Doctor Spork

Remember it's okay to not want to do your hobby as a job. It's okay to not want to sell the things that you make. It's okay if you want to make art without taking commissions.

It's fine to completely lose enjoyment in something if you're doing it for money. It's fine to say, "I don't like doing this when I have to do it," and to just never do it.

You don't need to make your hobbies pay for themselves. You don't need to turn professional or semi-professional. You can love the freedom of starting something when you want, working on it when you want, and finishing it (or not finishing it) when you want. If you find that taking that away makes you not love the thing, that's just a lesson that you've learned. It's not a failing. It doesn't mean you're not dedicated to your art or your craft. It doesn't mean you're not doing it right.

Not everything needs to be a business. Not everything needs to have financial worth.

While we're at it, you don't need to be good at a hobby to want to do it. You don't need to have a goal of improving. If you get a guitar and you love playing it, but never get beyond cowboy chords and 4-chord songs, you're still valid. You don't have to be the best in the world to have it have worth. Your grandma's chicken enchilada recipe isn't going to rank in the top 100 enchiladas ever, but you still love them and enjoy them and they taste great. Maybe your doll faceup isn't going to look like a youtube tutorial's did, but if you liked making it, that doesn't matter.

But it's also totally fine to do things just for the response you get from other people. If you're only updating that fic because you have nine dedicated readers who want to know how it ends, that doesn't mean you're not dedicated to the story.

The next image is the XKCD mentioned in the original post, the left side says, “I try not to make fun of people for admitting they don’t know things.

Because for each thing ‘everyone knows’ by the time they’re adults, every day there are, on average, 10,000 people in the US hearing about it for the first time.

Fraction who have heard it at birth = 0%

Fraction who have heard it by 30 = 100%

US birth rate = 4,000,000/year.

Number hearing about it for the first time = 10,000/day.”

On the right side it says, “If I make fun of people, I train them not to tell me when they have those moments. And I miss out on the fun.”

And then it shows twobstick figures having a conversation, one has hair and the other is bald.

The hair figure says, “'Diet coke and mentos thing’? What’s that?”

The bald figure replies, “Oh man! Come on, we’re going to the grocery store.”

The hair figure asks, “Why?”

And the bald figure says, “You’re one of today’s lucky 10,000.” And has one leg raised as if to walk away.

great news anon, as a human your blood is already among the most cursed on the planet!

see, most people don’t realize this, but mammal blood is actually completely unique among vertebrates. if you put a drop of mammal blood on a microscope slide next to a drop of lizard blood, you would be able to tell them apart instantly! 

how? simple- mammalian blood cells don’t have a nucleus!

the nucleus is a dark mass at the center of a cell that tells it what to do and lets it reproduce by splitting itself in two- and every other major vertebrate group on the planet has nucleated blood cells.

BUT NOT MAMMALS. (these cells are NAKED somebody please GET THEM SOME PANTS.)

at some point in their 200+ million years of evolutionary history, mammals discovered that if you force your red blood cells to drop their nucleus and turn into pink cheerios, they can focus on carrying oxygen and ONLY carrying oxygen! this means that mammal blood is much more efficient than fish or reptile or even bird blood at carrying oxygen liter-for-liter, though at the cost of lugging around some extra internal organs and having to make new blood inside of your bones. what a steal!

Nope, reptile blood is just that cursed that even the thrombocytes are nucleated lmao. They don't have the same megakaryocyte fragmentation system that (at least) humans have.

Medblr:

and i see you

and i recognize that you are suffering–

whether it is worry,

hopelessness,

or pain,

i see you

and i am sorry

because right now you are suffering,

but my first priority must be to save

and if you are not dying right now

i am needed elsewhere.

perhaps the biggest misconception of medicine

i had when i began

was that my career in aiming to heal others

would mean that i would always be driven to lessen suffering

(even in some small way)–

now i realize

that because this system cares not

for what truly constitutes

suffering

my hands will always be tied

to those who are most immediately threatened

and not those whose suffering is the greatest.

i see you

and i am sorry

that i am only one person

(because, yes, underneath this yellow gown

and this mask

and this title of ‘doctor’

i am only a person–

a small,

frightfully human

person.)

i see you

and i hear you–

you call us callous and heartless and, sometimes, evil

and you say we cannot do our jobs;

and sometimes,

because i am only a person,

i believe you.

When the haunted house catches fire:

a moment of indecision.

The house was, after all, built on bones,

and blood, and bad intentions.

Everyone who enters the house feels

that overwhelming dread, the evil

that perhaps only fire can purge.

It’s tempting to just let it burn.

And then I remember:

Resident Amsterdam, checking out a patient: so I have this lady who recently had some really wonky eye symptoms like intermittent vision loss and ophtho told me to get an MRI and turns out she has a mass pressing on her optic nerve. Neurosurgery says they can’t operate on it here so they’re coordinating with Tertiary Center to manage it.

Wayfaring: wow, so what are you doing for her today?

Amsterdam: I’m just checking her lipids.

Wayfaring: solid. Go family medicine.