At this point it is worthwhile for me to seriously (re)consider my activities online. I am fearing that I am too much expecting to make friendships that are, ultimately, not as real as they should be. Who are these online people? Why are they interacting with me? It is strange for (and of) me to say this because I have had many online friends over these past few years. Recently, however, I have lost one and one that was very dear to me. The reason? Communication problems, I guess. I don’t know if it were any different if it were an offline friend but at the very least we would have known better if we were better suited for each other. Or something. In any case: it hurts. And it sucks like this.

This journal that I keep online is now coming to a close. I must also reconsider my blog.

EDIT: ARGH! Please no misunderstandings: I am not leaving 43 Things! I am merely closing this blog and thinking hard about how I am going to ‘use’ 43Things. 9 months ago

She didn’t even do that. 9 months ago

Not going into detail. Suffice to say that once more I am biting dust. Suits me right for treating people for the smarts I know they have but regrettably won’t use.
:-/ 9 months ago

Neighbour kid found my iphone. In my house.
Yay! 9 months ago

Lost my phone.
Argh. 9 months ago

For a few days, really. My guy’s out of town/country and I’m on my own with the kidlets. Well, to be fair: they go to daycare and gramps three days out of five so all I do is get them out of the house clothed and fed etc. and into bed fed and clean etc.
It’s a hard life. ;-) 9 months ago

Another infection. Hates. 10 months ago

because I was on vacation for a few days with the guy and the minions. We went to a holiday park where there was swimming and biking and all things nice. There were pancakes and ice creams and a breakfast with a toucan stealing Lisa’s bread which impressed both of the kidlets so much that they’re still talking about it. Cute.

The rest of my personal and professional developments are currently on hold, purposefully, with the aim of me getting a break. The guy will have two more weeks of vacation, a few days of which we will be nurturing our inner nerdy/immature/plastic-loving self in Eurodisney, and a few days of which the guy will go off whizzing about with a friend to the whereabouts of Omaha Beach or somesuch. Guy stuff. I will stay home and do the wifey things. Okay.

After this we’re approaching September and it’s time to shape up and get myself rolling. I have quite a few ideas but also cold feet about them. Must warm feet before end of vacation. Yes. 10 months ago

This evening there is a special viewing of the documentary Under African Skies about the Graceland album with also an interview with the man himself, Paul Simon. I bought tickets for me and the guy as soon as I heard about it. Now the guy is sick today. I called about seven or eight friends and everyone says “oh that sounds great but I can’t go sorry”. It’s uncanny. Now I probably end up going by myself which sucks. I had so much looked forward to going with the guy, talking about something other than the kiddies, sharing something – and now it’s nothing. I am seriously disappointed. 11 months ago

Bluh. At work. These people are my friends and I will miss them terribly when I’m not working here anymore. I have never had such an attachment to a work place before – not the work itself so much but the people are pure gold food for the soul, which is a whole lot more valuable than gold. 12 months ago

My current tagline says it: I am getting to the point where I expected to be a few weeks ago. A few weeks ago we heard that our organisation was in trouble. IS in trouble. Quickly after that I found out that even if ‘we’ were to save it, there would still be no more place for me there.
Since then I have realised that I don’t even want there to be a place for me anymore.
Everything I have done in the past few years in the area of work has gone wrong. No applications were approved (not that I remember anyway), no project successful (not to my standards anyway), and nothing else that was put on my plat has yielded any sort of success. I’m through. Done. Sabotaging myself by now, I am convinced.
I need to get out of there!!! For my sake but also for others’.

At this point I have a few months before I will hit the street. I must use this time to get to a point where I am able to both figure out what I want to do with my life, and how to do it while making a bit of cash.
This means that I want to spend this time doing exactly that, and not doing more stupid, unsuccessful chores for an organisation that is heading for annihilation. However much I put into that place, it is not giving back anymore. It is stopping. I am through. WE are through.

Now I am on the brink of calling sick. I have a few more things to do though in the coming months, some things that I said I would do. I feel now that I should tell people to find someone else to do it for them/us because I simply can’t. I can’t do it anymore. It feels like I’m a coward, or that I’m letting everyone down by doing this at this point but oh oh gods!
Is this what a burnout feels like?
:-/ 12 months ago

It has been several years since I found 43Things. In the very beginning I didn’t know what to do with it much and I remember crying my eyes out the first time someone took the trouble of leaving me a supportive comment. It was amazing – someone was listening! The following summer saw frantic posting and commenting and loads of banter that kept me from my work and provided me with much-needed relief. After all, I was going through tough times so I could use the friendship I found here.

