dr_perry

 Hello. I haven't been around so I'm surprised this thing's still on. In case you're still around to pick up a piece, here it is. Finally.

When I started this author career, I paced along the edge of small symptoms of illness in ignorance, like The Fool in the tarot card with his dog at the cliff's edge, continuing this creative mission like the syndicated uniformed actors on Star Trek. The thing about going boldly where you haven't before is that there's always a surprise. Whether good or bad, only fate truly gets a say. Eventually, mine spoke its piece.

I fell.

Right off the edge of a cliff I called The Mystery Illness for a handful of years. TMI is an accurate moniker. When you don't know what sickness you're down with, why bring others down by talking much about it? And so, I restrained it mostly to medical professionals, though family and close friends got an earful. Or a pageful, to describe online communication more accurately.

It wasn't all bad news. A friend passed my work on and I got picked up by a publisher. The downside to that was only having enough spell slots to do the necessary for them. Unchecked, TMI is a harsh monarch, one that gave no mercy, let alone allowance for side projects or even tangential excesses to post here.

After what seemed like an endless cycles of segues between doctors, insurance companies, diagnostic labs, and back to doctors again I finally had it. A way to stand up against the thing that had held me at the bottom of the cliff all those years. Because we found its name.

TMI was Sjogren's Disease. It's a widely variable condition, like many autoimmune illnesses. For me, its main features are fatigue, brain fog, and trouble with autonomic nerves. I'll never be back where I was before that fall, but with treatment I have found some level of improvement.

I'm still planning to write books, as I have all this time. The other stuff, well. Let's just say we shall see just how much of my freedom I can wrest back from Sjogren's. In any event, life updates like this will be public. I'm easing back in so I don't want to do too many and burn out.

As the song says, if you don't expect too much you might not be let down.

Welcome to me, welcome to you. Here I am on the shortest day of the year, blogging again after all this time. It's been too long since I worked with a long form platform.

Bet you can't say that five times fast. Bonus points if you can bargle nawdle zaus with all these marbles in your mouth.


Weird Al is a favorite, you can see that in my interests. This is from Smells Like Nirvana, his parody of Smells Like Teen Spirit. Worth a listen if you like parody and grunge.

This is a good platform. I like that it's easy on the eyes and run by spoonies who keep things accessible and fair. It's free, ad free, and lets you see who you follow. Maybe you'll like it here too.

This feels a bit like unearthing, if not buried treasure, then a forgotten relic from summers past from the backyard. Perhaps beneath the shrub we pretended was a dragon's cave. Let's pick up what once inspired us and imagine anew.