I Am So Amazed

Well, I am officially humbled and amazed and pleased as punch (for all you old enough to remember VP Hubert Humphrey). I released my first podcast novel, Anon Time, in August 2009. Since then I released The Innerglow Effect and Write Now! TPN, at yearly intervals. Today I did one of my infrequent statistical reviews. Color me impressed! From absolute obscurity to now, 2 1/2 years later, the total number of individual listeners worldwide who have finished one of my podcasts is around 9100!!! The top 5 areas for downloads, accounting for 80% of the total, are USA, China, Iran, UK, and Canada. I have numerous listeners in places I have honest-to-goodness never heard of.
I began pushing my printed books, ebooks and paperbacks, much later - maybe a year ago. My sales are 'skinny' - yeah, that's what we'll call it. It is not surprising, in the end. In podcasting, I am a middling-sized fish in a small pond. In publishing, I am a paramecium in an enormous pond. It is really really really hard to get noticed. The good news:

1. I have a day job;
2. I am in no hurry;
3. Over 9100 people have completed one of my stories on audio. I am not nothing!

What few reviews I have received for the works as a whole are quite up-lifting. Most reviews are pretty darn good. That, I'll have you know, is a good thing. It means I do not suck. Not sucking is cool! I have heard many a podcast and read many a book in the last 2 1/2 years which do very much challenge credulity as to whatever possessed their creators to author - let alone release - them.
So, I am tickled-pink. I am smiling real big in my head. I am going to literally hold my head a tad higher. I am a validated author!
So, what is my odd, rather unanticipated response to being actually capable of creating a valid work of art, to reach-out and touch someone in a very special way? To be able to make a positive difference in another person's life is a very rare, coveted, and precious thing. My perverse twist is this. I am a physician, a very good one. I do not say that out of hubris or lightly. As a good physician, I have a very positive impact on several people a day - honestly I do. Two to three times a week, I effect a life-altering change in someone. Honest-to-goodness, about one a month I make a decision which saves someone's life in the short-term. So, I am amazed that with all the terrific karma I'm pulling-down, all the strokes to my ego I get-back, that the effect I can have as an author should matter to me at all. I mean, someone laughs for a few hours after reading Write Now! is a good thing. But shouldn't the value I place on that be dwarfed by the satisfaction of making the correct diagnosis and curing someone after multiple other physicians have failed? Again, I do not pat-my-own-back to impress you, but to place you in my frame of reference.
I'll tell you this. The scene in Field of Dreams where the doctor, played so well by Bert Lancaster, remarks to the effect that to not be a pro-ball player was sad, but to never have been a doctor, now that would have been a tragedy. Man, I hear his words as I type. And then, you know what? I wonder if Doc Graham - you know - ever wrote a little poetry, maybe a haiku or two. Just wonderin'..........

NB: Did you know Doc Graham was a real person and was extremely accurately protayed in the movie? Yes indeed he was. I hope I meet him beyond the corn-rows of the life's outfield........