Who I am, and why I’m here?

Blogging University: Day 1

I’ve been blogging for a year, but I’m not sure anyone’s noticed, so I’ve returned to the WordPress Academy to start again from scratch. Day One begins with 4 questions. The first is: “Why are you blogging publicly instead of keeping a diary?”
My answer is that writing a diary is a habit I picked up after suffering a serious stroke 7 years ago. Writing became my rehab (I literally started with one finger of my disabled left hand), but what I wrote about was not just the private agonies of dealing with my disability but what was happening around me as I struggled to reconnect with the world my brain injury took me away from. So it was a private quest in a public setting. What I started to write was both interior and exterior – the TV, the books, the failed experiments in cooking alongside my slanted view of current events and the state of the world. That is how my diary became my blog. It was more than JUST ABOUT ME.

The next question WordPress asks is, “What topics do you think you’ll write about?”
The short answer is anything and everything. Just like everyone, I have individual interests – reading, writing, art, being retired – but my experience of dealing with brain-injury and near-death gave me an urgent appetite to explore and discover, while I still can. So what you read in my blog is a daily account of me trying to find my way, looking into all the corners and touching the untouchable. It’s a scrapbook of a survivor’s adventures.

Next: “Who would you love to connect with via your blog?” 
I really have no preference. If you read it and enjoy it, great. If not, no worries. I am more interested in the act of sharing than the thing I’m sharing. Take it, leave it. There is no door policy here. Share back if you want to.

Last: “If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what do you hope to accomplish?”
Answer: I have already been scribbling here for one year and the only thing I count as a success is that my sister reads my blog to cheer herself up when she’s feeling down in the dumps. She says it should be available on prescription. A free prescription! That sounds like a good idea.

Read my stroke journey.