Over the years I have come back here when I needed it, and stayed away when I needed it too. Sometimes all I needed was to check up on my friends because I knew the difficulties they were facing and I wanted to know if they were okay. Sometimes what I needed was to have a place where I could post my doubts, thoughts, dreams and miseries away from the eyes of my real-life community. There are just some things not everyone has to know but you still need to get it out of your system. That’s what 43T is for. When I started I was scared that people on this site would find out who I was offline. Now I don’t want my offline peeps to know about 43T. It’s a haven.

Over the past months I haven’t spent so much time here. I was dealing with other things that required my attention and also getting lost in Facebook but Facebook isn’t the same, is it? Facebook is about how you’re spending your time, not about sharing what you really want to do with your life. Now I am thinking of quitting my Facebook account, or at least only using it to share my posts on various blogs. I am tired of it. I am not tired of 43, however. Here I always come back. It is like coming home.

So what I wanted to say, really: thanks for hearing me. Thanks for just being here and sometimes reading my rambles and lending your support, even if by only pressing ‘cheer’ because only 43ers know how powerful that little button can be. It is more than ‘like’ – it is a genuine, heartfelt expression of appreciation that we are here, that we have the courage to say what we say, and that we are glad to know that people like 43 exist. 13 months ago

ONE! (it’s a big one)
The city of Rotterdam is going to cut funding for my institution which means it will no longer exist by January 1st 2013.
Hello!
If anyone is still saying “crisis? what crisis?” without an ironic smirk on their face, or if anyone is still saying that voting is no use: think again! Sure, I didn’t vote for the parties that made the policies that cut the national funding that limited the available budget for the cities that meant that much less is available now. But loads of people did, people who let themselves be fooled by a blonde-haired man with megalomania issues. Those people, and those who voted for the spineless coalition partners, will need to be very quiet around me for the next few months or so.
sigh
The thing is that I had already been wanting to leave my job (see last entry before this) but now this decision is taken for me and I don’t like that.
The other thing is that I have been working at that institution for the past seven or eight years and I have been part of it from the moment it was conceived. I have seen the building process of the main hall (it’s a music stage). I have coughed in the dust while the workmen constructed our dream around us. I have been part of its program and ideas from the start. I have thought up projects that I felt would benefit the city’s music landscape and questioned activities that didn’t. We have worked so hard this past year to market the stage even better and we have seen the audience numbers go up along with our income. We are going well! We are a success! We made the right decisions!
It’s frustrating. There are people I want to hit.

Now I need a new career. Maybe in a new field of work. Everybody keeps telling me that I’ll be fine. You know you’re fucked when everybody tells you how talented you are. I know I have skills. I’m just not sure if I still want to use them. Or even if they are what I thought they were cracked up to be…

two (it’s a small two)
My blog sucks. The stats are going down so fast it’s like a brick defying gravity and failing (as bricks generally do). Also I started another, Dutch, blog and then invited a friend of mine to join me as an author. She did and now every time she posts something there is lots of traffic. She gets compliments on her writing. She reaches people. When I post, the stats remain low. I hardly get comments.
I suck.

Three (it’s a medium-sized three)
I’m 65.1 kilos. That is too much for my frame. Moreover, I feel like I’m too heavy. Also I look like I am, with a tubby centre that keeps me from wearing pretty much most of my wardrobe.
Waaaaah!!!!!

There is no four for now. :-/ 13 months ago

Might as well rename this goal to NSFB but the Urban Dictionary teaches me that it means ‘Not Safe For Breakfast’ and that is not what this is. It is more like my thoughts and ramblings but the ones that are too private for me to publish on my (public) blog pages. After all those are read by my wider community of friends, family and even colleagues. I don’t mind writing there about stuff like what happened today, how I don’t understand Uggs or Crocs fashions, or even what it is like to have trouble making kids… but I won’t share my life concerns that may upset them people. It is tough enough as it is for me, maintaining a social life. :p

The thing is this:
I am having ginormous problems with concentration. Not just a little distraction, noooo, really inability to focus on what must be done. And guess what? It’s all about work. I don’t do my work stuff. Something inside of me is resisting with full force when I sit down to do something relating to work. It is almost physical. I open the document, I stare at it, and I close it again. Almost like I can’t do anything about it. It is strange and I know it is insane. I need the work, we need the money, yet I cannot do it. Insane.

