Thursday 1 May 2014

What I Found Out in a Day on Twitter

I've had a Twitter account for a while, but haven’t seriously used it.  However, yesterday I spent my first full day checking my account and monitoring tweets and this is what I discovered:

Platitudes Really Annoy Me.  
One of the accounts I follow posts platitudes about how great things are, positive quotes and is all about the silver lining.  I’d seen them before, but to see her send a new one every few minutes, I was impressed.  Well, by the end of the day I was impressed.  I started off the morning thinking “Awww, that’s nice”.  By lunchtime I was a bit fed up of having my feed jammed with so many uninteresting tweets.  By late afternoon I was sick of the fluffy, well-intentioned nonsense and even went to the person’s profile with every intention of unfollowing them.  But then I remembered why I had started to follow her in the first place and so I didn't hit the button.  Now, it is evening and all cynicism aside, I am seriously impressed.  That account tweets every few minutes all day, every day –impressive.  Even more impressive?  Who knew there were that many platitudes in the world and so far I haven’t seen a single one repeated.  Also, every now and then they’re broken up by a beautiful calming image of a waterfall or some other peaceful landscape or a message of gratitude and thankfulness.  This really isn't my kind of thing, but as there are 55,000 people following that account, there sure are a lot of people who enjoy it, so more power to them.

How Quickly You Learn Breaking News.
I found out Bob Hoskins had died even before any of the news sites, like the BBC had a chance to tweet about it or before any one of my Facebook friends had time to post one of those typical “Bob Hoskins Dead. So sad. RIP” messages.  This is truly astonishing for someone like me (the finding out so soon part...although Hoskins' death was very sad news).  When Nelson Mandela died I found out when I visited my sister and found a newspaper with a front page article about his funeral.  The newspaper was four days old.  If my sister had had her recycling pick up before that visit, I may have been oblivious to that news even now.

How Amusing and Bewildering the Topics which Trend Can Be
As the news about Bob Hoskins broke, of course his name shot to the top of the ‘Trends’ list, but it was closely followed by ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’.  Seriously?  It was a good hour before 'The Long Good Friday' showed up and I’m still waiting for 'Mona Lisa'.  I love Bob Hoskins but can't say I ever thought much of that bloody Roger Rabbit movie!  Anyway, I always preferred his normal accent than to a put on American one.

People Will Keep Tweeting About Nigel Farage and UKIP…
…even when they’re complaining about how much attention and coverage these two topics are garnering.  I believe that is a little thing we call irony out these ways.

It Can Be Quite Fun and Easy To Do!
I don’t know if I have it in me to be on Twitter all the time, not even just observing others, but I did enjoy it and found it is much easier to do than I had ever anticipated.  But I also realised that I am not ready to use Twitter via my phone.  I used the app for a few seconds before I had a full on panic attack because I was getting notifications and couldn't figure out how to sign out of it.  I calmed down and did manage to do just that and I think it may be a while before I venture back to Twitter via my phone.

Wednesday 30 April 2014

More ME Soldiers Down, But We Keep Fighting

Yesterday was a bad day…a very bad.  It started off quite well, but by the time I got into bed yesterday evening I was physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted.  I just felt like I had been through the washing machine of life and had come out limp and wrung out.  So why was it so bad? 

Well, I think I overdosed on ME and ME'ers yesterday.  Yep, it is possible to do that.  I've been absent from the ME scene for much of the past few months, but I have been writing a book (ME related and more about that in the future) and as May is almost upon us, I wanted to write more articles online about ME.  Every May I try to write as many posts as possible to help raise awareness of this illness.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

ME/CFS and SAD

Yesterday I took part in a HuffPost Live segment about Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).  I suffer from the Summer Blues, rather than Winter SAD and I wrote an article about this last year (Melting to Death in the Sun – Life as a Reverse SAD Sufferer).  My ME/CFS symptoms have been really bad lately, thanks to a recent cold and with lots happening in my personal life (I will be moving house this year – HELP!) so I have to admit that when I received the invitation from the HuffPost Live segment producer, I really did not want to do it.

On any given day, I feel much more comfortable with the written word rather than the spoken.  But my recent brain fog had me worried that I would not be able to keep up with the conversation let alone reply in a coherent manner.  Also, I look and feel so ill, that I didn’t want to be seen on a video.  So I was all set to say “Thanks, but no thanks” but I thought about the reasons I wrote about SAD and it was for the same reasons I write about ME/CFS; to raise awareness and help sufferers know they are not alone.  So I agreed to do it.

The segment had not been on for long before I realised that I was probably the worst example they could have picked as a Summer SAD sufferer, because I also suffer from ME.  The two complicate each other and I would not have the same options available to me as a standard SAD sufferer.  The doctor who took part in the segment also made some suggestions about what Summer SAD sufferers could do, but the painkillers and meds that I take to help my ME symptoms prevent me from trying these out.

So, in hindsight, I fear I came across as this weird freak that abhors the sun and doesn’t really try to get any help, when honestly the complications come about because of my ME.  You can watch the HuffPost Live segment here 

Do you have ME/CFS and also suffer from SAD?  Do you find that one makes the other worse or that some of the treatment options are not available to you because of other meds and symptoms?