My name is Brooke. I’m not a chicken. Or a specialist. Or an arsehat.

I am, however, excited to be here. Along with everyone else, I’m excited by the potential of this new platform, but also, from what I’ve seen in my first little look around, what is coming out of this new community - the upgrade in content!

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a confession to make. I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to writing,my art, woodwork, the dishes, origami, everything. I’m a perfectionist. Let’s just leave it at that. And in that vein, I suffer, physically, with pain, in my brain, when it comes to the inexplicable amount of crap that is produced on a daily basis and shared with the world. So I’m really excited by Steemit because, from what I’ve seen so far, the very fact that there is a real reason to produce great content, an actual legitimate incentive, seems to be driving that exact eventuality. And it's glorious. Glooorrriousssss.

So. You know my name, that I’m not a chicken, or a robot incidentally, or a robot chicken, and I try very hard in life not to be an idiot or boring or a bitch for no reason. I’m a 38 year old mother of one over energetic, almost 6 year old boy and wife to @swans05. I live in inner suburban Victoria in the Great Southern Land.

I have 2 black dogs and one grey cat. I collect hobbies for a hobby. I also collect illnesses. The latter isn’t so much of a hobby as an unfortunate fact of life. I don’t really ‘do’ anything so to speak, but at the same time, I do many things. What I mean by that is that I’m on a disability pension and I don’t work a day job, but I have so many interests and hobbies I’m always working on something, albeit slowly.

In a former life I worked in the financial services industry, until I realised how much I hated it and became a personal trainer. I owned my own business with my husband and was an extremely fit, strong and healthy ball of muscle and energy who could deadlift more than my own body weight.

Then late in my pregnancy, I became sick with a rare illness called Guillian Barre Syndrome. You probably haven’t heard of it. Basically it happens when your immune system kicks in, as normal, to fight an illness like a cold or infection, but then it goes all Hulk-Smash on your arse and doesn’t stop.

The next thing you know, you’re paralyzed, unable to breath, have pain in your lower back and legs unlike anything you could imagine and having a tantrum in the emergency room because you only gave birth 5 days ago and after having already spent the last 2 months in hospital (due to the horrendous pregnancy), you refuse to be admitted again and really just want to take your bat and ball, (read: newborn), and go home.

My tantrum, which was quite ferocious in my mind, but actually mild in reality due to the morphine and the paralysis and inability to breath and all, was nonetheless met with the response by some very patient medical staff that my body was shutting down and if I went home I would be dead in 2 days.

The strain of GBS that I have gave me a facial palsy and the loss of feeling in both my hands and feet. It also comes with built in chronic fatigue and chronic pain. You get totally jipped on the cup holders...which is poor by the universe as far as I’m concerned because you can't use your hands! Anyway, I spent the next 4 months in hospital and then rehab, first stopping the attack on my body, then learning to move and “walk”, to use my hands and eat again.

Meanwhile my husband kept our business afloat by the sheer force of will and thanks to some amazingly loyal clients we had, and our family and friends helped us where they could with looking after our baby. I spent as much time with him as I was able to and grabbed tightly onto the little rays of sunshine and happiness that filled the room when I was with him and kept me from losing my mind.

By the time I left rehab I was able to shuffle along with the use of the pram and my husbands arm at an excruciatingly slow pace for about 30 feet before exhaustion took over and I conked out. My days fit in very well with the baby actually because we would both be awake for short periods with very little activity and then fall asleep for another 4 hours or so.

We are now almost 6 years down the line. Some days you wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with me if you weren’t looking for it. Other days I walk slowly and with a walking stick. Other days I don’t get out of bed at all. I still have chronic pain and chronic fatigue, dodgy mobility and some pretty exciting depression but considering I still have all my limbs and my brain function, and despite everything that I had a completely healthy baby, I’d say all in all that I was lucky. You learn the true value of small handfuls of luck when you are put in rehab for months and realise you can still talk and think clearly and have all your arms and legs.

GBS issues aside, I’m also a Type 1 Diabetic which is why I’ve never fully recovered from the GBS, and I’ve just had surgery on my left eye which recently haemorrhaged and created scar tissue that has been rapidly sending me blind, which is why I’m hiding my hideousness in my Steemit photo. In case you’re thinking it, you are correct, I do not do things by halves.

Back to the hobbies bit though. So as I said I collect chronic illnesses AND hobbies. This post is already far too long so I’ll try to keep this short. That said, I’m also trying to be myself and this is how I write so, I appreciate you sticking around.
One of the things I’ve recently discovered about myself is that there is a name for people like me, and...no, it's not hypochondriac. I’m talking about my lack of ability to focus on one thing. Let me explain.

When I said in the title that I’m not a specialist, what I mean by that is that I have so many hobbies and interests that I have never been able to answer the question of ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I’ve spent my life thinking there was something wrong with the way I do things. I’ve been associated with words like unfocused, quitter, non-committal, flippant, self-sabotaging and probably others that people are too polite to say out loud. Then, very recently, my bestie sent me a link to a TEDbend talk which was able to sum me up in one perfect word. Multipotentialite.

You can find the talk and more on everything to do with being a Multipotentialite here. I'll talk more about the founder of this site and all she does in another post. (http://puttylike.com)

I am a Multipotentialite. A who the what now, you ask? In a nut shell, a multipotentialite is someone who cannot possibly be explained in any way that fits into nutshell. We collect interest and hobbies like they were those pokemon thingis that have something to do with a smart phone and that I don’t understand. We weren’t able to answer the question of what we wanted to do with our lives because the idea of picking only one thing goes against every grain in our body. We pick up new interests constantly, varying in theme from writing to knitting, to woodworking to kayaking, to painting, to copywriting, to learning all the names and purposes of different drill bits to all the names of the constellations.

There are a few other words which we may go by, such as multipods, polymaths, renaissance persons, and scanners. We generally learn quickly, adapt well to change and new environments, we think outside the square a bit and may be innovative. So this recent discovery has put me on, another, new path to discover more about this type of personality and how others are making a successful living by embracing this trait in themselves.

Which brings me to the end of my farrrrrrr to long introduction post, (and I’m sorry and thank you for sticking with me because I really did try to shorten it many times but I have the writers curse of too many words). I love to learn about new things and I’m excited by Steemit for the potential to explore a brand new type of community and finding new things to learn about and hopefully providing content that is real and honest and interesting and that I really hope you’re able to find value in. I hope to find others who have multiple interests and/or multiple illnesses and who struggle with the same things I struggle with and rejoice in the same things I find joy in. I hope to connect with a community of people who love to write and love to learn and who sometimes want to tell people that that we’re not buying into their BS. People who have simple and honest values that are more in line with ‘Be kind’, and less in line with ‘I will make sure my shoes and my handbag do not clash when I drop my kids off at school in the morning’.

My values are pretty simple. Be real. Be honest. Learn new things. Don’t be an arsehat. I’d love to hear what yours are.