If you have a chronic illness you know how often a doctor asks you to keep track of your symptoms, medication side effects, diet, exercise, lifestyle changes, etc.
I have always hated it. I find it boring and depressing. Focusing on my symptoms reminds me I am sick, focusing on my pain makes it hurt more. So I have been really bad at it. Which doesn’t help the doctors do their job better.
So I am designing chronic pain journals that have useful, interesting, or engaging elements to them and selling them on Amazon.
My first is filled with haiku I have written over the years I have been dealing with these diseases. I designed it to commiserate, uplift, and ideally make you feel less alone.
The second I designed is a chronic pain management coloring book journal, so that keeping track of all this stuff isn’t as boring. It has a floral theme.
I’m designing other journals as well, because I am stuck inside a lot and bored and creating things makes the time pass more swiftly. You can visit my author page every now and then to see what I’ve done.
Can I just point out that I live in quite possibly the worst place a person with barometric pressure sensitivity can live? Our weatherperson gives out Spoonie warnings because the pressures in the valley are so intense.
I live in Denver, in a valley, in front of a huge mountain range. Like a dumbass.
A dumbass with a never-ending headache from hell.
Especially the last month. Or three months. Honestly I don’t even remember how long I’ve been slogging through this time. It’s been a while.
I hope you live on an island, or have no headaches at all.
Trevor Noah asks this several times in his recent Netflix special and it hits so hard. As someone who has had to redefine myself due to chronic illness, I am well aware of how much work goes into actively choosing who you are going to be.
If you live in the United States of America today can you really think of a better time to put in that work?
Our very way of life is under attack. Not rhetorically, not by diversity or advancement, or immigration, or change, but by rich, white men intentionally dismantling it while we fight over bathrooms.
So who are you?
Are you someone who ignores what’s happening and just lives their life?
Are you someone who thinks that they will benefit from what is happening and is helping them destroy our nation?
Or are you a fighter, a resistor, dare I say a patriot? Someone who is willing to fight to take this country back from these maniacs?
Think of the pledge of allegiance. As GenX I spoke it every single school morning, hand over my heart, while it was read over the loudspeaker.
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Liberty and justice for all.
Every single day I swore a pledge to a flag that stood for liberty and justice for all. Everyone. Every single person in a supposedly indivisible nation.
It didn’t say “Liberty and justice for whites” or “Liberty and justice for citizens” or “Liberty and justice for the rich”.
Liberty and justice for all.
So I am choosing to fight for the rights of my fellow Americans, and the immigrants that have come here, like my ancestors before them, seeking a better life. I am choosing for fight for equality, for science, for diversity, for all the things that actually make this country great.
I am choosing to fight for my flag.
That is what being an American means. Standing up for liberty and justice for all. So many of our countrymen have let the ultra-wealthy asshats in charge convince them otherwise.
But I’m GenX and I am here to tell you that you are acting like the Russians in a bad 80’s movie if you are still supporting Donald Trump. You are not the good guys in this story. You have lost the narrative. There is simply no other way to write your choice.
It’s not too late to make a different choice though.
So who are you going to choose to be? History is calling.
Managing life with chronic illness requires savvy spoons
