Great Blogs I have read
#RABlog week is at its heart a way for bloggers to connect. Tell others about the great blogs you have read this week. Perhaps you have found a gem from a blogger, you did not know before this week. Or maybe one of your friends gave a special insight. Give the high five in print to another great blogger.
I wish I could mention every blogger who took the chance and blogged with us this inaugural #RABlog week. The fact that you took a risk and came along is amazing and I am so pleased with the results. So to start all bloggers who contributed this week gets my high five. Thank you a thousand times over. To pick out my favorite bloggers this week I looked at each day, here are seven blogs that absolutely blew me away.
Day 1: A day (or an hour) in your life
I wanted the first blog posted to be good. I wrote what I thought was the best I could and I posted it when I opened blog week. Not long after I posted my blog, Annette posted this blog and it blew me away. Since I wanted a great blog for the first one on the first day I went behind the curtain of the mechanics of this week and withdrew my post making Annette’s first. Yeah, it is that good. Almost everyone who posted that day could have surpassed my effort.
Day 2: Managing RA fatigue
I had set a goal of reading and commenting on as many blog posts this week I could. So I was reading the blogs and I came across Kat’s of Flared Gene’s wonderful advice on fatigue. Check it out here. It is an amazing post and I am so pleased she shared it with us.
Day 3: Explain your RA
Day 3 was difficult for me. I was lost and I felt rushed as I wrote my post so I did not do a very good job. Therefore, I was very interested in what others would say. That is when I came to Linda Perkins post Life with RA: Like a Bowl of Jelly Bellies. It is a perfect blog, it both makes the point and entertains at the same time.
Day 4: Five things I have learned
This was my favorite day of #RAblog week. I loved reading all the great lessons learned. But the best of the day I thought was written by Lene Andersen titled 5 Things I’ve learned from RA. It is a terrific blog from a terrific writer. I hope you get to chance to read it.
Day 5: Exercise and RA
Kaz wrote a terrific blog about exercise and RA. I wrote about one of the wildcard topics that day and actually after reading Kaz’s blog I was glad I did. Sometimes you see a perfect blog and say wow, I could never have done better. Kaz wrote that perfect blog.
Day 6: Onset stories
Onset stories are the most interesting and personal stories we tell. I loved all of the stories posted yesterday. But one I love a lot was prepared by Molly Schreiber. Molly outlines a memorable start to RA. I hope you read Molly’s remembrances.
Wildcards
I really enjoyed Dana Symons blog ‘Rheumatoid Disease Update: The Eyes Have It’ is just fantastic. It is posted in wildcard #3. Reading her blog, I was both informed and entertained. I did not understand about the link between RA and Sjogren’s Syndrome. Dana gave us a very interesting post that held my attention.
And with that #RABlog week has come to an end for me. I hope everyone had a good time blogging this week, and most of all I hope we have developed great relationships. Blogging is a solitary act for the most part, we do not get great feedback most of the time. I was asked this week what I hoped #RAblog week would accomplish? I answered that it is our attempt to correct community, using the written word. I hope you feel that community today as you read or write and write your final blog this week. #RAblog week will be back next year. I hope you will participate once again and in the meantime, keep the community going, read and support each others blogs.
Until next year, take care!!!
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rick
Wow! Thanks Rick – I wasn’t expecting that. I just found your wildcard post yesterday when I wrote mine on the same topic, and that was a great one – so different from mine, which made it really interesting. As I said in my last post earlier today, that’s one of the things I really enjoyed all week – the diversity in the posts when we had the same prompts. It’s been great and I hope it happens again next year.
I think the diversity of answers to the same prompts makes blog week so cool. We get to see how each of us approach common themes in often very different ways. I love your post on feeling supported, it is such a real post, it expresses many shared feelings of the entire community. Thank you for blogging with us this week, your posts are fantastic…rick
Rick, thanks for bringing us RABlog Week; it has left me with a lot to think about. Your prompts were great–I don’t suppose you can use the same ones next year?!!
Trudy: thank you for following along with us this week. No, I doubt we will use the same prompts next year except for number 7 which is the foundation of the activity. That being said I do expect the themes will be roughly the same. Also, I will likely try to advertise the selection of the prompts better next year. This year they were selected by mid August but I may not have advertised them as aggressively as I should have. Some folks did blog ahead, but I expected more might have done so. Next year I will likely do the same, but advertise the availability of the prompts most widely… rick
Rick, I think your Medication Day post struck a chord with everyone. We all sit there all alone week after week (year after year) counting pills, and to be honest I hate to do it. It’s sort of like having to wash the dishes when that is not your favourite chore.
I was a bit sceptical about doing a whole week of RA blogging when I started. Even though I know I love to blog and it makes me feel good, the longer I wait in between posts the harder it is to get back to “work”
Also I am a bit squeamish about self disclosure when it comes to current pain. The past pain is easy because it’s gone, but the present is more of a problem, and feels like old new after so many years.
Annette: I am so glad you came along with us this week. Your writing absolutely set the tone for creativity and originality that we just would not have had if you had not come with us. Thank you so much, for having the courage to blog with us. The pill post was originally posted on TUDiabetes.org as part of a series I did about getting ready. This was titled getting ready for the week. I knew the minute this topic made the list that I was going to revise that post to use it here. It can be a powerful piece for folks who really do not know what we do each week. Man, I hate sorting pills. So I am glad I am not the only one who dislikes that job.
The overall reaction I got from the post in the diabetes community was shock that any human would take so many pills. In fact a couple of commentators suggested I was making it up. I knew in the RA community people would identify better with the post. So when this topic made the list, I knew exactly what I was going to post.
I sure hope you will join the fun of #RABlog week next year as well. Getting to know other bloggers is a great way to build community and that in turn leads to better and more bloggers. But more importantly, it helps those of us who blog not feel so isolated. I hope you have had as much fun this week as I have and I hope you will join us again for the 2016 #RAblog week…. rick