365/365 – What’s next for me

Well it’s finally here. I’ve been putting this post off for over a month now for many reasons but it’s now or never. One reason in particular has kept me dragging this out and I can finally share it with you today. My future is going to be very different now that 365 days of myasthenia, as you know it, is over. The main reason for that is I’m moving home. 

After nearly 12 years away from Edinburgh, I’m moving back. I’ve got myself a job I’m delighted with for the Scottish Government and this time next month I will be cutting around the streets of my childhood. 

What made me decide to move back now? The pull of my family and friends in the Burgh has been strong for a while now and by late last year I was finding it more and more painful to leave after each visit. Being 400 miles away on a good day felt hard and on a bad day felt intolerable. I’ve always known I’d like to return to my home city at some point, and when this job came up the timing seemed right.

As you can imagine, there’s a massive amount for me to do in the next month. But as I start to work through the seemingly never-ending list, I watch the new door creaking gradually open and prepare myself for the next chapter.

One last thank you for all your support and help over the last year!

364/365 – What’s next for 365 days of myasthenia

And so, the end is near and so I face the final curtain (the longest farewell ever, right). Before I stop blogging in the way you’re familiar with, I want to remind you of what I’m hoping to do moving forward and how you can get involved.

After a year of writing about me and my experiences coping and battling with myasthenia gravis, I want to hand this blog over to you. I had originally thought we could do a week of other people blogging but that’s a lot of commitment. So instead I’ll be looking for guest posts. I’ll continue to post too – mainly when I have something interesting to share.

Calling all aspiring bloggers

Whether you have MG, are the loved one of someone with MG (be it father, daughter, partner, friend, employee…) or have only recently heard of MG, I’m looking for guest blogs about what the condition means to you and how you deal with it. 

The rules

• Subject: It can be a guest blog about one day/week/year of life with MG, the story of your/your loved ones’ diagnosis or about a specific part of your life: I’m very open to ideas although the one thing I’ll be reluctant to publish is a piece that just moans
• Word length: I’ll be looking forj blogs to be between 300-800 words
• Editing: I reserve the right to edit blogs down to a readable size and for grammar/spelling purposes. I’ll also edit blogs to make them more digestible if I receive a giant block of text 
• Pictures: please feel free to send photos over to insert into the blog being clear about where you think they would be best placed. As you know, a picture can be better than 1,000 words sometimes

Are you ready to blog?

If you’ve read the above and think you’re ready to submit/discuss a blog you’d like to write, just email me at laurnacr@hotmail.co.uk

363/365 – Capturing the lessons of my 365 days

Since I began writing this blog more than a year ago, its been a frenzy of trying to keep up with the passing days. As I touched upon in a recent post about the lows of blogging for a year, the time commitment can be difficult when life is busy with other things. It has meant that during the year I’ve had very little time to think much beyond the 365 days and that’s why I’ve taken longer than I hoped to finish. So now that there only a few granules of sand left in my egg timer, I’ve been thinking ahead to what’s next. More about that in the penultimate blog. 

In this post I want to look at how I’ll be using what I have written. Over the year I’ve had fleeting thoughts about whether I could use the material in the blogs for something more and self publishing an e-book was something that I considered early on. I loved the thought of it but didn’t think twice about how I’d do it, what the focus would be or the format it would take. I’m still unsure about what the answers to these questions are. But, as I read back over the posts, I grow more sure that I want to tell a story about myasthenia through collecting the blogs into an e-book. 

If you have any suggestions or experience that you’d be willing to share, I would be incredibly grateful. Ideally I’d like the MG charities to promote to people when they are first diagnosed as the feedback I’ve had this year has often been that people wished they had it early to see that they can still live a full life. But like living with the condition, I’ll need to take this one step at a time.