Jumpstarting a Dead Blog

Jumpstarting a Dead Blog

It’s Saturday night and I say to FD, ‘I can’t believe I’m resurrecting the old blog.’ He’s noncommittal. In 2006, when I first started blogging, there were virtually no blogs on mental health and mental illness. Now you can get whatever you want, whatever you need, in all kinds of places online. So what’s the point in blogging, my thinking the past five years. FD, ‘So what’s the point again?’ I go, ‘Well, to market a book you have to network on social networking sites and for me to do that would mean establishing some kind of Internet presence, which therapydoc had at one time then frivolously let it waste away. Everyone Needs Therapy didn’t even go to hard cover as an agent suggested it should. In those days literary agents scoured the Internet for bloggers with content that might make a good book.’ Did you even start the book? Well yes, of course. I even have copyright on the title! That's how much of it is on paper. Virtual papers. Why didn't it ever become a thing? A source of income and inspiration? Did I ever tell you how hard it is to write a book? And that agent disappeared into a black hole before I even had a chance to reply to his email. ‘You make writing books seem easy. You knocked off The Book in two years. And I read it as you went along, which isn’t something I do. You know that I only read non-fiction.’ 'That’s because you can’t make that stuff up. It’s from my life. Our lives. Except the historical fiction parts. ‘Which are very good! I never knew much about Ho Chi Minh.’ And now you do. ‘Yes, now I do, thank you.’ So this year there shall be blogging is what I tell him. I will start next week with a case that is in The Book. He will recognize it. A woman sees the world from her balcony because she suffers agoraphobia. She beats it with the help of her cousin the psychiatrist. ‘She beats it! Ah. That’s refreshing.’ It is. So my dear friends, please G-d, we’ll get back to the business of explaining in plain language and silly conversations how people get sick and how they get better because that’s SO easy and fun and so possible, like, all the time. To everyone, because we believe the entire world and everyone in it was created on this coming day: Have a happy, healthy, successful, meaningful year, a year full of laughter, song, prosperity, and heartfelt prayer or just meaningful one-way discussions with Her. With love, therapydoc

The Untold Consequences of Social Networking

Raquel Welch on Facebook

We've heard about the many dangers of Internet socializing.  A face might end up as a pic online, except that the body, thanks to Photoshop, is the body of a young Raquel Welch without clothes.  This could be a good thing, for some people, depending upon their priorities and personal preferences.  But these types of pics can be sold for a tidy sum, and it is an anonymous merchant making the money.

Then there's phishing, losing valuable identifiers to people who could use what's left in our bank accounts.  For most of us, no problem.

But this is one for the books.  Blogworthy, we say.  Or something else to worry about if you worry a lot.  Therapists like to think of these situations as problems to be solved.

I'm on Facebook.  It's true, I don't post very often, and if I do, maybe a picture of saltwater fish.
But the other day I notice that I now seem to "like" Zoosk.  Zoosk is a romantic social networking website and I don't like them, never have.  So I post this:

Don't like Zoosk, no matter what they're telling you.  

I don't know, at this point, how to hide what feels like spam on my feed, and I don't know that nobody else knows that I'm the only one seeing the things that Zoosk is posting on my feed.  So I head over to Zoosk (unproductive) but now that I have visited, the cookie to this dating site is captured, somehow, by Match.com.

All of a sudden I have signed up with Match.com.  I am Hypnodoc55 and shudder at the thought that there may be a Hypnodoc54, 53, 52, etc.  And Match.com is sending me 18 women a day to date!  And here I thought that online dating was this difficult thing!  Apparently not if you are a Hypnodoc.

I'm thinking, Ignore it and it will go away. Wrong.  The offers, suggestions, keep coming!  I am clearly the hottest thing out there!  And here I thought that advice, Marry a doctor, passe'.  Apparently not.

So I tell Gmail to pitch Match.com to Spam. That will stop it.  No!  They keep coming.

The only logical thing is to sign in to Match and cancel the account.

This turns out to be simple.  They send me the password that somehow I forgot, and I sign in, and within minutes Match.com is sorry to see me go.

When I tell the story to friends, FD has a funny look on his face.  I know he's thinking, Does she really want to date at this age?

Never gave it a thought, honestly.  Until now. (Joke, okay?  Joke.)

therapydoc