Day One

 This is day one of the new blog.  I have missed writing my blog but I have not missed the troll and have felt very free.   He can be anonymous some places, choose names that suit him on the day,  and in others, like on my blog where only Google accounts are allowed,  he uses a Google account name which gives nothing away, no profile,  (except to some of us that know him and his nasty notes that we cannot be bothered with). 

This is my third blog in 15 years.  

I have not missed being accused of being an anonymous commenter either which was hurtful and untrue.  I was unable to cope with the stress of these accusations and twisted comments along with the stress of writing the dissertation so the blog and blog following stopped.  It was a very good decision.  (Whether coming back is a good decision remains to be seen).

The break away from blogging has helped me to put blogging into some perspective.  I do not let it dominate my life anymore and the spell was broken.  That gap was important.   Thank goodness.  I have also understood that blog friends are not like my real friends in real life who I see and talk to face to face and with whom I have developed long term relationships over years and years of contact.  This realisation is my biggest breakthrough.   I don't know why it took me so long.  I am open and honest.  I always assumed that others are.  They are not.  A number of things happened during my last few months of the previous blog which caused me a lot of stress.   A lot of total surprise discoveries about people I thought I knew and liked.  Well two people anyway.  I had made a mistake.  I turned on Comment Moderation for a while but I don't like moderation and eventually I turned the whole blog off and deleted it for the sake of my own wellbeing.  

Writing my dissertation is now in the past but I still await the result.   Looking back on the writing of the dissertation now feels like looking back on someone else.  I can hardly believe that I really did it.  It involved the creative part which was writing a collection of 20 to 25 poems and then a critical commentary part.  I worked very hard and was pleased with the finished piece of work.  It is now being double marked and then moderated by an external examiner.  I don't know what they will think of my work but I was pleased with it.  I am reconciling myself to any outcome as there must be some element of subjectivity that comes into the marking and this is unavoidable with creative work.  Most days I forget all about it. 

Since writing the dissertation I have had a few medical issues which have caused me a lot of stress.  GPs see it everyday but the person who rarely goes to the doctors such as myself can find minor things getting out of all proportion and alarming.  There is no gentle touch from the doctors now, that is a thing of the past, long gone. 

Last night I settled to watch the England football match and it was a pleasant surprise to see the new England under Tuchel and to see the team moving around and playing proper football, not being the old pedestrian game as it was under Southgate.  

Last night grounded me properly to stop worrying about the doctors and the way they run their surgeries today, to forget about the past and accept that we now live in a different world.

Weaver died one year ago this month.  I miss her emails and her friendship which never wavered. Weaver was as close to a real live friend that I ever had in blogging.  The troll even tried to tear this apart too at one point which was laughable.

I still go to the cinema once or twice a week and see my Thai lady for massage once a month and sometimes more. She is currently in Thailand where her family has been badly affected by the floods and her family home and farm have been washed away and roads gone.  She sent me the photos of the region sent to her by one of her sisters.  It is devastating.   She was not sure how she was going to reach them but was going anyway because her mother has only weeks to live as in the final days of cancer to add to the family stress.  It is a sad time for this little Thai lady and she keeps in touch with me via Whats App.  She has not yet reached the farm.  (Later, she tells me she is now with her sisters and they have lost everything).

I don't know how often I will blog or if I will keep it up at all but I have enjoyed writing this morning.