The Seated View

Did you know that sexuality and chronic illness is now against Facebook’s community standards? It is alarmingly easy to get blacklisted on social media channels. And once you’re put on the watch list, it is alarmingly difficult to get off it. I have been on social media for a very long time. It started with my personal account on Facebook years ago and by now I’m also on Twitter , Pinterest , Instagram , Google+, and StumbleUpon . I also manage several pages on Facebook, including my own author page . And that’s where the problem started. About a month ago, I decided to pay the same attention to my own blog as I did to other websites. After all, I have 12 years’ worth of material here on The Seated View and it seems a pity to just let it sit there. In addition to sharing my new posts, I started scheduling older posts every few days. And that’s when things started getting wonky. 1. My blog is blocked for the first time ever All of a sudden, Facebook wouldn...

I had a medical appointment fairly close to the Eaton Centre and it being that time a year where I stand in front of my closet bemoaning the lack of appropriate clothes therein, it seemed like kismet. So I headed to the building with many, many stores ready to give someone money so they could give me tops that would be neither too warm, nor too cold. I skipped the top floor entirely, as that has become dedicated to expensive US retailers that are financially unattainable for most people, including this starving artist. I mean, there’s a jeans store where items start at $300+ for a pair of ripped jeans. Even if I were to temporarily lose my mind and pay that amount for a pair of jeans, I’d be looking for something with more fabric. Y’know… to increase the value of the expenditure. The lower two levels not only have more stores, but also a lot more people. I zipped through the crowd, first visiting my new go-to store Reitmans . It’s not as perfectly “me” as Joe Fresh use...

Last year, I did myself a favour. I wrote — and posted publicly — a reminder about what May is like. Then I created a reminder in my calendar that I should a) read the post and b) that my loved ones know why I'd be incommunicado for the month of May. The reminder arrived as clockwork on April 1st.  I promptly snoozed it repeatedly until the end of last week. Oops. As I apparently can't be relied upon to follow simple directions (even my own), I am herewith putting it out there in public again. If I disappear a bit over the next month, now you know why. ------ I have a love-hate relationship with May.  May is the month when the world comes back to life, when it’s 99% sure it won’t snow again for months, when grey and brown makes room for shades of green and when it finally and at last becomes warm enough to take off my socks and set my toes free after a winter of being trapped.  What’s not to love? May, however, is also Arthritis Awareness Mont...