Every Sunday, Sadje asks a Sunday Poser question, and this week, I thought I’d take part. She asks:

What sort of posts [do] you like writing the best ; Q and A, stories, poems etc 

I’ll keep my answer short, but I thought it’d be a good opportunity to outline the history of this blog.

I started this blog in 2017, a year after I suffered a stroke. It was the third blog I had started, and the only one which stuck. Its purpose was to record my recovery, just because from day to day, it was impossible to see any progress. I had to look over months and, as it turned out, years.

I started out on Blogger and nobody read my posts except for me. But that was fine, because I considered it more of a diary at that time. I used it to talk about things like politics, too. For one, it was something I had always been interested in, and it really helped to clarify a position, to write things down. But for another (and this was important) I was forcing myself to think about the world again after a few years out. Really, recovery feels like pumping up a deflated football. Your world gradually becomes larger.

I can’t remember how I found WordPress. I do remember that the first post which stirred my interest was by a guy called Fandango. He did a series at that time called his Provocative Question. A question designed to make you think. Whatever the question was, I must have answered in a comment, and my interest in WordPress began.

When I discovered that people could follow each other’s posts, and have conversations via comments, I began to realise that it was a better platform than Blogger, and eventually moved my own content over.

In the early days, I wrote entirely non-fiction material, but as I got more sucked into the community, I started answering a few prompts, and developed tastes. For a while, I answered a music prompt. It was good to get to know people, but really, I didn’t feel particularly challenged by sticking a YouTube link into the middle of a post. Not only that, but I wouldn’t say my music appreciation is anything special – I like what I like, but that’s about it. I don’t expect other people to like it, too.

I grew to feel the same about Q & A prompts. I couldn’t imagine why anybody would be interested in what my favourite colour was, or what I’d had for breakfast.

But there were several prompts I did enjoy. I took tentative steps into writing creatively. For example, you’ve no idea how impossible that first one was, but over the next couple of years, I became quite adept at writing limericks. The biggest attraction was learning how poetry snobs would look down on them. (Unlike a lot of poetry,) limericks are direct, accessible and humorous and for those reasons, I love them.

There are over a thousand stashed away on the site now, and some of them were even half-decent. I still write them, occasionally, but I became increasingly aware that I was starting to repeat myself. I tried other forms of poetry – you’ll find a few sonnets, even, somewhere in this blog – but I mostly found my poetry to be very angry and nowhere near the quality of some people I follow here. So I don’t even bother. It’s never something I’ll master. One (excellent) poet I follow uses metaphors I would not even dream of. And my vocabulary is pretty good. I try to learn from her, but deep down I know that my brain is simply not wired to produce good poetry.

At that same time I also got into writing creatively. Short. Flash. A lot of it was learning the craft. Do’s and don’ts. I know people will say that this is a hobbyist platform, and there are no do’s or don’ts. Whilst, strictly, I agree, I still wanted to be the best I could be. Even if the only person who cares is… me. And while this is a hobbyist platform, if everyone gives up before they finish a poorly-written piece, what was the point in writing it in the first place?

Everything changed in 2023 when I got a job again. Setting aside the finances, I guarantee that this is a big deal for anybody who’s had a stroke. It’s a massive feeling, to know that you’re no longer on life’s scrapheap. I had to take it, and just accept the consequences. It must be the same for any major illness.

Unfortunately, one of the consequences was having little time any more for blogging. There would be days when I would knock off work at 5:30, and be tucked up in bed for the night by 5:35. No joke. Especially as fatigue is something I suffer from anyway. I went from posting maybe three times a day to perhaps once per month, if that. It’s a regret because I lost a lot of followers over that period, but I have to just shrug. It was a far bigger deal to get back into the workforce again.

While not blogging, though, I had several plot ideas, and I suddenly had some free time in 2025, when I was made redundant. It meant that I had time to put those plot ideas down onto paper, and I took the opportunity to write my first novel. I’ve not put it near the blog, because I don’t want to jeopardise anything in the future. But it was a really big deal (for me) to complete 80,000 words and to have a coherent story at the end of it. I embarked on another novel about last Christmas. It’s proving slower than the first, but I’m moving forwards – I passed 40,000 words the other day, so there’s no going back now! I know the main plot but am working through subplots as I go.

What all this means in terms of the blog is that while I now have free time again, I’m using it to write, but locally in Scrivener rather than onto the blog. At the same time, I’m conscious that I don’t want to stop blogging completely, and a few months ago I started a daily post just so people know I’m still around. They’re just short, old, mostly awful jokes that I lift from an equally old and awful joke book, but I figure that some people might be having a truly shitty day, and this idiocy might just raise a smile for a second or two. It might be important.

But as regards what I’ll blog in the future, we’ll see.