Stuff I wasn’t going to talk about here

I think blogging is like all kinds of writing in that one has ebbs and flows – of ideas, of energy, of motivation.

If I were to take my own advice I’d be sure to blog at least once a week in order not to lose readers or to keep my blog coming up in searches. I’d be making sure my posts were subtly laced with key words, I’d be finding my own spin on topical issues, always finishing blog posts with calls to action to encourage comments, always including AT LEAST one external link in every post. Actually that last one is a ‘rule’ I do think is important, because what are blogs if not part of the great linked-up thing that is the blogosphere & its grandad the internet? (Unless of course you are the phenomenon that is Seth Godin.)

As it is, I’m pretty relaxed about all that. My relationship with the online world has mellowed since those heady late-nineties when even eating and sleeping seemed an inconvenient distraction from being on the computer. And every now and then you get a wake up call that puts just about everything into perspective.

If I’ve temporarily gone off the boil with blogging recently it’s partly the fact that it’s The Summer, which as fellow Brits know is short lived and to be enjoyed while it’s here.  It’s also the first summer in our new home, with the novelty of a garden which needs weeding, nurturing, planning and sitting out in. Then the EU Referendum delivered the biggest shock I’ve experienced in my lifetime, and I worry more about the future now. I’ve also had breast cancer. I say that in the past tense, as I’ve been reassured by all the wonderful people who treated me that the rogue cells have gone. Only when I knew the prognosis did I start telling some people, on an individual basis, but not everyone. I didn’t want to make it a thing of it on social media or on my blog, I didn’t want a stream of sympathy or advice or sad face emojis, however well meant. Oddly, (given the ‘confessional’ nature of this blog at times) that wasn’t for me. A very good friend said her approach to breast cancer was to treat it as ‘a minor inconvenience’. Luckily for her, and for me too, it turned out to be exactly that. Onwards.