1135 days

It’s been 1135 days since I’ve last updated this blog which is a very long time!

Technically I should be celebrating my ten year anniversary of this blog, but it feels wrong to do so when I’ve had a gap of 1135 days – over three years! As I am about to embark on a new stage of my life – and I have missed blogging – it feels this is a good start and I am going to continue. And I am immensely proud that I’ve had this place for ten years now. In these ten years I have moved what seems like countless times and lived in three different countries [two of those more than once], had multiple jobs, met a bunch of amazing people and did a lot of fun things.

There are posts on this blog that I’m very proud of and there is a lot of stuff where I’ve been personal where I now feel it’s too cringe-worthy to read and I wish I hadn’t made that public even though at the time this seemed right. I’ve sanitised some posts in the past to remove identifying information [even though I do believe most people reading this blog know me personally anyway!] but I have overall deleted fewer than five posts. After all this place is a journey and 23 year old me was a lot more socially awkward than 33 year old me. I can’t erase mistakes I have made and therefore shouldn’t be trying to erase things I believed in at the time, no matter how unlikable they make me seem.

So it’s been 1135 days. What’s happened in that time? Not all too much. At this stage I’d love to talk about my travels around the world or meaningful things I have done, but those would be a lie [though I did do some charity work, but that’s hardly worth mentioning].

In 2014 I went through a breakup which really threw me off course and I still seem to be feeling the effects now, over two years later. Not allowing myself to grieve that properly, I didn’t recognise the signs of it and it really properly hit me in 2015. At that point I had already mostly taken a break off social media and my hobbies were already less social than before [knitting, gaming, reading] and just when I thought I would be able to change that and move on with a new phase I got very ill in late 2015 which persisted on until very recent and involved periods of hospitalisation, medication, and similar fun stuff [not being able to eat and brief periods of complete food intolerances really rounded that whole period off well]. Once physically better I had anxiety attacks which made getting back to normal difficult.

In short – I am very well now that the illness is under control and unlikely to resurface and I am making huge strides with my anxiety which, quite frankly, is incredibly boring to talk about as I’d rather get on with it!

So to my new adventure – I am moving to Germany for a time. This may be a year or maybe five years. I am specifically looking at Hamburg as I should be able to find a job there and it’s close to the sea. I am not planning to turn my back to the UK permanently [though it all depends what will happen to Brexit], but for the time being I can’t afford living in the UK and, in order to really work on my health, I need a change of scenery. My long game is the UK, specifically Reading, and I am planning to visit frequently, but in the meantime it’ll be nice to be somewhere else.

Perfect to restart blogging to chronicle the new chapter in my life. Here is to another ten years!