Hey, you! Yup, you. The one who's reading this. I adore you. Without readers, writing would be... literary masturbation? (I'm definitely not against that, it just gets a bit boring after a while). So maybe take a look around and see what I'm about...

My life has changed a lot since I began developing the Writehanded website, and the community I have today.

When I first started writing, my driver was anger. Angry at systemic welfare and health system failures, angry at politics, and most of all, angry that my body had failed me and forced me into a position where I had to fight to survive. My life was very much focused on these things, and they are still a big part of my reality.

While fighting the systems that were supposed to support me, I learned to manage Ankylosing Spondylitis to the best of my ability.

I never stopped writing. On my Writehanded website, as a freelancer and journalist. and eventually as a public relations consultant.

I can do self-employed work, but my ability is extremely limited by the pain and fatigue I experience every day. This was made more complex by two head injuries last year.

My income is far below what it should be, what it would be if I were healthy. Again, I'm lucky - I have a partner whose earning power is greater than mine. Which is both awesome and fucking depressing, if you get what I mean. I'm grateful - but I have equality and independence so very highly.

What that means is that the income I get from my writing is very much linked to my self esteem. What a capitalist nightmare.

Money isn't just about money. Work isn't just about work. These things are political, gendered, and deeply entwined with measures of human worth.

I last updated this in June 2020, and now it's August 2021 (wtf??). At that time, I wrote:

"I've only just started to be able to do my own writing again. It is a joy and a relief; to enable independent income, to talk about the issues that matter to me, to explore the real impact of ideological and political decisions on vulnerable people living with chronic illness and/or disability."

While this remains true to some extent, I am no longer writing solely about those things. I am currently working on a book, and the themes of the book are going to start filtering into Writehanded (as you've maybe seen in the recent Confessions of a Lingerie Addict post) though I intend for the most part to keep the two 'brands' - for want of a better term - separate.

What I may do is publish draft chapter peaks, fun dialogue, and some of the fascinating research I'm doing. This will help generate income while I write the book, and hopefully create broader interest in advance - but I hope you will find it interesting too.

You, my dear friends and readers, help me do all of these things, and I am incredibly grateful. The money is really important, I'm not going to lie - having this independent income is vital to my mental health. But it's the ongoing support that really does it. Like most writers I have moments of complete impostor syndrome, I'm insecure, I falter, I decide I can't write for shit, and I think about throwing the laptop out the window.

But here so many of you are, and, some of you, so many years later.

I can't describe how encouraging that is.

Thank you. I hope you'll keep sticking around. I think things are going to get fun.