A Year on the Streets

Well, here we are on January 1, 2006. When I started this blog "A Year on the Street" it was my intention to only record "a year" of being a medic, so it is with some trepidation that I am writing today. It is has been a lot of work writing each day, but it has yielded rewards for me. The discipline is no doubt good. But the best benefit has been the ability to see my day clearer. Sometimes I have no idea what I will write about. Some entries are tedious. But other times when I write, something from the day that I paid little attention to comes into focus. Moments that I might have otherwise missed are saved and recorded.

People do EMS for many reasons: to help people, for the excitment, for the challenge of medicine... For me one of the big reasons is for the view into people -- people at their best and worst. I am happiest when I can capture one of these moments. I don't do it everyday, but by the sheer act of writing, sometimes these nuggets fall onto my paper.

Some of you know I have another blog, Street Watch: Notes of a Paramedic,which I write maybe once or twice a week. I draw much of the material from this blog. I take out the better stories and rewrite them or I elaborate on some issue that comes up. It was my intention to return to just doing that blog. But I think I will try to keep both going -- at least for awhile longer. This will remain the rough cut.

I probably won't work as much this year as last so there will be fewer entries.

Thank you for reading. Knowing that everyday someone clicks this link gives me the impetus to sit down and try to make certain there is something new to read.