Writing on Water (Or the Blog That Nobody Reads)

 No one reads my blog anymore. And oddly enough, I take comfort in that.

When I started Walking on Water as an internal medicine resident at PGH, it was mostly a survival strategy. By the time I became a cardiology fellow, the blog had become a faithful confidante. Between rounds, referrals, and ECGs, I wrote frequently, feverishly, as if my survival depended on it. 2009 to 2012 were my golden years, when a few kind souls began to follow along, quietly rooting for my words from behind their own screens.

Then real life barrelled in.

From 2012 to 2016, the early-career hustle left little time to write, much less reflect. After that came the world of social media: quicker, louder, more fleeting. Instead of reading essays or poetry, I scrolled through Facebook comments. My literary brain, once nourished by Steinbeck and Tolkien, was now subsisting on digital crumbs. My writing muscles atrophied.

I stopped writing because I stopped reading.

I stopped reading because I stopped pausing. I had to hustle to live.

Now, after a five-year hiatus, I am learning how to pause again. To pick up my pen, well, technically, my keyboard. Clumsily, hesitantly, but with intention. I am writing again. This time, for no one. To write without the need for validation, without the imagined reader perched on my shoulder, judging the tone, the grammar, or the depth. That is oddly liberating.

There is no audience to impress. No applause to chase. No criticism to fear. Only the blank page and I, finally brave enough to return.

So I write again. Not to be read, but to be real. Sometimes I feel that I have stayed in the comforts of my boat for too long, and I am now too scared to walk on water. The stakes are just too high. The fears are heavier because my life is no longer mine alone. It belongs, in large and sacred ways, to my daughters, too. 

But maybe this time, I can just leave my boat once in a while when I want to. And learn to swim, or at least be still and learn to float.