Oh dear god, it’s been more than a year since the last post.  There’s so much tumbleweed drifting around this barren landscape I call a blog that I can barely beat a pathway through to the ‘New Post’ button.

I do seem to be making a terrible habit of avoiding my screen and I’m not even sure why.  Every day I wake up with the very best of intentions.  Every night I promise that the next day I’ll definitely do better.  Procrastination in its finest form, I’m sure you’ll agree.  Sadly this terrible lack of motivation seems to have infiltrated almost every aspect of my day-to-day life.

Much like a petulant, sulking teenager, one day, Motivation simply gave me a withering look, rolled its eyes and then disappeared under a festering duvet.  Accompanied by (oh so easily led) Mojo, they both holed up in the dark, barely visible amongst piles of cushions, hoodies and assorted technology beginning with ‘i’. They blocked out the world (except for the WiFi, obvs) and slept like the dead, surviving on nothing more than carbs, Spotify and Netflix.  Sunlight was met with shrieks, hygiene was minimal and conversations consisted of no more than one syllable.  Earphones kept all pleads, threats or bribes at bay.

It was neither a battle or a war I could win.  I’m a mother of a teenager, I knew that.

To make matters worse, at the exact time Motivation descended into pubescent hell,  my ‘Oomph’ simultaneously went into hibernation overdrive and Creativity went AWOL – last official sighting, 28th May 2017.  I put that last deserter down to writer’s block on a gargantuan scale.  The Trump wall of writer’s block, if you will.

Like I said, this last year really has been procrastination in its finest form.  To highlight just how bad it became, both my 2017 and 2018 New Year’s resolutions were to try to write more on my blog.  That panned out, clearly.

Come to think of it, my other three resolutions for 2017 and 2018 also proved something of a non-starter.  They were: to start exercising more (and when I say more I mean to actually start); to make the time to meditate (instead of watching trashy but extremely enjoyable TV); to sell everything I don’t need on Ebay.  Needless to say, my yoga mat was last seen loitering on top of the wardrobe, my Headspace membership expired with an embarrassing lack of use and my Ebay account has been as badly neglected as this blog.  Fail, fail and epic fail.

There is, naturally, a valid reason for all the tumbleweed and radio silence.  It’s called life, and it’s mainly been shit.  I’d go so far as to say that life has completely drained the last jot of energy out of me.  If the last year was put on a spectrum ranging from ‘Rainbows and Unicorns’ through to ‘Complete and Utter Misery’, I’ve probably been hovering right around the ‘Big Dark Hole’ mark.  That’s somewhere between ‘Up A Creek’ and ‘Where Exactly Is The Light At The End Of The Tunnel?’  Nope, not a flicker of a rainbow or a bleeding bloody unicorn insight.

Daily existence has mainly centred around pain, with some exhaustion, frustration, upheaval and therapy thrown in for good measure.  Then there’s been the depression, with a side helping of despondency, debt and despair.  Oh yes, and a little bit of death, like a sprinkle on top.

A right barrel of laughs it’s been.  A ‘fed up/screw everything/ I give up’ type of year in which I just haven’t felt engaged enough with my brain to type anything worth reading.  Certainly, nothing that you, most lovely reader, would want to digest.  That said, other people’s misery does have a wonderfully warped way of giving perspective and cheering the soul, so perhaps I’ve done you all a massive disservice.

Anyhow, I’ve decided that things need to improve, at least on the blog front.  So I’ve dragged a stinking Motivation and Mojo out from under the duvet and slung them in the shower.  Oomph has been given a triple espresso and Creativity has been frogmarched back from the wilderness and shackled to the keyboard.  Now we’ll just have to see how that all goes.

So thank you – to everyone who hasn’t unfollowed me, to all those who’ve recently shown their support and for the truly lovely comments that have helped to remind me why I started the blog in the first place.  It’s a mixture of all of the above and my therapist’s steel-capped boot up my backside that’s (hopefully) got me back on track.