Today I am home because I am recovering from a bitchy flu but to be honest I am also trying to uncover for myself what the hell I am going to do. I was supposed to be working of course but, yeah, like hell that is working. I just can’t. I tried everything, from rewarding myself to disciplinary measures and everything in between and to the sides, but nothing works.

And so…
There must be something that is causing this. I decided to explore what may lie at the foundations of this stupid distractedness. This morning I did a long meditation. That was bliss, not in the least because having time and space for myself without keeping one ear cocked for cries or coughs or other kiddies’ disruptions is a rare occasion these days. It also gave me a bit of peace inside. What it did not give me, although it was what I was hoping for, was the answer. However, I did ask for guidance during my actions and, well, this is what I got: even further inability to get to work.

Hm. Is this a sign? One cannot help but wonder.

I decided to explore the issue further in the direction of the meditation. I went to the website of a therapist who was recommended to me a while back. It is uncanny, you see, how many links to shamanism keep popping up in my life these days. I got into contact with that a few years back (from MamaBear, at the time) and although I read some stuff and seek guidance in that way sometimes – like this morning – I never really got into it. My biggest fear is the same as always: before you know it you meet some close-knit community of ‘believers’ (be it shamanism or herbs or capoeira or what-have-you, believers are everywhere) and then there are rules and conventions and social dynamics and cliques and I am outta there before you can say ‘rattle and drum’.

Still, the number of instances where people address this is starting to get unsettling. A man I know from work told me of this guy in the east of the Netherlands who helped him realise a few things about where his character comes from and how to work with that. Sounds good, the way he told it. And so I go to this guy’s website today – it’s not like I was doing anything else like working or summink – and I am startled to find that he does regression therapy and reincarnation therapy. Woah. Here I was thinking it was about ancestors. Ancestors, you see, do not necessarily require believing in as such; they’re (or were) there and that’s that. Genes and stuff: clear as a crystal. Reincarnation and regression is a whole different (ball) game!

Pfff, now that puts up a great big hurdle for me to climb over if I want to learn a bit about that and myself. That and the fact that this guy lives and works about 2.5 hours away from me so it’s not like I just take a chance and do a get-to-know talk with him on a Tuesday morning while my mother in law (don’t talk about her please, don’t wanna) looks after the kiddies. Argh. A new mountain on my list (i.e. mountain range) of things I would like to explore (i.e. cross).

So what about that work then?
Well that’s another route I have been exploring today. (It’s not all about regression you know? If even that.) There are some ideas in my head that have to do with starting my own business. I even have a 43 goal about that. Two ideas, in fact. One is (might as well tell y’all) starting a web shop with paper products and arty stuff. I love that very much and it would be something that my heart would go to. Sounds good but hardly profitable. I am a practical person.
The other idea comes from a shop across the street here. The underwear shop is closing after having been here for 40 years. I kid you not. The owner is retiring and the shop is up for sale. I never saw myself as an underwear salesperson and I don’t know anything about it but I was toying with the idea of running a joint on-site/online shop with organic basics: t-shirts, underwear, little black dresses, etc. The stuff that you always need but that is so hard to find and it’s good to have a sure address for. Hell, I could even set up a subscription where people (men…) get sent new slips every 3 months, before the old ones get washed out and stuff. I dunno.

Nice ideas, sure. But I don’t know anything about all this. I have never run a business. Most of all: I cannot afford to just quit my current job (something that every fibre in my being is clamoring for right now) and start something that at first will cost me a shitload before I even know if it will yield any profits at all. Got a house, got kiddies, got a man who’s already working way too hard. I could combine it with freelance stuff I guess but that would put me right back into my current work field and I am just. so. tired. of. that. What to do what to do?

Damn, those are a lot of words for something that’s not even on the blog…
:-/

Your thoughts (please be kind) are welcome. 15 months ago

worth having.

♥ 16 months ago

Now I have two choices:
either I change myself and the way I behave,
or I stay who and how I am and continue to be disappointed.

