Its all about The Title and other random crap....

To Coffeecup - I hope you are reading this.  I don't want to make my email public so wondering how I can contact you - then thought I know if you are on Twitter - go to my twitter name @bramblycat (where you will see I am really inactive and don't really understand how to work the whole campaigning thing) hash in my day was something entirely different - I do have a new phone and am now finally able to connect to all social networks via twitter, but am now OCD worrying away about my phone being associated with so much on line stuff, probably completely unwarranted but until I have some assurance that the thought police will not start following me about if all of my on line and off line, mobile phone life is all intertwined I remain ignorant and a little paranoid? About the whole, link all accounts and be damned policy but the fact is its all probably of such insignificance that it doesn't matter anyhow. All this worsened by hearing on Radio 4 that webpages have been able to collect mobile phone numbers of those who have visited. In the long run does this really matter, are they going to sell the number on and if they do does that matter either. If I start getting calls from people whom I don't know with a strange accent and obviously from a call centre it would be a bother but it is not life threatening.  Big brother is watching anyhow, google knows my every click, my every thought at least the ones I have on line.  I have nothing to hide in essence I am no criminal.   Anyway Coffeecup I digress, find me on twitter follow me then send me a private message letting me know it is you and I can send you my email that way, so sorry your blog had to go private! So sorry but I really understand.  Somedays I wonder if it would help if it would be better if mine were and I wrote to myself perhaps I would be able to bare my soul better that way.

I guess thats why I started off annonymous here on this blog, but a lot of what is going on in my life right now is to do with family members health not just mine and how I am dealing with it all or not as the case may be. Although on the surface I look to family as though I am coping inside I am not, so not!  Its hard as a lot of what is going on with them is very personal stuff and I don't think its fair to put that 'out there'.  But not explaining what is causing me to not cope with some of it would require the detail so I am stuck between a rock and a hard place on that one. I could speak hypothetically I suppose but it would lead I think to a lot of misunderstanding!  I am trying to think of a way to do it.....

To dear sherry - thank you.

To dad.... who posted and the rest of the blog name I am so sorry I can't remember. In answer to your query I don't mind either way.

On life - its still here. I am still here. Not quite ready to put into words that which is stuck in my head.

Here is a link to a moving piece of footage -  http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2012/jan/28/welfare-reforms-protest-oxford-circus

Shame it didn't make the front page of All of the papers, it should have done.  Just to prove I am not entirely lost in my own world and I am in touch with the welfare reforms, I am just selfishly struggling to cope with the impact the EDS and associated conditions are having on me on a daily basis.  There is a woman in the link who mentions that just to do what she did, which I applaud, she had had to take so much pain relief, I expect she is still paying for it now.  I feel guilty as am now on such strong pain relief daily and yet rarely get out at all, mine is to get me out of bed in the first place or to just stop me crying with pain, or wracked with spasms.If I took more I would be at risk of comatose and thats no place to go.  Let alone find the resources to campaign tirelessly as these wonderful people do. 

I loved the inaction of the Police in the footage, my feeling is that they pretty much felt like chaining themselves along with everyone else for two hours. The only thing I would say and this may not be popular but it still gives the message to the public that disability is about the image of the disabled person in a wheelchair.  I do understand that this was for the purpose of raising welfare reform issues profile and was for overall representation on behalf of the disabled population as a whole. A job well done and I hate to be negative but it also reinforces the image. Not helping those like coffecup whose blog has had to go private, suffering with terrible agorophobia for example, The cuts affecting her equally, although in her last comment on my last post, she at least is active on twitter with the hash tag spartacus thingy whatsit which I don't understand how to do.  Perhaps when I get round to it I will do a post with a easy question and answer thing in it, proving just how dreadful I am at understanding how twitter really works on the campaigning front.  And in the doing so I will be able to understand the whole hashtag thingy whatsits and all things twitter, I know there is a guidebook or whatever the terminolgy is for this medium of communication but it seems to assume that I understand a whole lot more than I actually do.

The nuns at the convent I attended would be appalled at how many times I resort to the use of the word 'thingy' on this blog.  It used to bother me now its better to write something and include lots of thingies than write nothing at all.

This post is about this and that so please note I listened to your comment, sherry, I am just writing whats on my mind, keeping it real. 

So when does one make the decision to remove a blog from ones reader, Not after one irritating post I don't think, but when the author keeps on irritating.....  perhaps its time to have a springclean but then comes the nagging thought that I might miss something. I know its the world wide web and I don't have to read a post or return to a blog if I find it irritating but to remove it from ones reader is a whole other matter.   I have some blogs in my reader that I actually quite enjoy, have even commented on but the author has never acknowleged a comment and never commented on mine when it was more active.  Do they go out with the springclean.  I have more blogs in my reader by the way than appear in the sidebar here. I admit that I often don't visit a blog to read the content of a post based entirely on The Title.  So if someone has written something like oooh baby had first crap in the title I probably won't go there, whereas if they had written Oh Crap I probably would.  I have a hunch that those sites who have a lot of passers popping in to have a look see, are possibly pretty talented on writing witty, appealing titles.

