Blogland and "Real Life"

It had been my intention this month to spend a lot more time in Blogland. Unfortunately my "other" life has been dominant. I was going to say my "real" life but in truth Blogland has been a very important part of my life, real or otherwise, since 2007 right through my New Zealand life and through the thick and thin. I have also made some of my most important friends through Blogland and despite the fact that I don't see many of my New Zealand friends in person now we are still in touch frequently. Indeed during these awful times for New Zealand we have all been in touch a lot.

Other friends I've met through Blogland but whom I've never met in person have become a significant part of my life too - you know who you are and I thank you for that friendship. It's one of the things that keeps me in Blogland even though a few of us are in contact outside of Blogland and Monica and I still play Words With Friends (Scrabble) every day which we have done now for, I think, 10 years. Kate and I communicate daily too and have been in touch since a day (which I remember well) lost in the mists of time but which I could go back to in my New Zealand blog.  Gosh, tempus fugit. 

My Blogs are also my memories. 

This was actually going to be a post about New Zealand but that will have to wait because there are far too many other things on the agenda today and I want to do it justice.

Thoughts on Release From Lockdown

I am amazed at how out of touch I feel when I have been away from Blogland for nearly a month. During lockdown Blogland was a place of normality for me. After all Blogland has seen me through a great deal in the last 15 years whilst I've been writing and reading blogs. Blog friends and acquaintances have come and gone (and stayed) but it's been there as a comfort blanket during my New Zealand life as well as life here on Lewis. It's seen me in France, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Italy as well as Australia and touring New Zealand when I lived there. 

Blogland has been part of normality during lockdown too.

When we were in full lockdown for six months last year I rarely went out except for walks. I met people a lot on video chats and the good old telephone. Like everyone else social life and things like meeting to play bowls all stopped.

However, unlike most of my friends, despite me being a social animal I did not miss socialising. I enjoyed having no commitments. I enjoyed waking up and looking at the weather and deciding it was a perfect day for the garden or a walk or writing letters or working in the workshop/garage out of the rain. 

I could well understand the angst of people living in a multi-storey flat cooped up with other family members with no space and probably having to work from home or home-school. I would have hated that.

Now that things are returning to 'normal' and my diary is full and I have to be aware of the day and the time I am realising just how much I actually enjoyed lockdown. I didn't just endure it. I truly enjoyed it.

Now, though, I will get on with enjoying life again and now that I'm home from hospital and getting back into my Island routine I shall, hopefully, also catch up with all my Blogland pals and find out what you've been up to.

Be What You Wanna Be

Back in the '60s (1962 to be precise) I made the journey from Liverpool to London's West End Adelphi Theatre see a Lionel Bart musical called Blitz. It was my first London musical. I may still have the LP I bought at the time (I don't think it went with the hundreds that went to Oxfam recently). Mind you I bought the CD years ago and I still play it. It was a very uplifting musical as well as being nostalgic. It included the song 'Be What You Wanna Be'.

I was thinking about something recently and the song came back to me. The 'something' I was thinking about was Blogland and social media and the use of cellphones and the like to keep in touch. I think it was triggered by a newspaper article which suggested that we should wean ourselves away from our general enslavement to the god of social media  and our cellphones.

Of course the term cellphone or mobile phone is a misnomer now because they are generally used less for telephone conversations than anything else. In fact several years ago a quarter of mobile phone users never made a phone call. Bucking the trend I have now got rid of my 'free' weekday and overseas calls with BT (the landline provider) saving myself about £20 a month and spending £3 of that on 'free' overseas calls on my cellphone bearing in mind all my other calls are included in my monthly fee (which is considerably less than £20) anyway.

I digressed.

What I wanna be is back in Blogland. It is, generally speaking, a far more comfortable environment than the Real World. Why? Because you can choose the environment in which you want to live. I've been so busy in the Real World (including travelling between Lewis and Glasgow - where I am at the moment) that I keep losing touch and catching up gets harder. So I'm reading as much as I can on Feedly (I can do that on my cellphone when I'm in the airport or in a hospital waiting room) but it's difficult commenting. So I'm still with you all and I'll comment as soon as I'm able.