Exercising My Demons

I've not been posting a lot lately. There's a lot to say about "why." It started with writer's block. I would find a subject to write about and become completely inarticulate. Posts, even bad ones, would not flow. Then in turned into a disinterest in posting about anything.

This blog, first and foremost, has been a place for me to channel my frustrations about my health. Even posts having nothing to do with my fibromyalgia often flow from it. The blog is my outlet. It's been a purpose in a purposeless existence.

No, I'm not trying to depress you.

My mother-in-law, the wise woman that she is, suggested something profound to me recently. The writer's block is a good thing. I forget her exact words, but it boils down to this...

I needed to talk and now I don't.

What does that mean? This blog has been like a therapist in my life. It was my "keep a journal" project. I had finally found the right job, our lives were headed exactly where we wanted to go, things were great and then my health made it all go away. I gave up "everything" to get healthy and focus on the things that matter. It was a very painful decision, but continues to look like the right one.

And so it happened. I stopped having to talk about "it."

Unfortunately, that's also meant that I don't need to vent about the economy, comment on the new "first dog," or share my sadness on the passing Harry Kalas. I see this writer's block as a good thing, but it's also created new concerns.

This blog has always served three purposes.

1) A place for me to work through things, "exercise my demons."
2) A place for my family & friends to check up on us.
3) A place to write.

I'm done exercising my demons through this blog. I can find other ways of writing. But what about my readership?

My plan is to go silent from blogging for a month or so. There are other things I've been devoting my blogging & feed-reading to - mostly exercise.

Exercise - daily - focused - even when I'm in a lot of pain or suffering from fatigue - but careful exercise has become the next major step in managing my health. It's the one post I still have left in me, but doesn't need to be written.

Simply put: the Wii Fit is an amazing piece of technology.

When/if I return, this blog will probably undergo a face lift and become focused on things like "vacation photos" and blurbs about home-improvement projects. I may even look for another online home.

This is not goodbye from blogging. This is shalom.

Where Did I Go?

The silence on this blog is deafening. Don't think I haven't noticed. I'm here, just not posting.

Over the last several years, my medical problems have developed a certain ebb & flow. My Doctor & I are well aware of the seasonal element of things. February & March have been especially bad times for me. Why? Well, that's a story for another day.

The story today is one I've told you many times.

One mistake we made early in my treatment was to vigorously fight my symptoms as things that could be "cured" through aggressive medicating. We also fought many of the symptoms at once. This was partly because I had not been fully diagnosed. Why would anyone assume that a slightly overweight man in his early 30's have Fybromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue? Treat the sinus headaches, migraine symptoms, the severe muscle pain, chills, depression and gastrointestinal problems all as separate conditions. Ignore the possibility that the mix of high-octane medications could be compound these issues. Why would medicine make things worse?

It took my current Doctor to put it all together. That's mostly why he's the "current" one. It took us a while to come up with a strategy to manage/reduce my symptoms through a mix of diet, exercise & medication. Yeah, I take several "controlled substances."

The story isn't over yet though.

In January, we upped the dose of Lyrica. It's having a net-positive effect on me. However, I also tend to take longer than others to adjust to side-effects. My energy level - which is never good to begin with - has been very low.

This isn't a bad thing. This time of year my energy is always low. If the medications improve all my other symptoms - which they have been - then I'll eventually get used to the side-effects & my energy will improve. Fingers crossed.

I've had other problems of late, all related to my fybro & sinus conditions. What to do with those? The current plan is to not repeat mistakes of the past. We're not introducing new medication into the mix unless I get very sick. I need to manage them with existing strategies until I've been taking the max dose of Lyrica for a month or two.

So, the silence on this blog has been a point of frustration for me, but we've got to just accept it. I'm "fine." This could be my best Winter in years. That doesn't mean it's going to be a productive time. I'm surviving with a lot of low-impact leisure activities mixed with small, targeted periods of productivity. This is my usual strategy, but right now it's magnified.

I'm focused, as always, in managing my health & become a more active person. I'm hopeful about the advances in Fybromyalgia treatments. The Lyrica has definitely been a good step.

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now. My short-term goal in this blog is to keep it up to date with fun stuff I find & mini-updates from me. Don't expect a lot of deep & reflective posts for a few weeks.

Like Blogging Constipation

Yes, I'm still here!

