Notes from a life I'm still trying to pay attention to.
A couple Tuesdays a month I send something I couldn't stop thinking about. Family, leadership, grief, healthcare, women's health, creativity, technology, and the ordinary parts of life that deserve more attention than we usually give them.
Essays mostly, and now and then a song, an episode, some artwork, or something from the advocacy work. I aim for Tuesdays. I don't always make it.
Why "Ordinary Tuesday"
Because the days that turn out to matter almost never announce themselves. A laugh from the next room. A conversation you didn't know would be the last ordinary one. Nobody circles a Tuesday on the calendar, and then years later it's the one you keep going back to.
There's an album by the same name, fourteen songs about the moments between the chapters. You can listen to it here. Headphones, start to finish, if you have the time.
Three to start with
If you want to know what you're signing up for before you sign up for it, read one of these. They're the ones people write back about.
One-Thirty in the Morning
Seventeen minutes, which is long for the internet and about right for what it's doing.
Women Should Not Have to Lose a Decade Before We Believe Them
On diagnostic delay, and what it costs a real family. My wife has endometriosis. I got a lot of this wrong before I got any of it right.
Everyone I Met Told Me About Someone They Loved
On grief that starts before anybody has died.
If we haven't met
I'm Mike. I run a community health center in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and I've been in community health for twenty-five years. I write books, make records, and do advocacy work around endometriosis and women's health. I have ADHD, which explains some of the volume.
I'm not writing this to sell you anything. I write because paying attention is the only thing I've found that reliably helps, and writing is how I pay attention.
You can always reply. It comes straight to me, and some of the best things I've written started with someone telling me what a story brought up for them.