Making plans

The 8th anniversary of this blog whizzed past me on the 15th of May without fanfare - without me noticing, even. It wasn't until November 2018 that I began blogging at the start of every month, and in that time I've written about love, death, grief, and loss - all the small things in life, obvs.

My most recent major loss has triggered a sharp reappraisal of my future - both on a emotional level, but also a practical one, too - and, as a part of that, I'm reconsidering a number of things, including this site.

When I first started this website and blog, I'll be honest - it was to pretend to be a real-life grown-up of some damn description. Being on long-term disability benefits, and without a job title or career description to conjure up when folks asked, "What do you do?", left me in need of something to say other than, "I'm long-term disabled by chronic illness, so I don't have a job or career".

Having a website, writing each month, having an accessible repository of proof that I used to do things in the past and have current interests which expand my identity .. it's been so incredibly helpful and has allowed me to build up and embrace an identity around the things I CAN do rather than the things I can't.

But now it's time to take that identity piece a stage further. I've wrestled for a long time about whether to have a website with my own name on it, and to drop the Let The Love In "brand".

I used to love giving people my business card (do you remember that practise, peoples? No? Ask an Old Person about how that used to be the norm) because the set I had included these AMAZING cards by Gaping Void (sadly the exact deck is no more), so even if the other person never contacted me afterwards they had already received something of value.

But also because the website name, even giving someone my email address, inevitably triggered a positive response and provoked further conversation.

(Who doesn't need a gentle reminder to "let the love in" to their lives? Well, EXACTLY).

I remember the author, speaker, and spiritual entrepreneur Danielle Laporte writing about replacing her website domain "White Hot Truth" to one of her own name, complaining to her coach that "no-one will know how to spell it" - but really, being afraid to drop something she hid behind.

(I mean, do I need to spell it out in words how much I identify with that shizz?)

So, what is the upshot of this highly self-centred blog post? Other than to vaguely gesticulate towards the idea that many of us hide behind something, be they titles, roles, or concepts in our lives?

It's to say that plans are being hatched, and some changes will be coming over the next couple of months - by the next blog post, hopefully.

And that I really hope you'll join me when I create my new internet home.

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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio