Top 10 Things That Brought Me Joy In An Otherwise Hard 2023

Usually when I'm truly out of the office (as opposed to the fake OOO when I'm supposed to be on vacation but I'm unable to escape the immense gravitational pull of work) I'll leave a creative OOO message. I've been doing this for a while. Once, a long time ago, after working into the week hours on a Phase 1 protocol when I was a Medical Director at GSK, I made an OOO that was an animated video of me telling my boss at the time (the inimitable and infinitely patient Richard Wooster ). I used a tool called Xtranormal (an incredible and well-ahead-of-its-time website that has long since passed away), inspired by this ridiculous cartoon of an anesthesiologist talking to an orthopaedic surgeon (note: this will likely only be funny to those who know an anesthesiologist or who watch a lot of The Glaucomfleckens ). My cartoon was a deadpan discussion between me and Richard where I was telling him that I was going on vacation for 2 weeks and all that his animated avatar could come back with (in a charming computerized accent) was "There is a protocol. And an IB. And an IND." Amazingly, that OOO went viral inside of GSK, a few months later I was at a dinner and met the (then) head of R&D at GSK who said, after I introduced myself, "Ah, yes. Dr. Blackman. Of the of-office-messages." True story. If anyone at GSK remembers that video, shoot me a note.

Anyhow, since then I've toned it down a bit. But I do enjoy leaving a fun OOO message for people. This year I was thinking about having ChatGPT write me something ridiculous, but then in a fit of creativity, I decided to write my own and do something a little different.

This has been a long year. It's not a secret that the entire Day One team has been working hard on our NDA, and many of you know exactly how much work and focus and time that entails. I told my family a year ago that 2023 was going to be a hard year and that despite my best attempts to balance, I was going to be preoccupied for most of it, and likely pretty absent as a father and husband. That was, sadly, bang-on accurate. This has not been a fun year. I don't think NDAs are fun. I've been remarkably one-dimensional and most of the personal goals I had for 2023 were set aside in the name of the one big progressional goal.

Now, despite the fact that it was such a hard year there were a number of things that brought me joy (that is, things that brought me joy beyond you and the team at Day One). Not all were obvious or predicted a year ago, so to round out the year I decided to make a list of those things that gave me joy in 2023 in the hopes of sharing them with you (yes you). Now some of these are actual things. Just know that I get nothing from the makers of these things.

So now without further ado ... Anton, drum roll please (and if you are a millennial and don’t know who Anton is, click here) ... I bring you what I put in my OOO for the holiday break:

Sam's Top Ten List of Things That Brought Unexpected Joy During The Ridiculously Hard Year That Was 2023

#10: Bonsai Trees: I was never much of a gardener, but earlier in the year I bought a bonsai tree and it turns out that I really love it, and now I have 3 including a juniper and a miniature flowering tea tree. They require care and love and adorable miniature garden tools. I bought some from Eastern Leaf, who does an incredible job packaging and shipping. Plus the stock all of the cool accessories.

#9: Dansko Clogs: My wife, Julie, used to be a nurse anesthetist and she always wore Dansko clogs. We met when I was a 3rd year medical student – poor as a church mouse, I was. So I wore cheap rubber clogs. When I matched for my internship, she bought me a beautiful pair of brown leather Dansko clogs that I wore throughout all of residency and well into fellowship. Because of my unique shuffling gait, patients and families would tell me that they knew that I was coming down the hall to visit them because they could hear the shuffle-clunk of my clogs well in advance of my showing up at their door. After a while, however, they had accumulated a pretty gross patina of various pediatric fluids: CSF, blood, meconium, probably some bits of marrow. She insisted that I retire them as they were a proper biohazard. I was sad. And for the past 15+ years, I never had a pair of clogs. For some reason, this year I got sentimental for them and treated myself to a brand new pair and they bring me joy for so many reasons. They make me an inch taller. I can take them off and walk around my office in socks, and they remind me of my roots in medicine.

