Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Writing Again

As I'm sure most of you have noticed, I have been doing an extremely poor job of keeping up with this blog.  In part, it's because I have a very active 11-month-old.

However, the major reason is that my hands have not been doing well.  Dr. C and I are still trying to get my rheumatoid arthritis in line, which means, of course, that my hands have good and bad days. I try to save my good days for playing with the baby, and so this blog gets neglected.  Fortunately for me, I have an awesome husband! Bryan figured out how to set up the voice dictation software on my computer and bought me a nifty headset that allows me to speak what I want to write!  This saves me a lot of time, effort, and especially saves me a lot of pain in my hands.  Hopefully, this means I will do a better job keeping this blog updated!

Beyond the updating of this blog, I am very excited about another specific opportunity this setup presents.  You see, I have been a writer my entire life.  I have spiral notebooks, folders, computer folders, and even a Trapper Keeper full of story ideas, dating as far back as elementary school.  However, for years, this blog has been my only outlet for that passion.  Why?  The answer is simple: my rheumatoid arthritis has taken away my ability to write or type for any length of time. This blog, with it's short, simple format, is pretty much all I've been able to manage since college. There have been several posts in recent years that have taken me multiple days to complete.  This means that all those half-formed, partially started stories have languished unattended and unfinished for the better part of a decade.  Heck, there are even a few completed stories somewhere in there that need to be edited and fine tuned!  Now, I am not saying that all of these ideas are necessarily good ones; however, amongst the notes, outlines, and half-started stories, there are one or two ideas that I feel truly have potential.  I'm excited that this setup will allow me to revisit these ideas and perhaps turn them into something, even if that "something" is never read by anyone other than myself.  At the very least, it will be a chance to actually finish all of the half-stories floating around inside of my head. It's getting kind of crowded up there lol!

Because it has been years since I last wrote regularly, I'm sure these first few attempts are going to be pretty atrocious.  In the past, the very fact that I might write something horrible would have deterred me from starting to write again; however, at this point in my life I'm excited even about the bad stories I'm going to produce!  Part of that excitement comes from my husband's enthusiastic support and encouragement. He is almost as excited about my starting to write again as I am!  More than that though, by taking my hands out of the equation, I will be able to reconnect with a part of myself that I had feared lost, and re-employ a skill set that I thought my rheumatoid arthritis had rendered inaccessible.  It is yet another way to refuse to allow my chronic illness to define, limit, and control my life.  And who knows? Perhaps someday I will craft a story worthy of actually being read by someone else!

And if not, at the very least, this setup will allow me to both write and save my hands for making wonderful memories with my daughter, and, of course, for knitting!

(JIP: Jackalope In Progress!)

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