I promised to be honest when I started this blog. So where have I been?
Since January 2017, I was probably guilty of a year of over-blogging, I realise I have now gone in the other direction, under-blogging. And to be honest (just a minute whilst I put my metaphorical hands over my blog’s metaphorical ears) it is actually my blog’s fault.
When I started the blog in January 2017 my technical guy put all the passwords on it and it was restricted to a handful of people. Partly due to lack of confidence on my part, but also because initially it was to explain to close friends and family what PD is, so they could re-read it without me having to keep explaining it.
Quite quickly it was opened up to a wider audience, to include subscribers and a facebook page. I was posting weekly (or twice weekly) for a while, and then things tailed off.
When the editor of the local paper read my blog and liked it, he asked me to write a fortnightly column. To be honest that has taken over … I had never done anything like that before and was extremely pleasantly surprised to find that a year on I am still let loose on page 8 every other week. 700 words, a full page, of Parkinality twaddle. It takes a lot of time to hone a standalone piece every fortnight for the paper. So to that has meant I have been neglecting my blog.
From that has come poetry writing and performing at local pubs, spreading awareness and generally making a nuisance of myself from an awareness point of view. I am now publishing a poetry book.
Along with all of this I have written with the wise-ish man, a musical and a play about Parkinson’s. The play ‘These Three Words’ was shortlisted for a local playwrite competition. It was cast, produced and performed and won it’s local heat, going on to come second in the overall competition.
Also PD is unpredictable and changeable but it doesn’t give me new symptoms every two minutes – thank goodness, that might be good for material for the blog, but not good for my health.
So PD has definitely become part of me. I have taken it on as a job (unpaid at the moment), as well as symptoms progressing and becoming more and more twaddly .
So, I am streamlining. The Parkinality page is now a website (well it was before but I am now calling it that). Divided into newspaper column, poetry and blog.
I am pausing the Parkinality facebook pages and twitter account for the time being.
All things Parkinality will be here, or in the fortnightly newspaper column.
Hopefully that will make things more simple.
Bye heck as like
