I am lately running into some interesting angles on 'puny' blogs, where people share their daily lives with chronic illness.  It took me awhile to really get the hang of noticing this because some of them are pretty slick.  At first I identified with them and felt a lot of empathy, left comments, tried to be supportive.  Over time I noticed I really don't get much back from those blogs, even when I'm practically the only one commenting.  And over more time I'm noticing that some of them are elegantly subtle donation-funneling sites.

 

I'm all for helping other people out when they've got problems and need help.  I'm not against anyone sharing what they can to make life a little easier for other people, especially if and when they really do spend their days in pain, medicated out their eyeballs, dealing with disability, confusion, and depression.  Lord knows I've lived like this for the last 20 years.  I GET it.

 

However.  I'm seeing some amusing little ways to get some sweet cash flow, gifts, and even free links that funnel even more readers in to these sites.  Wow.  Hats off to the brilliance and what appears to be many hours of effort put into these blogs.

 

For the record, before I say anything else about these blogs, I'll give them some context with MY life.  My couch is coming up on 18 years old, my microwave is 20 years old.  Until this last Christmas, the largest tv I ever owned was a 22".  I'm driving a 10 year old car that has had several things on it rebuilt, and the cd player hasn't worked in years.  Granted, I do live in a fairly nice house compared to some people, but after 15 years of paying on it we owe twice now than what we originally owed, thanx to mortgaging, and we're snowed under so many home repair problems that we'll never be able to sell this place and pull out even.  My student loan interest has spiked my loan total up over $100,000 because I've been in deferment so long.  We went through bankruptcy 2 years ago because my medical bills ate us up, even with insurance.  I tried to keep working for 20 years with lupus, severe fibro, arthritis, and lately complications in my nervous system and liver have made it impossible to keep and hold a job any longer.  My attorney says I have a two year wait until my disability hearing, and until then, I continue to see doctors, physical therapists, and a chiropractor.  I take as few meds as possible and pursue excellent nutrition, which means NO alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, chips, pop, or candy.

 

I do NOT want to be disabled.  I have fought it my entire adult life.  I have never used my health as an excuse not to get a college degree, which I have, or hold a number of jobs over the years on handfuls of meds, but I have finally arrived to a place where I cannot even walk through a store shopping for groceries without intense pain and fatigue, so I never go to the movies or theme parks or all the other places most people take for granted.  I keep a private blog for journaling my daily problems, which helps me tremendously because I can look back and see patterns with med problems, how different times of the year affect me, how I'm learning to handle stress and make daily plans and long term goals, and etc.

 

In my PAST, which I rarely talk about, when my daughter was a toddler, we were so poor that I remember having a handful of peanuts and half a hot dog bun to eat one day, and that was it.  I remember eating a can of corn for supper all week long when she was in grade school so I could stretch our food stamps enough for her to take tuna sandwiches to school in a lunch box, because she didn't like the school lunches.  I remember washing diapers in a bathtub, owning a $300 car, and living in a yucky trailer.  I was a single parent with lupus for 8 years.  By hook and by crook, we made it, and I never once asked anyone for food or money.  I had no furniture and the tiniest tv you ever saw.

 

Ok, that was context.

 

Now I'm going to say something about these other blogs, which seem to be all the fad nowadays.  The 'wish lists' from Target, Walmart, and other big retail chains are ludicrous.  If you're going to ask for people to buy you things to 'improve the quality of your life', ask for toilet paper and laundry soap.  That's much more credible than asking for cute clothes and electronics when the situations are supposed to be so dire that your food stamps were cut and you have no food for half the month.  If you've got paypal and gift cards set up for direct donations and are using multiple blog hosts like myspace and xanga and facebook and whatever to funnel these donations into those accounts, the LEAST you could do is comment back to the people who stop by your sites to leave empathetic comments.  Of all the social graces I've ever seen abused, that's about the lowest.

 

I understand you might really be sick, and that life is tough, and things suck.  But I also blog with other people with terminal illnesses and cancers who DON'T ask for things and maintain a semblance of dignity on their blogs.  Believe me, I *know* how hard it is, and I'm getting a little ticked off about being suckered into feeling sorry for other people who only want the money that I'm barely scraping together myself.  Otherwise, I guess I'm useless as a fellow human being on this planet.  What's really annoying is seeing people coming up with blog posts that look like rewrites of what I've already had up in my own posts here.  Geez, I guess I'm providing free material now.

 

'Nuff said.  Use your brains and figure it out.  I'm a survivor, not a victim.  You are what you choose to be.