I just hit a milestone in my writing career by publishing my 100th blog article. This is that article! I wanted to write something profound and important, but I couldn’t think of anything so deserving or poignant as to justify having it headline this most auspicious milestone. I almost just wanted to skip this 100th article and move on to the 101st article, so I wouldn’t have to face the challenge of making number 100 so amazing and memorable.
It all started back on March 13th, 2022, when I started my blog, Epstein’s Pearls, with my first published article titled, “The Beginning…” I discussed who I was and what my purpose for writing the blog was. It started with kind of a cliché of a quote:
"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." - Lao Tzu
At the end of this initial, published article, I mentioned, “This blog is the first step of another journey into the educational and advocacy space to bring my perspective in acute medical care for children further into the community. My hope is that this first step is followed by a thousand-mile journey of education that the community values and finds helpful.” I didn’t know how far this journey would take me and I definitely couldn’t have imagined that I would have made it this far.
While my focus has always been on educating and advocating about aspects of acute medical care in children, my writing evolved into sharing my personal perspectives on writing, creativity, leadership, and general healthcare events and observations as well. I delved into a wider variety of topics than I had planned, such as:
- A series on when to seek medical care for your child
- A series on why science matters
- How to remove an embedded earring in an earlobe or a foreign body in the nose of a child
- A series on medical content creation
- Thoughtful pieces on stepping outside your comfort zone and communication in healthcare
- Discussions about medical conditions such as RSV, severe head injury, and sepsis in kids
- Articles on leadership, “difficult parents”, challenging Dr. Google, and many others…
It has been a fun and enlightening voyage that has given me the opportunity to reflect and process feelings on an assortment of topics connected to the medical field. It has also afforded me time to be mindful and engage in self-care through my writing. I feel that I have received much more from the activity of writing than what the writing may have given to others.
As I write with the feeling that I am not going to have anything significant or deep to share with others about writing this 100th article, I realize that I may have erred. The significance of doing something with passion and determination is what the number 100 represents for me. It represents a commitment to doing something and continuing to do it because of the sheer enjoyment of the activity itself. Also, the idea is that if just one person appreciates what I wrote or learns something, I have made an impact. At the end of the day, I think that we all want to have an impact in this world and to feel like our efforts mattered to someone else, as well as ourselves. My overarching goal has always tried to be to leave this world a little better than when I found it.
So, while I may have wanted to skip writing article number 100 because I was afraid that it would not be good enough to mark such an occasion, I realized that just writing about this experience is special enough to mark this moment in time. All the articles that I have written have been special in one way or another to me and, maybe, to someone else. This moment in time is just another moment where everything is special because each experience, thought, idea, or query has its own inherent value. The pure act of writing this 100th article served as a mechanism for me to reflect on reaching this milestone and remind me to appreciate the journey that got me here, as well as to celebrate the progress and growth that I made along the way.
How do you celebrate or recognize milestones in your own creative journey, whether big or small?
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