Hi everyone! For those of you who don’t know me, well, this is me.

I started this blog to tell stories about and show pictures from my upcoming sabbatical from work, but I wonder if it will morph into something much more. The world seems TOO MUCH at the moment, has seemed that way for a while, for me to just tell you about my day.

Anyway, here’s the basics of what you need to know about me.

• I am a doctor. I am a pediatric hematologist/oncologist. That means I specialize in the care of children with blood disorders and cancer. I am no longer in full time medical practice, however. I currently work for a pharmaceutical company providing medical oversight of clinical trials for new cancer medicines.
• I am single. Which is why I’m not talking about my spouse and kids in the first bullet point. I would like to be in a relationship. In truth, I’d like to find my husband, that special someone who is in my life through thick and thin. But I live in San Francisco, and especially here, gay relationships are like laws and sausages—you don’t want to know how they’re made.
• I’m in my mid-40s. And since I’m taking a 2-month sabbatical from work, I like to think of this as my “halftime” in life. If my life was a football game, I’d say I was currently down 4 points after having been up double digits early, and down a lot more at other times too. But my therapist says I don’t have to look at my life in terms of success and failure, so I’ll practice that advice and not keep you updated on the score going forward.
• I didn’t come out of the closet until I was 35. When I came out, I thought that I was still the same me. But more than anything in the last decade, being gay has forced me to challenge my own assumptions about love, sex, religion, politics, all the subjects you shouldn’t discuss at Thanksgiving dinner, and maybe even some subjects you CAN discuss then. I can’t say I’m the same me anymore. You’ll get some reflections from me on all these things eventually.
• I like to sing. I am a member of the Golden Gate Men’s Chorus. You can check us out on streaming services.
• I love the outdoors. I love skiing (learned while living in Colorado) and hiking, and recently got back into backpacking. Somehow this Eurotrip won’t involve a lot of that however.
• I might live in San Francisco, but I’m Southern by birth and upbringing. Well, Southern-ish. My mom is from Birmingham, Alabama but my dad is from Springfield, Illinois, that is, the Land of Lincoln. So I had the freedom to come to my own conclusion as a child: “I’m glad the North won.” Quoting my 8 year old self here. That’s a STORY we’ll tell later. Also a STORY involving Lincoln is the rhyme my dad used to tell me: ”Lincoln, Lincoln, I’ve been thinkin’, whatcha been drinkin’, Lincoln? It’s not whiskey, it’s not wine…oh my God it’s TURPENTINE!” I’m pretty sure I learned that at 6. Maybe I should stop with the family stories.
• My sports teams collectively are having the best year of my life. My beloved NATIONAL CHAMPION GEORGIA BULLDOGS HOW BOUT THEM DAWGS are, well, THAT for the first time in my conscious memory. Check out the compilation video of Georgia fans celebrating the game winning interception on YouTube if you want an approximation of how I reacted. My adopted NBA team, the Golden State Warriors, just won their fourth title and THE WINNING AND DRAYMOND’S MOUTH DO NOT GET OLD. And my childhood baseball team, the Atlanta Braves, won the World Series last fall, but they don’t get all caps on account of their outdated nickname. (Hmmm. This needs a footnote about whether it’s enough to sanitize the name by getting rid of Native American imagery, a la…the Warriors. But I digress. Get used to it.)
• On Twitter I follow pediatricians, gay doctors, liberal college football bloggers (that’s a WHOLE SUBCULTURE good enough to merit all caps), the occasional gay icon, Pope Francis, MSNBC hosts, YIMBYs, a FEW Democrats, and of course DRAYMOND GREEN. That should tell you about my world view.

So yeah, I’ll be going on my ”halftime” trip, and I’ll provide you with stories along the way. I’ll be headed to Hawaii, Portugal, Croatia, northern Italy, Berlin, and Iceland. I might throw some time in Slovenia and Austria in there as well.

OK I better get back to laundry.

XOXO, Steve