Friday the 13th

Why I am starting this blog.  Well, there would be quite a few reasons.  It’s Friday the 13^th, so why not?  I’ve tried writing a book, no takers.  Tough crowd.  I didn’t understand the difficulties of trying to get something published, and not self/vanity published until attempting to directly email publishing companies with my book like some novice.  Oh, and I was emailing all 36,000 words at a time.  I tend to do things full-on and always a bit naively.  One of my mottos is, "often wrong, never in doubt".   Yeah, you need a literary agent as a middle-man FYI.  The book idea was meant to help pay off my veterinary school student loans as obviously it would be a best-seller, right?  I was hoping, actually praying, that would happen.  Because let's face it, I graduated a Doctor with a DVM and a diploma the price of a small house.  My student loans are astronomical.  It's not that I want to be some millionaire veterinarian (an oxymoron in itself), because I actually desire to practice charity veterinary medicine in foreign countries for the rest of my life, but I have this heavy noose around my neck chaining me to the ground, aka the student loan debt at 15% interest rate.  And no, I cannot refinance as apparently the foreign loan company holds the ace, king, queen, and jack.  So since that “book” was so successful, here I am putting it all out in cyber-space. 

A second reason for blogging: Let me explain my personality.  Whenever I land at an airport I think to myself, "How much time do I have before my next connecting flight?  What's there to see here?  Can I get out, see something historical, and back through security in time before the flight takes off?"  Or as my brothers would put it, "Yeah, my sister, she's run 7.5 miles or swam 5 miles, showered, been to the bank and the grocery store, filled up the car with gas, checked her emails, poured her chai tea, and is walking out the door...all before 8am."  I have often been called the queen of multi-tasking.  So naturally, I find myself pondering what to do with my time after a day full of performing 6 surgeries, treating 20 pets (which is only an average day), and 6 am swim practice, when the idea of starting a blog sounds quite fun.  Also, about 10 different people have said to me recently, "you really should write a book".  Last year I lived on Holy Corner or "Writer's Block" of Edinburgh, Scotland.  J.K. Rowling lived in the house diagonally across the back garden.  That had to be good karma right?  Book.  No.  Blog.  Yes.

Another reason.  No one judges you for your intelligence in your blog.  While I'm writing this, no one is asking me to explain the pathophysiology behind each post like every disease I treat in practice, and I'm not being assessed on my intelligence on a daily basis.  It's quite liberating.  But in reality, I'm sticking true to my veterinary training and actually explaining the pathophysiology of why I'm blogging to you.  Oh well, sometimes you just can't teach an old dog new tricks.

A final blogging reason.  I just got the first part of my reservation of my pilot boat to swim the English Channel the summer of 2012 approved and reserved.  I am so excited to get the chance to swim it, but it’s a LONG, hard road between now and then.  This blog will document all of it.  It also documents all of my travels like a diary.  A journey starting with a flat tire in Arlington, Texas traveling retrospectively back over the years through childhood, high school, college, Italy, veterinary school, Grenada, Scotland, Africa, Thailand, China, Ireland, Guatemala, and back to Texas again.  A journey from rock bottom to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro and everything in between.  And maybe this blog can provide a little humor for someone out there in the meantime.