Ah now you see that choice does not in fact exist because I cannot change who I am, even if I really wanted to, and changing my behaviour into something that does not suit me is disaster guaranteed, as well as misery.
So…
I might as well choose the disappointment misery in advance and keep going the way I have always gone. It means that I do not have an enormous circle of friends, or even a moderate-sized circle. I will have to learn to live with that.
:p 17 months ago

Yesterday I wrote a rather personal blog post about our troubles when conceiving kids. Somehow I realised that it is important to get this sort of thing out into the open, if only to allow people to openly ask questions or maybe learn something about it from someone who went through it all. It’s a bit of a big deal for me to be posting it on my blog because this is read also by people who know me only through work or who are vague friends or even family. But hey, if you’re going to be open, you might as well be shameless about it. ;-)

http://lookaroundyounow.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/things-i-know-about-having-kids-my-way/ 17 months ago

Dear,

The year has started and it sucks so far. On one hand, that means that the only way is up and hurray for that. On the other hand, it makes me feel bad and that’s no way to start a year.

Today I went to the park. I have been feeling a bit under the weather lately with stomach pain. I went to the drugstore where I know the owner and she is very good at giving advice about over-the-counter medicines so I asked her about it. She listened carefully and asked a few more questions and then told me that, although she wasn’t a doctor or anything, it sounded to her like I had a small ulcer. Nothing big to worry about but had I been stressed or super busy lately? I just goggled at her; she is a twins mother just like me. In fact, she has four kids, the last two of whom are twins, plus she runs her drugstore six days a week. If anyone tells me I’m a supermom just because I have twins, I have to laugh and think of her.

But anyway: yes I have been stressed lately. Things are a bit bumpy (not in a good way) between me and the guy, and I have been feeling stressed out and lonely. My work suffers from it because I am zero productive so that only adds to the stress. It’s not a good place to be. So today I went to the park.

There are seventeen apartments in my building. Several of those neighbours I know because I meet them regularly in the elevator or by the front door. Some have kids who are approximately my own minions’ age. The couple downstairs have four year old twins. When I meet any of these people I am nice and friendly, and try to be open and easygoing. Some people I like so I regularly invite to come up for a cup of tea/coffee or even for a movie because we have an in-house cinema so that’s always nice. They are always friendly back and politely yet inevitably turn invitations down. I don’t know why. I see that they interact between each other, they visit, they knock on each other’s doors. Not with us. We’re outsiders and we don’t know why.

Today I went to the park. There was a New Year concert by a big band and I thought I’d check it out with the kiddies while the guy was out biking. I walked down there and met several of my neighbours. They were not just from my own building but also from next door apartment blocks. I know them because I meet them all the time on the street and we often have a brief talk or we at least greet each other. They were all there: my own neighbours, the people from next door. And they were chatting, and wishing each other happy new year, and talking about each other’s kids. They were polite to me, although some of them didn’t even recognise me, and we exchanged a few phrases but after that their attention was drawn elsewhere and poof. Alone again. If it hadn’t been for a ‘work friend’ I met there too – she was there for work reasons – I wouldn’t have spoken with anyone for longer than 30 seconds.

When I came home I broke down. I can’t keep doing this. I keep seeking contact with people, and putting effort into being nice. I knock on their doors for things, like the other day when I gave our baby bath that we aren’t using anymore to the downstairs couple who are expecting, and I am always friendly and try to make conversation. Similarly, I put effort into people with whom I would like to be friends. I call them, text them, I go to stupid gatherings and parties although I don’t like going to those. I want people to like me, because it feels lonely if they don’t. Well, they don’t.

I don’t know what I am doing wrong. What I end up with is a lot of people who are polite and friendly to me, but very few people who genuinely want contact with me. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of telling me I should do things alone, and I would! It’s just that it feels so bloody sucky to feel so alone all the f-ing time.

Yours, 17 months ago

Please forgive me for being a horrible follower.

Thank you,
Tangerine_now 18 months ago

This week I heard that a couple of friends I have known for a few years and who always seemed so perfectly happy together are in fact apart now. He told her some time ago that maybe she should go figure some stuff out by herself for a while, and then she came back and told him that they were splitting up. Now he is devastated. Haven’t spoken with her. It’s awful.

This week I finally handed in that bloody application I had been working so hard on. On Tuesday evening I was on the phone with my guy, in tears, because the computers wouldn’t do what they were supposed to do and I couldn’t work out why so he had to help me and calm me down like I was some stupid damsel in distress. It sucked hairy toe cheese. That same evening, after finishing the damn thing and preparing the envelope for delivery (in Brussels!) the next day, I rang a friend whom I hadn’t seen in ages. She immediately said she’d come down and we had a few beers and it was absolutely wonderful to see her again. She told me about how she is still having a hard time dealing with her breakup, a little less than a year ago. Her relationship had been going for 21 years, since she was 19. That was more than half her life. Then he fell in love with someone else. Bye.

