How life events change us

Can you do something for me please? Find a coin and toss it. Heads or tails?

If it's heads  please have a look at this blog - It was the blog I wrote five years ago today. It was one of the last blogs I wrote before Covid hit and the new normal started.

If it's a tails, please read this blog - it was written two years ago today. It was written two years ago. After we'd opened post pandemic, before I was told that my Prostate cancer had turned nasty. Within a month of this date, I was facing what was a massive personal crisis.

It is quite striking how mundane both were. I had no clue that both of these events would have such a profound effect on my life. It really demonstrates that we don't know what is around the corner. Prior to both events, I'd been merrily chugging along, without a care in the world, then everything changed. Reading both blogs, when I read them back, I felt like it was a rather different person writing them. Events change us. The pandemic made me a lot calmer and more reflective. I'd lived my life at 100mph until then. I was forced to spend four months lying in the sunshine, drinking beer in the back garden. I've never really got back to that speed since. As for the prostate cancer, it has changed a lot of things. I do appreciate a lot of things far more than I did before. 

One of the benefits of writing this blog is that I can see my own personal journey, as much as I see the stories I comment on. I doubt anyone other than me would see why I wouldn't have written these blogs in the way I did, if I wrote them today. Writing a blog can be quite theraputic at time, when things are stressful. However, when things seem to be going well, you get a very different insight. For whatever reason, I find it more and more difficult to have that cheerful, slightly sarcastic tone. I also think far more about my blogs. In the early years, I sometimes wrote 3/4 a day. I guess some of that is age, but I simply couldn't think of that many things to write about now. 

I wonder if people who don't write a blog or a diary recognise the way their thinking and mindset change over the years. I was inspired to read this after talk on the radio about the fifth anniversary of covid. Five years ago, few of us saw the Tsunami coming. We've spent five years living with the consequences. I've spent two years living with the consequences of aggresive prostate cancer and the remedial surgery. One thing I've realised is that despite what happens on this the surface of this planet, in the little corner called Mill Hill, the Earth turns and the Sun rises just the same. Go with the flow.