I’ve Been Derelict In My Blogging Duties

I’ve been most notable by my absence lately. Those of you who read the blog regularly have no doubt noticed that the lack of posts. Those of who don’t, probably haven’t and won’t until you check in again, whenever that is.

I used to have a friend who was a professional writer. She didn’t make a lot of money at it, which is the case with most writers. Still, she had a couple of books published over the years and the only tip she ever gave me was that writers write. She told me that when she had writers block, she’d sit down and force herself to write something, anything. Even bad writing is better than no writing she said. Good advice, which I mostly followed the almost five years I’ve had this blog. Some posts were good, some not so good, some just plain sucked. Still, I put them up and let you decide.

Somewhere over the past few months I’ve let that go and my output has dropped off. I’ve also written a lot of non EMS stuff with the forbearance of the blog master, Dave Konig. A couple of years ago when he invited me to join EMSblogs we had a long conversation at EMS Today. Another EMS blog group had extended an invitation to join their group and my one stipulation was that I wouldn’t be limited to EMS only posts. That is what they agreed to, but they must have had second thoughts because they reneged on their offer and stopped replying to my emails. Dave understood all that and agreed to my terms. True to his word he’s never complained about any topic or opinion I’ve blogged about. It’s been a good relationship, at least from my side.

So, what’s the point of all this rambling?

My life has changed dramatically over the past few months and it’s obviously impacted my blogging. I’m no longer actively working in EMS, at least not in what I’ve always thought of as EMS. I’m not working for an EMS agency and I don’t have any expectation that I will in the future. I am working in EMS related businesses, but the nature of those businesses aren’t really conducive to blogging. To me they are interesting, for the most part because they are things I have never done before. One is an EMS education operation and I’m doing some teaching and will be overseeing the field internships for paramedic students. Which is mostly about filing paperwork and communicating with the various ambulance services where we have placed students. Interesting, but not exciting. The other job is QI related and it’s looking at EMS from the other side of the PCR, as in reviewing them. There are a couple of other offers floating around out there, but they have not been formalized as of yet.

The changes in my life mean that after over 30 years of EMS, I’m starting to live like a normal person. No more working all night. No more being tied to a pager or cell phone. No more giving up weekends and holidays with my family because I’m working my regular shift or over time. No more having to consult my schedule to see if I’m off on a night that a friend wants to go out to dinner or is throwing a party. As I said, like a normal person. Oh, and I get to sleep in my own bed every night.

The down side is that I don’t have interesting cases or ECGs to write about any more. I could dig into the dusty vaults of my memory and share stories from the old days, but then I’d sound like, well an old guy sitting on the porch of the retired paramedics home boring the young EMTs who come to take me to my appointments of stories of the days when backboards were made of wood and paramedics were made of iron. Or something.

Instead I’ll probably continue to comment on EMS in the news. Which is what my next post will be about. Still, it’s a post that you’ve read several times before on this blog. I’ll be writing about one EMS system that has recently “merged” with the fire department in their city. And then I’ll be writing about an EMS system that is under increasing pressure to “merge” with the fire department in their city. If you’re a regular reader, you know where that post is heading.
I’ll also post about current events, politics, and firearms. And maybe even country music. If you don’t like those topics, you’re probably not going to be very interested in what I have to say. It will be a mark of my writing ability if I can get people to read posts about topics that they didn’t think that they were interested in.

Hopefully you’ll hang around and read my posts. And comment. And if you have EMS related news articles, send me links because I’m sure I’ll have something to day.