Founded 1996

 

***** 

 

FLAKEHQ ON TERMINAL HIATUS

 After 15 years of laughing, crying and, yes, sometimes celebrating life with psoriasis, FlakeHQ is going to sleep for the next 16 months and then 'going dark' at the end of April, 2012.

This December, 2010 update, contains one new email exchange, a new and final poem from Sherry Sheehan, FlakeHQ's Poet Laureate, and a brief and final edition of Ed's Briefing.

Keep visiting PsorChat. The dialogue continues there!

Ed Dewke, December, 2010

 

Since 1996, FlakeHQ.com has been collecting and presenting the stories told by people with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. A part of FlakeHQ is an on-going dialogue conducted through email; other parts are collections of poetry, short stories and articles written by and for people who have psoriasis. You will also find interviews with interesting people within the psoriasis community, a list of things psoriatics wish others would not say to and about them, and some funny language that psoriatics (a.k.a. 'flakers') have coined to reference their condition. Like other web sites, we also have a list of "other places" on the web that have interesting things to say about living with psoriasis. And we have an e-book: Flake: Confessions of a Psoriatic (2nd Edition). Links to all of these things are located on the left.

FlakeHQ is a good place to spend time if you want to understand what it's like to live with psoriasis. You will laugh and cry, get angry and compassionate. You will appreciate the humanity that speaks here. It proves our disease, in spite of its painful ways, does not define us.

If you've discovered us through a web-wide search on a key word, use the Search box in the upper right corner of many pages here to narrow your search within FlakeHQ. Also, there are 14 years of archived correspondence listed by primary topic. Get there via the "archives" link on the left.

Welcome, and thank you for visiting.

 

ed's briefing

December, 2010

Briefings Archive Directory
Blog Archive Directory

Last Update of FlakeHQ

I created this site in the Fall of 1996 in conjunction with the publication of Flake: Confessions of a Psoriatic. At the time my principal reason for creating the site was to allow online sales of the book. In spite of my initially selfish motives, I did always harbor some hope that the site would turn into an online community. It took about 10 years for the online community to reach its peak at about 18,000 unique visitors per month. But long before that peak I realized Flake: Confessions sales were considerably less consequential -- and less important to me, personally -- than the fun dialogue and learning that I and others experienced through the site.

Fourteen years is a long life for a web site born in the 20th Century, managed by one person, and never "remade" to reflect evolving trends and tastes in web sites at large. In 1996, most people still accessed the Internet via low-speed dial-up services -- that eliminated most rich media. We hadn't yet decided the Web was all about multimedia. Today the web really is all about multimedia.

I know that producing a multimedia site is a demanding task. The career change I negotiated in August and September and the position I was given in October is oversight over a large (college) web site. My office is across the hall from a video studio, down the hall from a photographer's pool, and my work on the web site is considered a part of college "public relations." So far I'm having a great, heady time. I'm engaged in the kind of work I love, now sporting rich media I've long dreamed about. But I can't manage that new job and continue producing FlakeHQ.

Though there will be no more updates, I will keep the lights on at the site for another year -- through April, 2012. Interviewees, article and creative writers may want to download their pieces on the site. Others may want to use the search feature to find and download correspondence on issues of current or historical interest. Also, I'm pushing for a downloadable version of the Sheehan psoriasis poetry collection. There is nothing else like it -- anywhere. Stay tuned for more about this -- or, send me an email and I'll put you on a list to get further word directly by email when/if the collection becomes available as a single download.

Though I won't be publishing mail at FlakeHQ after this update, I can still be reached by email using any of the "send mail" links on FlakeHQ pages. After April 2012 that address won't work (it gets turned off at the same time the site goes dark).

I plan to remain a part of the dialogue at PsorChat and become more active on and through my Facebook page.

I started to list all the people who have made FlakeHQ better than it could have been without their time and attention, but the list got immediately out-of-hand. You know who you are and I hope we'll stay in touch.

To all I conclude: This has truly been my pleasure and I thank each and every one of you for sharing it with me. -Ed
 

New In Flaker Creativity

Our prolific, dependable and always inspiring poet laureate makes her last contribution to FlakeHQ this month: If I Were is, at first read, a typical human reflection on one's chronic misfortune; i.e., why do I have to flake like this? In our mind we assign our condition to several inanimate things around us -- a tree, a house, a road, snow -- all things which, when their surfaces are scarred, seem to get fixed. But the reader, if not the author, asks the question: Which, then is the natural state of things: flawless or flawed?

Check out the complete Sherry Sheehan FlakeHQ Collection starting here. Also, send me an email if you would like to receive an email notifying you when Sherry's collection is available as a single downloadable (and printable) PDF.

The Last Published Email Exchange

My original intention was not to post any email in this final update of FlakeHQ, but when Sadie's Guilty Conscience piece came in last month I knew it had to be "the closer" for FlakeHQ's large body of correspondence (almost 1400 correspondence exchanges in the Archives).

©2010 FlakeHQ, Inc.