My blog manager tells me I need to find my niche. That I need to write in order to interest people.

I’d sack him, but I’d be lost without him.

LONG VERSION:

I am a writer.

It has taken me a long time to make such a declaration.

I am a small-town girl, born with a kaleidoscopic mind, a macrocosmic heart and a soul that is unchained.

My head is ever dreaming among the clouds of imagination, but my feet are perpetually rooted in reality.

You may not find my writing inspiring, captivating or agreeable. But I hope you do. For the first time in my life I am my own cup of tea. And that is enough.

In fractions which vary from day to day, from hour to hour, I am a nature lover, a reader and an amateur ecologist.

I love to walk. I love to walk a lot.

I love my dogs. They are my favourite people. I love everyone else’s dogs too.

I am an animal lover. I don’t eat dead animals and do my best to avoid any products which involve the slaughter of sentient beings.

I believe in rights, freedom and equality.

While trying to iron out some of my many, many creaks and creases, I made this comment to my blog manager:

“I need to realise that not every blog post has to be a thesis. It’s ok not to include every scrap of information that has ever existed on the subject.”

As a former academic, that will always be a challenge. Watch this space. And take care not to fall down the rabbit hole.

SHORT VERSION:

I am the owner of a loving, peace-seeking heart. I’m more interested in the things that unite us than those which divide us. You’ll find a lot of that here.

The categories on my blog are not exactly intuitive to me (blog manager, again), but they may help you navigate, if you so choose.

They are as follows –

MUSINGS – a ramble of my current thoughts, informed in turns by the personal, the political, the spiritual and the intellectual.

MISSING WORDS – words that I have been prevented saying in my life or that I feel are omitted from the social narrative.

KALEIDOSCOPES – reflections, symmetries and patterns.

ECOLOGIES – the mesh that connects us to each other, to the world, and to ourselves; and how vitally, vitally important it is to understand it.

HEARTBEATS – poetry and music – the rhythms of life.