#8: Vancouver, BC: I live 41 miles from Vancouver, BC (as the crow flies) but it always remained out of reach - - first because of life being so busy, and more recently because of the border closures during the pandemic. This year, I’ve already been to Vancouver twice – once on a family holiday, and more recently for SNO. I’ve got another trip lined up in a couple of weeks. Every time I go I’m thrilled by the over-the-top Asian food, the incredible European markets, the friendly people, and the beauty of the water and the mountains. I’m looking forward to a return trip to the Granville Island Public Market to stock up on interesting meats and cheeses, and some kick-ass dim-sum. Vancouver definitely brings me joy (especially with continued strength of the USD).

#7: Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb in Slow Horses: I had heard of Mick Herron, due to my love of British, Irish, and Scottish crime fiction. I had a copy of his second Slough House book, Dead Lions, on my bookshelf but just couldn’t find my way into it. And then Apple TV unleashes the Slow Horses series with the incredible Gary Oldman playing the role of spymaster Jackson Lamb. The books, the audiobooks (narrated by the equally incredible Gerrard Doyle), and the TV series are all amazing and well worth a bit of your time during this holiday break, if you haven’t already discovered them.

#6: Birdbuddy: I first learned about Birdbuddy when it was a Kickstarter. I’m always looking for fun birthday or holiday or anniversary gifts for wife, who loves birds, and I do love the IoT (Internet of Things, for you Luddites). So a solar-powered Wi-Fi enabled bird feeder seemed pretty cool, and guess what? It is. Getting pictures of birds of Orcas that show up for a snack, and seeing them do their thing up close brings a little bit of joy to all of us. And like most IoT devices, there’s a social aspect to it, so you can see all of the different birds that show up at Birdbuddies around the world. My good friend Badreddin Edris was inspired to get one. This year, the company is releasing a Birdbuddy for hummingbirds, and I can’t wait!

#5: Br?d & Taylor’s Proofing Box: Given how cold it is here on Orcas, it is very, very hard for me to get my yeasted breads to prove properly. There’s simply no place of my house that’s routinely in the low 70s. As a result, I’ve gotten good at sourdough but my other baking has suffered. My challahs were dense and underproved, and my dinner rolls were a disaster. Enter into my life the incredible Br?d & Taylor Folding Proofer! This amazing gadget allows you to create a temperature-stable humidified chamber big enough for multiple loaves of bread. It can get warm enough to culture yogurt or kefir and can actually be used as a slow cooker. And then it folds up flat so it can be tucked away in a cabinet. The only downside for me is that it’s our cat’s favorite thing to sit on in the winter. If you’re a baker (or fermenter), this is an incredible addition to your baking (or fermenting) toolbox. And if you're looking for a Top Ten-worthy bread recipe to use your proofing box for, you can do no better than Pan de Cristal, a bread that I first encountered at a Top Ten-worthy dinner this year at the José Andrés restaurant The Bazaar in Chicago. The bread, which originates in the Catalan region of Spain, is incredible and incredibly fun to make (though it does take patience and requires a baking steel). If you want to go next-level with you Pan de Cristal, then toast it in the oven and top it with some tomato pulp and sea salt to make Pa Amb Tomàquet (Catalan Tomato Bread) which, if you ever come for a visit on Orcas, is what I'd serve you as an accompaniment to a lovely bottle of wine.

#4: Learned League: This is the best trivia league that you’ve never heard of. In a world where things are overhyped and easily accessible, this is like a nerd speakeasy that has remained undiscovered for years. I first heard about Learned League from my friend Chris Bonanos while sitting at an actual NYC speakeasy (Patent Pending, which you should totally go to next time you’re in NYC). In brief, Learned League is an invite-only, Seattle-born online trivia league that’s been running since 1997. There’s no way that I can describe it all here but you can read about it in the New Yorker, or the NY Times, or the WaPo. As a member, I get to invite a couple of people a year, so if you’re hard core about trivia (and I mean hard core) let me know, and maybe you’ll magically get an invite. At 5am, when I usually wake up, the first thing I do in the morning – even before coffee – is see how I did the day before, and start pondering the morning’s 6 trivia questions.

