EDITORIAL | A Full-Bodied, Well-Aged 'Whine'

You would think that after all the years of doing Scribbles while also living with various levels of chronic pain, that I would be used to having periods of time when I can't create a lot of new stuff. But even after well over 3 decades, I still get down when pain limits my creativity (and pretty much everything else as well.)

I think it is because I see the cool stuff everyone is up and I visual all the great ways to share those stories with everyone else and I get excited about it.

Those colourful Scribbles posts tend to make people happy and that in turn makes me happy. And let's face it, with the world being where it's at right now, we definitely could use more "happy" these days.

Then there's that thing called 'time'. The clock continues to tick and you continue to have adventures and I want to include them all on Scribbles. The list of what I wish to add gets longer and that makes me anxious.

Never EVER has anyone told me they're pissed off because there hasn't been a lot of activity on Scribbles and even if they did, my rebuttal would be something along the lines of "and you paid me how much again to put Scribbles together?"

Typically I always have some degree of pain in my neck, shoulders and upper back. You know that pain you feel when you wake up with a stiff neck? It's kinda like that, only ever single day. It's the reason I take many pain medications and do various stretching and yoga routines.

My current pain is new to me, it started the day before my birthday and if it was intended as a gift, I'd like to return it. I have experienced pain in my lower lumbar, right hip and throughout my right leg and into my foot. I have read up about this and it sounds like sciatica or an extension of my existing nerve pain. I believe the culprit responsible for this new pain were the four car rides in one week to and from the Ottawa Valley.

It's not all bleak however. There have been periods of time when the pain in my leg seems to be gone. Those blissful moments have increased over the past few weeks but I'm not out of the woods yet. In the brief time it has taken to write this message, my pain has increased from where it was when I typed the first words.

The point of this message is two-fold. Firstly I wanted to give a few more details to those of you who were wondering what I was referring to with my cryptic Facebook post "Sorry Scribbles fans too sore to create new stuff".

But the person I am truly trying to appease with this rant, is myself. I'm trying to convince myself it's all going to be okay. That I am slowly getting better and will get to those Scribbles posts (and other creative projects) in a little while. It sounds convincing enough when I write it and then read it back to myself.

Now if I can just believe in those words, I'd really be on the road to recovery.