Holy Moly it feels like yonks since we chatted…probably because I didn’t write a post on Friday, which is a day that I normally would have. I didn’t intend to go quiet on your ass, it just sort of turned out that way. I’d taken a few days leave from work at the back end of last week, and I’d enticed my best buddy away from her grandbabies for a visit.

Thursday was mad busy…after I’d been to vote we took my mum out for lunch and had a proper leisurely girly day. I’d intended to write Friday’s post when I went to bed on Thursday night like I usually do, but then I went and got caught up in all the EU Referendum TV coverage which I pretty much watched all through the night.

After very little sleep I had a dental appointment and various other errands to run, and my friend and I were still glued to the TV news in and amongst it all, as the enormity of the shifting political landscape kind of sunk in. It’s fair to say I was pre-occupied, and it didn’t feel like there was anything in my head waiting to jump out. so I decided not to write. And then I spent a while turning over lots of stones in my head to make absolutely sure that I was comfortable with that. And to my surprise, I was.

Which is all kinds of weird, right? A few months ago, not only did I post daily, I even obsessed over posting at exactly the same time every day. I mean seriously, it’s as if I thought the world would end if I was a few minutes late. I think maybe I was deluded enough to imagine that folk were sat waiting impatiently by their phone or laptop or tablet for my words to materialise, but I can see very clearly now that actually I was the one who needed that discipline, not you lot.

I was utterly convinced that writing my thoughts down every single day was the one and only reason I was managing to keep my feet in the sweet spot, so it became sacrosanct, you know? If I struggled to fit everything in and something had to give, it was never the blog.

The thing is, I can’t even begin to tell you how much the power of words has given me. Quite apart from the incredible support which has grown up around me, the knowledge that my own determined effort to unpick the spaghetti in my head was also helping some of you guys to work through your own shit was beyond awesome. That’s what kept me accountable, and focused, and it forced me to face into some of the really hard stuff. I couldn’t shy away from it, because you were watching.

And now, I feel like I’m in a really good place. All of the above has helped to keep me on this path, but I almost feel like I’m riding along without my baby wheels attached now, you know? In the first few months I clung to these pages like my life depended upon it, but as my confidence has grown and I’ve figured out a bunch of stuff I’m no longer quite so scared that I’ll fall over if I let go because if I do, I know how to get back up again.

I have a friend who used to wear his lucky pants every time he sat an exam. Which was fine when he was twelve…he was still wearing the same lucky pants as he sat his finals at uni even though they made him talk like a Bee Gee, and he’d had to cut the leg elastic to prevent long term damage to his nicki-nacki-noos but you know what, he was so convinced that they were the talisman which would guarantee good marks he probably would have bombed without them. Those of us who know and love him will of course take the piss until the end of time, but he still has them and he doesn’t care.

So I’m not going to blame my lack of words on Friday for the fact that still the needle hasn’t moved on the scale…week three of treading water. Except I’m not. Not even a little bit. My food plan is on track, I’ve not missed a single fitness session and I’m walking every single day…screw the number, right? Somewhere along the line all that effort is going to pay off, and I’m sure enough now in what I’m doing not to pick up a bruise on my confidence just because the bitch won’t play nicely.

Things really have changed, right? 🙂

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