November 20, 2019
by drplasticpicker
When I was in eighth grade English, a classmate that I admired with my whole adolescent heart was assigned to critique one of my writing pieces. I was excited for him to see my writing, as back then I thought intelligence was one of my redeeming features. He was himself a talented student. He wrote only one comment on my paper in bright red, “K.I.S.S. Keep in simple stu**d.” It broke my heart and I always remembered that.
November 13, 2019
by drplasticpicker
I was born and raised in this town. But it has taken me 40 years to fully appreciate how lucky I am. When I applied to pediatric residency, I wrote my personal statement about “Gathering Places. ” I vaguely remember drawing parallels with a well that was in the center of my family’s ancestral village in Southeast Asia and a pediatrician’s office. I wrote of my desire of becoming a pediatrician in the community that I would live. I called both the village well and the medical office – “Gathering Places.” Now I chuckle, because even then I was drawing random connections between disparate places and experiences.
Indeed, I did become a general pediatrician and my office is a “Gathering Place” for the families I serve. And I have realized that the Pacific Coast and this stretch of beach I transverse so frequently is a “Gathering Place” for many people.
November 11, 2019
by drplasticpicker
Becoming drplasticpicker meant devoting my free “me” time to taking a quick jog to the beach, taking a walk along the shore and picking up plastic and jogging back. I had no idea that this would cause a cascade in my life to make life simple. Peaceful.
I wanted to share this with you, because it is something that is so easy to do and so powerful.
November 9, 2019
by drplasticpicker.com
Ocean plastic picking has reminded me that time is not linear. Life is not linear. One of my favorite books growing up was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. In this book I was first introduced to the idea of the tesserect. That the shortest distance between two points is not a line but a wrinkle in time or a tesserect. Indeed the actual mathetmatics is complicated, but the concept is an intriguing one.
As I wandered along the beach this morning, I do the opposite of tesseracting. I take a longer meandering path. Rather than taking the shortest path, I follow bright pieces of plastic up and down the beach. Going slowly from piece to piece, wandering wherever my subconscious takes me. I concentrate on those pieces of plastic, trying to find the small and large pieces thinking alternatively between the whales that might ingest the big pieces to the birds that prefer the bright small ones. Then once in a while, I look up and I find beauty.
November 9, 2019
by drplasticpicker
It is day 72 of this ocean plastic picking journey, and I continue to find great joy and meaning in this new endeavor. As of today, I have picked up 65 bags of trash and salvaged 338 items. Yesteday, I was not able to reach the ocean because I had a full Friday clinic and things always run late, and with daylight savings by the time I got home at 615pm it was already pitch dark.
November 5, 2019
by drplasticpicker
Starting drplasticpicker and learning how to blog has been a fascinating experience. I started this blog because I wanted to share my journey of reconnecting with nature and health and to do something tangible for the world by picking up plastic trash. I have rediscovered my love of writing and creating.
But in learning the mechanics of blogging, I discovered that the world of the internet is half fake. My younger brother is a tech-savy millenial and helped me set up the blog, and has answered many of my questions and helped me download plug-ins and the google analytics programs. I have enjoyed learning how to figure out the process of blogging and WordPress.
October 20, 2019
by drplasticpicker
Drplasticpicker in my real life is in middle management. I do half time clinical work, and the other half at endless meetings. Trust me, I’ve heard about mindfulness and physician wellness. I sit there sometimes, and I just nod mindlessly about our discussions about mindfulness.
October 8, 2019
by drplasticpicker
I have dreams of ocean plastic picking on far off beaches, but the reality is that the stretch of coastline I walk along needs me. Every day is different. Different sunsets, different views, different living beings, and different experiences. If I don’t pick up along my short stretch, who will? I’ve walked by the same lost item several times over several days before I collect the item, so my experiential truth is that likely no one else will.
I have learned to appreciate the small changes along my stretch. I pick plastic, and stop to admire the remnants of castles and sculptures children have painstakingly built. These are the ruins I have seen in the sand.
October 7, 2019
by drplasticpicker
The Sea Turtle is our Spirit Animal. Why the sea turtle? The sea turtle is a marine and terrestrial animal. It’s life cycle starts on the sandy beaches where they hatch and then crawl to the ocean, the kelp where they live their first years, the great ocean during their adult lives, and back to the same beaches where they return to nest. The sea turtle is acutely vulnerable to ocean plastic, since as young sea turtles they live amongst the kelp beds and sometimes mistake bits of plastic for food. Sea turtles are also beautiful and majestic. The Sea Turtle is our spirit animal, because drplasticpicker hopes to be like the turtle – every day being consistent and persistent in our ocean plastic picking. Although the sea turtle is not a tortoise, it is related. Like the hare and the tortoise parable, the tortoise will win the race against ocean plastic debris.
October 4, 2019
by drplasticpicker
It has been over a month since I started this new hobby. I told my middle-school aged daughter tonight, “I am going to write a post about how ocean plastic picking has made me a better pediatrician.”
She replied, “You mean better than other pediatricians?”
“No, I mean a better pediatrician than I was before.” I answered in all seriousness. I know where her thoughts were coming from. I have always thought that anyone who makes it through the medical training process, including her mother, must have some level of narcissism and arrogance to make it and succeed. We have to convince parents, patients and colleagues that we are just special enough to deserve their trust, their respect and that we know what we are doing. Being mid-career, I certainly know I am competent. But the regular ritual of collecing ocean plastic has helped me be a better and more humble pediatrician.
Now I get to finally write one of those count-down lists!