“Sorry I’m Late”

Hey guys… you still there?… um… this is awkward…

As any of my usual readers would notice, I’ve not been around much (or at all) over the last few weeks. It’s just been the start of the academic year at UCT and the beginning of my final year of my Undergraduate Degree so the work, social life, series, naps, and whatever else you’d expect a usual Cape Town student to get up to has been keeping me busy. Well, that and also the fact that every time I’ve come up with a post idea recently I either feel it needs a bit more work or it fizzles out into nothingness.

Now that I’m back into the swing of things, I finally feel comfortable publishing my nonsense again. Yay for you (assuming you actually like the blog). While I might have had to dig myself out of the woodwork recently, that doesn’t change the fact that I am still at a loss largely about a topic for the next few blog posts. To make up for this, then, I thought I should sketch an outline of what I’m planning so that you actually know what to expect and I have a list of ideas to refer back to in future.

Collaboration with Diary of a Disabled Person

We did it again.

For those of you who remember, The Disability Diaries and the Diary of a Disabled Person teamed up on a post about life as a wheelchair-user as a sciences student in Leeds in comparison to a Cape Town Humanities student in 2017 (find the original collaboration here).

The 2018 edition focuses on the differences in the English and South African Health Care Systems and is set to come out on March 17 at 10AM GMT sharp. Hopefully, you won’t know much about one or both of these systems which will only make it more interesting. Be sure to comment which of the two you’d rather have where you are.

I’m going to try writing something longer than an article

This might sound strange coming from an English major but I suck at writing. An article or academic essay is one thing; prose constructed out of nothing but my own head is not quite the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to write something considerably longer than a blog post or newspaper article but I’m ‘inspirationally-challenged’ on that front at the moment and any idea I come up with wraps itself up within only 2,000 words or so. Despite the hassles it’s giving me at the moment, I don’t exactly feel like being beaten by words that haven’t even been written yet.

Clearly, though, Hemingway’s view that “writing is easy; all [I] have to do is sit at the typewriter and bleed” is not working out for me as well as I’d planned. It turns out that when you lose too much blood you pass out – who knew! Anyway, it’s time for a new strategy: turn what should be a simple bloodletting into a massacre. That’s write, I’m dragging you in on this… In order to help me organise my thoughts, force myself to keep to a writing schedule, and iron out the finer details I plan on devoting Saturday’s post to an update on ‘The Attempt.’

Updating you on our emigration plans

This has been one of the reason’s I haven’t been writing as much recently. We are set to move out of South Africa and set a trajectory for England, most probably Wiltshire at this point, by the end of 2018. To make this happen, as you’d imagine, it requires a lot of TLC from us if we are to arrive at Heathrow in December with our bags and two Golden Retrievers in tow and make England our new home.

Since the emigration plans have contributed to my absence here, it’s only fair that I get to cash in on the adventure and write about it here. Although for various reasons I will not be able to share every minute detail, I really think I should at least give you guys an overview of where I’m at in leaving South Africa.

And finally, <Insert Idea Here>

While I’m excited to work on these ideas, I’m always happy to write on topics that the readership want my opinion on. If there is something that’s coming up or something that’s happened either in or out of the Disability Sphere and you think it would be nice to get other people’s opinions on it, feel free to share it to The Disability Diaries Social Media networks (links below) or e-mail me directly at thedisabilitydiaries@gmail.com.