#3: Bagel making: Given where I live, getting good bagels – and I mean proper NYC bagels that are chewy and amazing – is hard to do. Seattle bagels suck (for the most part, unless you’re talking about Eltana’s bagels). In fact, I’m so bagelopenic that when I’m in NYC, I almost always fly home with a dozen in tow (plus whitefish spread, which makes me super popular on the plane). While I await the funding and opening of Orcas Bakery and Murph’s incredible seawater bagels, I decided to learn how to make my own. The catalyst was this fantastic article and video from the NY Times where resident baker Claire Saffitz walks you through all of the details of making the dough, pre-shaping and shaping, proofing, boiling, and baking. The secret ingredient that you’ll want to order in advance: barley malt syrup (I got a 3-pack of Eden Organic Barley Malt Syrup from Amazon). It took a couple of dozen to get the hang of it, but now I know to start preparing on Friday to have fresh bagels on Saturday morning.

#2: reMarkable 2: I have a confession to make. Well, not really a confession, since it’s not a secret. I love paper. I have piles of paper around me at all times. Notebooks, yellow legal pads, sticky notes, journal articles. Lots and lots of paper. I love to doodle, outline, diagram, and notate. I love stacks of research articles that I can mark up. The problem is that I lose papers in the shuffle. Or I have to schlep things around. And when it comes to organizing things on paper – forget it. Over the past year I’ve been tracking the reMarkable 2 e-ink tablet and over Black Friday I decided to pull the trigger and buy one (they have a 100-day money back guarantee, so it was risk free). And you know what? I LOVE IT. I mean I really love it. It has transformed my day. It’s thin and lightweight and a joy to hold. It’s internet-enabled to a very limited extent so there are no distractions. You can upload .pdfs to it but you can’t surf or email on it. It has a battery that lasts for weeks. As a left hander, there’s no smudging to smearing – you can drag your hand all over it and it won’t register it as a mark. The pen you use with it feels like a pen, and the surface is textured just enough so that it feels like you’re working on paper. You can overlay whatever template you want – a grid, dots, a to do list a diary, or just plain blank white paper. You can tag individual pages or documents. You can upload journal articles and mark them up however you want. You can file or organize your notes however you want, and with an optional keyboard you can use it as a plain ol’ typewriter if you want to write something significant. Long and short: I love it. And at $299 it’s a steal. I’ve been using it for a month and it’s now become my go-to thing for writing things down, and I’ve taken to carrying it everywhere in case an idea strikes me. As a thing, it brings me incredible joy.

And the #1 thing that has brought me joy in 2023 (drum roll):

#1: The Bear: What can I say that hasn’t already been said. This show is a love-song to the city of Chicago, where I lived for 15 years and truly came into myself. The soundtrack is so brilliantly matched to both the show, the actors, and the setting that hearing it evokes a ton of memories, and it’s so good and diverse that it’s on constant rotation for me on Apple Music or Spotify. But the show. OMG, the show. It’s perfect. It breaks every pattern you know about TV. It made me laugh, cringe, cry, worry, panic, and most importantly, it made me think. It makes me want to work in a kitchen and makes me never want to work in a kitchen. The actors are incredible. The writers are incredible. The plotlines are incredible. It is, without a doubt, the best thing I’ve seen on a screen all year. And it has provided me with my mantra for 2023. If you’ve not watched it, GO WATCH IT NOW.

Well, that’s it. The 10 things that brought me joy during a very intense and long 2023. I hope you enjoyed this list as much as I enjoyed putting it together. And I really hope that you find some time to revel in the things that bring you joy this holiday season. I look forward to connecting with you in 2024 where I hope to be renewed, refreshed, well-rested, and ready to continue to make a difference in the lives of children with cancer.

I wish you all a very happy holidays and a happy and healthy new year!

Sam

PS: And remember …