Why I no longer write as often

— THESE days I struggle with the lack of things to write about. Five years ago, I could turn the mundane into a decent blog post, complete with photos and quotes and links to random websites. Now that the world has changed, and the divide between the public and private has almost disintegrated, I tend to overthink. Will the things I write about merely contribute to the junk that’s already out there in the open? Do people really need to know this about me? While this is a private space, and only friends and a few strangers know of this website (the plan is to keep it this way), I still entertain the possibility that I might be wasting time—mine and those of my readers.

— Or, perhaps, is it because I spend most of my day writing anyway? I talk to people, then I write about them. It’s the story of my day. It doesn’t matter if they live or die—I still write about them. Internal Medicine involves much thinking and writing, no wonder why Abraham Verghesse, in the novel Cutting for Stone, called the internist someone who lives a life of introspection. While my chart entries vary, they follow a certain structure: the history of present illness, the systems review, the past medical history, the family medical history, and the personal and social history. The wording is brief and concise, though I allow myself to use a diarrhea of adjectives, especially in describing skin lesions and tumors. Maybe writing this way empties me, leaving me hardly any material to write about anything else.

— Or, is it because I am just getting old, and the need (and pleasure) in documenting my life has decreased, to a certain degree? I tell my friend Carlo, a quiet and melancholic man, that I have become like him, preferring privacy instead of huge crowds, especially at the end of a long day.

— Is the blog—rather, blogging—dead? I suppose so. But write I will.