Dear CCI Friends,
Many of you on our CCI’s large national email list haven’t received a message from me since June 17th, and even before that sparsely since mid-March of this year. The following will explain the reasons why.
My brilliant techy assistant was sending out your “MailChimp” emails among other organizational tasks. Unfortunately she became seriously ill in March. There was no time to search for a replacement and no choice but for me to handle two or more persons’ tasks to get the May delegation micro-organized and in flight. It required day, late night and weekend work from then on to travel time. I began noticing diminished frontal lobe acuity prior to our departure. This was explained to our travelers––they stepped up and helped make sure nothing fell through the cracks. BTW, they were a terrific group to travel with! More on them and their experiences later on.
By the end of the trip on May 30, I wasn’t at all sure my usual capabilities would return. I was able to fake it, be pleasant, smile, make general conversation, but short-term memory was near to gone. Getting back to the Bay area, I gratefully collapsed. The trip had been a total success and one that had never been previously attempted or accomplished. This was enough to keep my tired spirit grateful as I sank into downtime. June and much of July I spent like Ms. Rip Van Winkle. In addition to sleep, lots of organic vegetables and fish were used as healers. The lethargy and brain fuzz gradually began to lift. A week ago I woke up and realized later in the morning that I felt completely normal again––confirming to me that the body/mind complex is truly an amazingly resilient system … if we we treat it well!
Back to the Email situation: CCI’s national E-list has been using a bulk email service, MailChimp, for about three years. A great volunteer IT specialist installed it and posted our emails until this year. His own business is growing making it difficult to continue with CCI, so my assistant took over. Then a protracted health challenge occurred with her. MailChimp is great but quite complicated to navigate, particularly since it was set up to interact with CCI’s fairly new website. This requires IT-proficient persons, which I am not.
It makes sense for me to switch back to an email carrier which I can post articles to all by myself. Some of you have continued to receive some group emails from me from several smaller E-lists which were sent directly from my computer. Fortunately our one-on-one E communications haven’t been affected at all.
IContact (a less complicated system that I used earlier) was called yesterday. I’m learning their latest updates this week. Wish me well! I’m determined to not be email-dependent on any but myself from now on.
So you are receiving the this first email I’ve sent using IContact and more will be forthcoming!
Sharon
FYI: This latest brain/body skirmish mentioned above was handled solely with “non-Kaiser” commonsensical methodologies: sleep, the healthiest of organic vegetables, daily exercise (yoga/Qigong) and meditation. I will be 81 next month and still feel 30. If you are interested in simple but predictable methods to get well and stay healthy, I’ll send you what works for me and many others.