Thursday, December 29, 2011

New Year's Resolutions and You...how to not be lame in 2012

First off, apologies for the looooong delay between my first post and this one. I planned to update every week but between finals, some silly unemployment shenanigans, and an absurdly long flare up, I found my newfound blog left by the wayside. I'm hoping to fix that and make it a bigger priority from now on!

And with that, I begin my next topic: resolutions for 2012! 2011 was such a terrible year for me that I have all the hope in the world for the new year, and for the first time, I really want to make some resolutions I can stand by and accomplish. Usually, like most people I know, I dash off a few goals the night of New Year's and forget or simply stop trying after the joyful rush of the holidays is over.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Welcomes and hellos

Today is my first day as a blogger. Of course, I wrote Xangas  in middle school and Livejournals in high school and all that sort of angsty junk, but those don't count and it's best if we pretend they never existed. So we'll start anew, from the beginning:

My name is Kathryn. I'm 22, and a pretty hardworking student. I've been dreaming of going to law school since I was very young, and every day I push myself a step closer to that goal. Someday I hope to be a natural resources attorney. This dream of mine has probably fostered my overwhelming sense of perfectionism, which is something I struggle with on a daily basis.

I'm also a rheumatoid arthritis patient. I have been living with the onset of the disease for almost a year, and in August, I was formally diagnosed. I've been on a long-term steroid since November. Since the onset of my RA, I have toyed with starting a blog to document my own personal struggles.

Tonight is the first night of my first full-blown flare up since I began taking my medication last month. I struggled to fall asleep and so, instead of relaxing, or getting up to study for finals, I got up to start my blog. The name is dumb, I know. Maybe a better one will come along in time.

I don't have any high hopes for this blog. It's not meant to generate a million subscribers, or any sort of revenue. I just want to talk, in a public way, about how rheumatoid arthritis has affected me at 22 years old. I hope to be inspiring, and I hope to find a community of support here. I want to reach people, and I want to reach out to people.

I don't know a whole heck of a lot about living with arthritis just yet. The only thing I've truly learned so far is that I can't let having RA define me as a woman, as a student, or as a person. The rest will come with time.