About This Substack — Why Subscribe?

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Why Subscribe:

I write about leadership, medicine, reinvention, and the daily rituals that rebuild a life. Audio, video, and honest reflections from a surgeon starting again at 58. Free subscribers get the core stories; paid subscribers get direct access to me for insight, guidance, and deeper conversations.

Why Me?

Welcome. I’m Rich — surgeon, writer, wanderer, and someone who knows what it means to rebuild.

This Substack is where medicine meets leadership, where career upheaval becomes creative fuel, and where the simple rituals of daily life — coffee, a skillet cookie, a walk with my dog Theo — turn into reflections on resilience, identity, and what it really takes to start again at 58.

I write and record about:

• Leadership You Can Feel

Lessons pulled from operating rooms, wrong-turn moments, institutional politics, and the quiet decisions nobody sees. I call it Leadership Chess — the strategy, psychology, and humanity behind leading under pressure.

• Reinvention in Real Time

Not the glossy version. The real version — losing a job, losing an identity, finding meaning again, building new work, new systems, new rituals, new possibilities.

• The Daily Practice of Building a Life

Morning rituals. Sleep. Rucking. Tennis. Cooking. Travel. The slow, ordinary things that add up to well-being and creativity.

• Medicine Without Illusion

What it’s like to be a physician today — the grind, the risk, the calling, and the toll it takes. What it means to protect yourself and the people you serve.

• Audio, Video, Real Moments

Most posts come with voice notes, unedited audio, or short videos. Old-school radio meets modern storytelling.