Here it is, Thanksgiving morning and day 2 of Hanukkah, and in the spirit of The Freelancer’s Thanksgiving Bingo I’m stealing away a little time to do just a smidge of work. With any luck my family won’t bust me editing on my phone under the table in a few hours.
We’re going to mix things up a bit for this dual holiday and run a couple pieces today in the Fire Pit, which is a new-ish section over in the right sidebar. The Fire Pit features articles and info we’ve found online that we think are interesting, and that we think you’ll find interesting too. It’s stuff we talk about while sitting around the fire, if you will. We’ve been tinkering with the format for a while and thought Thanksgiving would be a good time to let it spread its wings a bit. Keep an eye over there for new posts; they’ll also be shared on Facebook, Twitter and our other social media haunts.
And hey, if you run across great articles online about career and lifestyle issues for creatives, please forward them to us and we may share them in the Fire Pit.
The word “grateful” doesn’t even come close to cutting it this year for me and my family. Less than six months ago I was living in and out of hospitals and the Ronald McDonald House with my very sick daughter, and today we’re on a family vacation in Florida with a much, much healthier girl. We have a ways to go as she continues to recover from aplastic anemia, but she has come a very, very long way. It feels like we are we have moved considerably closer to the light at the end of the tunnel and away from the darkness at the other end where we started, and for that I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
Loving thanks to all the amazing doctors and nurses at Cincinnati Children’s hospital and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, especially Dr. Michael Grimley, Dr. David Margolis and Dr. John Bucuvalas. Thanks also to our family doctor Dr. Mark Unverzagt who has been a lifeline through this experience. Speaking of lifelines, we would be lost without the help of Sage Harrington and Debbie Weissman in our daily lives, and the support of our amazing family and friends; we love you dearly.
Big thanks also to the core Pyragraph team: Lex Gjurasic, Eva Avenue, Adam Rubinstein, Turtle O’Toole and David Dabney. And huge thanks to all our amazing bloggers and contributors; your stories are the heart of Pyragraph.
And thanks to you, our lovely readers. We hope we’ve entertained you, taught you a helpful tip or two, and helped you feel more secure in your own path by providing you stories about other creatives’ ups and downs. Thanks so much for reading and sharing our posts, contributing your comments and steering new bloggers our way.
OK, go get cleaned up for your family meal. And get your stretchy pants ready.
Allow me (again) to take this opportunity to encourage all of you to join the national bone marrow donation registry, Be The Match. My daughter was a week away from needing a bone marrow transplant and we still do not have a match. We are now optimistic she won’t need the transplant, but it is possible (i.e. if her recovery stalls or she relapses), and I learned that people of mixed ethnic ancestry are quite underrepresented in the donor registry. She is mostly Irish-Iranian and has a correspondingly unusual HLA profile. And there are lots of other kids and adults who need bone marrow transplants but don’t have a match; this is not a good place to be. So go swab your cheek, ok?
Enjoy!