Hi. I'm a thirty-one-year-old woman living in the north of England, and I am a bit obsessed with journalling. I have kept an online diary in some format or another since around 1999; I'm now trying to branch out from LJ-style sites into something a bit more like an actual blog. (I also have a paper journal, for when I feel like splashing paint around or sticking pretty things together into a collage, or just writing something that's actually private.) I thought it might be useful to have a page for a quick description of myself and some background on some of the things I write about.
I am chronically ill and spend a lot of time at home because I'm quite frequently not well enough to do anything else. (I do have a little garden I can sit in when the weather's nice enough, though.) I was diagnosed with M.E. about ten years ago; I don't really know what this means except that I get tired very easily but (annoyingly) also have problems sleeping, and have a lot of problems with my immune system. I also have weird musculo-skeletal issues; I was recently diagnosed with hypermobility syndrome and osteoarthritis. I can still walk and everything, currently, but sometimes it's not easy. I have a bike; oddly enough, riding it is much less painful than walking, presumably because it's lower-impact and involves putting much less weight on my feet, so that's pretty great for days when I have sufficient energy for it (which are few and far between currently but hey I can hope). I'm mentioning all of this mostly so that the fairly frequent mentions of doctors and tests and hospitals in my journal will actually have some context.
I am kind of a tree-hugging hippie liberal type who worries about social justice issues a lot; I don't write about those issues a great deal, but they probably tend to inform my general ideas and the things I do write about. I'm currently co-habiting with a guy, but prior to that had a couple of serious relationships with women; I identify as queer, and I'm pretty interested in LGBTQ issues. I also identify as a feminist, though possibly a bit of a non-traditional one in some ways.
I live in a tiny (but nice) little house in Manchester with my partner T and our two cats. I love my cats to a ridiculous degree; I generally try to forcibly stop myself from filling this blog with pictures of them, cute stories about what the kitten did this morning, etc., but sometimes I fail. Hell, what is the internet for if not for spamming strangers with pictures of your cat?
I volunteer in a museum (when I'm well enough to get there), and I really, really love it. The museum has been one of my favourite places ever since I was a small child, so getting to actually be a part of it in whatever small way I can is wonderful. I'm also studying via correspondence course with the Open University, who are absolutely amazing. I finished my Diploma in Classical Studies with them last year and I'm now working towards a degree in Humanities with Classical Studies. I love my course - sometimes I struggle a bit with the work, but studying with them is seriously one of the best ideas I ever had.
I'm kind of a geek. Or possibly a nerd. I read a lot of books, and I read a lot of blogs, and I play videogames, and I really, really like the internet. It's pretty much my lifeline when I'm sick and spending a lot of time lying around the house with nothing to do and no energy to do it with. I love books, and I get really fixated on fictional stuff sometimes, but in a good way. Every November, I try to write a short novel for National Novel Writing Month; so far, I have succeeded four times, two of which were actually semi-coherent. I make jewellery, and some of it is actually quite pretty. I am learning to sew, mostly so that someday I can make myself pretty dresses. I like pretty dresses (no, this does not conflict with being a feminist - or a geek).
I also like dinosaurs and cats and the seaside and seahorses and museums and old books and paper journals and Shakespeare and cheap wine and lizards and roses. Actually, this blog is just me writing about my life and sometimes posting pictures and links and whatever, it doesn't really have a theme, but I guess that's a rough guide to the sort of things I occasionally get really enthusiastic about.
This blog is cross-posted to Posterous and Tumblr, to make it easier for friends to follow me.
