Finis

"Now my charms are all o'erthrown,
And what strength I have is mine own,
Which is most faint."

Prospero

In the Times Judith Lichtenberg examines altruism, in particular the fact that it seems impossible to isolate pure unselfishness, uncontaminated by all self-interested motives (even if only the often unconscious satisfaction of having done good). But she argues that altruism is no less desirable, individually and socially, for all its imperfections; indeed, a flawed, all-too-human altruism is the best we can hope for in this world, that is, at all.

It seems to me that the wish for unsullied altruism is parallel to the fantasy of an absolute free will, untrammeled by ambivalence, weakness, or material considerations. The totally free and altruistic act would, of course, be the act of God, not of human beings.

That seems like a fine note upon which to end this blog, which has now run for more than two years and 400 posts. A blog has no natural ending apart from the demise or sheer exhaustion of its author. I find that I have said all that I have to say in this format, and nothing would remain here but the recycling of old themes and, of course, gawking at the baubles of the Web as they flash by. I have arrived at that definite point marked not by ambivalence or by frustrated block, but by dispassion--it is time to move on.

If Emerson was right that life consists of what a man (sic) thinks about all day, then this blog has been a reasonable record of the past two years of my life. Many posts have been tossed off, but many have been thoughtful, carefully wrought and even alarmingly personal, especially to any perceptive readers out there. It has been a transitional time, befitting a blog I suppose.

Other projects await. I will need to prepare for a Grand Rounds presentation a few months hence (a late echo of the academic life), and I am getting closer, finally, to starting a private practice, which will take considerable doing. Any additional post here in the future would be a link to a possible different kind of blog, a more professionally discreet and decorous one that might support a practice.

Thanks to readers--be well.

Journeys

I will be traveling much of the next three weeks, so posting will probably be light to non-existent. Happy Independence Day!

Together Again

As you can see, Blue to Blue posts have been reabsorbed here.

Forwarding Address

I am in fact shutting down Blue to Blue and have returned to Ars Psychiatrica.

Happy 100?

I haven't indulged in blogging about blogging for a long time, but I will allow myself this now that Blue to Blue has inched its way to 100 posts over 11 months. However, while I have retained a few core readers (thank you!), overall the readership as reflected in both hits and comments has been smaller than in my first blog Ars Psychiatrica. Reasons?

1. I haven't been as prolific, either in frequency or ambition of posts; it has simply been a more desultory blog overall. For various reasons I haven't devoted the time and energy that I often did last year. However, some Blue to Blue posts have been, I think, every bit as decent as many in the parent blog.

2. While I would hope that most people would visit this sort of blog primarily for textual content, the cool pictures and quotes that often adorned my previous blog have generally been lacking here. All else being equal, people like pictures.

3. Considering style further, I think that the title Ars Psychiatrica, while a bit pedantic, also usefully named the blog's niche in a way that the more inscrutable "Blue to Blue" does not. Also, the midnight blue template, while appealing to me at first, has grown a bit oppressive (or maybe I'm just bored with it).

4. I haven't been as active in reading and commenting on other blogs as I used to be, which affects readership.

5. As Facebook, Twitter, etc. have continued to grow and offer further distractions, maybe fewer people take time for blogs than used to be the case. (?)

6. As compared to its predecessor blog, probably fewer posts here have offered anything like mainstream commentary on psychiatry (again, the niche is less defined).

7. Perhaps the Novalis brand, so to speak, has grown a bit stale. Just as some claim that writers tend to write the same book over and over again, one does tend to revisit the same issues, although hopefully in a spiral more than a circular fashion (theme with variations).

8. In any event, I find myself at another cusp of choosing whether to give up blogging altogether or, on the contrary, to shift gears again and approach things from a different angle. As compared to the past year, I am in a position to devote more attention to writing if desired. I have even considered returning to Ars Psychiatrica (2.0 perhaps), declaring Blue to Blue a finally unsatisfactory detour. Or perhaps I will undertake something else altogether.

Is This It?

Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu

That would be waving and that would be crying,
Crying and shouting and meaning farewell,
Farewell in the eyes and farewell at the center,
Just to stand still without moving a hand.

