The last several months have brought so many changes and challenges into my life that it’s been hard to do much of anything but hang on tight, and hope that things pass. In the next few days, I will post a brief summary of what has been going on, so that you’ll know that I haven’t forgotten all of you, and gone off to suck up the sunshine on some little white beach in Bermuda … don’t I wish! ;o)

As much as I’ve neglected this blog, and found it difficult to do keep up with the blogs I like to follow, two very kind souls have nominated me for another blog award. It was really kind of them, and I must say that I’m feeling both humbled … and guilty … for being gone for so long.

Vijay, over at Scan Man’s Notes, gave me the Be the Blog Award yesterday, and this morning, Ramona of Suture for a Living gave me the very same award.

Here’s the description:

…created by Mark at Me and My Drum for bloggers who make their blog their own, stay with it, are interactive with their readers, and just plain have fun.

And here’s what the little beauty looks like:

Vijay and Ramona have nominated a lot of the people that I also would nominate, and there are a lot more of you that I would like to nominate … if I started, my list would go on and on. All of my blog friends on Pownce, and all of those on Facebook … and so many of the rest of you who keep blogging, sharing, giving yourselves to us so unselfishly …

… I’m not bashful …! I’m going to beg anyway! :o)

Would any of my kind and generous readers already belong to a social program named Jaiku? If so, I would dearly love an invitation! I will do your (virtual) dishes for a week! If you’re a dude, I’ll make (virtual) dinner for you! ;o)

If you have an invite, or know someone who can invite me in, please email me at: moof@blogsplot.net

Thankee!

Somehow, that seems to be the theme, right now. Online communities like ours are waking up to the realization that we’re more than just faceless, often nameless, origins for the words which flow across the medical blogosphere’s monitors. We’ve become 3 dimensional, living, breathing, bleeding … warm friends. There are no ages, no sexes, no races, no cultures … we are all friends who happen to be in different places, but who are coming to know each other as well, if not better, than those we rub elbows with on a daily basis.

In Rob’s post yesterday, he alluded to the diversity of his online friends: “I have friends who are from all over the country – even all around the world. I have Hindu, Jewish, Atheist, and Agnostic friends, where I would have never had such an opportunity to get close to people across so many faiths [...]” Rob is right. Not only have we found diversity in our friendships, those friendships have developed real depth. Here, in our little corner of the blogosphere, we’ve done what the world needs to do if it wants to survive: we’ve built deep friendships irrespective of culture, race, or religion. Our differences have only been a source of wonder and enlightenment … and have expanded us beyond who we were before we stretched ourselves enough to become one thing only: good friends.

Now, I would like to think that we’re exceptional … in fact, in many ways, I do think so … but it appears as if this is a real movement which is picking up momentum as begins to span the world …

This morning, my son sent me a link to an article on SlashDot … “Over-50s Invade the Social Networking Scene“. I laughed when I read it, and quickly chased down and read the full article: “Face it – oldies want chums, too“. It made think … there’s more to all of this than meets the eye …

It’s not just an unprecedented amount of older people making a rush into Facebook … it’s people of all ages making a rush into friendship. Getting to know people … where nothing matters but who you are – not your looks, not your sex, not your age … simply who you are, and how you give yourself to your friends.

I have a sweet friend that I met in the spring of 2006. I’m sure a lot of you remember him: Dr. Hans Engel. He has the In a Doc’s Mind blog. We were in the process of developing a warm, wonderful friendship, when he had a catastrophic stroke just over a year ago. It damaged his reading and writing abilities, and since that’s how we were communicating, I was afraid that we would lose each other. But we haven’t. Our friendship continued to grow, and now we talk several times a week. We’re improbable friends … but oh, how we enjoy our little chats, and each other!

That’s an example of what these friendships are. They don’t end at the keyboard – although some of us haven’t explored them beyond that point, yet.

We’re living in an age when we no longer know our next door neighbors … we have no clue of who lives down the road … or a half dozen doors away. We’re all pressed together like canned sardines on elevators, in restaurants, checkout lines, church and temple benches … but we no longer know one another. The more tightly pressed down we are with the teeming masses in our daily walk, the lonelier we seem to become. The internet, the blogosphere, has provided a way for us to rebel against the aloneness … and here, we find that our hearts are not as solitary, and some of our deepest thoughts, loves, fears … can be shared in this little haven of ours.

Here, it’s not our bodies doing the talking … it’s our souls.

Yesterday, The Laundress, Stacy, our old friend from Doc Around the Clock, and I were talking on Pownce; Laundress asked when my blogiversary was … and I told her it was coming up this week. This morning, I checked the date … and I was right! It’s today.

I actually made 4 posts before that time, but those were not really meant for public consumption. I wasn’t actually “blogging,” I was journalizing. My first official, public post, made with the idea of maintaining a public blog, was on November 1, 2005

The first blog I ever read after I started blogging in earnest was Dr. Bob’s blog, from The Doctor Is In. From his blogroll, I found Kim from Emergiblog, and from Kim, I found our dear Dr. IBear from Doc Around the Clock … and on it went! I was addicted! In early March of 2006, Vijay contacted me for the first time; and our little blog family was growing.

I wanted to write about how the people I’ve met through blogging have touched my life, but … someone beat me to it. One of my very best blog friends, Dr. Rob over at Musings of a Distractible Mind, has an especially wonderful post today – he talks about building blog friendships, and he does a far better job of it than I ever could have. Please go over and take a look if you haven’t read it yet.

Here’s to another year of blogging! :o)

This morning, I heard from a fellow in the NHS – Max E Nurse. It was a “friend” request in FaceBook, and since I’d never heard of him before, I had to do a bit of research. That’s when I found his blog:

It Shouldn’t Happen in Health Care, by Max E Nurse

I’m still laughing! :o)

It’s a smaller world that I’d realized … turns out that he and my old friend, John Crippen, don’t always see eye to eye! In fact, Dr. Crippen is why Max began blogging …

If you don’t take a look, you’re the one missing out. He’s got a great sense of humor, and he uses it well!

In the last few weeks, there have been a few other new bloggers. Vijay discovered them, and introduced them to us. I’m pretty sure that all of my readers also read Vijay’s blog, but just in case you missed it, make sure you check out Small Town Doc, by none other than SmallTownDoc, and A Twist of Word and Mind, by Rambodoc.

Small Town Doc is a family practitioner in a small town in Southern India, and we’ve turned him into a Stereogram addict! He’s a new blogger, and has an excellent start. I’m looking forward to getting to know him a lot better. (And to seeing a picture … ;o)

Rambodoc is based in Kolkata (I think that’s Calcutta, to us Anglos, my Indian friends can correct me if I’m wrong) … and describes himself as:

“Philosophically a votary for freedom and laissez-faire capitalism, he is philologically a Pun-jabi, physiologically a tranquolatile mix of testosterone, endorphins and encephalins, and pathologically is a potential case for solitary confinement, with intermittent electric shocks to obscure corners of the cerebral cortex.”

So – take a look! There are so many new medbloggers out there that it’s hard to get to all of them … but these are worth taking the time for!