Writing
and sitting with
Essays on career pivots, identity, purpose, and the courage it takes to write your next chapter. These pieces also appear on my Substack, Permission to Change. Subscribe there to get new posts in your inbox.
All writing
Permission
A short essay on misplaced things, the limits of our own logic, and why what we call lost in our lives is so often just somewhere we haven't thought to look.
Identity
Why "shift your mindset" is the motivational equivalent of "be better," and what actually works when you're stuck.
Permission
A planner's reflection on multitasking, Marvel movies, and what it actually means to be there with the people you love.
Ikigai
What's the difference between an Ikigai that's hibernating and one that's been buried? How do you tell which is happening to you?
Identity
Clinical excellence in the AI era will not belong to those who compete with machines. It will belong to those who know how to partner with them.
Career Pivot
Why builder's guilt is different, and how to tell whether you're staying to honor what you built or just avoiding the discomfort of leaving.
Ikigai
Ikigai isn't a target you hit once. It's a living system that moves with you. How purpose evolves instead of ending when your career changes.
Career Pivot
The losses I feared in changing careers weren't the losses I experienced. The surprising truth about the cost of change.
Ikigai
The restlessness I couldn't name turned out to be a signal. What watching first-year students hear a heartbeat taught me about purpose.
Career Pivot
The hardest lesson of my career change wasn't about medical education. It was about how to receive feedback as an invitation, not an attack.
Permission
A coach's distinction between productive discomfort and borrowed suffering, plus a two-list exercise for figuring out which one is running your life.
Career Pivot
The career change decision that looked irrational on paper, and the question that finally made it clear.
Identity
A framework for telling the difference between honest realism and disguised pessimism, in your own thinking and in the feedback you receive.
Ikigai
Your Ikigai is a moving target, and continuous learning is what lets you follow it. Why permission to change starts with permission to be a beginner again.
Personal Statement
An honest letter to medical school applicants facing rejection, from a physician and educator who's been on both sides. Your timeline is not your destiny.
Permission
A coach and physician on why you don't need anyone's permission to change your career, your path, or your identity. The opening essay of Permission to Change.
New essays delivered when they're ready. Not on a schedule, just when there's something worth saying. No noise.