A few people have commented that they like the blog layout. Thankyou, I haven't done much it's just one of the themes that are already made to choose from. If it wasn't so easy to use I probably would have given up by now as I am not at all technical. I am sure there is a lot more uses for the pre loaded stuff weebly offer.

I thought that the site was good value. It's free if you don't want any stats. Inexpensive if you want some numbers, and I bought the domain name, I think I must have done, I can't remember now.

I set up a similar type of website about ten years ago for my business, but it wasn't nearly so clever or professional looking. I kind of made it a game to see how high I could get that site to the top of the pile on google and display on the first page. I don't realy know how to do it, I just do. I suppose it's relevent content.

If anyone want's to set one up as a 'professional' paid for version like this one, you could always mention that you were referred by me! I think this means I get a free year or something. Thanks if you do!

There are easy ways to edit the site, add pictures, you tube links, Google AdSense, and I think it automatically puts a link to facebook if I post something here. I haven't even got to grips with Facebook!

I think this is a very good tool if you want an inexpensive website for a business that can be updated frequently with new offers. There is a notify me when changes are made button somewhere, so if someone does want to 'opt in' or out it's up to them if they follow updates. With all the junk that gets sent out I am sure this is more polite than sending out spam.

I have wondered what to do with myself for ages, well since I sold my Hairdressing Salon. It's easy for me to write, as I don't have to stand up. (I hurt my back). I wonder if I could write some stuff for other people who don't have the time or confidence. Mostly my spelling is OK! For that matter perhaps I could try writing some fiction. They say there is a book in all of us.

Anyway I thought about putting an AdSense button on the page to see how it works. This is not exactly a major site for getting adverts posted on. I may not like how it looks or what is being advertised! I don't even know how one gets paid if anyone does click on an AdSense advert so It's a kind of experiment. Then I changed my mind and deleted it. Somehow I don't want to advertise something on my site that I might not endorse.

I just re read my previous post, and yes this is what I have been thinking about. Still it's difficult not to have anxiety symptoms. For those who haven't had them before they can be just about anything from a headache to muscle cramps from tensing up. Some people feel like they are going to have a heart attack, others get stomach cramps.

I am sure general illnesses are a result of the stresses we live with, and perhaps don't recognise for what they are. I find I don't want to eat much when I feel like this, although I made pasta for lunch and decided to have a second spoonful as it was rather good. That's a good sign!

It's important to keep taking those tablets too! With the history of Bi-Polar I have notched up, anything to help me through difficult situations is essential.

I do write about living with Bi-Polar, as perhaps there are others who read this blog, and can recognise themselves and their symptoms. We are all unique, but knowing we are not alone does help.

I think the best medicine is hope. That's not elation. It's the stability of having something to believe in. Also knowing there are different ways of dealing with stressed feelings, and depression. I am blessed with a good and stable relationship with my Husband, that is a treasure indeed. I do sometimes feel fearful of his health as he has a serious heart condition.

Somehow writing this helps me rather than internalising those negative thoughts. The overplanning and negativive fears that can take hold of me when the future seems full of change or difficulties. It's like the worries just keep going like a merry go round of 'what if's'. Then somehow everything turns out just fine. I realise the ride has stopped and I stagger away in that dizzy and disorientated lurch. Then I wonder at the amount of stress I let myself feel, running up to the inevitable change or event.

I just wonder if I could train myself to feel differently? Not to worry about things I can't change. Stop worrying about security, when the very notion that we have security in the first place is rather silly. I think a sense of security is just when we have nothing that challenges our way of living, and we have no fear of losing a job, home, income, status.. or anything else we put our stock of worth into.

Our lives must be more than buffering us against the hard edges of a reality we don't want to face. Yet at the same time a faith that there is a plan to our lives, engineered for us to grow in some spiritual way beyond our materialistic needs. A kind of sharpness in our experiences, otherwise we wouldn't be human.

I suppose by definition this whole site is a kind of cathartic effort on my part to have a conversation with myself. I certainly don't have these kind of discussions with anyone else!

It is bucketing down with rain outside, we had a huge storm yesterday afternoon and the drains couldn't cope. There was flooding yesterday. In a way I suppose I am the same, I can't cope with too much at once. The rain is both a blessing and a potential hazard with people's homes and businesses being flooded, yet somehow the crisis is overcome. Better drainage systems are due to be put in place to deal with such heavy torrents. Resevoirs full though, which for a small island is very important.