In a world without heaven to follow, the stops
Would be endings, more poignant than partings, profounder,
And that would be saying farewell, repeating farewell,
Just to be there and just to behold.

To be one's singular self, to despise
The being that yielded so little, acquired
So little, too little to care, to turn
To the ever-jubilant weather, to sip

One's cup and never to say a word,
Or to sleep or just to lie there still,
Just to be there, just to be beheld,
That would be bidding farewell, be bidding farewell.

One likes to practice the thing. They practice,
Enough, for heaven. Ever-jubilant,
What is there here but weather, what spirit
Have I except it comes from the sun?

Wallace Stevens


For the time being I can no longer pretend that I have the time or the motivation to continue blogging here on a regular basis. The nearly 300 posts since last year (counting the longer predecessor of "Blue to Blue") have been a fascinating project, well worth doing. But I have said many of the things I had to say, in this format at least, and circumstances have changed; there are real-life matters that need to be taken care of.

I may occasionally return if I have a poem or other bee in my bonnet that I can't resist sharing, but it won't be on any regular basis, and it would be for myself more than for anyone else. After the first of the year things may have settled down enough that I'll want to undertake something new. I will continue to follow some of the folks on the Blogroll from time to time. But as for this site, thanks for reading up to now.

The Spirit of Self-Disclosure

The opening of Hawthorne's "The Custom House:"

It is a little remarkable, that--though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends--an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favored the reader--inexcusably, and for no earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine--with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And now--because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasion--I again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three years' experience in a Custom-House. The example of the famous "P.P., Clerk of this Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates and lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But--as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience--it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader's rights or his own.

Still Kicking

The blog may be dying a slow death, but I'm not (well, no more so that we all are, really). A great deal has been going on here of the family and relationship variety, and in so overwhelming an emotional fashion as to make blogging matters seem quaint by comparison. But life requires quaintness as well as intensity, the abstract as much as the visceral, so whether I will regain the appetite for blogging that I had last year--whether I any more feel the need for that--I don't know, but the final word has not been written.

Moving Day

This blog(ger) is officially moving today to its successor site Blue to Blue (http://www.bluetoblue.org/). As I've said, the content will be similar, so if you've stayed with me so far, I hope you'll come along.

To those kind bloggers who have included Ars Psychiatrica in your blogrolls, I hope you will kindly replace it in your lists with its sequel, and I regret your trouble in doing so. Ars Psychiatrica in its current state will remain online, but future posts will appear on Blue to Blue.

Thanks for reading.

Let's Try This Again

Picking up where Ars Psychiatrica left off (trailed off?), Blue to Blue will contain observations--and sometimes flights of fancy--related to psychology and the arts (both broadly construed). As compared to its prequel, you may notice three minor modifications:

1. A more minimalist look. I'm sure I'll add a few more touches over time.

2. I am giving Twitter a try; as I enjoy both prolific Web links and pithy, gnomic utterances (both my own and others'), it may offer more than merely a waste of time (Twitter-fritter). If you will sign up to follow, I will spare you the burden of Too Much Information (about my daily doings, that is, not to mention...unmentionables).

3. I have reverted to quasi-anonymity. No particular problem arose from my name attached to the other blog, and no blogger enjoys absolute anonymity anyway, but I find that I feel a bit freer with the added degree of discretion.


Thanks for reading.

Rebooting Blues

Franz Marc, The Blue Fox

Is the blue fox anything like the black dog? As I get ready to close this blog (although not to delete it) and embark on a successor, I've been trying to arrive at a name that will be just right. I decided it ought to have "blue" in the title, for multiple reasons. It is a beloved hue, that of sea and sky, and it also denotes melancholia, which seems to me the paradigmatic mental disorder.

For Novalis and the German Romantics, the "blue flower" also symbolized the unattainable object of the poetic quest. I thought about simply naming the new blog "The Blue Flower," but that is a bit, well, flowery, not to mention the fact that several blogs--most of them defunct by now of course--have borne that title already (as did Penelope Fitzgerald's wondrous historical novel about Novalis's short life). So I thought about "The Blue Blossom" or "The Blue Bloom," but these were either too alliterative or too, well, "blooey."