You ever had one of those weeks were nothing, absolutely nothing, gives you that "I've got to blog about that" feeling? Yeah, it's one of those weeks. There's plenty of interesting things happening around here. The news has been filled with stuff for me to pontificate on. I have some health-stuff to post about.

Sigh!

Who am I kidding. I'm just not feeling it. Heck, it's taken me 20 minutes just to write this much. We'll just give it a few more days. If I don't start getting the urge to write soon, I'll find the equivalent of a blogger laxative.*

* I assume this would entail watching "Fix News" until I get so angry that I have to blog about it or explode. Five minutes should be enough.

A Solid Post about Obama from Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton of Star Trek:TNG fame wrote a great post the other week after the California primary. It's a departure from his usual writing about trying to make it as a writer and "personality" in today's entertainment industry.

I Voted Today by Wil Wheaton

When you're done reading that post, consider adding him to your "must read" list. He writes about comic books, reviews video games, writing & his personal struggles.

Readership...ACK!

I've been writing in this blog steadily for several months now. I like it. I've got a small following of mostly friends and family. I have some other "regulars" too. I also get occasional cross-traffic from my sister's blog. Beyond that, almost all my extended traffic comes from people doing Google searches that hit on my wide variety of topics. That's about it. I expect roughly 20-30 regulars who check my site 4-5 times a week and another 10-30 hits from searches. I occasionally hit on a topic that gives me 100+ views, but that's only when I comment on "in the news" stuff.

In other words, it's small, it's personal and it's everything I want it to be.

On the other hand, I've had my World of Warcraft blog, Beroth the Hunter up for a few weeks now. I finally got around to adding a site meter to it over the weekend and boom. Today alone, I got this site's weekly average in views. Most of my traffic appears to be coming from a fellow player's blog and from other players Googling my tips. From the comments and a dozen or so emails, people like what I'm doing. Last night I even posted my first response to an actual reader question.

This makes me glad that I took NothingKnew's advice to not put a link for this blog on that one. I'm not ready for that.

So, what now? Well, the first thing is to not over-react. It's really not a lot of traffic compared to the traffic at other WoW Blogs. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. I suppose, however, that if it continues to go well, I'll consider NothingKnew's other suggestion and post some simple ads just for fun. Eh, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, I'm just having fun! If I can write stuff that people want to read (and not just because they are family & friends) then I'm moving in the right direction with this whole writing thing.

TTFN!

Yes, I got him to post!

I have a confession to make. The reason for my rant today "because 'they' aren't 'our enemies" was a bit over-stated. I don't have the readership to create a critical mass of reactions. Rather, I was drawing from both the blog and from my real-life experiences. So, why post such a rant?

Firstly, I've been wanting to rant about this point for some time. It's become a regular road-trip discussion for Slick and me. There really is a lot of "Us vs Them" occurring in our country. My friends and family really do react to even the slightest hint for support of the other side's ideas and policies. The unfortunate truth is that there's a lot of good reasons for their reactions.

The second reason for my post was to goad NothingKnew (NK) into a response on his blog. Apparently, it worked, as evident by his post Us Bleeding Heart Liberals. Since the two of us really sit on the same side of the fence, we certainly can't debate politics. But I really wanted to see if I could get him to launch into something insightful. He doesn't post enough (he's really busy, so it's understandable) but he's really got the ability to become a first-rate over-the-top commentator. So, while I was honest, I was also pushing buttons.

NK makes several good points in response to my worst-case scenarios but missed the reason for them. It's our fear of these worst-case scenarios that are central to our inability to work together. Gun advocates are so afraid that we will take their guns from them that they refuse to give any ground even in the face of real statistics. They only see their worst-case fears. The same is true for abortion rights advocates. We (and I include myself in this camp) refuse to give any ground because we are afraid that the old draconian reality of back-alley abortions will return, the age of the giant orphanage filled with unwanted children will return and that women will not have any say in the treatment of their own bodies.

Are these fears reasonable? Well, my "common sense" (note what I said about common sense in the last post) tells me that these things can't possibly come to pass. But then, I would have never dreamed that we would get ourselves into a Vietnam-situation less than 40 years after the first time.

He is also right about needing a thick skin to blog. Someday, for better or for worst, my readership and traffic may increase enough to get real responses. If you've ever gone to a popular political blog you'd know what I'm talking about. Actually, if you read Fake Steve Job's blog, you would know that he's had some problems recently from an obnoxious comment about gun owners. So, a thick skin indeed.

So, thank you NK for responding. Your friends and loyal readers want to read more!