I know, I know...

...I say I'm coming back and I disappear. Sorry, loyal readers.

There has been a lot going on. There has been illness; nothing life-threatening, just a bad flu bug that felled me for nearly 10 days. Nothing like Mom Nature reminding you that your body is not always ruled by your will. I don't recall the last time I even had the flu. College, maybe? I spent 3 whole days of the last month lying on my couch, achy and exhausted, sipping water-downed Gatorade and wondering how anyone managed to get through a flu season before TV series came out on DVD. Ah, it was a time known as the Dark Ages...

There is dating. Lots of dating. 2011 is becoming The Year of the Date. I'm embracing the meeting of new people if for no other reason than I've got some great bar stories. I mean, you can't go to a speed-dating event in a city of several million but manage to see a guy you went out with six years ago and not have a great story, right? It's coming, it's coming...

There is also a new job. In specialty. Internal medicine and oncology. I saw an opportunity and leapt at it. It seemingly fell through, but I kept my eye on the ball. And the effort paid off, big time. I've been in this game for 9 years now, in a profession where the average burn-out time is 4. I've scrimped and studied, sandwiched school time between multiple jobs, put aside my social life and my sanity in the hopes of acheiving something special. There have been countless times that the effort seemed for naught. Lots of moments when I looked at the body of a dead pet and fought against the urge to run the other way. I persisted, blindly much of the time, running on the fumes of faith, believing that all the work and sacrifice might some day be worth it despite the many, many indicators to the contrary. Now I'm on the other side, with a remarkable career opportunity in front of me, and it's mine. And I'm ready and eager and going for it. There are exciting changes coming around, and I'm riding the crest of the wave. And loving, loving, loving it, maybe all the more because the path to here was such a challenging one.

Right now, I'm staring down the barrel of a 60-hour work week, a little daunted, but how many people get to spend a 60-hour work week doing something that they love? Really, folks, how lucky am I?

-C.