The Slacker Skeptic stops mulitblogging and starts gettin real.

This is Jenn, the resident padawan skepchick of Richmond Skeptics here, humbily groveling at your skeptical feet (nice shoes by the way, where'd ya get em?)telling a somewhat sad tale which hopefully will have a happy ending.

Fresh of the afterglow of The Amazing Meeting 6, I started a blog dedicated to skepticism in nursing. I had high hopes for my blog, which I called A Doubting Florence. As an RN, I have a wonderful oppurtunity to apply and use science on a daily basis, but I've noticed that there are not many blogs out there that address skepticism and nursing specifically. The plan was to use this blog to make people aware of all the good research and critical thinking done by nurses- past present and future. I also attempted something I called the Quest For Knowledge, which involved me trying to tackle a multi-faceted subject pertaining to either nursing science, research, or history, along with the regular weekly reports I planned to post. This fall I focused on a historical perspective on one of the most famous pioneers of nursing- Florence Nightingale.


I haven't posted since August. A LOT of nursing news has passed me by. I'm only on page 200 or so of a 400 page bio on Nightingale, the self-imposed deadline expired about a month ago. TAM 6 was in June. Now as December begins, the honeymoon is, sadly, over.

Sigh. Blogging is ruuuullly hard, y'know? And when I started A Doubting Florence, I'd figure the quickness and clever subject matter so easy to the great Steve Novella would come just as natch to yours truly. But alas, not so.

First of all, Steve is a blogging machine. He has, like, 4000 brilliant blogposts out there in skeptical cyberland- it's almost ridiculous! And in order to churn out the meticulous and well written blog entries that folks like the good docs at Science Based Medicine do on a daily basis, you have to do a lot of homework, have a lot of good resources and perhaps a few essays saved in your hard drive foryour writing block-esque off days. I chose to jump, figuratively, without these very strong nets in place. Also complicating things was around the time I started A Doubting Florence, my husband and I were sharing one computer. The computer in question is one he uses for his job, and since we like it when he works and makes money, that took priority over the nursing blog. And speaking of nursing, my job owns me, (really. They gave me a computer, a cell and most recently, a car. They own me, and I love it!) so that got in the way too. Plus, I am horrendously lazy and at most, I'm only getting the blog bug sporadically at best. Much less than the monthly updates I had promised readers.

Now I have a nice laptop with wireless internet (thank you job! I love you), and few more resources under my belt and a new side gig as a clinical mentor to nursing students. Life is good. I still felt a bit bad about the lack of effort. Even a skeptislacker like me could do more. I felt a little better listening to the long overdue Quackcast, which makes no apologies for their hiatuses (not that they should apologize). And the recent very lovely Skepchick Podcast made me think about the strength in numbers. After all, that was the real reason for The Amazing Meetings and others like it- comraderie. So I figure I would try to salvage what dignity and saavy I had left, and come groveling to the skeptics that love me for the procrastinating mess I am and ask if that would be okay. That was about 24 hours ago. So far, none of the Richmond Skeptics has chased me away with torches and pitchforks, so I am thinking that A Doubting Florence has found a home here! Exciting! Over the next few days, I'll be moving the old entries onto RichmondSkeptics.org and it, along with Skepchick news and updates, will sort of be my main contribution to the Richmond Skeptics. I'm totally stoked and ready to go. Thanks again to Patrick, John, and my one true love, John Y. for all their support.