My Love/Dislike Relationship with Social Media While Dancing with Chronic Pain
Oh how I have missed you blogosphere. Now that I have finally figured out how to tap back into your innards, I’m back and it’s just like riding a bicycle. It’s kinda like that with writers. It’s who we are regardless of how long it has been since we put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.
So ~ my excuse list.
1) 2012 was the year of excruciating pain, predominantly physical pain as the result of herniated discs in my neck. Physical pain which then translated into psychic and emotional pain and when that doesn’t dissipate it is off the friggin’ charts.
2) I had a new website built soon after my pain was eradicated. My wordpress blog was embedded into my new wordpress website and I had no clue how to access my blog this way. You would think it would be simple but…. website dude seemingly vanished into thin air. Not good.
3) Professional and personal life skyrocketed into another dimension simultaneous to pain diminishing. Who makes time to figure out how to blog again when that happens?!
Now that life has returned to the “normal” zone, I am going to have my website rebuilt but first I will expound on my love/dislike relationship with Social Media while dancing with chronic pain. Let’s start with Facebook. When you’re in chronic pain ~ I’m talking I can barely walk, off the charts with neuropathy kinda pain ~ TV, the Internet, close friends, family and doctors are your only connection to the outside world. Facebook is wonderfully uplifting on some days but on others it is a grave reminder that life is passing you by as you await the next injection. massage, MRI etc. to determine what will ease said pain. Although it’s wonderful to see family and friends starting new business ventures, getting married and having babies, it’s also a challenge when you want to attend and rejoice with friends and family but realize you don’t have the capacity to do so.
Some back story. My pain odyssey started in 2005 while I was in graduate school and training for a marathon. My hands went numb one morning during training and when I told the coaches, they looked at each other, then back at me and said, “You really need to get that checked out.” An MRI revealed that I had herniation between 2 discs in my neck, which wasn’t that much of a surprise because I played competitive tennis for 15 years. What was a surprise was that I had no pain until 2 weeks after I was asked, “How much pain are you in?” I tried physical therapy for while, acupuncture and chiropractic but nothing was easing the pain. 2 epidurals later I felt relief.
Enter late 2011/early 2012 ~ I tried to push myself up out of bed and I couldn’t. No one mentioned that epidurals last approximately 6 years. The pain had returned with a vengeance. I explored myriad holistic methods in addition to those already in my back pocket but nothing was coming close to touching this pain ~ it ran down both arms and into my head inducing horrific migraines. Although I didn’t want to go the epidural route again and staved them off for a few months… the pain was debilitating and my spirits were low.
I succumbed and it took 4 epidurals to chase this pain. To this day I still have some neuropathy in my hands and fingers.
So while my pain odyssey was going on I decided to explored this Twitter thing. I didn’t really get it at first and to be perfectly honest, I still don’t fully comprehend the fascination with it. It’s great for Breaking News and there are specific organizations that I like to follow. If you feel like I should be following YOU, please let me know!
Then there’s LinkedIn ~ an interesting character. I like it, a great networking tool and much to my surprise I have had several men utilize it as a potential dating site. One swing and a married miss and a few other irons in the proverbial fire. It has served me very well professionally ~ most recently I have booked several fascinating guests for my radio show, Holistic Living with Jamie.
PINTEREST: In a word ~ coolio! I started finding items and building boards while I was in between epidurals. Mainly humor and work-related items and a few cultural obscurities. All of a sudden I noticed that one board I set up grew by leaps and bounds. Somehow it became connected to another board which now has close to 4,000 pins supporting Eating Disorder Recovery.
So as I write this I am realizing that the LOVE far outweighs the DISLIKE, which pretty much sums up what happens when I put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. So expect to be hearing from me more often.
xoxo,
Jamie