The goal for everyday blogging is struggling a bit. To my defense, I have just experienced one of those ego blowing moments when I am forced to face that my life cannot continue as it has been. The trajectory has shifted. The timeline has split (sort of a Trekkie concept–another reflection for another blog entry) and I am left on the timeline I could not have imagined would actually happen (though to be honest I have imagined the possibility).

I am not ready to share details. Yes, it is that ego deflating. But as I went on a 5 K walk (a runner thinks in kilometers — 3.1 miles for the uninitiated) without a mobile phone (I so recommend doing this), I was forced into metaphorical thinking, and a couple of memories struck me as relevant.

South Bend, IN was my home and that of my nuclear family for twelve years. During that time, I was dismayed to discover that there was no efficient way to travel from one of the larger metropolitan areas of Indiana to its capital, Indianapolis. No interstate. Still no interstate. There is a major highway (US 31) that was meant to be a through way, but thanks to the town of Kokomo (not to be confused with the city of song in Florida), resistant to having its strip of businesses ignored by the rest of Northern Indiana, succeeded in putting up multiple stoplights. From what I have heard, another bypass has been made around Kokomo (A bypass to bypass the bypass) in yet another attempt to expedite travel between the University of Notre Dame to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

But I digress. North of South Bend, US 31 extends north into Michigan. When I first moved to the city in 1993, Route 31 wound its way through downtown South Bend and eventually reached Niles across the state line and then, through diversion from secondary highway to secondary highway, it eventually connected to another part of US 31 that proceeds in limited access fashion to Grand Rapids. Gradually, section by section, stretch by stretch, first by truly bypassing South Bend and Niles, then extending ALMOST to connect with its sister highway just beyond Benton Harbor, 31 continued construction right up to the point that where there was only one last detour on a 2 mile length of secondary road. One can still see where the split four lane highway had begun construction beyond the orange cones corralling cars to the last exit. I feel I have been driven up that last exit. I can see the route that my life had intended to take to reach the ultimate goal of my vocation, my livelihood. One can now see the weeds and grass that have been taking over and encroaching closer and closer to a detour that was never supposed to be permanent.

Ironically, just earlier this week, I had answered a question on Quora: “How does one define a ‘good life’?” My answer? To sum up, I defined it as being able to look back on one’s time on earth with satisfaction and a sense of peace. This definition has not changed for me. Eternally optimistic, I still envision my fate leading me to a ‘good life’.

There was another metaphor that occurred to me on this walk, but like a dream disappearing upon waking, like a tremendous plan evaporating after a whiff of nitrous oxide, it is gone. I may be able to return to the room I just left (the rail trail west of Alma) and it will come back. No matter.

A quick thanks to the two (that I know of) that have written comments to this infant blog — Dave, who also did a stint with “Errand Broad” and Rae, who has been one of my most faithful friends of Facebook. I hope you found a way to follow me, Rae. I’ll let you know when I know!

It began with Quora. You know you are of some sort of distant generation if the social media platform that most appeals to you is one that consists entirely of asking and answering questions. I’m good at it. I pass 10,000 views a week and my upvotes are increasing rapidly as well. When I spent sometime reflecting on this and then discussing it with my computer engineering student son, I realized that the core of this enterprise for me is telling stories. Not fairy-tale, fictional stories, but real life, experiential, historical, educational stories. It was then that I knew that a blog would be an ideal channel for my skills as a raconteur. (ding-ding college word!)

My current occupation is family physician working as independent contractor. Though my knowledge and practice are of high quality, my ability to keep a job is not. I have come to the middle of my life wondering what I am going to do with it. Just to illustrate that I am not inflating my competence, I am board certified with medical licenses in good standing in two states. I have never been sued for malpractice, though most doctors would agree that sometimes this is a matter of luck than absence of actual irresponsible mistakes. However, I like to think that this is no accident — I spend a lot of time listening to and examining patients and then spend almost as much time exploring and determining diagnoses and effective treatments AND THEN I educate my patients about their health and the rationale for my treatment.

And then, of course, when I have spent a half hour doing this, I still have to document it all. It never goes as quickly as I wish it would. And after failing for the third time to keep up with employer expectations for efficiency and productivity, I am left now to figure out the next step.

But we have loads of time to talk about that. Too mundane to continue for now.

The title? The same engineering son I spoke of above often engages with me in remembering the evolution of technology through the past few decades. What never fails to amuse and amaze me are the people who cling to older versions of technology even though it is reasonably obvious that the new versions will be much easier to use. Fax machines represent one of my favorite examples. In the mid 1980’s I was in graduate school in theology. My part time job to pay my way through school consisted of driving for a delivery service company with the name “Errand Boy.” Yes, I recognize how sexist that title would be considered now. It was not unusual at that time for me to get surprised responses from workers I delivered to. A postal employee loved to refer to me as “Errand Broad.” Oh, that’s right — fax machines — this job predated the common use of theses automated typewriters that functioned much like the old fashion teletype. The earliest ones could not transmit pictures or anything that could not be reduced to line by line print. One of my runs involved driving to a Neiman Marcus department store to pick up the receipts for that day and then driving up to O’Hare to have them flown to Dallas for their accountants to review and process.

We’ve come a long way — even fax machines are on the way out, though it is still remarkable the amount of paper that comes through a physician’s office in the form of faxed medical records. More and more offices are transitioning to scanned or electronically stored records that they send as email attachments (with the obligatory signed release permissions included). I ran into one of the collisions that can occur when people are at different points in the technology spectrum. One medical office only did record transactions through email. The receiving office only handled their records through fax. I wound up acting as intermediary (these were my personal medical records). The first office sent them to me by email. I printed them out and then faxed them to the second office. Yes, I still own a fax. It sits in a remote corner of our house. Perhaps once or twice a year I hunt it down, dust it off, connect it to a phone line, and then hope I can remember how to operate it.

There is a reason that fax machines are being replaced by digital medium, and it has nothing to do with excessive use of paper — it is that the material they send is often flawed — blurred, cut-off text, overlapping illegible lines. I have a whole medical safety/mistake story that centers on a fax, but that is for another time.

The title. At the bottom of most faxed message is a page count. I presume it is a way of making sure one has received the entire document that was sent from the other end. One day I saw this page count: Page 4 of 3. I am not sure where the extra page became manifest, but there it was. So now I am hoping that this is what this blog can be . . . the page you were not expecting, the page that everyone else denies having sent or knowing it exists.

Get ready for page 4 of 3.