Invisible Illnesses

We tend to think of disabilities as something we can see. If a person is in a wheelchair or has a seeing-eye dog, we can immediately identify the nature of his or her disability. But not all conditions are so obvious. Diabetes, depression, degenerative disc disease, lupus, chronic fatigue syndrome, high blood pressure, and bipolar disorder are not visible.

People may be candid about their health issues, or they may not wish to share what they consider private. The problem with masquerading as a healthy person is that most such problems create limitations. If the underlying condition is a secret, it's hard to explain why some activities are off limits.

There is no easy answer to the question of whether to be open or discrete. Sad to say, many illnesses are still stigmatized, which makes the choice all the more difficult.

If there is a lesson to be learned here, it is that you have no idea what someone else is dealing with in terms of health. It could be anything from a headache to heart disease. My advice is assume it's something, and behave compassionately.

Rules to live by: Learn about it; write about it

I am the first to admit my marketing has been somewhat scattershot up till now. Therefore, no one was more surprised than I that something was working. People were finding me on the Web. Actually Google and Yahoo! were finding me, which is the name of the game. Still, I knew I wasn’t planning; I was shooting from the hip. My resolution for 2011 was to meticulously plan my Web marketing for the year.

I love charts; so I made a chart. Down the side were the months; across the top were themes and communications vehicles: Website, e-zine, blogs, articles, major social networking sites, and podcasts. Setting up the chart was a breeze; filling it in was not. How was it that the social media expert I heard last month had a knock-your-socks-off annual plan, not for only one business but for three?

There were so many unknowns. Would I be able to get the guest bloggers I wanted to write for me? Did I know enough to adequately cover the material I wanted to write myself? Did I have meaningful themes to fill year’s worth of ezines, blogs, and all the rest? I did not have definitive answers to these questions.

My entire career as a writer is built on a foundation of research. Learn about it; then, write about it. Not only would writing all of this material require research, constructing the marketing plan would, as well.

That’s what I am doing now—reading, learning, absorbing, planning, writing. Actually, that’s pretty much what I was doing before … without the chart.

Those were the days, my friend. Those were the days.

I reunited with three old friends yesterday and today—not old as in age but as in how many years we have known each other. We were young when we met or at least much younger than we are now. But time stopped as our conversations slipped into the same intimacy and candor we had shared thirty or forty years ago. It sounds like a cliche to say it was as if no time had passed since we were last together, but that really is the way it felt. Effortless. Relaxed. Real.

Of course, we asked about kids and work and health. Of course, we talked about mutual friends and dredged up half-forgotten names. Remember ______? Have you heard from ______? Whatever happened to ______? And, of course, we pulled out our calendars and made dates.

If we didn't say those were the best of times, we surely thought it. It's not that these are not good times; it is that those times were special. As names surfaced in our conversations, we reminisced about how giving people were in those days. It seemed everyone we knew was willing to share and help and open doors. These three old friends epitomized that generosity of spirit.

Time passes. Some things change. Fortunately, though, some things don't change at all, like the spark of timeless friendships. It can be rekindled in an instant.

Living with Change

Change is unsettling no matter how it occurs. If it happens gradually, we think we are prepared. When it comes out of the blue our lives may be turned upside down. All change involves loss, even when it means a promotion or marriage or a new baby. To gain the new, we lose the old, whatever it may have been, and with loss come a degree of disorientation. If the loss is substantial—a relationship, a job, health, youth—we grieve.

In between the old and the new we fall into an uncomfortable place where we sort it all out until we are able to move forward. Sometimes we may feel we are stuck in that place for far too long.

Finally, we emerge and embrace—or at least, accept—the new. It isn’t easy, which is why change is so often underestimated. But, frankly we have no choice. Life is all about change. Every minute of our lives something changes. Sometimes it is imperceptible; sometimes, dramatic. But moment to moment and day by day, we find ourselves living in a new reality.

Resolved: to live in the moment

My brother-in-law's best friend has been having headaches. They finally got bad enough to send him to the ER, where he was told he had a brain tumor. They operated the next day. The tumor was very large; the prognosis was very bad. It all happened in a matter of days.

Sometimes, life changes faster than that. We are never prepared. We had a storm in St. Louis last week. It was unseasonably warm, and a rash of tornadoes ripped through here, flattening houses and business in its wake. True, this is tornado alley, but not usually in the middle of winter. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, but a lot of people came close.

We take life for granted. We take health for granted, until we lose it. Is it human nature or just our western culture that blinds us to impermanence? Would I live differently if I remembered that all I can be sure of is this very moment? I know I would.

Resolving to live mindfully—being totally aware of NOW—would be a good way to begin 2011.

