{"id":29,"date":"2018-10-22T13:56:49","date_gmt":"2018-10-22T12:56:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/?p=29"},"modified":"2018-10-31T14:53:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T14:53:40","slug":"rolling-with-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/rolling-with-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Rolling With Me&#8230; Who I am and why I&#8217;m blogging?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Rolling With Me<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">(www.rollingwith.me)<\/h3>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">Clever name eh? Well, I thought so but then, I\u2019m easily amused.<\/h3>\n<p><em><strong>Rolling With Me<\/strong><\/em> as I roll around in a wheelchair. Or as in \u2018<em>rolling with the punches<\/em>\u2018 and how to keep getting up and going on. Or simply because I thought www.rollingwith.me was a clever way to use the <strong>.me<\/strong> domain?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d thought about blogging for a while, documenting my life since I acquired a disability in May 2013. Hints & tips, things that you don\u2019t get told when your life takes a sudden and dramatic change in direction. Choosing a wheelchair, buying a car. Work. All that <em>stuff<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>You may be asking yourself why would you want to read my ramblings? There are loads of \u2018disability blogs\u2019 out there. What makes me <em>special<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>And it would be a good question too.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of disability, I\u2019m certainly a rarity. Prior to becoming physically disabled, my full time job was managing services for physically disabled people. Isn\u2019t that ironic? And I mean real, dictionary ironic, not the Alanis Morissette type as Ed Byrne discussed some time ago\u2026<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"Ed Byrne slates Alanis Morissette\" width=\"640\" height=\"480\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nT1TVSTkAXg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m also a Registered Nurse. You can be pretty sure that I was a pain in the backside to have going through the rehab unit! It meant that I knew what was coming and the advice & encouragement I\u2019d given to other people over the previous ten years, I now had to take on board myself. The most advances that you can make post injury are in those first few, intense months. Which is the one time when it is hardest to come to terms with the new disability. What did I do? How did I cope? That\u2019ll be a subject for a blog all of its own at some point. But basically, being stubborn, having a weird\/dark sense of humour, being able to get back in to employment really quickly because my office & toilets etc were already wheelchair accessible due to the client group that we supported and having a fantastic wife who is amazing, as well as strong family & friends, all made it easier.<\/p>\n<p>In the blog, I will primarily focus on travelling and hopefully inspire other people to go for it. But also \u2018lifestyle\u2019 hints & guidance too.\u00a0Some of it will just be \u2018<em>stuff I like<\/em>\u2018 that has nothing at all to do with disability, because being a person with a disability is something that <em>I am<\/em>, not what <em>defines me<\/em>. If you find it interesting, or better still\u00a0<em>useful<\/em>, please, let me know.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_30\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-30\" style=\"width: 418px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-30\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/P1020920-300x206.jpg\" alt=\"Blogging at the bar\" width=\"418\" height=\"287\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/P1020920-300x206.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/P1020920-768x527.jpg 768w, http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/P1020920.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 418px) 100vw, 418px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-30\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Blogging at the bar, Blue Aegean Hotel, Kato Gouves, Crete.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I started this blog while sat out by a pool in Kato Gouves, Crete, late October 2018. This was a \u2018chill out\u2019 holiday, doing very little. I set myself a task of beginning this blog to stop me from getting too bored. Somewhere in the blog, you\u2019ll find a write up of this trip and access etcetera.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\">When I acquired a disability in May 2013, <strong>my life changed, it didn\u2019t end<\/strong>.<\/h3>\n<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>This is my story, my life & my thoughts. <\/em><em>Hopefully you\u2019ll want to visit again.<\/em><\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Please do get in touch, either in the comments section or by emailing me:<\/p>\n<h4 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"mailto:keith.fitton@outlook.com\">keith.fitton@outlook.com<\/a><\/h4>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Who am I and why am I writing this? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,22],"tags":[13,11,10,4,12],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-contact-me","category-life-style","tag-blog","tag-disability","tag-ironic","tag-travel","tag-wheelchair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/130"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rollingwith.me\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}