I love both the color and the word "ultramarine" ("beyond the sea"), but a long-dead blog already bears that title. Similarly "lapis lazuli," but that would be a bit baffling. "The Blue Book" or "The Blue Blog" would be nicely whimsical, but little more, and are probably already taken too. I considered "bolt from the blue," but it seemed trite; "the blue bulletin" seemed flat. "The blue bulb" carries the intriguing double meaning, both botanical and incandescent, but somehow didn't seem to flow.

So I thought about borrowing a blue phrase from Emily Dickinson, my poetic ideal. Her poems famously mention "my blue peninsula" as well as "a slash of blue," but believe it or not, now-expired blogs have used those titles also. Other instances include "breadths of blue," "withes of supple blue," and "inns of molten blue." Finally appeared the blue example that struck Goldilocks as being just right:

The Brain -- is wider than the Sky --
For -- put them side by side --
The one the other will contain
With ease -- and You -- beside --

The Brain is deeper than the sea --
For -- hold them -- Blue to Blue --
The one the other will absorb --
As Sponges -- Buckets -- do --

The Brain is just the weight of God --
For -- Heft them -- Pound for Pound --
And they will differ -- if they do --
As Syllable from Sound --

Blue to Blue--that's it, reflecting the refracting contributions of psychiatry and poetry, and without the stiff quasi-professional patina of Ars Psychiatrica. Blue to Blue juxtaposes brain and Earth, the vastness of the one rivaling the enormity of the other. Other areas of medicine deal merely with the humdrum body, while psychiatry confronts the universe of consciousness. "I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, if it were not that I have bad dreams," Hamlet said. Poetry at its best acts as a rupture in reality, swinging open a portal onto the void.

As subtitle I'm thinking of "Psychology, Speculation, and Sea Change" (I'm a sucker for sibilants). According to Ariel:

Full fathom five thy father lies.
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

This summons another fascination, that of self-transformation, by self and of self by the sea of media and molecular influences we swim in. What about ourselves can be changed? How and how much? Should we change or merely accept?

The new blog's content will probably be similar to this, although with more emphasis on poetry (perhaps even--groan--some of my own). Under construction.

Addendum: Yes, others came to mind--"Blue Lagoon," "Baby Blue," "Blue Devil," and "Blue's Clues"--but, alas, all already used. "Cyanotic" might still be available, come to think of it.

Anniversary

The man-hero is not the exceptional monster,

But he that of repetition is most master.

Wallace Stevens

After 224 posts, Ars Psychiatrica is a year old--well, not quite, but in about three weeks, and as my kids would say, what's the harm in marking the occasion a bit early?

I undertook this blog after a relocation in which I chose to depart a tenured position in academia (after realizing that while in most of academia, tenure is life-saving, in medical academia it is merely an honorific). I had published a number of papers in obscure medical ethics and humanities venues, but felt like I still had things to say. I happened to find myself in a most peculiar job which had scandalous amounts of down time; for many months, most of the posts here were at least partially composed at work. Yes, it was a public job, so for quite a while this blog was taxpayer-funded; I am sorry, although it wasn't my fault (there really wasn't much else to do).

After a while I left that lame job behind and took on another one which, while involving fewer hours overall, kept me far busier while I was there. Due to that and other obligations, I found myself with less time to write, and probably I got lazy too, which is why in recent months illustrations and quotes petered out, and posts became less frequent. I noticed that readership went down: I think people really like cool pictures, although I wish content alone could carry the day.

The biggest challenge has been to define content and target audience: I have been torn between making professional issues at least the centerpiece of the blog on the one hand, and the inclination to give free rein to my eclectic instincts on the other. The latter has won out often enough that I'm sure that many people initially drawn to the blog in hopes of mainstream discussion of diagnosis and treatment were disappointed. I have found myself generally disinclined to write about work, narrowly construed. Shedding anonymity limited my openness as well.

Observing reading and commenting patterns has been fascinating. Some folks, to judge from both comments and Sitemeter data, come more or less to stay, while others, often after leaving comments suggesting the blog is the best thing since sliced bread, disappear, never to return. Was it something I said, or didn't say? Was s/he run over by a bus? I also think of Elaine's great Seinfeld line, and I paraphrase: "Is it possible that I'm not as attractive as I think I am?"

