About
The Coxcomb:
“A vain, showy fellow; a conceited, silly man, fond of display; a superficial pretender to knowledge or accomplishments; a dandy . . . indistinguishable from a Frenchman.”
The last six months have been rich in transformative life experiences. An eight year relationship ended badly and a four year educational journey concluded with an intense period of consolidation and evaluation. I’m now a bachelor for the first prolonged period in more than a decade and a board certified radiologist for the first time ever. More importantly, I’m also a better and a happier person – or at least one with a lot more insight into my own psyche. Residency wasn’t an easy time – the stress of making life and death decisions and the physical and psychic pain of constant sleep deprivation paired with some of my own unrecognized neuroses was turning me into someone I didn’t like. I inflicted pain on the people I cared most about – and I inflicted a great deal of pain on myself.
It’s been a good time to sort through the wreckage of the past and decide what’s worth keeping and what it’s time to get rid off. Sadly, most of Parliament & Wake is in that latter category – as is the way that it mutated from an enjoyable hobby into an all-consuming and largely joyless unpaid job. But my desire to communicate remains and, I believe, deserves nurturing. I love to talk to people and to hear their stories – that’s what drew me to medicine and to teaching, and what has kept me writing online in one form or another since the days of Netscape. I just have to figure out how to keep the pleasure while ditching the self-imposed stress.
This is my effort to do just that. People tell me that they enjoy listening to what I have to say – that I occasionally provide insightful analysis and that my aesthetic sensibilities are worth sharing. However, rumors of my arrogance notwithstanding, being the focus of attention without the shield of a pseudonym or a fictional narrative is a new and somewhat discomforting thing for me. I can’t very well share a journey of self discovery without self; but I can’t engage in that sort of public navel-gazing without laughing at myself a little. Hence – “coxcomb” to make it clear that I appreciate how ridiculous it is that I’m presenting my opinion on anything as worth reading for anything other than humor.
I’m going to use this space to share my thoughts on, well, whatever I’m thinking about. Above all it’s got to be fun for me – although that doesn’t necessarily mean frivolous. There won’t be any schedule – I’ll post things when I want to; and there won’t be any rigid content or style restrictions – if I want to write about it, I’ll write about it. I have a backlog of near finished essays on Steampunk, on radiology, and on men’s fashion . . . so that will be the short term focus here. But in the coming months I hope to wander into topics as diverse as medicine and architecture, religion and love, history and philosophy – and I’ll probably excavate a few pieces of particularly treasured fiction from the archives too. Oh, and pictures – there will be a few pictures too.
In short, Welcome – to those of you who know me from Steampunk Facebook and Parliament & Wake and to those of you who just stumbled by. Don’t hesitate to get in touch via email or on Facebook with your thoughts on what I’ve presented, with ideas for essays, or with potential contributions of your own.
Sincerely,
James Schafer . . . the Coxcomb
P.S. I love the French.
