I have learned a lot from my English 1117 class. And I have accomplished so much that I never thought I would be able to do. But I did it and it was not easy but now that this is my final post I get to look back and reflect on how I did.

In my Seeing Ourselves through technology chapter 2 notes I feel that I did ok. On the other hand, I feel like I repeated myself a lot. I wish I would have went in deeper about the chapter. I feel that there was a lot more that I could have talked about.

• Another way to think about how filters work are how some people can go about when making or creating a baby journal. As the parent or parents would log information such as the baby’s first step or first word the digital journal would filter through all of the recordings and tracked information and put them all in order. Going forward they start to talk more about how filters have impacted our selfies and or photographs we take and post. The author states that there is a mass variety of people who tend to use filters when taking a photo.

When I was writing or blogging about my own personal experiences it felt like it was a lot easier to flow with. I think that I did a very good job at going into detail and trying to explain the journey that I once went through. I feel that if another person were to go and read my blog post Enough was Enough or Was it that they would get a good feel from where I was coming from and what I was trying to present to them.

• And I had remembered telling myself that I would never resort to putting a needle in my arm. Well they had the dope and I didn’t have a pipe so you can only guess what I did. The moment before this happened, I remember my friend looking at me and saying, ” if you thought your life was hell before you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into”. But like an addict I didn’t care and instantly I was in love and it scared the crap out of me. It lasted about a week or two and I came down really hard and I called treatment up and said that they needed to get me in, or I was going to die. Within 3 days I was on my way to treatment and soon my daughter would be reunited with me

I think I was more confident in my post when it came to the main idea. I felt like I was able to get the point across and do it in a brief paragraph or two. Annoying ways people use sources notes being one of them.

• Main idea- In this reading it reflects on the comprehension of reading an article or book that is unorganized or there is a lot of words that are out-of-place. And how we can over come the obstacle of being a reader and a writer and avoid these annoying sources. The article gives a variety of examples to try to understand why the writing or sources are so annoying. The author explains ways to fix problems like these when writing while still getting the point that you were trying to make without it being extremely confusing. And also think about different ways to communicate to your reader or audience where they have a better understanding.

 

I would have to say my proudest moment about this blogging idea was my very first post. I got to introduce myself and simply explain what I was going to be blogging about. I say this was one of my proudest moments because at the beginning when we were setting up our blogs I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do my blog on. But in the end I figured it out and we are now here.

About me

• This started by telling you a little about myself and kind of give you an idea to what you will be seeing in my future post. As I said before my name is Amanda and I live in Minnesota in a town called Owatonna. I have lived pretty much my whole life either in Owatonna or in surrounding towns that are with in county. I am 27 years old and am about to turn 28 this November! I have two beautiful little girls. My oldest just turned eight and her name is Kirra and my youngest will be four years old coming up here the beginning of next year and her name is Mila. I also currently just started my first semester of college and at this time my major is a veterinarian technician. You can say I have a soft spot for animals! But I also have a caring heart that goes out to addicts and recovery. As for myself I am a recovering addict. And my mission is to carry the message that no addicts never needs to be alone or left behind. There is a way out! And its called life after addiction!

 

Before this English class I didn’t even know how to blog or what blogging even was. I have learned so much from blogging. I have learned that I can have an opinion and help others by sharing my blog with others. I also feel like my writing skills have improved over the course. I might continue my blogging but I am not quite sure about it yet. I do intend on keeping my blog up and running for others to look at if they want to and hopefully some of my stories will inspire others.

 

