It’s been a while...

Hello! It’s been a long time hasn’t it?

With one thing and another this blog has just not been a priority over the last year or so. With the main holdback, obviously, being COVID-19. Touch wood, my nearest and dearest have all been well so far, but my household really have spent the whole time hiding ourselves away at home. We are fortunate that my husband has been able to work from home throughout, and I was able to be at home to deal with the home school/home learning situation. I know that I could have still posted on here about what we’ve been doing but, to be honest, I didn’t really want to and whatever I was going to post just didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to write about how we were dealing with things, as I didn’t want to come across as being preachy or patronising. Over the last 13 months everyone has just done what they’ve needed to get through. And that’s the ideal way to cope. No-one needed to know what I was up to. Everyone has had far more pressing things of their own to be dealing with. 

I also felt extremely uncomfortable sharing ideas of days out, and places to go. With guidelines constantly changing and everyone’s situation being different, whether they were shielding, self isolating, or just keeping their distance, I really felt ill at ease promoting activities that might encourage people to travel further than they should be. Plus, I don’t need both my hands to count the days out we’ve had since March 2020. What was I going to be recommending?! As we live quite a distance from both sides of our family we have managed to meet family at a few “halfway” points, including Westonbirt Arboretum, National Memorial Arboretum, and Stratford upon Avon. We were extremely fortunate to have a lovely week in Norfolk when it was allowed too. I will probably write about these in retrospect at some point, so keep an eye out for those.

Secondly, I kind of fell out of love with this blog. I kept reading about what I “should” be doing to make this a successful blog. I should be sharing links in a certain way, I should be taking better photos, I shouldn’t be using the platform I do, I should be networking more. And to tell you the truth, I find all that quite boring. Once, when I shared a blog post on more that one social media platform I got a sarcastic “who do you think you are?” type comment from someone which knocked my confidence a little. I have zero interest in learning how to edit photos and use photoshop. I mean, what’s the point? If when I visited somewhere it was overcast and I happened to get a dog poo bin in the back of the photo, so what? That’s what the location was like during my visit, and you know you can take your dog! Surely a more accurate representation than messing with the image? I’ve no interest in learning how to host my own website, and I’d have no idea where to start. So, in short, I’m just going to write because I like it. If someone reads what I’ve posted and finds it interesting, excellent. If they don’t, that’s ok too. Because this is just a hobby for me. It was always supposed to be a bit of fun, and if anyone read it that was a bonus.

As well as all the above I’ve had more general concerns around what to write about. My children are now both in school, and they have their after school clubs and hobbies to keep them busy. We just aren’t having as many days out as we have previously. I don’t want to manufacturer scenarios just to keep the content over here similar to what it was in the past, so you may find that the content over here changes slightly, and it may not all be as relevant as it use to be to you. I’m sorry about that, but hopefully you’ll stick around to see what ends up happening over here. To be honest, I’ll probably be as surprised as you!