Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me

I mean, I come around once every 6 months or so and expect you all to still be here: what's up with that? Not much, really.  Just a hope that some people have stuck around, and a heartfelt "thank you" to anybody who manages to read this. I'm still trying to get used to living the life of a chronically ill guardian/co-parent (who lives on the couch in the living room, still), and it's ... A. Lot.  Much, much more than I ever could have predicted, and it's taking pretty much all of my brain cells to make it through the days. So writing? Writing has fallen to the wayside quite a bit, unfortunately. 

BUT - I am determined to participate in the Blogging Against (Dis)Ableism Day in two days time, so I figured I'd better make myself say 'hello' so I wouldn't be too ashamed/intimidated to show my face here again, come Sunday. 

And I'm not completely absent from the web - you can find me tumblring at Au-NTE & Whatshouldwecallfibro, pretty much always. (There's a queue: I love me a queue I can fill on good days, and not worry about on bad!)  I'm also participating in Cannonball Read 8 (although I'm behind there, too).  My latest review was pretty much a rant-filled "Are you kidding me with this bs?" kind of post that - if you've spent any time here at all - you can depend upon me for, if you're interested (the book's publisher was seriously NOT, and left a comment that I had no idea how to respond to, which was a new 'adventure' for me).  And I tweet about ridiculous things, and important things, and my love of all things Hamilton, too, if you're interested. 

Either way: I'll see you back here on Sunday, and I'm going to attempt a 'post every single day' after that, just to force myself back into thinking what I have to say is valuable, and setting aside the time for it.  (Even if all I have to say is random memes, because: guys? I am good at random memes.)

Look how much I am sharing!

Yeah, no: another two weeks have passed with very little word from me - unless you follow me on Twitter/Tumblr, and even there, it's mostly other people's words re-hashed. The reasons for not writing are numerous, at least in my head - ranging from the usual ('not enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things I need/want to do' combined with both 'active illness & post-holiday flare-up' and 'so few spoons it isn't even funny') to the restrictive ('everything I want to say will hurt someone if I say it, so I don't know how to say it' and 'everything I write is so depressing and if it makes me depressed to write it, who the hell is going to want to read it?') to the absurd ('but seriously: do you know how many episodes of Dr. Who I still have to watch?') So it's been pretty difficult to carve out a thinking space, let alone a writing space.

But I have promised more sharing, and more sharing it shall be.

First off, let me recommend, if you do have a Tumblr, that you follow me over there for some mostly illness related, gif-filled ramblings. I'm a little bit upset that I am too old to be in school now, when I imagine I could find an appropriate gif for any single homework assignment (and that I could bs my teachers into accepting their validity as objective tools of measuring my learning). There is a gif for every occasion, I have come to learn, and it is a little bit disheartening to me when I am interacting with actual people in real life and can not just open up my gif folder and show them that I understand exactly what they mean. I have a feeling Google is probably working on that though. (Dear Google: work on that INSTEAD of Google+.  Nobody likes Google+, because you try to force us to like it and incorporate it into everysinglething we use. It is not ok with us. Just let it die already.

 See what I mean about the gifs?)

Secondly, in an effort to keep from writing yet another truly depressing post about the current state of my family let's just keep it under a paragraph and say that things here are pretty sucky. In a major way. For a lot of people. But because we're in kind of a holding pattern right now (for reasons that I do not understand, and therefore cannot explain to you), I can't figure out what to do to help myself or anybody else.  There's a whole lot of not-communicating happening, which is stupid (except for when it's me, of course), but also understandable.  I think my mother is afraid of what comes next, even though she knows it has to come, and is postponing it as much as she can by talking about the unreachable finances of the situation (which are valid issues) instead of the direct harm she is causing herself by not just bulldozing forward. I can't even say I blame her, because I could bulldoze forward about shit too, but really just don't have the energy to deal with the fallout. So: hellish holding pattern it is!

And lastly, for this morning anyways, some commitments.  After a few years of reading awesome reviews and interacting with some great people, I have signed up to participate in Cannonball Read 6, which is "a race to read and review 52 books in a year".  Now, if you've been here any length of time, you know I will read many more than 52 books this year, but as my sadly outdated Goodreads account reflects (Seriously: September? That's the last time I told you what I was currently reading? Ugh), I did not review nearly quite so many.  But I think it's definitely doable, and it fits in with my goal of sharing more parts of myself in different places, so I'm going to do it.  I'm also on the look out for a therapist who specializes in people with chronic pain (did you know there even were such mythical unicorns? I did not!), in the hopes that s/he will have some strategies that I haven't tried out that will help me moving forward. And I'm also trying to comment more, across the board. (??!?!)

This commenting thing is obviously not unique to me (one of my own commenters JUST left a comment saying she was trying to do the same), but it's something that should be so easy, and it's just so HARD.  Guys, I feel ridiculous!

Sometimes I feel like I have a good thing to say, but then I feel like a third wheel or something - especially if it's on Twitter, and two people I follow are talking about something, and I just... butt in - and I wind up erasing what I was going to say.

 Or I feel like, after reading all the other comments on a post, that all I could contribute is a "me too!" or "Agreed: what X said!", which feels like a comment not worth leaving. 

Other times I will spend long minutes - I do not mean like 5 or 6, but like maybe 20 minutes - crafting what I think is the exact right way to phrase what I want to say, and then chicken out before hitting the enter button.

It's so stupid!

I do not know why I am so intimidated by the commenting thing ~ all I know is that I often feel like I did back in high school, when I was at the edges of all the crowds, not unpopular, but never quite fitting in anywhere, and having to monitor my words and actions to an extreme rate, for fear of embarrassing myself.  I know this is all in my head - aside from spam, and one mean comment about 6 years ago, I never have had a comment that I wasn't Super! Excited! to get.  Not here, or on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook (maybe Facebook - the people I know in real life are not always awesomesauce with the comments). 

But the general truth still exists that comments - even of the "me, too!" variety - make my day! And I should just get over myself already and hit that submit button.

So, that's how my January is going so far - how are all of you faring?