now, he was staying put. If he did AWOL, I'm sure there would have been some consequence for sure, and I really didn't want to find out about it. It was quite a scene, the 5 of us sitting on a beautiful day in Southern California, the least crazy and least addict prone person in the group had somehow become the person who ended up in treatment. Like I said, I don't know the full story and I didn't want to press, but my theory is psychiatric mismanagement. Sometimes the meds that are supposed to make you sane, all they do is just make you crazy.