I have decided to brush off the domain I had originally setup for my dissertation. I have much better sense of where the project is going – so I’m using that blog as a way to share my writing as I write, and my field notes and ideas as they occur to me. It is a living blog.

David Elpern at http://pathography.blogspot.com/ defines pathography as “a narrative that gives voice and face to the illness experience. It puts the person behind the disease in the forefront and as such is a great learning opportunity for all care givers and fellow sufferers.” I chose Living Pathography for the domain name because all the current work on pathography relates to books rather than blogs. I think of blogs as living books – ones that can be updated regularly – but also ones that contain reflections of the experience as it is happening, rather than the post-processed reflective version that is presented in book form. There are less constraints when blogging, allowing the writer to express illness in a raw and authentic way, which provides a layer of learning that can be lost when the experience is distilled into a book narrative.

I will cross post things here that may be of interest, but also, there are things that happen on this blog that are completely unrelated to my dissertation. I’ll try to keep the academic language (like the above paragraph) to a minimum on this blog, respecting that the focus of this blog is my emotional and physical journey.  The new site will focus on my dissertation as well as other academic papers, conference presentation, or book chapters associated with health blogging.

If you are interested in following specifically my dissertation journey, I invite you to follow me at http://livingpathography.org or on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/livingpathography/