Decommit (v)
As you know, I have multiple chronic illnesses, including diabetes, Crohn's disease, and sleep apnoea, and also depression, panic anxiety disorder, and social anxiety disorder. My meds include Lantus, Diabex, Diamicron, Zoloft, Pariet, Micardis, Crestor, and Cyclokapron. I have a CPAP machine, a TENS machine, and blood pressure monitor. I regularly see a psychologist, an endocrinologist, and a physiotherapist.
I paint this gruesome picture not to provoke your pity but to remind myself of reality.
You may have heard of spoon theory. Briefly, when you are chronically ill, there are a limited and unpredictable number of things you can accomplish in a day. Faced with more tasks than you have "spoons" for, you must choose between them.
I need to look after my health, Jon, and the cats; and I need to write. However much I'd like to, or feel I ought to, I just don't have the "spoons" for gardening, art, astronomy, or chess. It's highly unlikely I will ever keep a goat or visit Antarctica.
I've been pursuing my solitary and eccentric brand of progressive activism almost since I got online seventeen years ago. I've probably benefitted from it more than anybody else has. Now I have to firmly put it aside as anything like a regular part of my life. I have a choice between scanning the news, rummaging through journals, emptying library shelves, plumbing Google, and scribbling little essays for the Internet; and getting to the gym and the chemist, keeping doctors' appointments, having a cuddle with Jon, doing the washing up, selling an original SF novel (the only remaining ambition of my life).
This is not to say that I will never blog anything about politics again; only that, as of this posting, I'm decommitting from it. (Decommitting to it?) No harm done; the Web's full of a jillion hungry activists. Go to it, kids, and good luck.
(To follow: final dump of links and stuff.)
I paint this gruesome picture not to provoke your pity but to remind myself of reality.
You may have heard of spoon theory. Briefly, when you are chronically ill, there are a limited and unpredictable number of things you can accomplish in a day. Faced with more tasks than you have "spoons" for, you must choose between them.
I need to look after my health, Jon, and the cats; and I need to write. However much I'd like to, or feel I ought to, I just don't have the "spoons" for gardening, art, astronomy, or chess. It's highly unlikely I will ever keep a goat or visit Antarctica.
I've been pursuing my solitary and eccentric brand of progressive activism almost since I got online seventeen years ago. I've probably benefitted from it more than anybody else has. Now I have to firmly put it aside as anything like a regular part of my life. I have a choice between scanning the news, rummaging through journals, emptying library shelves, plumbing Google, and scribbling little essays for the Internet; and getting to the gym and the chemist, keeping doctors' appointments, having a cuddle with Jon, doing the washing up, selling an original SF novel (the only remaining ambition of my life).
This is not to say that I will never blog anything about politics again; only that, as of this posting, I'm decommitting from it. (Decommitting to it?) No harm done; the Web's full of a jillion hungry activists. Go to it, kids, and good luck.
(To follow: final dump of links and stuff.)