Why blog? It’s a question that has come up more than once, asked by family, friends as well as myself. It’s something I asked a good friend of mine, J, back when he first started his blog years ago. He had several reasons why he personally blogged, and felt that there was a lot that he got out of the process. For J it was a way to practice writing, a skill lost if not used. It was a new world for him to explore (in a way). I got the sense that it was therapeutic for him, a form of catharsis. For myself, I’m still unsure of why I want to do it but there are definitely similarities between my friend’s reasons and my own.
The reasons of why I started this blog were brought to my mind a week ago with an article published in MedScape called “Why Medical Students Should Have Their Own Blogs” by Nicholas Genes, MD, PhD. In his article Dr. Genes states that there may be a certain benefit to using blogging as a type of expression and that the format forces one to communicate at times when communication may be at its hardest. I think this is true. I also desire to use this space to communicate a little of what I see now as a matter of record for myself so some day I can look back and remember what it was like in medical school. I would also like this space to be a way to communicate with family and friends so that they are a part of my experiences even if they separated from me by time or distance… And maybe someday it’ll be a form of therapy (maybe someday I’ll need it! That is to say more than I need it now). For the time being it fills a much needed niche.
