Leaving a legacy

Ok, so the title seems a tad too heavy compared to the actual content. However, I had a moment of clarity a while ago (while in the shower) about legacy-building, and how the stuff we leave behind will affect others. It may be something grand like a monument, an amazing architectural feat, or an impressive achievement that would stand the test of time. Looking things on a smaller scale though, you would find that each of us is leaving his or her legacy in our own little seemingly insignificant way.. I'm talking about the stuff everyone puts online.. 

I won't go into the intellectual and philosophical arguments about one's online presence, but will instead be commenting on my own footprint on the web, particularly this blog.. Looking back at the archives, I apparently started blogging 15 years ago as a way to pass the time during medical school.. I believe I had started out in Blogger before I migrated to multiply, then back again when Multiply decided to sell out and convert itself into a pure online marketplace, which left the casual bloggers and photodumpers out in the cold (remember, this was way before Instagram became really mainstream). I do not remember what content I had there, or if I was able to successfully migrate the entries to Multiply. As such, 2004 will now forever mark the starting point of my official blogging history.

Going back to the theme of this post. When I took a trip down memory lane and viewed the blog posts from the very beginning, I realized that I wasn't really producing much content as I was just using this as kind of a stream of consciousness dump for catharsis. It may have been good for my psyche at the time, but now it all just looks so messy and disorganized. Having said this, it is now my goal to clean up this blog and get rid of all the unnecessary drama or negativity. I won't be altering posts since I still want this blog to be a life chronicle of sorts, but I shall be deleting what I would consider as just background noise which are deemed irrelevant to the overall narrative.

I guess that's all for now. This is gonna take a lot of work. :P

2019 Yearstarter (Better late than never)

I have been looking for an opportunity to just sit down and jot stuff down but the chance always escaped me..

It is now already a couple of weeks into the new year, and I have failed to put up my annual retrospective, nor the "yeartstarter" that usually takes its place when I lag behind. hehe.. 

Seriously though, so much has happened this past year that I don't know where to begin.. Couple that with all the negativity in the news and in the country at large, and I have an exhausting pile of data to sort through and work with.. @_@

So now it has come to this. I shall try to try my best to condense what has been a roller-coaster of a year into a few paragraphs. :P

------------------------------------------------------------------------

2018 has been a year of tremendous upheaval in my life. It was a whirlwind of life-altering changes and fresh new experiences I never thought I would witness..

Obviously there was \bringing everything to conclusion by passing the boards. At the same time my other half has began her training in earnest, and we're quite pleased to say that she hasn't looked back ever since. Sure she ran into some hurdles along the way, both academic and otherwise (especially the annoying problem of bad incompetent seniors), but I guess the experiences have toughened her up and helped her personal growth. The hurdling of the examinations led to a new frontier, the start of practice. I wanted to try to accomplish things firsthand, like registering with the taxman, walking the papers and whatnot, until I was satisfied that I had a grasp of how it was to run your own simple practice the right way.

I was also granted the brief opportunity to present a couple of papers at an international academic forum. Who knew that research could turn out to be so satisfying and rewarding? ;)

A great many minor things have also happened along the way, some of which I consider as big steps in terms of personal growth.

Overall, I guess the themes of this past year was LEARNING and GROWTH, and I hope this year will see more of both. :)

Having put this down has apparently defused my need to rant about the ills and failings of society, particularly the local variety.I guess that is going to be a different piece for another time.