In my last post I had talked about the beginning of my meth addiction, so I wanted to touch base on not only my use but also my recovery and how I got clean and how I stay clean till this day. So, it’s about April of 2013 and I was all over the place. I didn’t have a place to call home and to be honest I didn’t really stay in one place long enough to even try to have a home let alone to sleep. At this time, I had been running around with one of my best friends in a car that didn’t belong to either of us. After a couple weeks went by, I had been driving the car to go pick him up and, on my way, I had gotten pulled over. Right away I knew I was going to go to jail because for one I was going to pick him up because he was running from the police and also because I was on felony probation and had no license and was higher than a kite. I went into jail on a probation violation and sat for about 5 days and then was released. I was told by the judge that I had to get a rule 25 done due to the fact that I was driving under the influence. So, weeks went by and I got my rule 25 done and was just waiting for a call. I continued to get high and they had called me one day in May 2013 and said they had a bed open and I hung the phone up on them. I was not ready to go to treatment. It wasn’t till about 2 weeks later I had ended up with a couple of my friends and the way they used dope was not the way I did. And I had remembered telling myself that I would never resort to putting a needle in my arm. Well they had the dope and I didn’t have a pipe so you can only guess what I did. The moment before this happened, I remember my friend looking at me and saying, ” if you thought your life was hell before you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into”. But like an addict I didn’t care and instantly I was in love and it scared the crap out of me. It lasted about a week or two and I came down really hard and I called treatment up and said that they needed to get me in, or I was going to die. Within 3 days I was on my way to treatment and soon my daughter would be reunited with me. I lasted 60 days in treatment and then got kicked out and tried staying sober. After a week of being out I went right back. I had then ended up in an extremely unhealthy relationship that revolved around drugs and getting high all the time. That then lasted for about 8 months. During those eight months I tried to get clean. But I would always go back. I remember just praying to god for a way out because I didn’t see a way out. Well on June 2, 2014 I found out that I was pregnant with my second daughter. I was that type of person that when I was pregnant I didn’t even smoke cigarettes. So, I got clean and I began going to Narcotics Anonymous and still I go till this day. I do truly believe that god had answered my prayers even if it was with me getting pregnant. Because for me that was a way out and I still have bad days and still think about using. But I also remember where I was at and see where I am today, and I never want to go back to that, and my kids need me. If it wasn’t for the support through friends that had gotten clean around the same time I did or even the people I have met along my recovery journey I dont know where I would be. So, if you are an addict and dont think there is a way out. Believe me there is one just reach out. We are here waiting for you.

After going through the different blogs and trying to find the ones that related to me the most I had finally found one. The blog that I am talking about is called The Path To Addiction. I like that in his introduction post he first starts right off by explaining the contents of his blog. He talks about his struggles and his journey. As he states in his introduction he tells you if you want to know the whole story to scroll down and make your way up and that is what I did. As I start reading his very first post I could tell right off the bat that he was a very up front and honest person. He talks about things that he says he was ashamed of, but also that he was saying these things so that it could possibly help a struggling addict. He refers the word “chems” to drugs and I have never heard of that but the way he explained it was that people use that word to make it seem like using drugs aka “chems” is not such a bad thing. His path was no easy one. Well if you are an addict really no ones path is easy. He talks about all the drugs that he had done and talks about there effects it took on his life. Each post going further he talks about his journey to recovery and all the hardships he went through and some worse then others but he didn’t give up. Also along the way he gives helpful tips for a person that might be struggling. This blog is amazing! I personally pulled a lot of good useful tips I could use myself going forward from this blog. If you are reading this post I encourage you to take a look at this blog. It might also help you also and show you that recovery is possible and you can live the life you always dreamed of.

Have you ever been In a place or situation where you had to question the insanity of on going events that you surrounded yourself by? Well I have and you are probably wondering what in the hell am I talking about. Well I know that I have touched base here and there about my addiction and some of my use. But in this post I am going to take you through a brief tour of my early beginning days of dancing with the devil. Now you may be wondering what in the world is she talking about ” dancing with the devil”. Well through out my life I have had many different demons that came in all different forms. But when I talk about the devil, I am talking about one specific thing and that is methamphetamines.  When I was about 16 years old was the first time that I had been introduced to meth and at this time it was a one time thing and as crazy as it might sound to other meth addicts I had a bad experience and thought that was the end of any type of dope days. Well I was wrong! See when I turned about 22 years old I went into this big depression. I had a whole lot going on and I didn’t want to feel my emotions and it had so happened that one of my best friends was going through a similar situation. So what did we do we both decided to get really messed up on all sorts of stuff. Well one day we were at some house and the next thing I know a light bulb ” also known for something to smoke meth out of” was getting passed around. At this point I was so far gone from all the other stuff and thought why not and that was my first true dance with the devil and I was in love. I didn’t have to feel, I felt like I was on top of the world and that I could do pretty much anything. Well that didn’t last to long. Within weeks my life had shattered and I was too high to even see it. I was convinced that I could live that life. I also had a daughter at the time and as sad and horrible as it sounds that didn’t stop me from using. Instead a close family member that would watch her for me on the weekends stepped up and asked if I would allow her to stay with them until I got my life in order. At that time these people didn’t know that I was a full blown meth addict. They just knew that my life needed some touching up and they were willing to help me out by taking my daughter while I was suppose to get my life straight or stable. All that did for me was gave me more freedom which meant more drugs. And when more dope came more chaos and hell came along with it. I found myself in places that I never ever thought I would end up. And that was only the beginning!