Timing and scheduling of posts remains tricky. Regularity and frequency help keep the blog's blood flowing, but a daily regimen can lead to some pretty perfunctory posts. Yet I dislike blogs where the author disappears for a few weeks every now and then with no explanation. Perhaps the best solution is scheduled posts a couple of times a week, such that folks know what to expect, yet one has time to work up something really worth posting. I'm curious too about all the abandoned blogs out there, which just stop without explanation: a dilapidated farmhouse in North Dakota, its occupants long gone for parts unguessed at.

I think blogging isn't done with me quite yet, but maybe it's time to overhaul the format, title, and theme. You know, go toe-to-toe with The Huffington Post. Mass appeal--MJ had it, why can't I? (Anonymous, don't answer that).

At the risk of being self-regarding (moi?), I thought I'd mention some of the posts during the year that I've enjoyed the most, usually because of the discussion they prompted. Some of this year's greatest hits: in one of my rare down-to-earth entries, You Be the Judge, folks helpfully advised me on a problem involving felines and unneighborly neighbors. A more highfalutin ethics discussion centered on capital punishment in Hippocrates and the Hangman.

I was tickled to get a surprise comment from the author himself after an appreciative review of Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct. While I enjoyed writing many of the literature entries most, they weren't the kind to generate a great deal of controversy or debate, but DFW Revisited attracted interest after Wallace's death last year. On a mainstream professional plane, posts on medication issues (On Med-Seeking and Old Wine, New Bottles) provoked not only lively comments but even a mention in the Los Angeles Times.

Easily my most controversial post, Uneasy Lies the Head, involved the political acceptability for high public office of those with major psychiatric diagnoses. I offered a heartfelt encomium of President Obama (The Case for Obama, Seriously) soon after his election last year (no, Retriever, I would not retract any of it today).

The question of proper compensation for psychiatrists attracted interest in How Much is a Psychiatrist Worth? The topic of the political persuasion of mental health professionals led to a rousing political tussle (I think Van der Leun has given up on me by now) in Where Liberals Lurk.

Finally, and more loftily, I and others considered spiritual issues in All in Your Head and The Missing All.

While I consider what to do now, I'll leave this post up for a while, so both panegyrics and take-downs are welcomed. Anyway, I figure the dog days start early here in the Carolinas...

Off-Grid

I'm heading on the road again, and owing to a laptop on the blink, I may not have reliable access. The blog may be off the air for ten days or so. Happy Independence Day.

The Summer Slowdown

You start a conversation you can't even finish it
You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything
When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed
Say something once, why say it again?

Talking Heads


I see that as compared to 31 posts in January, I have eked out only 11 so far in May. This shouldn't surprise me--the light and life of impending summer always suppress the urge to write, just as they suppress melatonin. If I were to move to the tropics, a transition devoutly to be wished, the inclination to write might wither away altogether. Summer for me is for movement, love, and music, not so much for the logos.

So to my three (or is it four?) consistent readers, thank you for following. The blog is not ending, just entering a period of languor, to be furthered only when what passes for inspiration in my case strikes. As the pessimist says to himself when passing through a period of prosperity, this too shall pass.

Times A-Changin'

Maybe, or maybe not. Here's Samuel Johnson on "blogging" in 18th-century England (courtesy of Peter Martin's biography). Sound familiar?

(Writing of the proliferation of independent printers) "If we consider chiefly the state of our own country, [it] may be styled with great propriety The Age of Authors...The province of writing was formerly left to those, who by study, or appearance of study, were supposed to have gained knowledge unattainable by the busy part of mankind; but in these enlightened days, every man is qualified to instruct every other man."

(Writing on the pressure of frequent deadlines) "He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic, sill it is too late to change it; or in the ardour of invention, diffuse his thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgement to examine or reduce."

