October 10, 2023

by Dr. Plastic Picker

How are things going for your family? Are you well? Is everyone loved and being cared for? If I’m your pediatrician, I am back in the large HMO office today and will try to do my best to do my job. You know this historic strike? Do you think it’s manufactured chaos by the powers that be on both sides? It’s kind of like the government shutdowns, I think. The people who are not creative? They have to create this manufactured chaos like war, government shut downs and strikes to make themselves relevant. All those emails that are being sent around the HMO. I know they need to be sent, but I find them all boring. This is a situation that has been created by some people, some forces – and let’s deal with the foundational issues.

Okay. I don’t know where that came from?

But I choose to do my job and show up when I’m supposed to. I know society is this dance, between tugging powers. But the creative class (and that includes a lot of small business folks) I think are the solution. If you create and if you think out of the box, you know that awesomeness and the rewards on this earth aren’t a zero sum game. As my daughter and I often tell each other, there is not just one awesome pie! You can continue to make more awesome pie! And that is what our extended family is doing. We are continuing to make more awesome pie!

Three steps art studio in North Park? In the works. Oregon tree farm and some sort of retreat and wilderness center? In the works! Solar powered tree house with composting toilet that can Air BnB for a lot a night? Started! Meditation retreat somewhere in East County that can be rented as a wilderness event center? 100% it’s going to happen. And empowering a bunch of premeds to do the work that actual attendings should be doing? Hey it’s happening and they are getting into medical school doing the work that needs to be done, and not the manufactured chaos that is happening now.

And our family? We are doing well. A lot of the next generation were gathered together last night in a beautiful setting in a home designed and built by someone brilliant, and I looked at those handsome faces and my daughter’s beautiful profile – and I know we have all done a good job. Our family continues to buck the system, and to realize to not let the powers that be dictate how we think. In the end if you know fundamentally that joy and happiness is family and the food and traditions that go back centuries and togetherness and your ancestors, than the cacophony of emails and the endless chaos of the news cycle seems kind of silly. We each have to play our role in society, and I am doing my part. Just ramblings this morning.

Okay, have to mock up the website with two young people who need a small project for H3SD and hoping that the Scripps Oceanographic Institute agrees to house it on their website or at least a link! I slept last night and turned off my phone. I also did some yoga. Sleep and yoga and a bit of matcha this morning? Yeah. Life is starting off well this morning.