It’s weird you know, I’m fifty years old and I’d like to think I’ve learned a few valuable life lessons along the way. I’m still learning, in fact this journey in particular over the last few months has peeled away a lot of layers and revealed things about me to myself that I don’t think I ever knew. If someone had told me at the very start of this journey that that would happen it might have spooked me a bit, I mean it could have had disaster written all over it, right? We all know about Pandora’s box.

Happily, as I’ve uncovered stuff, talking it through with you lot has helped me to work through it, in fact it’s been like six hundred words of therapy every day. I’m more grateful than I can tell you for the fact that you all listen to whatever comes out of my head, and then empathise, and relate, and chip in with your own perspective.

I must admit, I’m totally unguarded on here, and I’m sure occasionally I’ve been guilty of over-sharing, but I’d hope my words come across to you as authentic. It’s my journey, as seen through my own eyes, and whilst I might crack a joke or two, those of you who’ve sussed me out will understand that’s my default way of dealing with difficult, you know?

So I had an email yesterday morning from one of my most loyal supporters who was absolutely outraged that someone had awarded a ‘poor’ rating to something I wrote a couple of days ago. And bless her, she even felt the need to apologise on their behalf. I was so touched at the way she had my back, but to be honest until she pointed it out, I hadn’t actually noticed.

See, I don’t think too much about the star ratings widget…it’s useful in the way it allows me to see which posts you enjoy the most, and I love that it generates a favourite posts list – new folk who wander into the blog tend to poke around in there, and it gives them a good flavour of what we’re all about. I’ve never really thought about it in the context of people passing judgement on my writing, daft as that might sound.

I’ve got to be honest, I didn’t like the fact that someone thought my words weren’t up to scratch, but I wasn’t especially worried about it. And this little storm in a teacup demonstrated perfectly to me just how far I’ve grown in the last few months. At one time I would’ve been absolutely gutted.

I would have read, and re-read the post, trying to pinpoint the exact bit which sent someone’s opinion of me plummeting downwards. I would’ve chewed myself up about it and then probably headed straight to the Hobnobs. I wasn’t good enough, look it’s there in black and white, I’m officially rubbish. POOR!! I need a hobnob immediately to make me feel better.

This time, I re-read it once and thought you know what, it’s probably not the most entertaining post I’ve written but actually, it helped me. And let’s not forget, I write for me. Writing my thoughts down on that day in the way that I did helped me to find a link. And the links I’ve gathered over the past ten or so months are the reason I’m still here, sashaying along on this road to Skinny Town.

So I’m happy with those words even if they weren’t to someone else’s taste…they served me well. They had a purpose. And if I tried to be funny when I wasn’t feeling funny, that’s when I stop being authentic, right?

I don’t much fancy getting another ‘poor’ though. Ever. So I changed the descriptions, ‘cos I can do that. ‘Poor’ is now a bit dodgy, and ‘awful’ is now a steaming pile of shite. I sincerely hope nobody ever thinks that, but at least if they do it’ll make me chuckle, and I’d rather be dodgy than poor any day of the week..!

Have a great weekend everyone…see you on the other side 🙂

Like it..? Tell your friends!