Thankyou for leaving a comment, It is very encouraging to know my personal thoughts and probably far too much of my personal feelings are read by other people. I suppose this is a personal diary realy. Not a very regular one at the moment though. I will try to make it more regular.

Upheaval is in the air. We must move home. To be honest I don't want to leave where we live, but we must sell and move. I can't imagine living anywhere else. My Husband feels this is the right time for us to make this transition. It is His choice to make, and duty to do so for His mother's sake. We need to be able to pay for her nursing care.

I am strangely thinking about my tomato plants in my greenhouse. They haven't been watered for over a month, they look a bit thirsty but instead of dying they have obviously put down very deep roots. They are so full of fruit. I picked over a kilo of the tiny yellow ones a few days ago. I don't want to start watering the plants as this may make the fruits split. Better to have them small and abundent than larger and spoiled.

I kind of took this as a metaphor for my spiritual life. I do read a lot of texts around the Bible narrative. I am re-reading 'The Particulars of Rapture' which is an in depth commentary of Exodus. I find so much that resonates within me about my own journey with mental illness, and coming to know myself.

I checked out Reb Jeffs posts and left a comment today. It was about how God is enigmatic, and if we had a kind of empirical knowledge of Him, and that was the end of it, there would be no sense of the mystery of God that draws our desire to greater depths. We wouldn't put down deep taproots into faith if we had abundance, knowledge, and satisfaction in competeness. Perhaps that is the desire of the Athiest?

I perhaps see 'faith' as that deep taproot, rather than the water table below. God expresses himself as water that quenches thirst in many passages. Perhaps testing times are those that make us send down deep taproots to find both something to cling to in the grounding of our lives, and also to seek refreshment from the arridness of our own desires and self seeking.

Yes I want a home that gives me a sense of security, and that I will not have to move from. Yet reading The Exodus reminds me that this desire for permanence and security is strangely at odds with revelation. There is a need for instability in our lives, or we fall into a kind of unhearing, unseeing stupor. We have no sense of obsticle to reveal our deepest desires.

This was something that struck me from 'The particulars of Rapture', that those things we see as obsticles, difficulties, setbacks, are in themselves revelations to ourselves, our inner world of hidden desires that we find it difficult to access. It isn't until we begin to feel those turbulent thoughts and emotions that we see what our hidden thoughts and motivations truly are. Events precipitate a kind of open window for us to glimpse our life within.

I have in the past not responded well to stressfull dificult situations. I can't say that I want to move, but I do want an established home that makes me feel secure in the future. This is what I lack at the moment. It may not be a comparable quality of peace and tranquility this home offers.

I simply trust that things will turn out fine... It's just easier to trust God's timing, and that my Husband is right! The alternative is heartache and anguish, probably developing into arguments.

If it is difficult for me, how much more difficult for Him to sell the family home. This is a time to support one another as much as we both can.

We all want to know what the future will bring, but for sure we can only deal with it one day at a time when an elderly and sick parent needs caring for. Yes, it would not be possible for us to care for her as she now needs professional nursing care. This has to be paid for.

The whole Exodus narrative is very powerful, about transition, leaving behind a way of life and embracing a new culture given through events, revelations, and desire for identity. Leaving behind a state of spiritual death; the worship of the known, abundant, ordered world of Egypt, where people were stifled from fulfilling their potential because of 'hard labour and shortness of breath' for the unknown future that seems initially haphazard tenuous and insecure. A place and space that opened possibilities.

A story of moving people, shifting sensibilities, desire to experience, and have a relationship with God. That we have this story of redemption as a constantly aplicable paradigm to our lives, is a gift indeed. How would we know this story if it had not been kept alive through the re-telling. Yes it is freely available to everyone, Perhaps we Christians don't root ourselves deeply enough in the old testament texts. Jesus pointed out that parable of the seeds that withered and died in the sun, but those that grew in fertile ground were strong and gave abundant return. I do like the whole Bible, not just the New Testament.

Right I am off to make a cuppa and not worry about a 'ting'.

I guess it's the anti-climax to having had such a busy and enjoyable time with my family and friends.

