I Am One Thankful Blogger

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Today I am taking a few quiet moments to reflect on my blessings. This Thanksgiving, I find myself feeling the most thankful for being a blogger/writer.

I started blogging as a way to better communicate with family and friends about my ongoing health problems beyond the somewhat impersonal en-mass e-mail. I wanted to create a place to receive updates from me that anyone could access from anywhere, whenever they wanted. I wanted to give everyone a choice rather than another e-mail to read (or delete.)

I truly had no idea that, by blogging, I would be joining a community. In this past year of active blogging and participation in the patient blogger community, I have experienced:

• support and encouragement to become a better writer
• opportunities for friendship
  
• encouragement and feedback from readers
• writing inspiration from other people's posts and comments
  
• collaborations through blog carnivals and blogging events
  
• and many, many other benefits
  

Today I can say that I am no longer blogging to just inform my family and friends; today I am blogging with purpose. My purpose is to be helpful and be of service to other people living with chronic illness, to support and inspire them on their journeys of discovery, learning living their best lives despite chronic illness.

To show my appreciation to all my friends, I created a Twitter daily newspaper over at paper.li which I have titled The Chronic Friend Daily.

My newspaper highlights the work of many of my fellow chronic illness/patient bloggers each and every day. I have tried hard to ensure that all my blogging friends are part of my newspaper. However, if you are a chronic illness blogger who is also on Twitter and I have overlooked you, please forgive me and bring it to my attention so I can add you too! (Make sure you are on my blogroll too please.)

I am grateful for this new purpose in my life, a purpose that is fibro-friendly, i.e. fits well with my life with fibromyalgia.