Sometimes it's a good sign when diaries are hard to write. Two years ago, I had only barely joined Kosability when I was slammed with the reality of fighting service cuts, which, if such a fight has a good side, it makes the words flow in the raw way they do in the best blues songs. Maybe it's easier to see it that way since we won, but like a person who has received a difficult diagnosis, I always add "For now". Who knows what lovely cost-cutting scheme our likely new governor (and ice-cream mixing savant) will throw at us next? Of course, as of this writing we may not have to find out.
KosAbility is a Sunday 7pm east/4pm leftkost volunteer diarist community of, by & for people living with disabilities, who love someone with disabilities, or who want to know more about the issues. Our use of "disability" includes temporary as well as permanent conditions, from small, gnawing health-medical problems to major, life-threatening ones. "Love someone" extends to cherished members of other species.
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Still, I stay busy, throwing myself into data collection, phone-banking and reading about exotic locales where, sometimes, legend tells us, liberals win. This is all work that gives more meaning to my days, but sometimes leaves my written voice more halting than it used to be (Which reminds me of the times when my gimptitude is doubted over the phone. Only once, when I was feeling my oats as a college senior did I really say what was on my mind and joke "Let me eat a jawbreaker and call you back!") It's not so much that it takes from writing, but it does demand different skills. It may help in the end to do the kind of work that has a beginning, middle, and end, but they really do call on different skills. I take notes, though, because maybe I could write something about people getting involved in their communities--write what I know, or what I halfway know.
Whatever I do, sometimes doesn't feel like enough. Maybe that is the downside of having my birth presented as a miracle, I expect impossible things from myself (in a different way from my "fans" on my local editorial page who believe I should have used greater care when selecting my parents as a zygote, but impossible all the same).
There is always another fight. The thing is that I would feel that way (and I did back in 2000) when I took my unfortunate steps away from politics and the wider world. Disability takes a lot from a person...it takes more time to do everything than a person untouched by it could ever know, which continues to be hard given the American obsession with timetables, five-year plans, and the like. My own five year plan coming out of college took twelve years, and even the things I marked off did not seem like the end of the movie. The one thing disability gave me is that I have learned that I don't have to figure it out all by myself.