This is a thing that people ask me about, from time to time. It’s been over a year since my Medical Event, and people ask out of kindness, curiosity or in a bid to calculate when they’ll finally get rid of me.

I have wildly fluctuating blood pressure and what my doctors are pleased to call “hypertensive stress.” This means that my body’s reaction to the slightest stress or anxiety is to ramp it up to paralysing levels and then try to make me die. Not actually joking about that last part. My body has tried to die twice now.

“You’re young to have hypertensive stress,” the doctor said. “I’ve been a freelance writer for more than twenty years,” I said.

It’s hard to avoid stress as a freelance writer, even at my advanced age. But avoiding stress is, frankly, the only thing that’s going to keep me alive.

Chances are that you’re reading this via a link from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Tumblr. Those posts are automated. I won’t see your responses, I’m afraid. Aside from a couple of work-related events, I’m going to be off the public internet until next year. I may not see your emails to my public Gmail account for days.

My days are built for peace now. They’re private, and often very isolated, but they are soft and simple. They’re slow, most of the time, and full of music and words and flavours. So that, when the work madness does hit - and the last few months - hell, the last few days! - have been insane - when it hits, I’m in a better place to manage it. And the work madness is the only madness I live with now. Trust me, that’s enough.

So, yeah, you may not see me around as much, and I’ll move away from anything that looks stressy or toxic, but, if you were wondering: I’m doing fine.

And I have a large glass of red wine every day. For the resveratrol. Seriously.