Wow. I can’t believe that we are already in October and so far this year I have only written 10 posts! So much for my plan to write 50 posts this year. Of course, looking back at my plans made last December, I can see that I have “failed” in nearly every single one of them. And yet, from where I’m standing right now, this does not feel like a failure to me as much as a change of perspective.
At the end of last year I still believed that the DWP were going to expect me to work towards getting back to work. And there was a big part of me that knew I would never be able to do that in the more typical way. I was too sick. So I was trying to find a way to make it possible. I was trying to figure out how to make this blog profitable, once and for all.
But the truth is, I am sick. I simply do not have the energy or health to invest in creating the kind of content and promotion and brand/client networking that is required to earn consistent money from self-employment. The only work I have done for anyone other than myself this year has been for the church, and that has been limited to creating one post for the Facebook page per week, promoting the service. And even that has felt impossible some weeks.
No, working isn’t something I am capable of right now. And thankfully the DWP agreed with me on that one (although how they then went on to refuse me disability benefits, I don’t know – surely, if you’re too sick to work, you’re classed as disabled, no?) Anyway, I digress.
This year has been a hard one. I have been more ill than I have ever been (well, aside from my pregnancy from hell, but at least that had an end point!) We’ve been in a major battle with the DWP, we’ve moved home because I could no longer cope with the stairs in our house, and I have spent a large part of the year completely debilitated by pain, nausea, migraines, and dysautonomia. And as such, I’ve had an awful lot of time where all I could do was lay in a darkened room, thinking about life, and trying to figure out who I am when I am not all the things I always thought I was. Including a blogger.
You see, over the years, as I have begun to use my media experience to work with clients, I started to forget that it’s perfectly okay to just blog for the sheer joy of blogging. I forgot that a post didn’t have to take 3 hours, when you calculated the time taken to write, research links, edit for SEO purposes, find a decent stock image, create promotional images for various social media platforms, and then share on said platforms. That’s what you do for a client, or for a business site. It’s not what you do for a hobby blog. Or, at least, it can be but it doesn’t have to be.
A couple of weeks ago I almost gave up blogging. Which is sheer and utter madness, as I’ve been blogging since 2006. It’s as much a part of me as anything else. The problem was, I’d forgotten how to blog just for me. I’d forgotten when it was like to write whatever was on my mind, regardless of whether it had any value to anyone else. I’ve never been very good at writing in a diary or journal, it makes my hands hurt for one thing as I can’t form the letters as quickly as I can type them, and I grip the pen too hard and it messes with my hypermobile joints. But more than that, I actually love the creativity of sitting down and crafting a post that, whilst not necessarily aimed at others could still be read by them. It helps me form a structure to my random thoughts, and that, in turn, helps me figure out things I might never have noticed if I didn’t blog.
Plus, blogging means that I have a permanent collection of thoughts and feelings to look back on. I might misplace a journal once full, but I can’t misplace a blog. My first blog is still lurking away on the good old internet. I looked back at it the other day. And my second one. And it was so wonderful to read my little rambling thoughts. To see how much has changed (and also, how much hasn’t!)
And suddenly I realised that this is what I wanted my blog to be. I wanted it to be a collection of memories. A place where I could just come and share whatever was on my mind. I didn’t want to worry about whether it would make sense to anyone, or whether I needed to include background information for something to make sense. I just wanted to write and share. And so that’s what I’ve decided to do.
I spent most of last week trying to come up with a new tagline which really encompassed this new theme for the blog. And then suddenly, out of the blue, it came to me. Life, as it happens… Because it’s nothing more than that. It’s life, as it happens. It’s not worrying about the future. It’s not worrying about where I fit in. It’s simply life. And life is a flow of new beginnings. Every day is a new beginning. And I want to focus on that. Taking each day as it comes. And writing about whatever happens to take my fancy.
But even though I’d come up with this idea, I still needed one last little push to actually do it. And that came in the form of a wonderful group of people who are all taking part in Get Your Happy Back (GYHB). I won’t write about GYHB in this post, as I want to end this soon. But just know that it is an amazing community that once you join becomes like your family for life. They meet 4 times per year to work on, as it says on the tin, getting your happy back. Because we all get beaten down by life, don’t we? And we all need the opportunity to come together and focus on ourselves regularly, right?
I know I do. In fact, I know I need to work on this a LOT. During the group call on Saturday, my microphone wouldn’t work, so I couldn’t join in to begin with. We all had a laugh about it, but it was very poignant for me. I have issues with expressing myself. You wouldn’t think that, would you, really? I mean, I’m a linguist and a writer – words are what I do. But as my dear friend, Rachel (who is an amazing therapist, by the way), mentioned to me today, there is a big difference between my ability to analyse what I think is going on and what I think people want to hear, and actually expressing what I need to express.
I’m so terrified of what lies beneath all the different personas, that I don’t even really know who I am anymore. And that’s scary. Because if I dig deep and I find out I’m not who I have portrayed myself to be for all these years, will people like the real me? Will I even like the real me? Scary stuff, huh?
Which is why she has challenged me to sit in front of a mirror and tell my story. From the very beginning (birth). In chapters. Because God knows I have a lot of layers to work through! And, to be quite honest with you, this blog post is a little bit of a delaying tactic, as I’m putting off getting started. But that means that this is really important, and so I’m going to be brave and I’m going to do it. I’ve got the house to myself until 5, when I have to go to an appointment to remove my Mirena (more on this at a later date – it’s a big, scary, but empowering change!)
So, changes are afoot. I am going to try to stop worrying about who I am and actually see if I can simply find her underneath all of these layers. I’m going to try and tell myself my story. And I’m going to use this blog to document what I call my “Sacred Healing Journey” over on instagram. Because this is life, as it happens…
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