oops on the * footnote for

This should have appeared as an * footnote for can I continue. I cut it by mistake — not unusual given my current mental and physical state. What a time to start feeling more ill – during a blogathon about health care, chronic illnesses, etc. Catch up, thy name is tattooed on my arm. (just kidding re the tattoo!)

*The more you know the harder it can be to write; to distill all that info into 142 character world, or a brief, informative, funny, or inspirational blog post. Good example, my struggles with day 8 animals. The trouble with heffalumps, woozles (not tribbles) and such is there are film/animation folk, reviewers, “fan” clubs, stage shows – in other words scholars from various disciplines have a lot of media to mine. Also, I didn’t realize there were variations on the heffalump theme. Perhaps I was thinking back to the story books, adding in Dumbo’s pink elephants, and my own 3 year old imagination. But I feel like I have to describe lay down so much groundwork re heffalumps, there leaves very little time for me to say why a heffalump is the animal of my chronic pain.

HAWMC 2013: can I continue?

Heffalump and Woozle Band (Photo credit: Peter E. Lee)

The prompts for HAWMC are brilliant, and folks have responded with exceptional posts. There is a definitely strong dynamic within the health blogger community; folks who are advocates/writers for their particular chronic illness.

I was mostly going to focus on chronic pain; the bipolar 2 disorder is a newer diagnosis, not a new set of feelings, emotions, and reactions. I was looking forward to HAMCW 2013; I had seen the downloadable pre-April “calendar of prompts,” and reading through, ideas kept snapping in my brain – I could hardly keep up and there were furious pen diagrams and writing up, down, and around the printout.

Always playing catch-up on these doesn’t bother me too much though I’m now 7 days/prompts behind, lol. What I need to do is write short, evocative, expressive blog entries based on the prompts. Can I write short, snappy posts? No. Can I edit down a long post? No. Can I stay away from researching*? No. Do you need to do research for every prompt? No. Do you have to over think and let your self-editor out of her box? No. Can I still write? That answer’s not so clear; I do know that I’m not able to write now.

So, my “modest” proposal is to complete the month on my time, finishing the writing challenge as my goal (and reading more widely what other folks have written), I’ll post to facebook and twitter when I have completed one of the challenges; the other participants will reach April 30 ahead of me.

I have a too scholarly day 8 that needs heavy editing, care giving advice based on my experiences for day 9, not sure I want to participate in day 10! The entry for day 11 will be very, very short. I like antisocial media, can’t afford a smart phone, don’t tweeter, have an empty pinterest board (at least, I think it’s empty – better check it out, lol) Care giving comes up again on day 12 (hindsight). Day 13 will be a puzzler. And, the theme of day 14 (spread the love) is wonderful.

Maybe, the writing fairies and elves will descend on my laptop and finish off these posts for me. Let’s just hope I get to take at least a quick glance before they hit publish, lol.

blogging, 19th century style (much like I do in the 21st century)