Regular readers of this blog have almost certainly noticed a paucity of postings over about the last 12 months, even compared to my usual low level of activity here. The short version of the explanation is this: the last 13 months have been very difficult for Tracie, and–by association–for me as well. To put it bluntly, things have been so difficult that I haven’t particularly felt like writing about much of anything, most of the time.
Over the past month, I’ve mentally worked on a long version of the explanation. It involves two incurable illnesses, one excruciating nerve condition, more than half a dozen doctors, more appointments with doctors than I can count, many tough choices and several disappointments. The story isn’t all bad; there have been triumphs as well, and Tracie’s in good shape now. But it’s going to take some time to write, and I find myself avoiding the trip down memory lane, because that lane is really rough for the last year.
However, I also have a backlog of other things to write about. I’ve found myself holding those up because I wanted to first write the aforementioned tale as the anniversary of its beginning approached in June. But if I continue to do that, who knows when I’ll get around to posting anything at all here. So, to break this bit of mental congestion, I’m putting up this brief explanation as a way of giving myself permission to move along to other topics.
In other words: I wasn’t writing much for a long time because I didn’t feel like writing about what was dominating my attention for a long time, which was Tracie’s health issues. It just didn’t seem attractive to write a series of posts that would have all been along the lines of “things sucked before, and got worse today, and will probably still suck for awhile.” Now things don’t suck so much, and while I intend to write a retrospective account of exactly how they sucked, writing that account is gonna suck in itself, so I’m putting it off and writing about things that don’t suck. Sound good?
Irises, for instance, do not suck. The lovely specimen pictured above is currently blooming in one corner of our yard.
Beautiful iris! No point in reliving the sucky stuff in writing until & unless you’re ready, and I hope there won’t be so much of it in the months to come. Enjoy the good stuff. Like iris.
Glad to hear things are getting better, best to you both.
Now the philosophical question: Do you feel the need to write about the last year (catharsis etc) or obliged, that you owe it to your readers or something? I realise we live in a time where everyone shares everything thanks to social networks but maybe it’s still ok to just say “yep, bad times but things are better now thanks, let’s move on…”? I’m sure the people who need to know the details do so already and, while I’m sure the readers are curious in a well meaning way, it’s not really about them ultimately.
Best,
Gary.
To state the obvious, I’m glad the suckage is trending downward.
Looking forward to hearing about whatever you decide to write about, whether it’s details or more irises, or some of each.
Hoping you guys continue to do better and better…
GaryG: Thanks, and good question. I’d say that the answer is both, and also some other reasons. While I’m old enough that I’m not nearly as compelled to share everything online as many people seem to be, I did/do feel that I in some sense owed an explanation to the readers of this blog. Simply put, if there are people out there who take the time to keep tabs on my blog, it seems appropriate to take some of my own time to explain why I’ve posted even less than usual.
There’s also the possibility that sharing our experiences will somehow benefit someone else in some unexpected way. This point was driven home to me a number of years ago when someone wrote to me–someone whom I don’t know, and haven’t heard from since–to tell me that she was so inspired after reading my travelogue from Italy that she was finally going to set aside her qualms about traveling because of her disabilities and fulfill her dream of traveling in Europe. Tracie learned a number of interesting things over the last year and both of us would like to share this learning with a wide audience, but the lessons are probably more compelling if presented within the year-long and somewhat complex context in which they were learned. (The short version, though, is this: if you have an autoimmune condition, you should probably switch to a Paleo diet, and you should certainly consult a practitioner of functional medicine. These things are probably true for everyone, but Tracie has first-hand evidence–literally–that they’re true for people with autoimmune diseases.)
Catharsis is part of it, too, but maybe I don’t actually need that. Maybe I need to just move along, looking forward rather than back. On the other hand, I’d kind of like to have my own written account of it because someday it might be interesting to re-read. My memory isn’t infallible; I sometimes search my own blog to see whether I wrote down something I’m trying to remember.
Duffy & Jesse: Thanks, and there will be more photos of iris soon. There’s a beautiful pink iris in bloom right now. I took a bunch of pictures of it and will probably put them up on Flickr, once I get a chance to run them through Photoshop and pick the best ones. Interesting discovery: the JPEG code in my camera doesn’t handle deep purple hues well. The above photo was shot as RAW and converted in Photoshop with default settings; its color accuracy is considerably better than the JPEG version which came out of the camera.