I wouldn't mind a couple of new blogs in my reader.  But tend to stay within my comfort zone.  I am absolutely sure that there are some riveting reads out there but where to find them I ask myself and do I really want to spend hours trawling the net to find them.  Due to pain I can only spend a short time at the laptop so need to spend that time well. I am not expecting anyone to tell me exactly what to do with regard to blogs removal or not or indeed find me the perfect blog, a perfect blend of wit, reality, honesty!  I am not lazy and am prepared to do some legwork but I need to feel I am open to new information, a widening perhaps of my horizons, a need maybe to step out of my blogging comfort zone.  I will be honest and say I tend to steer clear of blogs were there is a heavy christian emphasis.  Not because I am anti-religion, it has probably got more to do with attending a convent school and in truth feel I have done my time. I am reading a few more blogs now, where the author is male and having gotten over a slight feeling of guilt that I occassionally converse with a male my husband knows nothing of, realising that its a bloody blog, not a dating site. The content is often suprising and a much more emotional journey than my perhaps preconceived, misplaced ideas of the male blogger.  Because of the whole welfare reform situation here in the UK and the recession I have now more politically based blogs in my reader and find them both stimulating and depressing at the same time.  I also have one which I visit simply to know that for some life is a dream, where the blogger lives a life that seems so perfect its almost too good to be true.  Living in a vast farmhouse, with wonderful children, a crafting, organic experience.  Somedays I can't go there as the contrast to my messy house is too much to bear but I take a peak once every couple of weeks to see how things are going and it is so reassuring that there are more handmade beautifully crafted 'stuff' adorning a lovely family homestead.  On the whole I stick to my favourites, finding comfort in that.


I know there are already studies on the increase and impact of internet friendships which are longlasting and provide mutually satisfying interaction and whether this means real life friendships are waning or acts as a compliment etc.  I know my condition really really limits my social life so I am now in the position where some blogging friends appear to care more than real time friends whose lives have rushed on ahead of mine.

I still though can't quite cross the divide and have my bloggy friends on my facebook although lately I have popped one in there and felt quite bold in the doing of it.  Feeling though that she will be disappointed as there is no picture of me there at all, just a dodo by way of me.I thought the other day that I should find a recent photo of me but it seems it is I who takes the photos of people at family gatherings and the odd one there is of me is certainly not what I think I look like! Perhaps to get me going I will put a photo up of me as a child.   My facebook is so locked down that it may as well not exist either, can you tell I have a fear of me going viral ha ha. fat chance.  So me the private person indeedy to be here at all is a little miracle. Then now it looks like google will blow my need to keep myself to myself what with my mini social phobia n all, and everything I ever have done will be out there linked to this blog.  Have I understood their new privacy policy or not. I don't know much do I and am losing my fear gradually the more I write of showing just how ignorant I really am about a whole lot of stuff,

So I have done well, I have moaned although not much about EDS and me today, shall I, no, I will save that up for another day.  I have talked of more than one thing.  Admitted my crapness as campaigning either in real time or online on welfare reform.  Managed to admit also that despite having a fine mind, oh yes dear reader I do, although hide it well. I am struggling to keep up, particulary with twitter and facebook.  I have about ten plus facebook friends most of which are family and a couple of friends who live a very long way away.  I don't aspire to have my feed or whatever its called filled with other peoples lives whom I don't really know and on past form never will as keeping people at arms length is my forte afterall.  My cloak of steel only really slips here.  Which is ridiculous really as anyone could be reading this, if they have got this far they deserve a medal.

So to finally end this vast post.  Please note that I wrote it having taking slow release morphine, top up of oramoph as breakthrough pain broke right through like a battering ram, lyrica and a small amount of valium.  So to have written anything at all I think is an accomplishment for which I will reward myself with a horlicks. 

ps - I find it quite interesting that when one has been out of the blogosphere for a while, not really able to comment either due to health taking a tumble that those who comment mean a lot, a whole lot and then there is a suprise thoughtful comment from a lurker too.  Those who one thinks may say something are nowhere.  I don't mind though not being a stats person but if sherry didn't comment, after my long period of abscence I admit it, a little tear would stain my cheek for she out of the whole bloggy world is a loyal and respected fellow blogger of whom I do admit to being fond of,

Coffeecup - as I started with you I shall finish. I will miss your blog so very much.  I hope we can find a way of staying in contact.

I am one of those people by the way who tend not to comment rather than rant on someones blog if I don't agree with the content, I certainly don't do that awful annonymous comment behaviour which I find so abhorrent.

What makes you just click unfollow?