This is, I think, the longest gap in my blog. Each time there is a long break I come back and promise to try harder - it's a good personal discipline and it's just possible, I imagine, that some people may be reading and finding the odd snippet helpful. For this reason I begin, once again, with an apology, an apology for being what, as I now consider myself, as a 'slack blogger'. Don't try saying that after too many drinks!
Rather amusingly it's been so long since I did blog the format here has changed and I am having trouble navigating it!
I am happy to come back to this though because what I have to add at this point is essentially all very positive. I say 'all', perhaps I should more accurately say 'almost all'.
Despite being badly treated by the next most senior people in my 'chain of command', and to be truthful, I mean appallingly treated, I am feeling good, more positive, more in control of my own health, and less likely to seize on a media soundbite and turn it into a future crisis for me and those whom I love, my two sons especially. In other words, at least in this particular respect, I am being more consistently rational and find myself, as a result, more often climbing out into brighter light than descending into emotional darkness. I do have dips along the way, I suspect I always will, but the 'line of best fit - which is, I am told the best mathematical description for a graph that varies but heads, despite the peaks and troughs, in one direction - is upward.
I have, without a shadow of a doubt, been discriminated against outrageously. But such is my new found strength I am able to say it says more about them than it does about me; far more actually. More importantly, I feel more and more confident that despite a few bad days, they are rare and, to quote the I Am Kloot song (much beloved of Gavin and Stacey fans) I have 'No fear of falling'.
My new spaniels are a constant source of fun and joy. My family life is much improved. I feel better about myself. I am physically fit again. It is two and a half years since I took any mental health medication.
My final words of this offering are simply this - if you are one of the faithful souls who do return here from time to time in the hope that maybe I will offer to it, I thank you. If you find some words here that help and encourage every word is worthwhile. If you are still struggling - keep the faith, I am beginning to feel I have emerged into the light and whilst the clouds do still, occasionally, catch me up again I am living proof that it does and will improve and the sunlight does eventually burn the cloud cover off.
