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.