Reaching Out to Strangers

*that's my "I have a big ego" picture, and yes my bedroom is the same color as my blog


I would be the first to acknowledge that things in my world run along on their own synchronistic paths, that to any outside observer would probably look like either complete chaos or eerily consistent coincidences. Actually, I take that back... from my point of view that's what it looks like, so I can't imagine how outsiders would take it at all.

I am a gemini, and true to to that, I tend to have multi personalities, and juggle multiple things at once. Doing this blog seems to be no exception to this rule.

So last week, while I was freaking out about job interviews and things, I also had sort of an emotional freak out about the whole permanent cancer thing. But for whatever reason, just writing a blog post and sendin it out in the anonymous blogosphere of existance wasn't going to cut it. So instead, I wrote to the only other person I know of that has thyca on a permanent basis; Kairol Rosenthal from Everything Changes. And she has been awesome enough to respond to me in a blog post on her blog, and we've sort of been having a chat back and forth over there on the things I've been frustrated with lately... You can read about it here: Everything Changes . I figured if you follow along with things like my little rants, you might be interested.

What I like most is this is exactly why I started blogging and searching the internet community and digging up total strangers to talk to. Because when I had that complete freak out, I knew there was at least one other person in the world I could turn to that would actual get it. My EXACT problem. Not a different cancer, not a different chronic disease. And that, well, wow did that help. On my ego side, its kind of neat to see that I had real questions that other people had too, and in general are going through similar situations, even if not exact. I can only hope that I can give the same kind of support when someone needs it.

How this ties in w/ bizarre synchronicity is, not only did Kairol talk about my letter to her on her blog, but Matthew Zachary (i[2]y, stupid cancer blog and radio show) came across my last blog post, and has stuck links to it all over facebook and the stupid cancer blog. I'm pretty sure my blog hits have jumped exponentially. I'm also pretty embarrassingly proud to get attention for something that seemed easy enough to do.

So yeah, in a weird synchronistic day, my name has been plastered all over what I generally consider the main young adult cancer blogs in one day, for two unrelated topics. My ego is HUGE right now, and my studying minimal.

And since I'm talking about blogging, I'd like to direct your attention to some little tweaks I've made (I have no idea why I like to update on format changes to the blog... again, I think it goes w/ the ego and conquring technology in some small way). I've split general cancer blogs and cancer websites. I've also relisted all the blogs to show the name of the last entry and when they were last updated; this might just be more for me so i can see what blogs have updated recently all in one shot so i can read them, rather than scrolling through my bookmarks. I've also stuck a followers box. I've been avoiding this; part of me is content w/ just having a counter, but... how cool is it to say i have "followers" (again, I'm having an ego day). And I'm curious about who likes to read me... No pressure to follow, its just there for my amusement, and if you see other people you want to connect with. The last new feature I put up is a cool little map that puts dots to show where people are logging in from. While being dominated by US and Canadian visitors, there seems to be some UK regulars, along w/ hits from Germany, Hungary, Italy, Iceland, Bermuda and the Phillippeans. Now that's what I call networking. Oh, and I broke 1,000 hits last night. 8-)