I know how it looks.
I haven't posted anything here in months and recently started powering down my account.
But don't worry. My reasons for this are unrelated to Steemit.
I haven't lost interest or become dissatistfied with this platform.
And, although laughing at the lies of corrupt public officials can now apparently get a person sent to jail in the US, I've not started self-censoring out of fear over how my views will be received, either. As always - and especially on Steemit - I feel quite free to express myself however.
So then what is the problem?
In short, the problem is my brain. An incurable and extremely inconvenient medical condition called cluster headache has been taking up all of my extra time since last autumn. This condition's latest onslaught also made short work of my savings and emergency money, which has forced me to begin tapping into my powered-up STEEM.
In general, cluster headaches are a fucking nightmare. These things come in waves, one after another after another for days or weeks or months. Moderate attacks are painful enough to cause involuntary bodily writhing of the sort that passersby mistake for seizures. Severe episodes are more intensely traumatic than can be processed by the rational mind. And while this condition is recognized by medical science to be one of the most painful things a human being can experience, industrial medicine remains unclear on exactly what causes or eliminates it. So despite loads of tests and drug prescriptions, no doctor has so far proven able to cure me of these cluster headaches, or curtail them in a way that improved my quality of life even slightly.
(a malfunctioning hypothalamus screws up the autonomic nervous system )
Obviously, in order for me to have any sort of a life at all, I have had to become adept at managing this thing (which I've posted about before). A great deal of patient and ruthlessly systematic work along such lines has made it possible to reduce the average number of attacks I experience per year from a couple thousand down to just seven or eight hundred, and to get to the point where the most severe episodes occur only rarely. But there are still good years and bad years. And, with my current headache cycle now entering its seventh month, this has not been one of the good ones.
As you can probably imagine, the challenges I face as a result of this condition can be extremely unpleasant. Describing them is tedius and depressing. Reading about them is not very much fun, either. So when my life consists of little more than dealing with these challenges, blogging about it tends not to improve matters.
In truth, although I have some great posts coming up, I will likely continue to neglect Steemit until this latest headache cycle calms down. But I bought groceries this week with money drawn from saved-up steem power, and am totally excited about the way this site is developing, so I figured it was time to check in and say hello - and ...