I realised this week while looking back through some of my previous posts on here, that I missed my second blogaversary!  With all the crazy that's been going on the last few months especially, I guess it was understandable for it to slip my mind.  I know I've not been very good at posting regularly for the majority of this year, and I actually can't remember the last time I did post before lockdown.

I just checked back and I fell off posting in November last year and didn't post again until April this year.  The post titled 'First Post of 2020', posted in early April was originally written in January and there is a post in my drafts folder that I also wrote in January.  Over the last few months with lockdown and working with my therapist I've felt that I've been in a better place mentally and so have been able to post more recently. 

Last year was a different kind of crazy for me with me taking another major mental health dip, leading me to put myself on the waiting list for more CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and asking to be put on antidepressants again as well.   But with a lot of time over the last few months to think about things as well as write in my journal, I feel I am making a lot of progress in a short space of time.  It's helping with no usual daily distractions of going to work because when I'm at work I have to pretend a lot that I'm ok and I get in the habit of pushing thoughts and feelings down or to one side and I never or rarely end up dealing with them. But in lockdown, I've been able to explore my past, my behaviours and negative habits and then work through things and recently I've been working with a therapist to help me make sense of a few things which has been a great help to me.    

I've been using some of the lockdown time to brainstorm a few things to write about on here and I think that due to me working on my mental health, that I've felt more awake as it were and I'm able to put my head above the water a bit more than I could a few months ago so my inspiration and drive as starting to come back.  Which I'm very grateful for.

I've no word as of yet about when my company's stores and specifically the store I work in will reopen, we've certain protective measures to put in place before we can reopen, but I'm guessing maybe mid-June at the earliest.  The stores will be opened in stages and maybe with shorter hours, to begin with as well.  I'm on the email list for my local police to be kept informed with local things and in the most recent one, it says that the government is to reassess the temporary closure of places of worship at the earliest in July. 

I'm really missing seeing and speaking to my mum, work colleagues, friends and church family.  I didn't get to see mum on mothers day in March or my birthday which was in early April, which I found very difficult.  We Skyped but it just wasn't the same, I wanted to hug her, hopefully, I can visit her and hug her again soon.  The most difficult part of this for me has been the isolation, from going from speaking to dozens of people daily to speaking to a handful over a week if I'm fortunate enough has been really hard.  

This blog post has really taken a different turn from what I thought it was going to be when I sat down to write it, sometimes the posts write themselves without any or much instruction from me as it were.   Sometimes I know exactly what points I'm going to cover when I sit down to write and others, like today, I have a starting point and just sit down to write and sometimes I end up talking about something different than I thought I was going to.  But its all good!  I write whatever I need to write, that's one thing that made me start this blog in 2018, to write more finished pieces about my life and mental health journey along with whatever else I wanted to write about.  

I'm going to continue to post when I'm able to but hopefully, this round of CBT will help me get to where I want to be to live the life I want to live, where I'm not vanishing for months at a time from writing blog posts as I know it helps me when I write them and therefore I hope it helps some of you who read them.