Guten Morgen!

Do you ever have those days when you know there’s an idea just a couple of layers beneath the surface?

Maybe a shower, a cup of coffee, or a walk will bring it out. Maybe it won’t.

This Monday night, around 8 p.m., I left the house barefoot and went for a walk, on a mission to think of creative activities I could do with my son. (I’m all ears, by the way.)

Why’d he say good morning in German?

The ideas never came, so the walk got longer, and my risk of stepping in dog poop increased linearly.

Finally, I arrived at a totally random conclusion, quite solidly.

The village I live in needs to be a little weirder.

This isn’t a diatribe against my town, a place I cherish and hope never to leave. But we could use a little weird.

Walking clears the mind in odd ways.

What’s so good about weird?

Here are some Googled synonyms:

Bizarre, quirky, outlandish, eccentric, unconventional, unorthodox, idiosyncratic, surreal, crazy, peculiar, odd, strange, queer, freakish, zany, madcap, outré.

These words pretty much summarize everything I’ve always wanted to be in life. Except outré.

I have no idea what outré means. Didn’t bother to look it up, either.

Austin is weird. Thanks to our good friends at the Texas Medical Association, Austin has become a satellite epicenter of WWAD. Probably not a coincidence.

Walk with a Doc has been a little weird since day one.

Ninety-two-year-olds racing four-year-olds. For a mile.

Friends in Ann Arbor, Michigan, doing the same thing (talking, walking, making friends) at the same time as people in Abuja, Nigeria. That’s a little weird.

A gastroenterologist showing up at a park in her Birkenstocks, explaining the health benefits of pumpkin, then heading to the hospital to make rounds? A little weird.

I’ve checked out a couple of these old newsletters. I don’t know, or care, who wrote them, but yeah, not exactly normal. Weird. Actually, very weird.

We have 27-year-olds in finance who found us through Meetup, spending an hour with tenured college professors who’ve devoted decades of their lives to a particular brand of ladybug.

Is it a brand or a species? Species, right?

You get the point.

Walk with a Doc is a place to be yourself.

If you’re one of our thousands of doctors, WWAD is a place to be restored and chill (and maybe avoid burnout). 

WWAD is the perfect place to wear the T-shirt your wife threw out. Twice. And you dug it out. Each time.

WWAD is the place to bring your old dog, who has a “thing” under her eye and can’t move quite as well as she used to, but lights up every single time someone pets her.

WWAD isn’t necessarily a place to talk about politics, but it is a place where it’s okay to cry about politics.

WWAD is the place to sit in the covered picnic area for three months in a row, building up the courage to walk a few hundred feet with the people who have been encouraging you all along.

WWAD is the place to finish your 12-mile predawn run, grab a banana and some water, and walk a victory lap with your friends.

I guess it always boils down to being yourself.

Personally, I think most of us, myself included, have a little more weird in us than we let on.

Maybe we just need a place where we don’t have to hide it.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

david