This week my friend F heard a doctor tell his mother that she has only up to three more months to live. Cancer is everywhere and it’s unstoppable. The look on the oncologists face told F that a second opinion was useless. Pain relief, that’s all. Four or five months ago, F’s uncle died of exactly the same cancer, same way, same deadline. He died within three weeks of the diagnosis. That uncle was like a father to F. Now his mother is going the same way. I fear for F and his sanity these days.

This week, today, my friend C told me the date for her wedding. That means I am still invited! (I was a bit worried.) That is awesome and I so look forward to it. It’s in January. Stuff to figure out, things to discuss and plan… Yay!

This week I made a lot of progress of my translation. That is good. 20 months ago

Still not dead. Just exhausted. Spent yesterday evening snuggling up to the guy in bed and then for no apparent reason crying my eyes out while he just held me and I held onto him for what seemed like dear life. I guess I am just beyond tired by now and also sick of being constantly the person in charge.
It seems like a lot of people (read especially my mother and my mother-in-law) are watching me like hawks to see if I slip up somewhere and fail at this thing of being a mother. Never once will I hear that I am doing great and that I am such a good mama with the kiddies – noooo, they will ‘suggest’ I do things differently. When we go to the zoo, my mother brings enough food and drink for the kiddies in case I forgot. That is just one example, it gets a lot worse. My mother-in-law will constantly act like she is protecting the kiddies from my unreasonable demands from them to e.g. go swimming, explore the world on their own (while I am watching of course), chew their banana themselves, eat bread without anything on it (which they like) and somesuch. The way she presents it, it is like I am constantly torturing the kiddies for my own pleasure. She will tell her friends that during baby swim we need to ‘drag the kids under water’ – like we’re drowning them. Yes, I think they should try how it is to have your head under water and yes, we do jump into the pool with them to experience that. I will make it less scary when they get older and hopefully they won’t panic if it should happen accidentally. Panic can be fatal. I want them to realise that getting your head under water is not the end of the world. Well, she thinks it’s cruel. Etc. And I am sick of that kind of thing. Yet what sickens me most is the “I knew you couldn’t do it” attitude from my mother when I do slip up. Because I do, of course. She will smile that condescending smile and suggest to take things out of my hands. Which is exactly what I am least tempted to let happen at that point.
That whole mothers things was of course only a small part of what I was bawling about yesterday evening. Most of it was probably plain exhaustion so it didn’t help much that at 1 am tonight Lisa decided to wake up and have a ball. She cried, she whined. We gave her something to drink. She talked, she played, she whined and cried some more. She woke up her sister. We gave her some more milk. Etc. This continued until 3.30 when Lisa finally decided that she’d had enough and went to sleep. I think my mother gave her not enough to eat during the day yesterday but it is hard to start that kind of conversation with her because it just puts things on an edge again and I don’t think I can deal with that now.
So here I am, completely knackered and typing a 43 entry from work. I update my blog still almost daily so if you want to know what’s up with me I suggest you check that out. It has all sorts of entries and topics, a bit of a mishmash of stuff. I save my whinging for 43things where I know kind people are and nobody tells me “I told you so”.

PS If you share my stuff on some other social platform I will hunt you down and kill hurt you.21 months ago

http://walkingfornamaste.wordpress.com/

Let me know if you do. :) 21 months ago

Somehow I just can’t focus on anything these days. It’s frustrating. There is a ton of work I need to do and it needs to be finished soon. Deadlines are grinning at me all day and all night, their grimaces keeping me from sleep. Yet when I am behind the computer and ready to get crackin’... nothing. I am completely inactive and loiter away doing nothing at all. It is horrible. I need something to get me going. I need a rhythm – in more than one sense. First, I will put on some music. Then I will make a schedule for myself, a simple schedule that means that I will work for 30 min and then reward myself by doing something else for a few minutes. If I think of other things during the work time I will jot it down on a piece of paper so I will not jump up and cut into the work flow. I will keep going like this until it is time to stop. And this weekend I will translate my nanothingy a little further. 22 months ago

