A Recovery Blog

This blog is about my continuing recovery from severe mental illness and addiction. I celebrate this recovery by continuing to write, by sharing my music and artwork and by exploring Buddhist and 12 Step ideas and concepts. I claim that the yin/yang symbol is representative of all of us because I have found that even in the midst of acute psychosis there is still sense, method and even a kind of balance. We are more resilient than we think. We can cross beyond the edge of the sane world and return to tell the tale. A deeper kind of balance takes hold when we get honest, when we reach out for help, when we tell our stories.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

A Quick Response


A little while ago I got an email from Mr. Rutledge apologizing for the delay. I don’t know if he responded because of my modest rebuke or because he just happened to have the time to return my emails. Perhaps I was too hasty in rebuking him. It turns out that they will have multiple bloggers for the schizophrenia community which was the main thing I wanted to know. I didn’t feel qualified to be the only blogger on the subject which is why I recommended Pam and Chris. They will also have communities dedicated to Bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. At this juncture I am definitely willing to give it a try as long as I am free to write what I want. He says I will retain the copyright for my writing while giving them permission to publish my blog entries on their site. There are no hard and fast rules about writing, just that I do write and post. Otherwise, he left me no new instructions and so I guess I will wait until they are ready to start up their communities. I tried to set up a profile on Wellsphere, but it won’t accept my password, so I will try to apply again and see what happens.

I probably should feel foolish, but I don’t really. It is a fair deal--they get all my blogs dating back to November 2006 and then get my new blogs for their site and I get more exposure to people who might benefit from reading some of my writing and who might help me in my recovery as well. I only regret that I wasn’t a bit more patient with the process and that I jumped to a conclusion. For that, I apologize.

Now I am rereading my blog entries to see if I want to keep all of them as is. Also, I haven’t put labels on all of the entries, so I have to do that as well and then post the labels so people can get to the subjects they are interested in. That will take a week or so if I’m diligent. But the idea that more people will read my writing is enough to motivate me. So, I’m back to being excited about it. I think it will also help me personally to stay more stable and accessible to others. I hope so anyway.

A month ago I discovered somehow (I forget how) that my blog was listed on a site called “Blogged”. On this site editors and people in general rate individual blogs that have been organized into categories. I don’t know if someone chose my blog to be part of their listings or if it was just picked up along the way. It wasn’t rated. But I looked and found Chris’ personal blog, Nancy’s blog and also beautiful mind’s blog listed, but not rated yet. So I decided to join and start looking through their blogs to find ones that interest me. I will be inviting Chris, Nancy and beautiful mind to check it out. I did not see Pam’s blog, but will be recommending it to them as well. I put in a request for the editors of the site to review my blog. That could take up to two weeks because they get a lot of requests. It just struck me as a neat system for finding the strongest blogs out there on any number of subjects. If you want to see for yourself, click on the “blogged” link.

Today I was trying to figure out how to do a podcast through iTunes. Too much information confused me, so I’m going to go to the Blogger help pages and see if they write about it more clearly. Part of the drawback to being a recluse is that I don’t have handy friends to teach me how to use my computer. But one of these days I want to include a weekly or every other week podcast with this blog or on iTunes if possible. It would be a challenge for me and a way to cut through my self imposed isolation. Now I have to think of topics to talk on and tape myself. So far, I’m comfortable talking to myself on tape, but I haven’t tried to do it with an audience in mind. The first step is to organize my ideas and write good blog entries.

1 comment:

nancy said...

Kate,

I have learned so many things about blogging through Chris and Melissa who is my artistic coach for Elation. Ask Chris. She may know about the podcast. I am learning more and more about the blogging too. Thanks for looking out for me.
Nancy