1000th post

Cocoon is gently growing - feels soft and squidgy to the touch

 The weather is still dreary - sepia skies and a brittle breeze

My cinnamon coffee is good though 

Just discovered that this will be my 1000th post with this blog - hoodathunkit.....

My previous blog incarnation reached 581 posts before I closed it, and it got me wondering how long I'd been blogging. 

I started on the 15th September 2009 with the first post dedicated to my eldest son who was then 11 and had just started senior school. The blog (and I) gently changed as it went along and eventually became a different version - this one.

It got me thinking - how much things have or in some cases, have not, changed since then.

I'm pretty much the same to look at - apart from the inevitable ageing and the increasingly odd grey hair. We still live in the same little semi-rural village, still know a lot of the folk we first met and have remained firm friends. Equally it is not the same.  I have changed.

Changed jobs, from evening work at a rural doctor's pharmacy so I could be at home for the boys during the day, to a rural veterinary surgery - a job I loved and left before it destroyed me, presently a 'struggling artist' which - if I am perfectly honest is not a job. It is an inner deamon that drives you to distraction that when you show it some attention, drops you like a hot potato.

I have met people along the way that I felt at ease with only to find their friendship makes me feel as if I am being drained and drowning and have had to fight to regain myself and then there are the folk that fairly early on you realise that they are not for you and quietly and without being rude I have had to gently distance myself from. Not always successfully.  That has changed me too.

I am was, naturally gregarious, a natural communicator, preferred the company of others as apposed to my own. That has changed. I have narrowed that down to those amazing folk I am honoured to call my friends and if possible avoid situations where there is a large group of people. I dislike people. That's changed.

I can feel it in myself and I know those who really really know me have seen it too.  Sometimes at night I dwell on what has happened, what could have happened, what did not happen and now, added to the list is ... I have changed. I am more solitary, preferring the company of the dog and the hills.Not everyone likes it. 

Yes I have changed - I can now walk further and faster than ever before, further than before I damaged my knee (although hills are still a challenge..... I will work on that particular one), I can knit and crochet - learning the latter and relearning the former in the 11 years since the first post. I paint and sketch better than I have ever done, trying out new techniques (with variable but fun results) make paper and print.

I can do spreadsheets, online forms, organise meetings, schedule and coordinate groups of artists and volunteers and run events - things that before I would have shuddered at. With a lion-hearted friend we ran a very successful art event for three years running, with events through out the year - again something I would not have even dreamed of being part of never mind leading. 

I had noticed that several bloggers I'd quietly been dipping in and out of, catching up with their words and their images - have vanished - usually with a final post saying that blogging was not for them any more. I miss their company but equally sympathise with their decision. 

Any hoo - where this is leading that after 11ish years of blogging - something that has not changed, is I still enjoy this space, waffling on and sharing photos and stories. I will continue to evolve, it is part of my journey - I need to - change can be good.

And I'll leave you with this little meme - it struck me today how relevant it was.