Scott D. McLean, MD

On January 6, 2024, I retired from medicine and set out to enjoy a year of invention, adventure, and reflection before spinning up another incarnation of myself, Scott Mclean – the writer. One thing I learned in that impostor syndrome loves rebirth. Though I may tempestuously declare that I am a writer, in the still moments between breaths I’m not so sure. But I now have the freedom, in the waning quartiles of my animated version of stardust, to not worry too much about not being sure.

At this inflection point, the mandate is a moral one. To find the best words to describe the truth, the biology, the altruism, the greed, the abnegation, the search for the right word; to heft the ethical weight when the terms are appropriately light or lite or insufferable and ponderous. I’m counting on finding a glide path of work and sweat and worry. The success, secret. The elation, optional.

The other morning at Lander Coffee in Tacoma in the corner by the window a man sat with three notebooks in a stack and a pen and a three-mile stare. Beyond the plate-glass window and into the dark wet streets, he was thinking, caught short by two or three of his ideas in a dog fight.

In the opposite corner sat an artist with a fine-tipped pen –  a stylus – etching intricacies and grace notes for ink drawings, portraits when I cautiously looked closer. A folding light illuminated a focal point the size of his fist. His eyes peered through 4 inches of photons to the clear vision of what spoke to his hands and heart.

The religious and secular holiday season at this moment is ending, with legions of 3^rd graders mourning tomorrow’s early morn, commuters steady at the wheel, winter storms a lashing, and program managers tachycardic with anxiety about deliverables that are all but deliverable. My wife and I plan to ski Whistler and Blackcomb mountains by the time you have poured your second cup of coffee.

This is my last blog about my Gap Year. Learned a lot. Thanks to all 23 of my regular readers for following the journey. No neat and tidy ending, no aphorism about my alchemical transmutation. There’s nothing wrong with base metals, anyway.