Blogging Revisited

The Fall from Blogging
A year ago on April 15, I fell and broke my leg*. I blogged about it here. I’m done with physical therapy or rather I can’t afford any more and for the most part, I can get around and do what I need to do. I’m going to always have problems walking up stairs and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to climb a ladder or run again. I get pain in my knee when the weather changes, I get pain in my knee and feet if I stand for long periods and it’s difficult to get up from the floor or low lying furniture. I drag my cane with me wherever I go, because I just never know when I’ll need it.

I won’t carry on and on about it, as it all gets boring all too fast. I’m just kind of crippled now and that’s how life is. It is what it is.

Revisiting Blogging
So, over the last year, I’ve been slowly getting back to some sort of normal life, my new normal, as it were. I’ve depended heavily on my iPad that my in-laws so generously bought me right after I broke myself. I thought I’d be able to blog all about my recovery, my aches and such as things happened from my iPad, but, um, that didn’t so much happen. Have you tried to actually type on one of those damn things? It’s infuriating. Fast-forward to a week ago and I finally got a new laptop. Thanks be to the tax-return gods. It’s so lush and wonderful a feeling to have a standard sized keyboard beneath my stubby-nailed finger tips again.

Some of you might recall that I used to blog every day about something. I had a few blog carnivals that I was involved with and I had some little blogging projects that I managed to keep up with, much to my amazement. Well, I want to do that again. I miss the feeling of waking up and busting out a post or staying up late to cheat and post-date tomorrow’s post (shit, I just admitted to blogging ahead…). I had very little inspiration or desire to blog much while I was sans a proper computer and that made life frustrating at times. I’m someone who likes to get things out there in the open, to force people to think and to start conversations, or if nothing else, to hear myself talk from time to time.

I think part of the lack of the blogging bug is due to Facebook. Pinterest. Foursquare. Instagram. Tumblr. I’ve discovered that while I had no computer and only an iPad and its app plethora for the larger part of a year, you don’t really and truly need a blog. I’ve had more meaningful discourse via Facebook (and Google+) comments to status updates, notes and links than I think I have ever had on any blog I’ve ever kept up with. People are on, paying attention and responses are instant or waiting for you the next morning. I kind of use Facebook for everything and that’s cool with me. I’m drawn to Pinterest because I’m such a visual person. I love looking at everyone’s boards and exchanging ideas – it’s also neat to see someone wearing or using something they’ve made from a pin (more so, if it was your idea or tutorial that they followed). Foursquare is like my little travel journal; here’s where I’ve been, what I’ve done and my recommendations to others. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Instagram. I love all the beautiful people using it too. It’s so nice to connect through photographs with people who are far away (and those near too) and to get kind photography help and guidance. Though I have two Tumblr blogs, I don’t post to them much and I’m contemplating deleting one of them. I think I’ve decided that I don’t need to keep a Tumblr blog, but they are very nice sources for topic specific posts and images. There’s also a huge community of queers and other nonheteronormative folks on Tumblr and that makes me very happy – it’s nice to connect with so many awesome body/fat-positive, sex-positive and queer-positive people.

I don’t know if I’ll try blogging on a daily basis, that just seems overwhelming at the moment, but I do want to finish up a few of my old blog projects and carry on with a couple other ones.

• I want to finish up with the 100 Things Project, I’ve got twenty questions left to answer.
• I really miss Friday Fill-ins, because they made me do a bit of reflection and meaningful projection most of the time.
• Wordless Wednesdays are fun to do, but sometimes, my Wednesdays aren’t worth a picture or words – maybe I can figure out some kind of generic wordless post for when pictures are just what are needed.
• The word association posts were a neat exercise, but I don’t think I’m going to keep doing them.
• I am really interested in keeping up with my Gratitude Journal posts. Those are always meaningful to me.
• I’ve thought about blogging about unschooling again, but it’s something that comes so naturally to me, that it’s hard to figure out what to write about it – especially when most people see positive posts about unschooling (or anything remotely non-mainstream education or parenting) to be a personal attack.
• I’ve also thought about doing a bit more blogging on traditional midwifery. Something to highlight skills, practices and lore of the traditional midwife and granny mountain magic – I might think about this a little more.

We’ll see how things go. I’m always open to suggestions and ideas as well.

