The selves doctors keep alive beside the work, unusual lives, and the slow work of remaining a whole person in a profession that asks for everything.
What this topic answers
The questions we are working through, in your words.
- What happens when medicine becomes your whole identity?
- How do doctors build unusual lives?
- How do I keep interests alive through training?
- What does a richer life in medicine mean?
Read in this order
Guides first, then the pieces that explain, then essays and stories.
The name without the title
Medicine gives you a title before it gives you a career. On the slow work of remaining someone without it.
The case for a hobby you are bad at
On doing something purely for its own sake, in a profession built on getting things right.
Work it through
Tools and references for this topic. Every assumption is visible; nothing you enter leaves your browser.
Ten dimensions of a medical life, for private reflection.
Doctors who have built interesting lives, in their own words.
Doctors whose lives took a shape nobody planned for them.
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The Handover
New writing on this topic, every Sunday.
One considered letter a week, with the best new writing across every topic.