The thirteen days of pre-publishing.

It’s not as catchy as “The Twelve Days of Christmas” but it does provide a small bit of information. Thirteen connected posts are coming. Old posts I’m revisiting and updating. It’s my psychiatrist’s fault. He suggested I take my top twelve blog posts and turn them into a e-book. It sounded easy when we were talking about it during our Zoom therapy session. Copy, paste, upload, done. Reality requires a little more work.

Finding the top posts was easy: WordPress is a fan of statistics. After a cursory review of the top performers, I went with a baker’s dozen rather than the originally-proposed twelve. Now all I have to do is assemble an original piece of cover art, a stunning introduction, and thirteen pieces into a cohesive, edited, and updated document.

The editing is proving interesting, at least so far. I’m currently working on chapter one, “My eating disorder rules, of which there are many”, which was originally posted February 22, 2018, nearly three years ago. I can see what’s changed and what hasn’t in all kinds of areas. For instance, I’m back together with dairy. I’m also over my no-capitalization affectation. And I definitely should’ve paid more attention to proofreading back in the day. There’s that arrogance again.

I struggled with deciding between “as-is” and “updated”. By “as-is”, I mean proofread and tidied up but without significant changes or additions. No “where are they now” inclusions. In the end, I decided to add amendments to the e-book only. The blog-posts proper get the “as-is” tidying up without. That way I can use the new writing as an introductory segue back to the revised original.

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Reviewing an old post is an interesting experience. Some of the behaviours are still a problem. Perhaps they’re hardwired; a permanent part of my operating system that requires a workaround. Some I’ve let go of. That was a pleasant surprise: I tend to assume failure and no progress. Confirmation of success is a nice thing to have. Still, I’ve more work to do, even three years on. I wish I’d considered the consequences carefully when I was younger. I wish I’d known to look down the road and speculate as to where my choices might lead. I like to think I’d have chosen better. But probably not. We do what we need to do to survive. Even if that looks like insanity from the outside. Besides, I was eleven. Not an age of forward-thinking.

My Eating Disorder Rules, of Which There Are Many.