This is going to be a great year. I was working on New Year’s Eve. My shift was supposed to end at midnight, which meant that I would normally be home around 12:30 AM, but my colleague let me out early since the ER was unusually light. I got home at 11:55 PM, so I was able to kiss my beautiful wife as the new year began. If that’s not an auspicious start to a year, I don’t know what one would be.

I am so lucky. I have a great job, which is getting better all the time. I work hard, but I get some pretty good karmic rewards. It’s not perfect and maybe someday I’ll rant about the pitfalls of being a hospitalist, but it’s certainly better than my life was as a primary care doctor.

I live in a beautiful house where I feel comfortable and “at home”. I have a loving extended family who, thankfully, are all pretty happy and healthy.

Most importantly, I have an amazing wife and 2 darling children who can lift my heart into the heavens just by looking at me a certain way. They can also make me feel completely unfit to be a father sometimes, but I guess that’s part of being a father. I have so much to teach them and they have so much to teach me.

This is starting to feel like a “Thanksgiving” post rather than a “New Year’s” post. The bottom line is that I have a great feeling that this is going to be a great year for me and my family.