I have read before that newly prevalent coffee houses in Johnson's era helped to spur the development of literary culture, caffeine promoting attention and perspicacity more effectively than the psychotropics available in taverns and alehouses. Fast forward to contemporary neuroenhancement, whose prime time status is attested to by Margaret Talbot's review of the phenomenon in The New Yorker.

Talbot interestingly profiles college students who, unmedicated, might lapse into indie slackers, but who seem to fire on all cylinders thanks to Adderall, as well as new agey scientific gurus who swear by Provigil. She covers all the usual objections to widespread and off-label use of such agents: the pressure of technocratic conformity, the emphasis upon focused productivity at the expense of serendipitous creativity, and of course known and unknown adverse physiological effects. But she seems to conclude that the practice is roughly analogous to plastic surgery, that is, regrettable perhaps, but likely not illegal or even necessarily unethical.

The enhancement issue occupied my mind a great deal a couple of years ago and yielded a couple of published papers, but here I would say only that neuroenhancement does differ from plastic surgery inasmuch as the former affects not only one's attributes, but also one's capacity or inclination to reflect upon those attributes. If someone without ADHD is in some hyper-focused state due to Adderall or Ritalin, this state may in itself vitiate his ability to consider whether this is a good thing (just as, similarly albeit more dramatically, an actively inebriated person is not well placed to appreciate the virtues of sobriety). It is as if a plastic surgery procedure were to directly (and not just indirectly) make one even more superficial and other-directed than one already was.

For the psychiatrist, it is also somewhat quaint to hear talk of these agents as being fraught with prodigious impact and potentially hazardous effects, when the issue for many folks with real ADHD is less likely to be side effects than limited efficacy.

Category Mistakes

I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Hamlet


I think I've identified the source of the nagging cognitive dissonance I've felt at times while writing this blog. The quasi-professional imprimatur implied by the title and by my medical status implies a content for the most part that I am not interested in delivering much of the time. I'm interested in two main things: worthwhile writing in general on whatever topic strikes me, and a constellation of topics--narrative, beauty, and puzzles of identity and existence chief among them--that might be considered the vast penumbra of psychiatry.

I suspect a number of folks arrive at the blog (although often not the ones leaving comments) looking for insight into the nuts and bolts of psychiatry: the meds, the diagnoses, what it's like to be a shrink. And I write on these at times of course, but for the most part I'm content to leave these matters in the office. Most of the things I ever had to say about psychiatry as an entity and a profession I've already expressed in obscure academic contexts.

My natural inclination is to examine the narrow phenomenon of the psychiatric with the much more venerable and flexible tools of the arts, of general moral understanding, and of common sense. So when folks at a social gathering inevitably wonder aloud if I'm examining them, my tacit response (in addition to "Not unless I'm getting reimbursed") is that I need them to help me to better understand the weird undertaking of psychiatry, not the other way around.

So I'm doing a blog because I enjoy writing, and I enjoy it outside of the traditional strictures and pressures of publication (I sacrificed my 20's to the inferno and purgatory of medical school and residency, respectively, partly so that I would not be desperate for funds at this stage of my life). I do not do it to purvey some priceless wisdom that anyone could associate with psychiatry.

What I consider a good post is a kind of micro-personal essay, which doesn't imply that it is primarily about me, obviously, but that it conveys an apprehension of some experience--whether an idea, a cultural entity, or a book--that is refracted through a particular sensibility (mine). If you couldn't care less about the sensibility or the writing, then the wonderful thing about the Internet and blogging is that you have wasted "only" a few seconds of your life. Or not wasted, at least not entirely.

Two questions arise. If this is not primarily a vehicle for professional expression, why not leave it in a private journal, and why include the psychiatric title and implication at all? Well, as I've written before, few are less interested in or expectant of a mass audience than me, yet as I share a basic human message-in-the-bottle kind of aspiration to being known--even if only by a handful among six billion--it seems worth doing for a while. And the psychiatric handle may be somewhat arbitrary--I can think of any number of personal and biographical aspects more indicative of my worldview than happening to be a psychiatrist--but it will have to do, for now.

Spring Hiatus

"Is it a world to hide virtues in?"

Twelfth Night


In a few days we'll take the young 'uns by car, plane, ship, and roller-coaster on the tragically American quest for the perfect vacation. Off the grid for the most part, so this site will be idle for a couple of weeks.

