I haven't posted anything for a long time, so please bear with me.
I'm not even going to pretend any pertinence to clinical medicine, nor any forays into Dorksome jocularity. I shall refrain from the third person self-referencing for a change, as well.
Firstly, an apology to all my intertubes comrades, friends and acquaintances, who felt excluded by this blog 'going all private'. With my rudimentary understanding of Blogger, my decision to close the blog in May seemed to present only two options - make it "private", or delete it completely, which I wasn't quite prepared to do.
I have eschewed my dorkdr@gmail address until now, and regret any hurt feelings, as I wade through a great backlog of email tonight, to those who might take umbrage at any perceived exclusion from a "private blog". It was simply easier for me, at the time, to close the blog and avoid the brief flurry of kind email inquiries. The blog was not so much private, as in a state of pre-deletion.
I have started lurking about again of late, and note that many other health blogs, some of my favourites included, have shuffled off as well, pro tempore or otherwise. As others have discussed with far more perspicacity, perhaps this is simply the nature of the beast.
Why did I vanish ? Let me count the ways...
1. Ill health. Improving now.
2. Copyright concerns. I have developed further some of the nascent scribblings I occasionally posted, and as posting on Blogger legally counts as "publishing" in most regards. I have had to remove most of my creative work that I am compiling or submitting elsewhere, unfortunately.
3. Privacy. I don't write about my patients in any way that could be potentially identifiable. This is a Hippocratic fundamental, in my opinion. However, I have chosen to bare my personal foibles and failings in this blog. Others have suffered for similar disclosure, possessed of far greater altruism than I. Whilst hosting Grand Rounds was a privilege and a pleasure, the consequent huge surge in site visits was worrisome for me. I much prefer peeping out (and piping up occasionally), snug beneath my warm little rock, to the glare of the hot sun.
I am of the opinion that, particularly with my personal spectrum of illness, this fractured window may have been, and still could be, of use to someone, somewhere, sometime. When traversing one's own dark night of the soul, a single kindred spirit is of much value, wherever and however found.
So the blog archive is back, in part. Not that there is much of it, in retrospect. At least for now.
It is a pleasure to read the words of others, especially those who have lingered long. It is a pleasure to be read.
Yours occasionally,
Dork
