Member

blogiversary has gained official status as a word in at least one online dictionary.

scan man’s notes completes one year of existence today.

The monster is alive and well, though it doesn’t seem so monstrous.

There are 145 posts in my blog with about 480 comments (including those in the older version of my blog). Which amounts to 2.78 posts every week on average and a little more than 3 comments per post. Not great numbers compared to what most of the medical blogging community is used to. But they are good enough for me

Statcounter and Sitemeter say that there have been about 11,000 people who visited my blog. Wow!!

It’s a different matter that most of the visits lasted less than 3 seconds, the time it takes to identify rubbish

I’ve remained a Slimy Mollusc for a while now without sliding lower on the evolutionary scale.

And my ClustrMap shows visitors from all continents. There’s even someone from Iceland and what seems to be Siberia!!

Not bad for someone who started blogging without any idea of sticking to it.

I have come across many bloggers who try to explain or justify why they blog.

Here are my thoughts on why I think I blog.I started this blog with some lofty ideal vague idea of trying to express my creativity and to have a place where I could write something related to Radiology.

I don’t think I have lived up to those ideals. I realized the hard way that I couldn’t just summon creativity, make it sit up and beg.Now I’m trying to be an Artist.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” Scott Adams, ‘The Dilbert Principle.’

The last post was the only one that I have written related to Radiology in a long time.

I had an epiphany sometime ago: “My blog is primarily for my amusement.”

I’m overworked as it is at work. And as the lone Radiologist at my hospital, I’m pretty much on call 24/7.

Note: I wish to place on record my eternal gratitude to my Neuro colleagues (the Neurologists & Neurosurgeons) who allow me a some hours of undisturbed sleep as they don’t need emergency CT scans of the Brain to be reported as and when they are taken. I’m only disturbed at night when a CT scan is done for a non-neurological emergency or if the surgeon or duty medical officer at the casualty want an emergency ultrasound scan of the abdomen for a trauma victim. Thankfully, non-neuro emergencies are rare. (I’m touching wood as I type this! I don’t want this to turn out like the ER curse, the one that goes “Things sure are quiet around here tonight”)

I don’t want to think about or do anything related to “work” in the few short hours of leisure that I have.

In a fit of initial enthusiasm and with the intent of increasing traffic to my blog, I posted a few medical and Radiology-related items and submitted them to blog carnivals such as Grand Rounds (on the few occasions when it was hosted in blogs where I was considered a friend) and Radiology Grand Rounds. But that ended with the fiasco of my first ever attempt at hosting a Blog Carnival. I decided that kind of stuff is best left to bloggers who maintain strictly professional blogs.

I submitted an image to Laughlin’s blog mainly to assuage a guilty conscience. I intended to submit a few more, but again it seemed too much like work

I am at my best when I post something innocuous like some silly internet quiz. Or when I copy and paste a news article with a short commentary thrown in.

I’ve tried to steer clear of political issues. Tried, but not always succeeded.

Like other bloggers who have posted about their experiences, usually on their blog anniversaries, I too have to say that blogging has widened my circle of friends. I agree with Neonatal doc who celebrated his blogiversary recently that I seem to have more friends in the blogosphere than in real life.

The list is long. As long as my blogroll.

The circle is growing wider, thanks to the communities and contacts features on MyBlogLog.

I have recently started exploring non-medical bloggers from India through DesiPundit and Blogbharti.

I don’t usually have time to read all the posts by everyone on my blogroll and my Bloglines Feeds list. But I do make it a point to visit all of them once in a while.

I can’t imagine how else I would have met someone from Alaska or someone who travels to exotic places like Borneo, Uganda and Afghanistan.

Lakshmi & Arunn, the only bloggers that I met personally (other than my old friends Suresh & Navin) turned out to be nicer than what I expected.

I would dearly love to meet the Moof

I really admire some of the doctors and nurses out there in the blogosphere:

• some like Dr. Crippen, Rob, Dr. A, Flea & Kim for their prolific output which for the most part is written by them, and others such as Kidneynotes & Kevin who post a steady stream of links with commentaries.

• some like Maria & Michael Hébert for the sheer pleasure of reading their work no matter what the subject.

Another thing that blogging has done is to force me to learn some new stuff like html, php, css, etc,.

I’ve always believed that I’m a closet nerd (in spite of evidence to the contrary). This is the place where I get to experiment with all the cool new stuff that I take a fancy to.

I’m now definitely classifiable as a Blogaholic. And I don’t think its curable.

My resolution for the second year of my blog-life is to explore and make more friends and get to know old ones better.

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