I am a big doofus who always forgets to smile. I hate selfies, but my head is warm.
As I pushed the door open to exit Great Clips, a wave of cold bashed me upside the head. It felt like a giant ice cube had immediately enveloped my head. “Shit,” I said. “I forgot my damn hat.”
It’s easy to forget how much your hair can protect your head. I have never had long hair, but what little I did have kept me warm. It was noticeable as soon as I walked outside.
I do stupid things all the time and I’m about to embark on a really big, stupid thing. I hope this post goes out to everyone as I expect. I’m trying to schedule some posts ahead as I find new ways to find workarounds to my trauma, PTSD, and triggers.
Sometimes, I forget to post the things I’ve written. I can’t plan out when I’m going to sit and write a post because I can’t plan when my trauma is going to prevent that from happening. There are days where I might finish editing two things and I want to post them. I don’t like posting more than one thing per day because I don’t want to overwhelm people. I think I will do it tomorrow, then I forget I wrote two things and only one ever gets posted.
Until I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2017, I never knew what was “wrong” with me. I just always figured a way to be able to do my job, regardless of what the job was.
When I worked at the Star-Herald, I often had stories “in the bank.” There were days I could write two or three stories in one day. There were other days, I couldn’t get more than a sentence written. My job was to have one story a day, so if I could get a few ahead, it worked out for me and I didn’t get fired. This coping skill is kind of shitty, but it worked until it didn’t.
By the time I left the Star-Herald, I was struggling almost every day to write my stories. This was because I was beginning to face the things that gave me PTSD, which often led to multiple days in a row where I was barely functional. You can imagine how things continued to go downhill when your editor is a giant trigger and just walking through the door to work is a huge task.
Anyway, WordPress has a scheduling function. I know it works. The question is whether the email program I use to notify folks I have a new post will work with it. If it does, problem solved. If it doesn’t, I will need to figure out a plan for the days when I have stories in the bank because I have a bad habit of forgetting they exist.
Fingers crossed.
AJ
I am sure it would have been spectacular to have written/published the stories that YOU/I/Many Others would have like to have read, instead of being tasked with writing the stories THEY wanted you to write.
Irene
Speaking of which, I’m working on just such a story right now. I’ve had several people ask me to write out my “day of and after Obergefell” story and thoughts. It’s a behind the scenes at the paper with me. I hope to have it out next week.
Also, I had three editors while at the SH. The first two gave me a lot of leeway in stories I wanted to write. I had to write the stuff I was assigned first, but it was a deal I could live with. In my beginning years, they allowed me the freedom to find my voice and run with it, which resulted in adding a weekly column. It’s why the end was so hard. But that’s a story for another time. I’m not past the “be polite about it” stage yet.