It’s amazing how one conversation can change your perspective on so many things.
So Friday I had to go visit my doctor, which is decidedly not in my top fifty things I prefer to do on a sunny Friday afternoon. Or ever, actually. My doctor’s actually pretty cool to talk to – he does a lot of research studies, travels the world presenting at medical conferences, and is generally a pain in the ass trying to get an appointment for, which in a twisted way really works for me (“Are you sniffling? Why don’t you go see your doctor?” “Ah, I tried, but he’s over in Kuala Lumpur for the next two weeks and I don’t trust anybody else”). But what really I like about him is that he’s very easy to talk to, and he speaks my language. He approaches our conversations like a scientist conducting a research experiment – gather as much information as possible and dig to the cause, rather than treating symptoms and calling it a day. In our powwows, there is no shaming me for having headaches – I generally eat right, exercise, and stay away from stuff that’s really bad for me, and he knows it. He also knows I work harder than I probably should and that I have my little vices (my three-Coke-a-day habit was bolded and highlighted on my chart by a well-meaning associate who filled in for him once when I was sick), but for the most part I’m healthy and try to keep a good balance. Finally, he knows I’m also aware of my normal, and when something is off can articulate specifically what is happening, when it started, and what circumstances surrounded the change. If I had a question, I’d call in. If something persisted, I’d come in to visit. It was a good arrangement.
It had been a while since we’d last spoken, so we chatted about the current projects we each were working on as he checked over my chart. When he stopped mid-sentence with a quiet “that can’t be right,” my heart definitely plummeted a little. The look on his face when he re-checked all my vitals and the strange silence as he quickly scrolled back up through the chart notes from my past few visits didn’t help. Finally, he spun around in his chair. He smiled, but his eyes told me he was in full scientist mode.
“We both know one data point doesn’t tell a story. Let’s start from the beginning.”
*****
Something readers should probably know about me before we go much further is that there are a lot of areas in life where the way I work is fairly backward of the norm. As an example, the day before I decided to launch a weekly blog for RCM, I had a lengthy conversation with both Bio and Hax about the issues I was having thinking up interesting topics for my monthly article offering. It was stressful. We’d tried to keep the articles section focused around gaming, which as an extremely casual gamer wasn’t something I could reasonably keep up with. I was tired, too. Between a demanding day job, taking care of a house, and all the little behind-the-scenes stuff it takes to keep RCM going, my brain was fried – even if I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to drop the articles, though. As I told the guys, I’m head of RCM Writing, for crying out loud. If I couldn’t pop out one little article each month outside of my fiction pieces, that was just sad.
So the very next day when I told Hax “I’m thinking of doing a weekly blog about podcasting,” I could sense the eyebrow raising when he typed back, “Erm…I fail to see how moving from a monthly to a weekly article commitment takes pressure away from you.” It was an understandable concern, but the blog was set to be something different – a way of forcing me to take stock each week of where I was in my journey and think through different events swirling around me through the lens of podcasting and writing. The fact it was to be public meant a forced consistency, so I had to be thinking about what I was learning and articulating it in a way that made sense. It would be a chronicle of different issues we faced, reflecting on how we tried to deal with them, what we did right, and what we could do better. Data points, if you will, to chart the experiment that will eventually be the multimedia juggernaut known as Rivalcast Media. And when one was involved with so many aspects of the process, it wasn’t realistic to recap once a month and get anywhere near a clear picture of how far we’d come: the snapshots had to be once a week, and they had to be there consistently for us to chart our progress and see our trends.
If nothing else, because it forced me to talk about whatever topics were on my mind, it would serve as a tool for my team to keep tabs on what I was obsessing over so they could rein me in when need be.
*****
Back in the office, my doctor kicked back in his chair, eyes closed, absorbing everything I told him into a mental timeline. The pointed questions he asked throughout the narrative were sometimes things I hadn’t really thought about at the time, and sometimes things I had and summarily dismissed, but was kicking myself for now.* The story wasn’t a new one. In fact, it was something I’d written about a lot in these very pages. I would just end those posts with an explanation as to why the rules I was laying out didn’t apply in my very specific case.
At the end, he nodded.
“I have my suspicions,” he said, “and the story backs it up. But, we need more data. Solid data. We’ll do bloodwork Monday just to be on the safe side and rule out any immediate concerns, but your task for the next two weeks is to collect data points so we can both see exactly how this is affecting you. And then we’ll decide what to do about it.”
To be continued…
*****
*Yes, Olive, you were right.
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