Today I attended my medical clinic retirement luncheon. About 20 of us retired docs from our clinic get together for lunch once a month. We pick a different restaurant each time and move them around town; sometimes we try new restaurants. Our discussions range from travel reports about trips taken, our families and their happies and their sads, and also, of course, our run-ins with medical care from the other side of the check in desk. At least, we can share the latter, because it is bound to happen. Almost everyone of us present has had something to be treated or has a family member going through medical stuff right now.
I love retirement! People ask me if I ever miss my patients or my medical practice. On rare occasion, I do miss having that doctor identity, but it really does not occupy a large part of my thoughts. I tell people, "Yah, the other day I thought about that for about 30 seconds." That does seem to be the way of it. I was ready to retire when I did it. I have a lot of interests and wanted to spend more time on those interests. That's where the name of this blog came from. A doctor friend that I used to share an office with often called me the Renaissance Woman because I had so many interests and had read and done so much with those interests. She felt she could ask me about almost anything and I could give her an answer or I could describe a personal experience that answered her question. So she called me Renaissance Woman. The term was usually Renaissance Man. The definition of this term started because during the Renaissance there was much less knowledge about fields of study so one person could be knowledgeable in multiple fields in the arts and sciences such as Leonardo Da Vinci, as an example. A modern definition for the use of that term applied it to a scholar who was in a position to acquire more than superficial knowledge about many different interests. The term was first recorded in written English in the early twentieth century when it was used to describe a person who is well educated, or who excels, in a wide variety of subjects or fields. Usually it meant that the man was accomplished in areas of both the arts and the sciences. Since I had been called a Renaissance Woman due to my many interests, I decided to call myself that in my blog. As my profile says, I am interested in gardening, writing, water color painting and drawing, learning piano, geneology, reading, keeping fish, travel, interior decor, stamp collecting, toy collecting, exercise, tennis, medicine, birdwatching. As you can see I don't have enough time to tend to all my interests, but I try.
I was going through some stacks of papers and I found this list of quotes on retirement that were in the Editor's Note of Physician's Money Digest, June 30, 2003. This was a throw away newspaper that was sent to all doctors free, paid for by the advertising within. I should explain what "throw-aways" are. Doctors pay for subscriptions to receive medical journals and some newsletters or newspapers that have scientific articles in them. These subscription journals are peer-reviewed. That means that the scientific articles are judged by a panel of experts and/or an editor before the article is accepted to be printed in the journal. But there are many medical journals or magazines that are not peer reviewed. Doctors or other experts are asked to write articles for them, and the article are accepted without peer review. The advertising fees pay for the publishing of the journal. There are no subscription fees. Now there is often good articles and good information in these "throw-aways." But they are usually not kept, or bound. They are read and thrown away.
Following are the quotes from that Editor's Note:
The things that should accompany old age; fairly good health to the end, an unceasing interest in life, and the affectionate esteem of a largre circle of friends. William Osler, MD
A doctor is happiest twice in life -- the day they hang up a diploma and the day they take it down. Howard J. Bennett, MD
Our lives bregin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. George Washington Carver
Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead. Scottish Proverb
Love prefers twilight to daylight. Oliver Wendell Holmes, MD
There is an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job. Peter Drucker
A person can stand almost anything except for a succession of ordinary days. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retired. Samuel Johnson
Sooner or later i'm going to die, but I'm not going to retire. Margaret Mead
The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender. Coach Vince Lombardi
I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy. Danny McGoorty, Irish pool player
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. Lilly Tomlin
I retired because of illness and fatigue. The fans were sick and tired of me. Coach John Ralston
My doctor work interfers with my life. RenRae
Note: The Wordle image that I opened this post with contains the words that were used most often in all of these above quotes with their size relating to their frequency of use. There is a wonderful site online that creates these wordles. You can paste in text, or link to a URL or other site and then tell the application to create a Wordle with these words. You can choose the shape, the directions of the words, the colors and the font. Very artistic, isn't it? This is especially useful if you are creating a genealogical image because the surnames and the places of birth will stand out with the most common ones being larger. Try it at this site: http://www.wordle.net/
