I am a novice blogger with little in the way of HTML skills. But hey WordPress makes it easy so I, @surgeoninheels, recently paired up with my Scalpel Sister, fellow Trauma Mama, @surgeoninkicks to bring you our random musings on life outside of work. Our explicit goal for this blog was to NOT perseverate on our jobs or opine about professional topics. We want to use this forum as an outlet for what makes us whole outside of work.

So when we finally got our act together and posted our bios this week, the first thing we each said about ourselves was about our careers. I know, TOTAL FAIL!

Is this really what defines us? I mean, you know, beyond the dark black cake eyeliner which we are both known to covet.

Take a leisurely walk through your local cemetery and you find gravestone after gravestone with epitaphs along the lines of “Loving Mother,” “Devoted Sister,” or “Beloved Daughter.” You don’t find very many with “Shrewd Investment Banker,” “Winning Trial Lawyer,” or “Badass Surgeon” engraved into their granite facades.

Yet here we were describing ourselves first by our jobs and then by everything else when this blog is supposed to be about everything else. Is this really what defines us? Clearly, the two of us are conditioned by our profession to put it at the top of the list. And, though we strive to be the “Badass Surgeon” worthy of praise for our patient care, our research, and our education of the next generation of “Badass Surgeons” we realize that we are defined by more than just our careers.

Sometimes it’s just hard to get the “cat-eye” or “smokey eye” look just right no matter how good the liner.