I am writing, with one month delay due to other significant priorities, my traditional review of the past year. In order to be understood and in spite of being a beautiful year I will start with the ugly.
In February, my grandmother (90 years old and the last survivor of all adults in my inner family as saw it when I first started to look at this world) had a stroke that left her alive but totally disconnected from reality. This fact, which was the only truly sad thing that happened to me in 2012, has enabled me to wake up and see the world with different eyes. I came all the way form imagining the worst (at the beginning funerals and so on going through being really scared of having to look after a person that demands a lot of care) to accepting the destiny, adjust and discover new and, surprisingly, fascinating realities.
Now the good:
Business wise, it was a good recovery from the previous not so good year. I was pretty busy during the first half of the year and, more importantly, I had new and interesting projects, real fun, and great feedback and felt overall meaningful. More importantly, I started to run projects with doctors. These projects have thrown me into a new world of opportunities and convinced me that I can have a larger impact and feel much happier turning my face back to medicine and my former colleagues, the doctors. I am in a process of an interesting spin with the business and I have great expectations for the year to come.
However, the professional highlight of the year is writing my first book which is these days printing and will be launched on February 19th, 2013. Together with my friend Olivian, who also wrote a small part of it, we hope to create the desire and provide direction for doctors to change or improve behavior for their own benefit as well as for the benefit of their patients, colleagues and society in general. The book is called “Cine esti tu, doctore?” (“Who are you, doc?”) and it persuades doctors to consciously, consistently and consequently give substance to their career, create a doctor brand and become indispensable. Let’s hope it was a good and useful investment.
Privately, this year meant re-connection with my childhood. Having to stay closer to my grandmother brought a lot of good things to me:
- Firstly, I stayed long periods of time in the house of my childhood. Last time I remember to have stayed there so long I was 20 years old. In the last ten years I did not sleep a night there. I had the feeling that the time in between disappeared and I am again 20. I was back into the same play but with different players with all the good and the bad that came with the change in cast.
- Then, I started to get involved again in gardening around the house and I have met some of the tastes of my childhood dishes with organic foods. I realized that I have not forgotten much.
- I had the great pleasure to witness and feel the turn of the seasons to an extent larger than in any of the past 20 years.
- I focused on offering my daughter a glimpse of what summer holidays meant to me in my happy childhood. Lots of things changed meanwhile but we managed to create a hotspot in our yard and have plenty of noisy neighbor children playing all day long.
- The highlight of the summer was sleeping under the sky with my daughter (and wife and friends sometimes) counting falling stars until we’ve lost that day.
- I was happy to discover that some people in the village (including the family taking care of our grandmother) still resemble the kindness of authentic villagers I was familiar with in the past.
Somehow I felt, that my grandmother plotted with universe in such way that there will be continuity on that land beyond her departure.
Other facts:
- I thought my daughter how to ride bike.
- I did less sport, unfortunately.
- I was grumpy for my family and most of my friends as I was falling behind all my deadlines for writing the book.
- We were all healthy and seemed to have enjoyed the moments.
