Sunday, November 6, 2011

Aspirations and the bigger blogger picture ~ NHBPM Day 6


The prompt today for National Health Blog Post Month is this:

If I could do anything as a Health Activist… Get aspirational. Money is no longer an option. What is your biggest goal that is now possible? How could you get there?

Now bring it back down to size. How much of this can you accomplish now, in a year, in five years?



I aspire to selfishness?

My first approach to this is to envision myself living the life of other bloggers.  I would love to be posting about my post-CFS life, or how I got my job back (or a better one), or how I'm earning a paycheck and helping bring my family back from financial ruin, or how I've created a life equally satisfying to the one I lost to illness and discrimination, or......this one's the biggest......that I just ran a half marathon or went backpacking.

It's interesting, though, that these are the emulations that have the most to offere me.  Even though the authors I'd be emulating are making enormous contributions.  And I would be a success as a Health Activist if I were making those contributions.

The most immediate motivators, though, and the most immediate pictures in my mind were primarily for me.  I picture Health Activism as more self-less than that.  And selflessness helps us cope.  But not if we become so selfless that we become ineffective copers.

Serving myself well is the right example to set because I can't cope well if I don't learn to do it.

Bigger Blogger Picture

Standing up on my tip toes, I still can't quite get a full view of  the big picture.  I'm an evolving blogger in an evolving web and I've evolved just enough to know that my view so far is obscured.

I want to contribute, but what and for who?  How do I get it out there?  How do I make it worth getting out there?  Is it unique?  Does it have to be?

Several of the blogs I've been inspired by recently (as a patient and as a patient blogger) are ones that I would never have seen if the authors had not become experienced enough bloggers to figure out how to get their blogs seen.  No matter why or how they accomplished this, they contributed more to my coping and recovery because they did.

I'm really describing baby steps here for myself because I just can't get a view of where I want to go.  I want to keep growing my ability to competently and coherently express ideas so I can regain my confidence and my efficiency before I start a new job.  It's not within my power to start a new job just yet (for legal reasons more than anything, as desribed in my Bread and Roses blog), so perhaps now is the time to make sure I get a good blogging start.

If I want to help other patients the way other patients have helped me (from Bell's palsy to diagnostic tests to coping with CFIDS) I have to figure out the following:
  • What parts of my story can help people the most?
  • Am I reviving the right parts of my brain to share it effectively?
  • Am I doing what I can/should/could to get it out there?
The better I feel, the more I can think about these things and the more I can begin to think about whether or not I'm spending my blogging time effectively, even when I'm doing it just for myself.

This month, I am feeling amped about 30 posts in 30 days.  I'm amped about blogging.  I'm escaping the stresses of the next steps of the EEO process as much as I can by keeping my mind busy and hopefully using blogging to cope effectively when escaping is not an option.

I aspire........to answer this question better by the end of the month.


This post was written as part of NHBPM – 30 health posts in 30 days: http://bit.ly/vU0g9J
I am also participating in my Bread and Roses Blog

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