Playing with the cards you've been dealt

If you had a stroke and couldn't walk or talk, or another debilitating illness of some sort, would you be able to blog to the world?
I guess this might be a difficult one to answer truthfully because you never really know what you will do or can do until a situation presents itself.

There are people who have had a stroke and then need support and then there are others who probably still can capitalize on a skill or a passion they had before.

In the case of the latter, I know of someone who's taken life's lemons and made delicious lemon meringue pie.

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She's a blogger, actually one of my favorite bloggers about life in general, and she writes as Jan Sebastien on Medium.

Jan identifies as a writer who has had a stroke, can't walk or talk, but who knows how to utilize a pen, a feat which she performs with finesse. And, as you can guess, I'm a fan. What can I say? I love fighters who refuse to stay down.

Anyways, recently, Jan shared with us, her readers, a story about a terrible experience she had with a tenant who is suffering with schizophrenia and who had a terrible episode, which she, as the landlord, suffered from as theirs is a live-in arrangement which left her vulnerable.

Now, I'll say this. I've seen schizophrenia first hand. It's scary. It's almost like two people living in one body, so I can see why back in the day there was a lot of religious hoopla about schizophrenics being possessed by evil spirits.

Honestly, when you come face to face with a schizophrenic, this theory doesn't seem like a stretch. Because no matter how kind and gentle someone is when sane, when they're having an episode, depending on how they manifest, you can legitimately fear for your life.

I was a child, around 11 years old, when someone I loved dearly, set his home on fire during a schizophrenic episode. Suffice to say, it was traumatizing, and we were not sharing a home. Jan, on the other hand, is living in shared quarters with her tenant. And she can't walk or talk clearly. So she got the full brunt of this while coping with everything else.

And while there is much to empathize with there, I'd want to note that as a writer, whatever challenges Jan faced, however exhausting or scary it was, she managed to keep her chin up. Peep that.

In a field where consistency is key to success, she stuck to her dates, she stuck to her times, and she met her commitment to her readers. And so, though I do not know her personally, I'd say that she plays well with the cards she's been dealt, and this is motivating to me.

Four years ago and counting, I changed professions. Previously, I worked in the field of communications and marketing in a job that I'd held for more than a decade. But then I left that job in 2018 and by the end of that same year, the company had closed its doors permanently.

Since then, I've had no desire to return to the field of communications as an employee for anyone else but I have courted the idea of growing as an independent blogger.

I was blogging on another platform when I learned of Hive. I joined earlier this year and was fortunate enough to enjoy early success. Thing is though, I haven't been as consistent as I should be.

Going forward, all of this is going to change. I'm going to consciously step up blogging and networking because I understand that to be a successful blogger/ content creator, one must be structured, focused, consistent, providing content that can be useful to readers and building positive relationships. Thanks to a little reminder or nudge, I'd say, from Jan.

And so, I do not know what I would do if I had a stroke and couldn't walk or talk but could write, but I do know what I can do right now with the tools and resources at my disposal. Rather than moping about the things I'd like to have in life but do not, I can instead take my seat at the table and start to play with the cards that I've been dealt.