Hospital stay with a happy ending

"You need a biopsy" is a scary announcement. "There is a slight complication" is scarier yet. Suddenly, there are gurneys, tubes, I.V.s, every-other-hour checks of vital signs, and endless waiting for doctors and diagnoses--all exhausting and uncomfortable.

I just spent two days in a very nice section of a very nice hospital. I started out in "special services" and ended up in a cross between an ER and a modified ICU. My room was OK, except that it lacked a bathroom. This was my first experience with an indoor port-a-potty and a sink as the only visible plumbing. After the initial discomfort of the tests and aftereffects, I spent a lot of time waiting and reading.

At the very last minute of the very last hour my doctor arrived and said the magic words: "It's not cancer; you can go home." As anticlimactic as the event was, I accepted it with gratitude and left as fast as I could gather my paperwork and hail a wheelchair. Despite the two long and miserable days, "exhausting and uncomfortable" were a welcome relief.

A Year of Learning Life's Lessons

This has been a year of "lessons"—some revelatory, some repetitions of those I had learned and forgotten. I heard myself say "aha" so many times it became a private joke. I can't remember a year when I was so conscious of what matters and what is a waste of the space it was taking up in my brain. Permit me to share a few of my epiphanies with you.

1. Don't let a little tear in the fabric of your family become a huge rip. Do whatever you can to mend it while you can.
2. They say you can choose your friends but not your family. Good friends are family—the family you create by choice.
3. Moods are energy, and energy is contagious. If you don't believe it, see what happens when you smile and say something pleasant to someone who is crabby or rude.
4. Feeling OK is not the same as being healthy. Health is a gift, but you can do a lot to make it the gift that keeps on giving. Don't take it granted; life can throw you a curve when you least expect it.
5. Work is not labor when you are enriched by doing it. It is not about money or what others expect of you. Doing what you love and loving what you do is like hitting the jackpot every day.

Writing Is Not a Competitive Sport

It seems like a very long time ago—well, actually, it was a very long time ago (1972)—that I met an editor who was in a race for her life. She edited the feature section of a major daily newspaper and was tyrannical in the way she ran her little fiefdom. She treated writers like second-class citizens, never returning calls, scribbling on carefully typed manuscripts, and developing a well-deserved reputation for rudeness. She only talked to me because I was a fellow editor.

I have no idea how old she was, though I had this sense that she was especially disdainful of young writers. One day she confided that she was indeed threatened by all of those fresh young faces coming out of the University of Missouri’s famed journalism school. “They are after our jobs!” she insisted. “And, if we’re not careful, they’ll get them.”

I could have learned one of two lessons from her: (a) Watch out for all those youngsters coming up behind me and don’t let them catch up; or (b) nurture talent wherever and whenever I see it. If they are better than I am, they probably deserve my job.

Fortunately, I opted for (b). I've never been sorry.

Form a New Habit: Look to the Left

My daughter has a saying: "If you think you have problems, look to your left." This week, I was forced to do just that. She has two friends who recently suffered tragic losses due to serious accidents.

Such costly accidents happen every day. They are the stuff of the late news on local TV stations. Most of the time, when we hear about them, we feel a fleeting sense of sympathy and then go on about our business. We don't know those people. But when misfortune hits close to home—when it happens to a friend or family member—the sympathy we feel is long lasting and deep.

Often, in the midst of our sincere caring and concern, we take a moment to give thanks for our own good fortune. Our problems, whatever they may be, suddenly seem tiny and inconsequential.

Thanksgiving is two days away—a sanctioned and appropriate time to be mindful of all that have, rather than what we don't have. It shouldn't take a close-to-home catastrophe to simply "look to the left" now and then.

What to do when you are out of your depth

I met with a new author recently who had taken her finished manuscript to a quick-print shop. The owner told her he could design and print her book for a few hundred dollars. He promised to show her a proof before he printed the final copies. When he delivered the book, however, it wasn't a proof. It was the final, printed book; and it was in a carton with many other final, printed books.

Unfortunately, the manuscript had never been edited, so there were many mistakes in its 240-plus pages. The "design" looked like it had been done by a group of first graders. And, in general, the book was about as bad as it could possibly be.

The printer didn't seem in the least disturbed. He collected his money, gave the author the files on a CD , and walked away. The story gets worse. The files on the CD were worthless and couldn't be corrected. The author was out her money and had no idea what to do next. In fact, she didn't even know what she might have done to prevent the current mess. She felt very stupid.

This author had never written a book before. She had been working on this one for many years and had no idea what the process of writing and publishing a book entailed. She was not alone. Many first-time authors are in the same position: They don't know what they don't know. They don't know what to ask or whom to ask.

Here is my advice. When you are out of your depth and don't even know what questions to ask, do two things. First, find an expert in the field; second, ask one question—What do I need to know?