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| Amy-Charlotte Devitz and her sweet service pup, Fish |
From The Bendy Biologist
by Amy-Charlotte Devitz, a University of Michigan Frontiers Master’s Student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
It took me a long time to decide if I wanted to start blogging again.
I had a blog several years ago but it was heavily centered on an old project that has since died out, and I have been very unsure about starting a new one. I’ve spent the last ten months going back and forth, talking myself in and out of doing it, and starting pages only to delete them before I could publish them. I’m not really sure what has held me back for so long. Fear of being judged or shamed for expressing my opinion on touchy subjects? Concern that my posts may be seen as attention or pity-seeking? Self-doubt? A lack of confidence? Honestly, probably all of these. It took me a long time to get here. Beyond this uncertainty, however, I find myself feeling excited. Excited to share stories and discuss things that I care deeply about, excited to connect with people who are facing similar challenges and excited to have a place to channel my thoughts and a voice to promote positive change.
I’ll talk more about the goals of this blog later, but let’s start from the beginning with the blog name and my identity in the Twitter-verse – The Bendy Biologist. The months I spent deliberating the start of this blog I also spent wrestling with what to call it. I wanted something that would help to define my identity, but would also leave people curious and wanting to know more. The term “bendy” refers to my primary diagnosis; a rare connective tissue disease called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.