I’ll get back to the ‘spiritual series,’ probably. But at the moment I’m unsure about blogging as a pastime. The other day, reading online about blogging splashed me with cold reality. One article: ’10 Reasons Why Your Blog Sucks.’ My blog satisfies all ten. Other pieces discussed how AwStats overestimates traffic (a fact I’d already guessed, but somehow had deluded myself into ignoring until I saw it spelled out,) and how blogging is ‘so yesterday.’ Today, the trendy use Twitter and FaceBook. It figures that I didn’t start until blogging was already dying. No matter. In the past few days I’ve changed my outlook. The need for income presses, so I’m looking for what will pay off. Blogging let me try out different types of writing with little risk, and see if anything caught on, or motivated me to keep going. Nothing did catch on. But the writing all feels good to me, and I know there has to be some way to make it pay. In searching online for jobs, I see work in medical writing. Although many ads seek freelance writers of all sorts, some firms advertise for full time medical writers. Not that I want, or could even tolerate, full time employment. But if there are corporations hiring, there must be more work in medical writing than in some other arenas. It’s not what I most want to do. I’d rather share what I’ve experienced and learned in life. Recovering from child abuse and adult disappointments. Psychiatric fiascos, spiritual breakthroughs, and a few therapies that actually helped. But the field of self-help, motivational writing is saturated. Who doesn’t have a story to tell? My education gives me an ‘in’ to medical writing. Although many doctors are jumping ship and trying out writing and other pursuits, the field looks less competitive than those that don’t require a specialized background. So for the time being I’m investigating this route, and not blogging as much. By the way, if any one reading (if anyone is reading,) has suggestions for how to proceed, I would dearly love to hear them.

When younger, I never worried about success. If I applied myself, my grades stayed high. Scholastic achievements translated into acceptance to the next stage of training. Through a series of steps, education led to good jobs. Nothing to it.

Times have changed. A decade of unemployment and mental illness has stripped me of possibilities and confidence. How can someone with a medical degree from a top university worry about work? Easily. It boils down to the stock Hollywood question, “what have you done, lately?” I’ve been out of work for most of ten years. And how many ophthalmic plastic surgery skills can be used in other jobs? Not many.

Better than before, I understand the plight of the poor. Childhood abuse convinced me I’m nothing special, so it’s not like I was an arrogant surgeon who thought lowly of those ‘beneath’ me. But it’s one thing to understand that underachievement is not a reflection on worth when you look at it from the outside, and another when you have to face it in yourself. I find it impossible to separate my unemployment from my self-esteem.

Neck problems ended my surgical career at age forty-two. As I’ve said elsewhere, losing my job, status, and pay landed me in psychiatric wards. Afterwards, an incompetent psychiatrist pushed me to accept ‘retirement.’ There are few things worse for a middle-aged man than to be told he is too mentally ill to work. That message undermined the attempts I made at employment. I now see that my doctor was wrong, but it is hard to reconstruct a working life after years of inactivity.

I’ve been driving myself (even more) crazy with this problem. How will I support my wife? What can I possibly do to earn an income? How will we survive? Creative writing will not feed us. Maybe technical writing? But can get into that field at this age, without experience? Do I even want to? Should I teach biology in high school instead? Could I stand it? Would I be any good? Where do I begin? What should I do? There are hundreds of demoralizing questions.

The confusion tires me so much I can hardly imagine doing anything productive. I feel fury at myself for wasting youthful time and energy learning medicine, when I knew it wasn’t right for me. Trying to build a career in my fifties, after ten years of failure and sickness, feels overwhelming and impossible.

It must be worse for those who’ve never achieved at a high level. Success must look like a pipe dream. For those burdened with depression, failure snowballs into despair all-too-easily. How many people out there feel hopeless and uncertain about what to do?

The solution must be to do a little at a time. For me, it meant starting this blog. I know my writing is too wordy, my topics inconsistent. I know my promotion skills are poor, and the product amateurish. But it keeps me writing. I remain busy while I work things out. It’s a small step, but it’s a step. If I can write 150,000 words in six months, then I should be able to make an income as a writer. Maybe not with a memoir or spiritual text, but perhaps writing science articles or even medical editing. Who knows? At least I’ve proven that I like to sit at the computer, and fashion language.