Revamping this blog

Hola- I decided to be back after a long hiatus. Several reasons prompted me to revive this fledgling blog. In a recent conversation with a good friend of mine, I had expressed my desire to have a better memory and actually be able to speak or recall with fascinating details. In his usual casual laid-back mannerism, my friend revealed in his computer engineer speech patterns that he just
"learns to upload and download information" because there is too much to remember. In his complex world of computer coding, he often encounters many types of bugs, pardon me for my layman terms. And although he doens't often have the answer immediate on hand, the blog that he keeps to document all the problems he has encountered to date serves as a quick refresher of the approaches and methodologies that he had worked on previously. A small revolution was pulsing within me as I recalled about this abandoned solitude blog. Where were the days when I was so deeply passionate about instituting change in the health care system? Where was the enthusiastic HMP student who was always thinking about whether this could work somewhere else....Perhaps this blog might have a grander purpose for documenting the spontaneous number of ideas that I have about health reform (on a micro scale)!

In recent months I have been reading a couple of social media books, health care books, all of which seemed to be screaming something into my head. In my daily work as a health care consultant, I always ask about the numbers, the metrics, the data and who is accountable for it. For equity's argument, shouldn't I put myself through the same lens which I often judge my clients?
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the way to truth; not going all the way, and not starting," -Buddha
Guess I still have time to recover from my mistake. On pompously starting this blog and then single-handedly throwing it away.

The last reason is perhaps a little more selfish than the others. I can proudly proclaim that I have a memory like a goldfish. I can probably remember things for up to a couple of days and then after that, with the exception of dates and numbers, I often find myself on the tip of my tongue. I had better quit playing that game of taboo with my friends which I am so bad at..

In the spirit of the new year, I wanted to set some metrics to hold me accountable:
1. Blog at least twice every month. In my defense, as you can tell, most of my blog posts can be pretty dense and require some amount of research. Give me a break.
2. Accrue at least 20 followers on this blog. And by that I refer to invested, interested individuals who are actually reading and commenting.
3. Read at least 10 books this year! Obviously book suggestions are very welcome.


Next two posts will be on the two books I recently read. Better by Atul Gawande, a book on Gawande's illuminating experience as a surgeon and what his stories tell us about our world. Next, the Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz, a International Banker formerly with Chase who followed her heart to better the world through microcredit and her journeys through Ivory Coast, Zaire, Rwanda etc..