Since this personal journal first appeared in 1999, I’ve restarted it many times. Here I am once again, at the start.
I’m at a new job, having spent the last two years as Chief Medical Officer at a biotech, I’m now back on the Contract Research Organization (CRO) side of drug development The work environment is more conducive to this long-term project I call “On Deciding … Better”.
It’s easy to declare a new start at these transition points. Just as every morning it should be easy to start again with the opportunity provided by a new day.
But realistically, what chance does a new beginning have against the weight of personal history? My beliefs that determine how I parse the world are not new today. The accumulated experiences that have shaped my mind can’t be put aside in the morning though a simple act of will, by any decision to start over.
Writing this journal has given me the opportunity to create a personal body of work in photography and in writing. There’s traction created by the act of publishing that puts what I’ve done in the past and creates a new blank page that challenges me to create once again. I don’t need the audience and I have no intention of making a living as an artist. But as Austin Kleon points out in Show Your Work!
Sharing these texts and photographs on the blog has marked my progress over time. Without the string of posts, the work is suspended in an eternal middle. And so I return in order to begin again, to rise up and start off down the road..
