Those who were around in 2007-2008 might remember just how debilitating my then "mystery illness" was. It started with irritated eyes and vision problems, a constant loss of voice or hoarseness, allergy symptoms and fatigue so extreme that I fell asleep at stop lights and could literally sleep for days ... and progressed to migraines, complex partial seizures and other problems that I attributed to my "broken brain." After almost a year of poking and prodding ... and doctors scaring me with what their opinion about what it could be, we (and by "we," I mean me) traced it back to the cleaning chemicals that were constantly being sloshed around in open buckets up and down the hall outside my cubicle wall.
The bad news is that the first list of symptoms is back.
The not so bad news is that my contract for work there is ending ... so I will be out of the new office location (we moved on Nov 1) that is making me sick.
Until I lose this job and have time to recover, I may not be the best at being on top of things. For example, I didn't get out of bed and mostly slept from Thursday night through Monday morning. Emailing me to ask why I haven't yet added your blocks to the sidebar really just adds to my stress. Spending an hour and a half reading through the posts and finding BAD LABELS really makes me wonder why I am giving up 90 minutes of what is now very precious "alert" time for people who can't be bothered to label their posts correctly. I mass corrected all of the Oct 2011 received blocks ... but I do wonder why some of you think it's OK to continue to expect me to spend the time to fix your posts to make it possible for me to track down missing blocks--and you do know that you WILL EXPECT ME to track down those missing blocks. Or maybe you still think YOUR IDEA about a label to use is a better idea than using one that would make it possible for me to find ALL the posts about sample blocks sent or received or ALL the posts that contain photos for blocks you expect to be counted and included in the drawing?
If you have posted blocks in the past week, please take a moment and check the list.
In case you haven't noticed, all this EXTREME fatigue and "broken brain" makes me VERY CRANKY. I have NO ONE to take care of me and yet some of you seem to think that when it comes to the block lotto, I am here to continue to waste hours TAKING CARE OF YOU.
We will be taking a Block Lotto break in December--I had planned to suggest a Block Lotto group swap next month, but after seeing the posts and complaining email messages, I am now asking myself WHY I would/should spend even more time doing that for some of you. During my break (when I will inevitably be cleaning up the blog posts and updating the blog), I'll decide if I can continue ... and whether or not I want to do so. Adding the stress of my contract ending and the job hunt to my health may well be all I can tolerate.
I appreciate the offers of help and may be taking some of you up on past offers to clean up the labels. And before some of you ask, I am NOT interested in franchising the block lotto and spending what is often considerable time choosing and/or creating blocks and pattens for YOU to use in YOUR block lotto. Especially in my sick, cranky state, I'm just not that altruistic. And while I ALWAYS appreciate your input, if you are going to email me about how I SHOULD be doing things, labeling posts, or something else, please consider that the Block Lotto is a finely tuned machine that has evolved and grown over the past 10 years and over that decade, I have pretty much figured out what works and what won't. If I poo-poo your idea (everyone using their own name for the labels, for example), it's because I probably have a better understanding of WHY the guidelines, labels, etc are what they are and what can be accomplished through following the established rules.