Eight months and 185 posts in, I'm growing a little restless with the format here. I guess that's what drives one to blog in the first place, restlessness that is. I'm not done yet, but it may be time for a reboot of some kind. You know, get back to first principles, whatever those might be.

Squawk

I had seen this local piece not long ago (by J. Peder Zane on the Twitter phenomenon) and then saw it again today on Arts and Letters Daily.

Do I need Twitter? Will it enhance my life? Or is this the tipping point at which my nervous system finally falls a fatal step behind the curve, starting the long stagger into senescence?

Shall I disturb the universe with Tweets? (That always reminds me of Peeps, the appallingly sweet and gooey Easter candy my kids love). More importantly, could I do so with a straight face?

What would Harrison Bergeron say?

What would Emily say?

No bobolink -- reverse His Singing

When the Only Tree

Ever He minded occupying

By the Farmer be --

Clove to the Root --

His Spacious Future --

Best Horizon -- gone --

Whose music be His

Only Anodyne --

Brave Bobolink --

Uh-Oh

Here's an interesting thing I discovered while glancing over my annual malpractice insurance renewal form (to the tune of $7000). Along with the usual litany of intrusive questions like When did you stop beating your wife? or How many human body parts do you have in your freezer right now? came a new one: Do you have a website?

Fortunately the malpractice slate is clean, although I realize that these days that is as much a matter of luck as anything else. Last year was the first time I had to arrange my own malpractice insurance, having been covered institutionally before that. I don't recall that question last year. Now it appears after Do you communicate with patients by email?

Does hosting a blog make one a higher malpractice risk? If I were "anonymous" it would be easier to lie on the form without being immediately found out, but as there have been instances of anonymous bloggers being unmasked (to put it a tad melodramatically), I could still be risking losing coverage if I answered untruthfully.

As I've suggested before, for many folks blogging is just an extension of other forms of publication. The insurance application does not ask Have you written case reports for academic journals? Is this just because your average patient is much more likely to Google your name than to wander through the university library stacks?

What if I hosted a blog on, say, orchids--would that be somehow more innocuous? Or does the mere fact of a professional's name on a blog--any blog--suggest that he is a loose cannon in some way? Unfiltered by traditional media, he could, any day--in the next ten minutes even--type something so appalling as to invite universal and timeless opprobrium, a great carcass thrown out for the vultures...

The Course of Life

They warn you about killers and thieves in the night

I worry about cancer and living right

But my mama never warned me about my own

Destructive appetite.

Jenny Lewis

Suppose as thought experiment that I were to look for a new job. Crazy in this economy, right? Poor choice of words perhaps, as the demand for psychiatric services seems perennially high. Will diagnose, prescribe and counsel, for cash destined for the mattress (hold the 401(k)--please).

So the question is: does a blog like this improve or imperil one's job chances, even if it's left off of the CV? (It is currently on). I've never been an employer, but does anyone make a hire these days without running the hapless chap through Google first? Plenty of folks have been embarrassed by drunken and other shenanigans bumblingly posted on Facebook (okay there), but what about the hybrid personal/professional blog?

I would hope the humble site here would reflect some creativity and independence of spirit, but some employer might grumble, "As if that's a good thing?" But if so, why would I want to work for him/her? Um, because the mattress might get low on cash.

What about private practice, with multiple individual "employers" as it were? Would the blog usefully advertise my clinical and philosophical views without Too Much Information, or has the latter threshold already been crossed? As I compile posts it is easy to forget how much could be inferred from a careful reading of the entire series (do not try at home). I don't like the idea--or the effort--of painstakingly editing past posts in detail, but it might be necessary to jettison a few of the more casual or jejune efforts (like this one) that might not measure up to Professional Dignity.

Blogging topics to be deferred:

My High School Prom

Domestic Pet Peeves

Back to the Dentist

Annals of Toilet-Training

My Vintage Bottle-cap Collection

(Just kidding, prospective boss; a sense of humor is important to me in a boss, unless the economy gets any worse, in which case I can play it straight with the best of 'em).

What would Freud do?