Brittle Fingers

Kia ora and G'day from and wild, wet and blustery New Zealand,

Just wanted to let folks know that I am still around, had a particularly nasty flu for the last month and am just starting University studies and papers in my Diploma in Creative Writing again.

Apologies for the lack of posting or participation but back in January I crushed my poor wee fingers in my brother's log splitter by accident.

Suffered one broken finger, which wasn't picked up by the Doctor's for a month, and then struggled to use my hands for all sorts of stuff since then.

In June I was diagnosed with Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome in both hands and forearms. It's incurable, but the pain can be managed. Unfortunately it limits or completely stops me from doing a lot of things I used to take for granted.

Writing and using a keyboard and mouse for any extended period of time gets painful, and it's frustrating trying to do simple things like tie shoelaces, read a newspaper or open a can of soda.

In New Zealand, all accidents are covered by ACC, and they're working on my physical rehabilitation and looking at aides to help make using a computer more bearable - like voice activated software, dictation software, and special mice and keyboards.

Since manual occupations have been permanently ruled out by ACC's Occupational Assessor's, I'm looking at having to retrain for other sorts of work - and the catch is that jobs that don't involve physical labor tend to invole using a computer.

To top that off my external hard-drive broke down - and it contained all my Poser and Graphics related software, images, tutorials and documents.

Thankfully the hard-drive was under warranty so I was expecting to get it replaced and hopefully some of the data recovered.

Last Monday I found that my hard-drive - sent by Registered Couriered Post - had gone missing. New Zealand Post is investigating, and I will be compensated if it can't be located, but man - all those years of stuff I've collected and done gone.

But... it could be worse. I could have no hands.

So I'm getting on. Apologies if I don't post as frequently, or am unable to take part in any artistic endeavors other than writing or the odd MAFIA game.

:box James