I Should Have Been Blogging

As I am in the last two weeks of taking prednisone before being weaned off, I imagine I'm at peak levels of steroid retention and intake. (Hey it's my blog, it's my imagination.)

The effects are becoming more pronounced. My arms and legs hurt. My face, swollen to the size of a Halloween pumpkin, burns. Sometimes it's difficult finding a comfortable way to sit and read, because of the steroid fat pad on my back and the ring of jello around my neck. I sometimes feel like I'm choking. The swelling is around my chest, I feel listless and unable to do much for most of the day.

Last night was the first full night of sleep I've had in several days.

What's worse though are the psychological effects. In an effort to apply a less as more principle, let me ask you to imagine what happens when you

• Take a sick, steroid-filled, out-of-work post-menopausal female.
• Add to this a rambunctious, curious soon-to-be-fifth grader just out of school who plays child-oriented TV at full blast.
• Top it off with a self-employed real-estate industry executive.
• Now, shake them up together in a relatively small Brooklyn house for a few days
• Add incessant rain, no play dates in sight, one computer, one TV..

It has been tense, to say the least.

Yesterday, too, I had a wonderful guided, conversation with a Relative-of-a-Relative on turning this blog into something more lucrative. This gracious, generous magazine exec asked, among other things, what had made me start blogging.

The short answer: It's keeping me sane.

This way I keep writing. I keep talking. I keep updating friends on what's happening. When it comes to a simple question like "How are you doing?" it's hard for me to just say, "Fine."

The blog allows me to put it all together in a lucid way, I hope. I guess I'm imposing some order on a life gone out of control (as life will do). And so, the title of today's post..

I should have been blogging...

This opened a whole new subject...GraciousRelative pointed out the irony of vast numbers of individuals now out of work, in great part due to the shift to Internet use, who themselves use the Internet as a (free) outlet to blog/complain/comment...More on these and other ironies later.