Poor neglected blog

I think it must be something about starting a blog – now this one looks like a lot of others, with an initial burst of enthusiastic posting followed by a long quiet period of neglect. Not that I haven’t had anything to write about – I have – but the posts that I compose in my mind when I’m under the shower in the morning just haven’t been finding their way onto the Internet – I remember having the same problem years ago with letters to my grandparents. In the absence of a waterproof laptop, I need to find a way to translate all those wonderful ideas into words on “paper” – which, of course, is part of the reason I started a blog – to get my thoughts out of my head and recorded in some coherent way. I suspect the answer lies in the concept of self-discipline – and trying to form new habits – all of which takes time.

The maths has also suffered a period of neglect leading up to Christmas as I was saving my energy for driving to and from the hospital / apartments where my parents spent almost five weeks as Dad underwent a stem cell transplant (similar to a bone marrow transplant only using the patient’s own stem cells which have previously been harvested). It’s not a pleasant process but they were able to go back home just before Christmas, and he seems to be slowly recovering his appetite and energy levels. Prior to that, I also expended more energy than I could afford trying to mulch various garden beds – with considerable help from the local Apex club. The worst beds have been done, but there’s still a pile of mulch awaiting my further attention – for the time being, weed-killer is keeping things under control.

I’ve returned to the maths recently – I have to finish within 40 weeks of the day I started it (ie the end of April) and the schedule is starting to get a bit tight. The year 11 stuff is all finished – just the exam to go, which will be in February. I’ve started on the year 12 textbook and have got as far as drafting the first of 4 tutorials – on the first 2 chapters (out of a total of 12). Now I’m working on the 3rd chapter in between watching the Test cricket on TV.

My thoughts over the past week or so have been very much with those people affected by the Asian tsunami – I’d already gotten the strong impression after the Christmas Eve service at church that I needed to keep the events of my life in perspective –that I actually have a lot to be grateful for. Now, I realise more than ever just how lucky I am – in fact, how lucky most of us in Australia are. The challenge for me is to retain a sense of perspective – after all, I have a roof over my head, plenty of food, running hot water, car, electricity, phone, internet, all sorts of “toys” (tv, computer, books, music) – the fact that I have a chronic illness and that my fridge decided it wasn’t going to join me in 2005 is really not such a big deal ….