by Carolyn Thomas ♥ @HeartSisters
Blogging sometimes feels like a cross between therapy (writing about what I’m obsessing over at any given moment) and planning a classroom lecture (getting emerging research, current journal references and my own thoughts in order about very specific subjects – mostly women’s heart disease and the experience of becoming a patient).
But if you’ve been here before, you already know that one of my favourite parts of noodling away on this blog is the interactive response from my readers. This is always a two-way street. Your comments make me laugh, they make me cry, they almost always make me want to respond. My favourite kind of reader comment: “I thought I was the only one who felt this way. . . “
But what some of you may not know is that sometimes, reader comments can also make me feel tired and cranky. Continue reading “Failure to inspire”
Well, we’re into the New Year now. For some of us, that’s almost enough time to notice small cracks beginning to appear in the boldly announced resolutions made in the midst of all those Christmas excess guilt pangs. When I was one of the run leaders at our local Y Marathon Clinic during the last century, we’d often hear such resolutions from our first-timers at this time of year, something like “This is the year I’m finally going to quit smoking, lose 20 pounds and run a marathon!”
This year, a “Best Of” list with a twist. Usually my behind-the-scenes WordPress stats page tracks total views so far for each article I write. That kind of all-time list, however, simply favours the oldest articles, most of which have the advantage of attracting readers over and over, year after year ever since I launched Heart Sisters back in 2009. So this year, here are your Top 10 most-read of the dozens of articles I wrote in 2018: 
Oh, sure, you can do last-minute Christmas shopping for another scented candle, or a lovely piece of pottery that might end up on the yard sale table together some day. Or you can decide to shop for a truly useful gift for the woman in your life who has been diagnosed with heart disease. Here’s why, in my admittedly biased view, that gift should be 
Heart Sisters 