Blogging : where personal and professional collide (especially in Chinese medicine)

Edit (8:14am) : Forgot the editorial calendar!  Sorry!

It should be no surprise to any of you that I think blogging is a valuable activity for those of us in the field of Chinese medicine.  I’ve fielded a couple of questions in the last week from Chinese medicine students and practitioners interested in starting their own blogs.  They are wondering, mostly, what the benefits and drawbacks of blogging are for most people, but CM professionals in particular.  Seemed to be likely fodder for a blog post.

Personal Development

For me, blogging has been productive of a tremendous amount of personal growth.  Forcing myself to put my nascent, fragile ideas out into the universe has required some amount of courage (and, possibly hubris) and has helped me to reshape those ideas into something useful.  This growth has come in the realm of the medicine itself, of course, as I write posts about theory, herbs and acupuncture.  This growth has also come in the realm of business, blogging and professional formation (discussed below).

There’s something very potent in sitting down and writing what you think you know.  Some people have commented that my posts seem to be quite well-researched.  While that is true in some cases, for the most part all it has required is sitting down with some quiet time and just writing.  I have learned so much at NCNM (and am so indebted to my professors because of it) that often all it takes is to force myself to write it so someone else can understand.  Sometimes, I’ll find a huge hole in my understanding and will take the time to fill that hole in with research.  Sometimes, my readers find those holes for me – which causes me to do additional study.  What a tremendous boon!  It’s a worldwide classroom where I’m always giving speeches.  Thanks for being my teachers!

Further, the fact that I have (at least in the past) wanted to keep very regular content coming has forced a certain amount of personal development to happen.  You all know that I’m a Getting Things Done fanatic.  Well, part of my interest in David Allen’s system was a result of the time crunch involved in being a student and parent, but wanting to have a daily (or almost) posting schedule.  While I haven’t been as frequent as that in my production for more than a year, that was a conscious decision that came about in part through my engagement with Allen’s material.

Anyway, I knew that if I was going to make good on my promise, I was going to have to get more organized.  This launched an odyssey into the realm of personal productivity that will likely define my life and work for a long time.  In fact, I’ve begun teaching my interpretation of David Allen’s philosophy to patients.  I truly believe that the lack of control and perspective in work and in life is at the root of, or at least contributing to, many people’s disease process.  In short, David Allen is the perfect cure for Lily Bulb disease!  :D  Much more on that at another time.

Professional Development

It’s true that blogging can have important professional benefits for individual Chinese medicine students and practitioners.

1.  Networking : I am in awe of the connections I’ve made with practitioners all over the world.  I won’t mention you all here, you deserve your own posts, but I feel that even while in school I was already embraced by the Chinese medicine community as one of its own.  This has been a tremendous confidence booster, and has already served me in a number of ways as I seek to learn this medicine.  If you blog for long enough, and do what you can to get your posts noticed, you will get emails and blog comments from people in all kinds of positions, from all kinds of places.  It’s incredible!

2.  Learning about the intricacies : While researching posts and in conversation with my readers, I’ve learned a lot about different facets of our profession.  I’ve learned about the various regulatory agencies – their strengths and weaknesses.  I’ve learned about a lot of the internal and external political realities in both American and Chinese professional communities.  I’ve learned more than I ever could just being a student, and I’ve learned enough that I won’t be blindsided by any of these realities as a fledgling practitioner.  Worth its weight in gold.

3.  Learning medicine : Obviously this is both personal and professional – but as I mentioned before – I’ve learned a lot about medicine through this interactive online format.  It’s worth saying twice, as I think it may be the greatest benefit I’ve noticed in blogging about Chinese medicine.  I’ve been exposed to others’ ideas, particularly about topics in Classical texts and herbal theory.  I’ve had my ideas picked apart and reformed.  I’ve been introduced to many resources, both online and offline.  In general, I think I’ve graduated as a more well-rounded practitioner than I would have otherwise.  In a way, blogging has provided me with a free educational supplement that has greatly enhanced the wonderful instruction I received at NCNM.

4.  Money : I’ve also opened a lot of new potential income streams for myself.  This is critical in my quest to reduce the pressure on patient visits in my private practice.  I want to do this so I can be fresh and clear with all of my patients, not exhausted and brain-dead from seeing a dozen in a row.  I also hope to create openness to a whole range of price points for my services so everyone can take advantage of the healing that Chinese medicine has to offer.  Making money by blogging, by selling books and services and by, eventually, doing speaking engagements and classes will help me in this quest.

In addition to all of this, I  believe that blogging (and, yes, even social applications like Twitter and Facebook) may have a very important impact in developing the profession of Chinese medicine in the 21st century. This may be a simple point, as most professions could benefit from the kind of networking and information sharing that these activities have to offer.  However, I would contend that for Chinese medicine and for natural medicine in general, there is a special effect.

Our practitioners are far flung, and sometimes quite isolated.  As our profession continues to get a growing piece of the limelight, we need now more than ever to have a global conversation about who we are as medical providers.  While international conferences, peer reviewed journals, magazines and so on are an important part of this – I believe that the new media provide an even more potent location for this kind of professional development.  The real-time and democratic nature of Internet publishing means that issues are exposed immediately and the vast majority of students and practitioners can be involved in the discussion.  I think this is a beautiful thing.

The dangers of blogging

There are also a number of dangers in blogging, particularly as a student.  However, I’ll have to leave those for another post as this has already continued on long enough.  :)

Upcoming development of Deepest Health

Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming and strategic planning for Deepest Health.  Now that I’m out of school, the focus and purpose of the blog will naturally change.  However, in general, I don’t think the content will change that much – just become a little more consistent.  There will  emerge more of an emphasis on clinical and business topics, of course.

I’m developing an editorial calendar for the blog so you can come to rely on certain types of content coming out at certain times.  I’ll include my working draft here – if there are topic areas you would like to see, please let me know.  Yes, I know I already discussed some of this in my recent post. If you’re wondering why all the talk about what I’m going to do and relatively little actually doing it – I understand.  It’s been a long year.  :)  But, I want to take Deepest Health to the next level, integrating it with my efforts at Watershed Community Wellness and really helping it to become the most trusted online resource for Chinese medicine students and professionals.  These things take time, planning, and a willingness to be patient.  ;)

Likely editorial calendar

• Monday : Topics in herbalism
• Tuesday : Business and professional development
• Wednesday : Origins (Classical texts, language, culture)
• Thursday : Topics in acumoxa
• Friday : Technology (blogging, computing, products)
• Saturday : Awareness (self cultivation, etc)
• Sunday : People and events (links to other posts, also meta posts like this one)

I am going to be experimenting quite a bit more with media – audio, video and even simply images.  DH will also be undergoing a redesign sometime this year.  In general, expect there to be more content, more variety, and eventually, products and services for sale for those that are interested.  Think: study aids, blogging courses, etc…

I’m going to be out of town this week, so pardon my silence on the comment front – but please talk amongst yourselves.  I will have spotty Internet access, so will try to keep the conversation flowing.  I’ll be back refreshed and ready to launch into some version of the editorial calendar discussed above.

Eric

Tagged as: Blogging, Business, classical-chinese-medicine, education, getting things done, gtd, Learning, Personal Development, professional-development, students