BLOGGING

For as long as I can remember I have kept a diary, not a diary that exhibits the eloquence of Samuel Pepys, or the tension and horror of Anne Frank’s , not even the daily consistency of Barbara Woodhouse’s. It’s not because I’m particularly lazy, but I do tend to lapse on occasion, I may scribe furiously at some length for many weeks, then not make an entry for months afterwards. It’s not as if I haven’t lived through some great historical moments. Being born in 1962, I’ve lived through wars, assassinations, plus ‘near misses’ i.e. Thatcher and Reagan, I’ve seen men land on the moon, which I witnessed from my sickbed at the tender age of seven, grizzling with mumps, although that seems to prove the old saying that “every cloud has a silver lining“, as I wouldn't have witnessed the landings in their entirety otherwise. I have noted some of the historical events of my lifetime, I recall writing in my diary about the wedding day of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, not because I’m a Royalist, I wasn’t even remotely interested in their marriage, but on their wedding day, I went to the beach and I was so badly burned that I spent the next three days in bed with sunstroke. I have always made a note of contemporary events that have coincided with notable occurrences in my personal life.
For approximately the past five years I have participated in various online forums which have served as a substitution for my need to keep a journal, although for the past year I have discussed writing a blog about the pressures and pleasures of running a small high street business in a small town in the twentyfirst century. Yesterday I finally bit the proverbial bullet and started to create some blogspace for my witterings. Although it’s taken me all of today, to begin writing, not that I’m devoid of anything to say, it’s just that it seems bizarre writing to myself, yet knowing that my words will be available to anyone with access to the internet.

“What am I trying to achieve by babbling incoherently in cyberspace“? A question that I’ve been asking myself for the past year. It’s quite a strange existence being a sole trader on the high street, whilst I interact with many customers and other business people in an average week, I’m never fully involved with any of them as mind has to be concentrated upon certain tasks, as I’m essentially a ‘one man band’ having to multi-task a multitude of different roles and it is only at the end of the working day, when I can sit alone at my PC that I can truly reflect upon my daily grind, but being alone I cannot obtain feedback and many of the people that I would physically interact with are unsuitable for such discourse. It is my hope, that by concentrating my hopes, fears, gripes, amusements and general nonsense in this miniscule part of the gigantic internet, that I will encounter others with views broadly similar to my own, or even wildly different, from which I can take soundings, or counsel to help me through that lonely part of the day when the business has ceased and there is the long pause for reflection.