How would you feel about defriending someone on FB because they appear to be sharing (their own!) stuff from 43 on FB? It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable to see 43 show up on the FB wall, even if it is from someone else and that person is only showing his/her own stuff. It probably makes it clear(er) to me how close it can get.
Sigh.
I don’t know really. I feel I can’t even contact that person about it because, as I said, it is only his/her own stuff…
Sharing is not always caring, it turns out. 22 months ago

Monday night I had dinner with friends. One of them a guy, the rest girls. Very much girls – but not too much. So anyway, at one point I mention off-hand that I like sci-fi films, if done well. The guy looks at me and goes “you like sci-fi?” I admit that I do by pointing at myself and saying ‘geek’. He answers “hey! good!” The rest of the table just looks at me, having no clue what’s so good about that. :D 22 months ago

How are you? I hope this finds you well.

I have a question. What are your plans and intentions with this website? Thank you.

Sincerely,
Tangerine
(who is feeling a bit foolish for campaigning people’s return to a website where they may perhaps not be valued or even welcome for all we know because the builders of the website are not particularly good at communication)

^{Why didn’t I send this straight to the bots? Because I am using the 43 app on iPhone and it doesn’t allow me to.}22 months ago

I took my business elsewhere. I took my business to a blog I created to keep track of my Things. It doesn’t work out. Not because of the blog format because that works. It doesn’t work out because there is a leetle too much chance of me (tangerine) being found out (as tangerine) by my offline friends and I wouldn’t like that. Not that I have put stuff online under the name of tangerine that would be blackmail-worthy material in terms of shockingness but it could get embarrassing and I don’t like that. So… I am getting rid of the blog. Too bad peanut spread, as we Dutchies say.

That means that the entries I posted on the blog are now being transferred to this site once more. It also means that I am still looking for a good alternative to this site, because of the robots not giving a gnat’s arse about its users – and attitude I don’t care for. Plus the site has an enormous lag. It could be deemed appropriate that by the time my typing is published, it has reached daylight in California, but I don’t like it much. As someone on here recently said, it is astonishing how little time it took the bots to wreck this place.

So yep: I’m back. I have no idea how many active subscribers I still have here (HI!) and I have no idea how many people are all that glad to see me around once more, or how many will just go meh – the majority methinks. I don’t think I will ever be so active as I once was. I keep my blog now on a regular basis, usually daily, so anyone interested is invited to check it out and perhaps subscribe there (too). In the mean time, I will be posting here. Maybe the joy of 43ing will return, eh? That would be nice. I miss you. 22 months ago

taking my business elsewhere . Considering doing the same? Let me know. I need to connect it up with a network for interaction, much like 43.

Note: I am not gone (yet) just trying this out. 23 months ago

Finding out that Scooterbird is leaving 43, I had to post this.

“When I left primary school I was excited to be going to a new adventure but I was also sad because I would be leaving my friends. Most of them were going to a different school than me. When I left highschool I was sad because I had had a good time at school and I would miss my friends. I did. I had been close with them and truth be told: I didn’t find that intensity of friendship easily after that, the intensity that comes from seeing each other nearly every day.

I only found something that approached this online, on the internet. Here I found a website (that shall still remain unnamed, thankyouverymuch) where I could meet up with all sorts of people but mostly with people who would in time become my friends. (I am a little hesitant to be writing about that here because this is also read by my offline folks and I know what that general consensus is about internet friendships. I am, however, not weird.) I am still active on that website and will continue to be so.

That website however, that meeting place, is now undergoing transitions. The people who built it are implementing changes that turn out to be destroying slowly the very fabric that made the site so strong: the social cohesion between its ‘users’ (or rather ‘contributors’). Many of my friends are leaving the premises. I am not but I miss them, and the proximity that we had. It is like school except we’re all grown-ups, and ours is a grown-up world.

Most of us are writers. Of course: why else would we meet on an internet forum? Means you feel a need to write stuff up, otherwise you’d be broadcasting or similar. I am hoping now that we can set up a network of blogs to replace (or complement) the platform that our shared website used to provide. That way we’ll be able to keep each other informed about our lives and we’ll still be able to respond to each other: support, banter, all that. (Here’s hoping people will be using WordPress… makes my life so much easier because blogspot does weird things with my comments.) I will list them under a new heading: ‘Good people’s blog network’ or something. How is that?”

So any of you, and you know who you are: let me know where your blog is, sub to mine or my rss, and I will return the favour. It will be like the site exploded.

<3

Please feel free to read this as an invitation . 23 months ago