Insanity
I won’t lie, much of this past year and a half or so has been spent in a whirl of depression and hormonal chaos. I’m literally tearing up just thinking about the past year or so. Things haven’t always been good or even just acceptable. There has been a lot of struggle in many areas of my life. I’m moody, I’m irritable, and I cry a lot. This Winter didn’t help much, which some of you will recognise as odd. I typically love Winter, but I experienced SAD for the second time in the Winter this past Winter. I usually get something similar during the Summer, but it usually doesn’t effect me too terribly. This Winter was really rough and come January, I was having to force myself to leave the house on a somewhat regular basis. Though, I did find out that I really like calendars and filling in the squares with stuff to do.

I’ve battled with some kind of depression or another off and on for as long as I can remember, maybe since I was ten years old or so. Most of my depression as a child/teenager stemmed from having to live a completely different and pretend life or multiples layers of life all at the same time. I had to keep up appearances with my parents by staying a straight-A student, not be out as a lesbian/queer (especially with a homophobic father) and hide all the drugs & self destruction used to deal with living multiple lives. I wasn’t able to really be ‘me’ with most of my friends, even my closest, for fear of being alone. Combine all that with not knowing I had Asperger’s and that I’m a synesthete until I was an adult and it’s a wonder I’m as awesome as I am now! It wasn’t until I moved out, married a man (Ha! Right!), popped out a child and then moved us all 1200 miles away from Home that I actually started to feel like me in my own skin. It’s been a long winding and twisty (redundant, I know) road, but it’s my road. I used to deal with the depression through alcohol and drugs (you know, the illegal variety), but now I just kind of deal with it. I’ve tried therapy, but it’s weird going to a therapist considering the amount of psychology and counselling education and practice I’ve had. I end up just playing ‘cat and mouse’ or ‘let’s see just how fast we can outsmart the shrink’ games with whatever poor soul happens to be my therapist. I’m really good at listening, but terrible at talking. I think the most important and healing thing has just been for me to not pass on my childhood hurt and pain to my son. It hasn’t hurt that I’ve given myself permission to just be myself and my gods, I can’t leave out my wonderful, supportive and fantastic husband – he’s my rock.

It’s Spring now and things are turning up some. Per usual, we filed our taxes early and so there’s been a steady stream of tax-return-purchased things coming in the mail. I bought William a Berkey water filter that he’s been pining after for a few years. I finally got a Vitamix – oh, holy, hell; what a climax after a five year wait. The laptop I’m typing on was a tax-return gift to myself as well. I’m also looking forward to more and more kombucha and water kefir to pour from my kitchen. I’ve also been taking an apothecary class, which has been fun and informative thus far.

Mainly, I just miss home a lot. I really miss my peoples in Oklahoma. I don’t miss Oklahoma, really (I’m a fat chick; fuck hot Summers), I just miss my network and support system of people there. I never realised how hard it would be as an adult to make new friends and adopt new family when we decided to move out to Pittsburgh. I knew I needed to get away from baggage, things and childhood pain by running away to another state (BTW, it only helped a little), but I had no idea how hard it was to really connect with other people as an adult in a strange city. Children do it so nonchalantly; I envy them. That’s not to say that I haven’t made a couple friends or met some truly wonderful people while we’ve been here in Pittsburgh, but it’s just not the same as Home.

The Daily Mugshot
Back in August of 2011, I started taking a picture of myself on my iPad every day. William had made a comment about not having enough photos of me, so I took it upon myself to start taking a bunch. Fast-forward to now and I’ve taken a picture daily, regardless of how I feel or look, at least once a day for somewhere around 160 days. That’s almost half a year!

The project has really helped me be more me in a small way, because there I am every day, whether I look presentable or not, whether I’m smiling or not, whether I feel like being there or not. People keep asking me what I’m going to do with all the pictures, how long I’m going to keep up with the project and so on. I really don’t know and I really don’t want to put that kind of pressure on myself – arbitrary limits are the bane of my existence. I just want to continue posting a snapshot of me, every day.

I do think that if I make it one whole year of daily photos, I’ll make a book for William (and I guess anyone else who wants a book of 365 pictures of me) – I’ll reach that point before his birthday…

Yep
I’m going to iron out and change some things on this blog over the next week or so – expect random changes and periodic oddness. Let’s call this post the first of many more ramblings to come.

* tibial plateau fracture, to be technical; shattered the bottom of my fucking knee to be precise.