Question for Len

Ok, Len. I just wrote a long post, which I managed to destroy before actually posting it. So I'll keep it shorter this time.

Basically, I totally get how you could feel trapped by golden handcuffs to the point that you needed to put your survival first and get out. As we discussed five years ago, once you've invested as much time and energy in a career as you had invested in medicine and as I had in law, it's not easy to walk away.

But what I don't get is the connection between your unhappiness with practicing medicine and the theme of this blog: failure. From what I can see, it was precisely because you did so well in college, did so well in med school, did so well in your residency, and did so well in your practice that it became so difficult to walk away; success begets success begets unhappiness. Had you failed at any of those earlier steps, it would, I suspect, have been much easier to acknowledge the toll that your chosen career path was taking on your health. But if that's true, why isn't the theme of this blog "the dangers of success"? Why is it about failure?

Does your interest in failure stem from a sense that some vague fear of the unknown and of the potential failures that might accompany any career change kept you trapped in medicine for too long? If so, then I think you were too quick--in your initial introduction of this blog--to poo-poo those who seek to recast failure as something more positive: say, a necessary part of learning, or an opportunity to demonstrate one's grit and resilience. I myself find such recasting very useful as a means of countering my own most destructive, perfectionist impulses.

To put my question polemically, exactly why does a man who has been such a successful husband, successful father, and successful physician consider himself qualified to blog about failure? Are you soliciting stories about failure because you have always been curious about it and are considering trying it?