one: confessions of a serial dropout
Welcome to the rebirth of brain surgery dropout THE BLOG!
I started the first “brainsurgerydropout.com” blog in December 2009. I had just quit my neurosurgery residency at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to pursue a new drug idea I had for treating brain cancer. It was a very uncertain time—not unlike the current quarantine situation—where I was unemployed, broke and paying my dumb Beverly Hills rent on my credit card, getting distracted on Facebook, living with my girlfriend but working up the balls to move out, and otherwise spending most of the day and night grinding at the kitchen table trying to figure out how the fuck to turn a big and crazy idea into reality with no experience or connections.
It feels like I’ve come full circle. Here we are a decade later… I successfully invented that new cancer drug (OS2966)–thank you–but then once again felt compelled to quit at the top of my game and pursue something with even more impact (more on that soon). So, yes, I’m mostly unemployed, back in Los Angeles with potentially millions in startup equity but none of it liquid (i.e., still broke), getting distracted on Instagram, separated from my wife and working on the divorce, and otherwise spending most of the day and night grinding and trying to figure out how the fuck to turn another big and crazy idea into reality… but this time with plenty of experience and connections.
The first blog fizzled out after just a couple of months in early 2010. I was too caught up in fear of judgement to really make it successful. I was worried about what people would say and looking unprofessional. Basically, I felt like I couldn’t be myself and it completely extinguished my motivation to write. I was also busy just trying to figure shit out.
It wasn’t until 2014 when I saw the potential of Instagram for science communication (#scicomm) that I decided to get back in the game. I began documenting (in pictures and brief captions) life as a biotech startup founder and CEO (@brainsurgerydropout). I’ve seen some success through consistency and vulnerability and am grateful to have a whole gang of awesome followers. I have also made some fantastic homies. But now that I don’t spend so much time in the lab or office my posts have evolved to longer-form content. So, old-school blogging for me made sense again. (I’ll still post on IG though, duh.)
My goals for this blog are to 1) provide value to the readers in the form of both practical life/career perspectives and resources in a (hopefully) entertaining package and 2) help me workshop content and work out my writing muscles for my first book in the works. I’m kicking off the new blog with two entries... This intro is the first one, obviously. Part II, “confessions of a brain surgery dropout”, is the original first entry from the 2009 blog for added context. I was going to post a Part III called “confessions of a biotech startup dropout”, but I realized the principles of Part II literally still apply in this instance… same shit, different decade (#selfawareness). How convenient!
Thank you for spending your self-quarantine time reading with me. Be safe. Be well. Fuck SARS-CoV-2!
[BTW, my goal is to post content here every week on Thursdays no matter what. Please sign up for my e-mail updates and comment and share!]