Rambling Bollocks & Changes

Two years later...

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*Tumbleweed*

Whoops... it's been a long time... again. Many apologies. To be honest, when I typed in the address for this blog a few weeks ago, I was half expecting to find it had disappeared without a trace. Not only was I surprised to find it still existed, but that people have actually been reading it in the two years-and-a-bit it's been lying idle. So, thank you to anyone who stumbled across it during that time, read a post or two and kept coming back and I am so, so sorry you had to wait so long for something new to appear.

For anyone who has been reading the posts on here since it all started, then you probably know by now how quickly things can change. Actually, you don't need to have read a single post in order to know that. Life is a weird bastard and things can change and cause shock in the blink of an eye, as we all know after last year and it's constant stream of BBC 'BREAKING NEWS' captions, followed by a collective sigh of "Who the fuck's died now?". Incidentally, the lack of any posts on here during 2016 has nothing to do with the shitstorm of deaths, lies on buses and orange Golf enthusiasts we endured last year.

The actual reasons as to why I didn't post anything on here last year and most of the year before that are:

1. Things started to get a bit tough at work. A lot of changes happened that caused upset and various problems. Good people left - many of them by force and it wasn't a very nice time. Then, it was deemed that those changes had been a disaster and more changes happened. But things only got worse and then it really wasn't a very nice time. As a result of all of this, I didn't want to post anything on here, as the work situation was taking over my life and aside from not wanting to get into the shit by publishing something that I shouldn't, I didn't want to constantly make posts with a rather negative feel to them.
2. I sort of felt I had run out of steam with blogging. I guess this is sort of related to the previous point, but I think I had started to get a bit paranoid that I was being a bit dull and non of what I had to say on here was unique. 
3. Some other stuff.

And the changes kept coming.

Earlier this year, I made the difficult decision to leave London due to an illness in the family. It really was heartbreaking to leave my London life behind, but I needed and wanted to be closer to my folks. I had been down there for five years and although it had been a real struggle to start with, things improved within a year and I had a truly wonderful time with some lovely people. It's been just over a month now since I left, but it almost feels like a lifetime. I'm still trying to get the next chapter started, as finding a new job is proving very hard and life is continuing to throw various kinds of shite at me. I'll get there, eventually. Either that, or The Orange Twat will blow us all up.

So... this blog.

I'm determined to make a bloody good go of it, this time and this will involve some changes. Firstly, you may notice the slight change of URL, because as thankful as I am to Blogger/Blogspot for hosting my rambling bollocks and for not deleting it all during The Year Of Death, www.madnessisallinthemind.blogspot.com was a bit clumsy and long. As luck would have it, I was able to purchase a shorter one. It's still a bit long and I did toy with the idea of using an acronym for the address, but MIAITM doesn't really work or look good as a URL, so there you go.

Secondly, I've simplified the layout of the site, as I decided the sidebar was a bit cumbersome and cluttered, so I removed everything that was there apart from the 'Archive', which now sits below the header and is now a handy drop-down list. Some of the other features that used to form the sidebar might return at some point, but we shall see. I was thinking of carrying out a complete visual revamp, but I still kind of like this one and so far, I'm happy with the 'refresh'. I'm still tinkering with it though, so if anything isn't looking right, please feel free to let me know.

Thirdly, I want to add new posts on a regular basis, so I am thinking of introducing one or two 'features', that I aim to post weekly, alongside standard posts, which I will try to post more of. It's all early days, but after doing this blog on and off for 9 years, it really is time I actually make it bloody work and you know what? I actually bloody want to.

So, there we have it. Some rambling bollocks and changes. It's what life is all about.

*Yes, I know the ITV strike of 1979 didn't last anywhere near as long as 2 years, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I was writing this.