Dad Hard At Work–  When I start to read Tylers blog, I see a lot of attention getters. Which is very important in my eyes, it made me want to keep reading to see what happened next. The first blog “Unlawful pull over” was the one I chose to read first got my attention, well basically because I can relate to a lot that he talks about. From bogus charges that leave you to wonder what book they pulled that existing charge out of. I may have not dealt with the same kind of charges but being at such a young age and being thrown in jail and not knowing when your gonna get out or if you are going to get out at all is probably one of the worst feelings ever!

IKARS SITE – When I first got to Ikar’s page the first thing I noticed was the layout and color that caught my eye. In Ikar’s blog post Seeing ourselves through technology chapter Three reflection, I really liked the connections that were being made. He talks about how social media effects our personal lives. And I totally agree with him. Sometimes that goes unnoticed. And like he stated people based their personalities off of the stuff that they post. I feel that he made many good points through out his post and that anyone reading it would be able to relate and apply his same thoughts to their lives.

Yslamblog – First off I have to start this off by saying that Yslam’s blog is one of my favorites. His humor is off the charts and with that being said who wouldn’t be drawn into reading his blogs! He is very original with his post and this is something that I would love to apply to my blog. Even when he is blogging about something he has read and is reflecting on it, he finds a way to make it his own and its awesome.

Well by now I’m sure that you guys have picked up on the fact that I’m an addict. And well to be frankly clear I like all types of drugs. But the one that I’m going to touch on is one that is commonly miss used and is very addicting. So lets rewind time quick, I knew about when I hit the age 15 that I had a problem. I wasn’t totally sure what the problem was, but that I like to use things like clouded my mind and made me not feel all the bad emotions I didn’t want to feel. Now at that age I was smoking weed, popping cough and cold over the counter medications, drinking all the time, inhalants and I had did meth once at that time. So I was kind of like that person that what ever came my way Id try it and sometimes do it more then once. When I was 18 I got pregnant with my first daughter.  I stayed clear and sober the whole pregnancy. I was due Sept 1st 2010. Well my daughter wanted out earlier then that, so on August 19th my water broke and I went into an emergency C-section. This was the point in time where I had my first taste for pain medication. I can remember it like it was yesterday and I loved it. I stayed in the hospital for a couple days and got sent home with a couple pain pills just for discomfort. But it didn’t end there. At this point I felt like I found my drug of choice. So I began to doctor shop. I would get scripts of prescriptions for all types of opiates and they would only give 30 tabs at a time and I would have that gone within 24 hrs. So then I would resort to emergency rooms, and I’m not talking about just one or two different emergency rooms. I traveled pretty much all over southern Minnesota to different emergency rooms. You may ask why I did this. Well my theory was when they would start to catch on that I wasn’t really in there emergency room for serious matters, they wouldn’t give me any pain medication. So I would just move on too the next emergency room. And over time I preferred to go to emergency rooms because they would administer the medication through and IV and that feeling was like no other. Sooner or later my insurance company caught up with me and figured out what I was doing and they red flagged me and put me on a restriction. I am allowed to only get prescriptions from one doctor, one pharmacy and I can only go to one hospital. And now that I think about all of this and what I just shared with you, that was just a short version of went on. But even in that short version, you can see how fast and easy It was to get hooked on opiates. And how easy it is to get them even to this day.

This week I have decided to follow a blog by a girl named Dani. The blog post that stuck out to me the most was one of her posts she called “How Street Drugs Have Affected My Life From Personal Experience to Being Victimized By Other’s Addiction”. As I read her blog post I found it really almost emotional, as in I felt like I could feel the pain she went through. Dani starts out talking about drugs and how its not something that is talk about enough. She then goes on to tell a little bit of her personal experience. This girl didn’t even have a chance from birth. As a kid she was bounced around facilities and was put on so many medications that all she felt was numb. As she goes on she points out a very important part of her experience with the numbing and the medication. She expresses that even though these medications were prescribed they gave her a sense of escape and a way not to feel. She did have several health conditions that cause pain and when there is pain and its a health condition, there comes pain medication. She expresses how she very quickly pretty much fell in love with the feeling that the pain medication gave her. It took away the physical pain but it also took away the emotional mental pain. But like  all good things, they always come to an end, she was strip from the pain medication. Many may not know but when you are stripped from a opiate medication just like that there are a lot of painful withdrawals that come along with it that are extremely hard to deal with. Sooner or later a person can only take so much and they reach out to the streets so they dont need to be sick anymore and this is what Dani did.

