Sundaze 180

I can hardly believe it’s already time to write this Sundaze post, not least because it’s been such a long and draining week. From a smol car crash (car and I both fine!) to a second wave being announced, to One of Those Weeks at work, it’s been relentless. Top that all off with a severe crisis of confidence after feeling a little blindsided in my online content, and you’ve got one helluva situation.

I’m mostly trying to give myself some space to sit in my feelings (as woo-woo as that might sound) and let myself be anxious. It’s totally valid and understandable to be continually anxious when there’s a badly managed global pandemic running rampant around the world. And I just don’t think I’ve let myself… do that? I’ve always thought I have to find the good and suppress anything not-so-positive, but that isn’t doing me any good. I pick up my phone and am too anxious to open WhatsApp, I start writing a Tweet and delete it all, I write a blog post and discard it because I’m not good enough. So, I’m not doing great in the wake of the second wave and it’s stopped me from doing, well, anything this week. It’s okay if all you managed was to run an excellent midweek bubble bath.

Soaking up the final stretch of summer

Amongst all of the doom and gloom, I managed to get outdoors for two glorious dog walks. Autumn is right around the corner, and it was nice to soak up the last moments of summer. Mostly, we’re working on building up Milo’s confidence outdoors again. It’s shocking to see how many dogs roam freely off their leads, and it’s been a big trigger for us. In fact over the summer, we’ve barely left the house and Milo hasn’t had daily walks – we have a large garden and vegetable garden though! – so it’s been nice to get out and at least glimpse some of what we may have missed.

On online trolling and trying to live by my own rules

I’ve written Daisybutter for over 10 years now. 10 long years, and I often feel like I’ve seen it all. But this week felt pretty awful online. After a string of bad days, I then finally logged back into social media to find endless replies and DMs full of disgusting hate speech and ‘trolling’. As I’m ‘so Pisces it hurts’, I’ve found it hard to shake off this time. It’s easy to say ‘don’t take it personally’, but once the words have been read and the thoughts have been thought, they’re imprinted. So, grab a cuppa and get cosy because the blog is my always priority again!