David McElroy

The cats pretend they’re not excited, but I know better. They’re just as happy as I am that Lucy came to live with us, so they’re celebrating — in their own dignified feline ways — the second anniversary of Lucy joining us.

When she came to live with us, Lucy was terrified of the world. The people who had rescued her and worked with her before she came to us declared that she would always be a “special-needs doggie” who wouldn’t do very well and would probably never warm up to people.

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Women who have had children have been the best source of perspective for me about the pain that comes from gallbladder problems. Every woman I’ve talked with who has had children and also had gallstones that led to a cholecystectomy tell me that their gallbladder problems were 10 times more painful than any childbirth.

I’ll never be able to make that comparison myself — thank goodness — but I can definitely say that the pain I experienced off and on last month was the most intense pain I’ve ever felt. I’m glad it’s behind me.

Since I’ve gotten several emails over the last week asking how I’m recovering, I’ll give a brief update about how things are going.

It’s been 17 days since surgery and I’m not far from declaring myself back to normal. There was a lot of pain for the first week, but I had pain medication to help me deal with the issues. Believe it or not, one of the worst aspects of the recovery was being unable to sleep on my stomach for about 10 or 12 days. Since that’s primarily how I sleep, it was difficult to get rest on my back.

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The only reason I signed up for Facebook 10 years ago was to please a girlfriend. I didn’t see much point in it, but I signed up anyway since she asked me to. At this point, I wonder if that was my first social media mistake.

I was online far earlier than most people. In the early ’90s, I was active on CompuServe message boards. I quickly became a discussion leader and then “SysOp” — which originally meant “system operator” but eventually just came to represent the managers of a forum.

I liked some of the people I met online and I loathed others. At times, I got involved in horrible flame wars that embarrass me now. Years after that, I was quite involved for awhile on a message board for independent filmmakers. Again, it was a mixed bag. A lot of the people were insufferable, but I’m also still friends with some of those people and I ended up meeting some of them in real life.

As social media services have become more and more important in modern life, I find that it’s become a more and more toxic environment. I’m seriously questioning whether I still want to be part of social media.

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