For the first time in two years I feel I miss work. Like they say, if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Indolence is a killer when it comes to motivation and self esteem. I used to live at break neck speed, and get so much done until it was impossible to continue. Thankfully my back that got damaged pretty badly doesn't hurt any more when I stand for an hour or so. This was why I had to give up hairdressing.

I have got out of the routine I was in, going to the gym a couple of times a week and helping with some charity work on a Wednesday morning, (when I could wake up early enough). The days are shorter if I get up late, which is a bad admission really.

There is so much charity work available on our small island. I think I need to just join up and do something that brings some benefit to other people. I have been rubbishing myself thinking that I don't have anything to offer. This has just been a ruse to avoid getting out there.

It's the workshop for mental health recovery next week. MIND Jersey would seem the obvious choice to help out doing something. I will ask and see what volunteering there is available.

Perhaps those Olympic Volunteers are the biggest inspiration, all 70,000 of them. There were many more who offered, somewhere in the region of 250,000 which is staggering.

I do feel I needed this time, just doing nothing. Well two years has been taken up with getting a building project completed. It's almost over, I need to get some plumbing work redone, as the builder/plumbers put so many bends from the bathroom to the down pipe it blocked and caused a flood.

I simply can't use the same builder to re-do this work, even though I should, because no-one wants him on site. I think I would rather pay to get this done as well, when I can afford it, as I have no faith that it will be done correctly by the original plumbers. So this is just hopefully the final bit of work that needs seeing to, to get it right.

It makes me quite sure that I would not want to take on a renovation project of any kind again. I lost my sanity over the project I undertook. The building trade here moan that business is so low, and that many are out of work, but if they did a much better job and caused far less anguish to their customers perhaps people would have more confidence to spend their money, and get the satisfaction they want from home upgrades. I would rather live with an old bathroom and kitchen than suffer the upheaval and potential stress of having poor workmanship, badly managed projects, and the sense that I am being ripped off.

I just think the building trades get away with too much, when it comes to customer service.

Well thats my moan for today!

We Brits are great worriers. Perhaps it's because we want all the details to be right. Even the things out of our control like the weather! It was a spectacular closing ceremony last night, I realy enjoyed it.

The last couple of weeks the Olympics has overtaken our lives. It has turned our gaze to something beyond ourselves. The best thing of all was the 70 thousand volunteers, the 'Gamesmakers'. Just extraordinarily generous, helpful, cheerful people, who gave themselves to making the atmosphere of the games so happy. We met them, they were wonderful.

Wouldn't it be great to have these people all the time, and for this excitement, friendliness, and genuine pleasure in chatting to strangers the norm in societies.  It was an injection of happiness from the volunteers and aspiration that rubbed off from the competitors and delight from the spectators no matter who won. We saw everyone compete at their best, medals or not.

Now we are back to the reality. The weather has changed here today and we have had a few downpours. Thank goodness realy because the garden is very dry. The lawn won't get mown until tomorrow, or until it is dry enough.

I am delighted we went to the games. Next time we watch it on TV we will have that we went there once feeling, and know the atmosphere that builds with each heat and performance round. It is something to celebrate, and long may the Olympics cary on inspiring every day people to do outstanding things.

How lucky we were to spend a week with my brother and sister in law and going to the olympics for the first week. The atmosphere was incredible, and wonderful to see my family and spend time with them. I don't realise how much I miss them all.

We have had friends stay with us too. We havent seen them in over 10 years, and they now have children. Two lovely, lively children.

I suppose today I am realising what an anticlimax i feel to such a lot of laughter and company.

Still catching up on washing and household chores, well not realy being serious about it as I keep watching the olympics on TV. I have tried not watching the news lately so closely, It made me feel awful all the time.

The killings by delusional people of so many innocents is harrowing. I do appreciate following Reb Jeff's Blog on Joyful Judaism. He puts things into a perspective of redemption when the events are so desperately unholy.

The person who commits a crime against humanity is someones son or daughter. How can hatred and fear of others become so intense that it breaks down the structure of someone's life to the extent of finding justification in inflicting their own 'punishment' on others. How do we as friends and family miss the tell tale signs that someone has become mentally unstable, and could become a threat to others?

What do these massacre killings say about our societies and our humanity. Too big a question for me.