After I read some peoples blogs about addiction it made me think about my own and how I can help and inspire people. But at the same time also be able to connect of a level where there is an understanding that just because I am not in active use any more. Does not mean I am any better then the person that has on 24 hours clean or a person that is in active addiction. At the end of the day we are all human and we all make mistakes. Its our own choice if we want to change. Sometime it takes someone to hit rock bottom to want to turn their life around and others it may be jail and sad to say for some it might be death. See addiction is not like a normal disease, there is not cure. The only cure is to change you life around, things like changing the people you hangout with or the places that you use to hang out at. Everyday you wake up you have a choice if you want to stay clean or to go get high. Now there is way more to recovery then to just stop using drugs. Trust me if it were that easy I probably would not be blogging about all of this right now. I know from being an addict myself that when we were using we felt very alone. So when we think about getting clean and sober we often feel the same way but in retrospect thought to ourselves that it wouldn’t be that way. But what it all comes down to is that your not alone there are millions of people out there that are just like us. We all just have a different story. But we all can come together and feel united. Because at some point in our live we all felt the death grip of addiction.

This week I decided to follow and mentor for a blog called Addiction.  What caught my eye first when I looked at this blog, was the picture that popped up of several different pill capsules. These pill capsule had figures of people who all seem to look in pain or struggling and I really related to that. As I began to start reading I felt like these were my own thoughts that this blogger had out into words. They were so valid and true. Talking about how at the beginning of our use or addiction things seemed so beautiful. But only because we no longer had to feel the pain that we once had. The drugs covered them for us for a little bit and as the blogger said in brief words that all the pain does come back and that the beautiful part of using you experienced does fade away and then you are left with an addiction and all the issues you had before you decided to pick up that drug. Also in the same post I like how he says that you can change, you can live a different life and not use. But it never truly goes away, and that those triggers and thoughts will be there. As I scroll down his blog I see different post about mental health and depression and different ways to cope. These are all major things to look at when you are trying to figure out the reason you went to drugs in the first place. And also the factor that your mental health takes on you when you are in active addiction and also in recovery. These are many factors that play into both life styles and ways to cope. Like I and many other have heard over time “life on life’s terms” is one of the hardest things to deal with day by day when in recovery. Not because we are incapable of doing it but because that’s not how we train ourselves to function. We took the easiest, but hardest path in life. And now we recover.

 

Main idea- In this reading it reflects on the comprehension of reading an article or book that is unorganized or there is a lot of words that are out-of-place. And how we can over come the obstacle of being a reader and a writer and avoid these annoying sources. The article gives a variety of examples to try to understand why the writing or sources are so annoying. The author explains ways to fix problems like these when writing while still getting the point that you were trying to make without it being extremely confusing. And also think about different ways to communicate to your reader or audience where they have a better understanding.

Key Terms-

• Sources- a place, person, or thing from which something comes or can be obtained.
• Illogical- lacking sense or clear, sound reasoning.
• Links- a code or instruction which connects one part of a program or an element in a list to another
• Rhetoric- language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content.

Commentary-  I agree with the author when it comes to most of the things he pointed out in this reading. I myself got annoyed just by reading this article. There was to much jumping around and the examples pretty much explain themselves. Trying to stay connected with the reading as far as the examples went was very frustrating. Many time I just wanted to just stop reading because I felt like I had to read it ten times before to try to even get some kind of feeling from the writer in his examples. At times I would stop and just kind of look over it but not totally read the example. After doing that a couple of times I realized the point the author was trying to make.

Making Connections- I can relate to the way the author describes how it’s so easy to just get annoyed and not even finish what was provided to read. In return I myself tend to pick up books and put them down a lot faster when there is not a lot of organization in the book I may be reading. Although thinking about this to myself now makes me also think and analyze the way I might write a paper. Making that connection with the reading is very important, whether you are the reader or the writer. To me I think its ok to add a little spunk to your writing. As well as to make the readers think. I have struggled with this myself. You want to grab the audience’s attention, but how do you do that without getting so sidetracked that what you are trying to tell the readers doesn’t come out in the way that it was ment to be interpreted. When I write for my writing class, especially on my blog I do a lot of rereading and revising. I have to hear it read out loud so that I know that it make sense and that others as well will understand what I am writing and not get annoyed by it.