Hi, I’m just here unwrapping the dust covers, brushing down the spiderwebs and sweeping up the left-over dreams of my tiny little space on the internet.

I know I’ve been gone almost 12-months. I’m not even sure how that happened. A full-time, stressful job. Two daughters morphing into adults where they need you less, need you more, need you less.

Somehow along the way I lost the mojo to sit here and talk to you all, but gosh I missed you.  Almost every day an idea for a post would pop into my head, it was just the energy to sit at the computer and craft it into interesting content was missing.

But today I’m back, this time I hope for good.

So I’m desperately waving, hellooooooo, is anyone out there?

If you have clicked through, leave me a comment here, a facebook like or comment, follow me on twitter, instagram or pinterest, just to give a flicker of hope that poor old Shambolic can be resurrected.

There’s so much to fill you in on.

It’s been almost four and half years since we lost Simon and I’ve lived all of that time in a fog of grief that has to be waded through on a daily basis. It’s exhausting, even when it’s no longer obvious.

However, today on the first day of spring here in Australia, there’s a slight shifting. I think maybe, just maybe a little tiny bit of the old me is resurfacing. For the first time in a long time I’m feeling a sense of hope.  I’ve spent the past couple of days thinking of new ideas and even making a few plans. OK, maybe that has been forced upon me by a financial counsellor telling me I need to earn more money, apparently in 2018 a full-time, pretty good paying job, isn’t enough to sustain a family of three and I need to embrace the side hustle. But more of that in a minute.

I’m 50 now. The girls are 21 and 18. Hippie Child will, in the next few months, finish her degree and be a fully qualified Natural History Illustrator. Princess Child will finish her HSC and we will be done with school! Oh yeah!!!!!

I must say, Shambolic Living, has been good to me, even while in hiatus. At the worst of times you people provided support and friendship that was so very comforting. You wouldn’t think strangers from around the world could make a tough time bearable but you did.

It’s funny someone asked me the other day if I had a travel bucket list. I said I didn’t anymore. But as I started thinking about the blog I decided if I was to travel I would love to visit some of you in real life. Don’t panic I’m not planning on arriving on your doorstep with truckloads of luggage and an indefinite timetable, but I would like to wander into the cities and towns you live in and meet up for a long lunch at your favourite local restaurant. Geeze that would be fun.

But back to filling you in on the gossip and explaining how old Shambles has been good to me. An old friend recently got back in touch with me. He saw a documentary featuring a ship he used to serve on in the Navy and it reminded him that he had lost touch with everyone from that time of his life. He began googling some of his old mates and a combination of not changing my name when I got married and Shambolic Living  pushing up my ranking in the google search engine meant he found my public facebook page.

It’s a little weird to reconnect with someone from 30 years ago, particularly when they are someone you were pretty crazy about back in the day. But it’s also been lovely. Safe and comfortable and easy. He lives 1300 kilometres away so it’s one of those long-distance friendships but he’s probably the one responsible for my new sense of hope. The feeling that maybe the future might not just be me sitting alone in a big house. Perhaps it will include me dragging a poor dude around the world to meet up with an eclectic collection of individuals of varying ages who have at some point taken to sharing their stories on the world wide web.

I do still have to explain blogging to him, I think he’s having a little trouble grasping the concept. Really, it shouldn’t be that hard to understand, it’s simply when you take to the internet to talk about your life, your problems, your hobbies, your passions, your joys. Yep you make your life public, even though you aren’t famous. You irritate your children by providing too much detail about them online and sharing embarrassing photos which sometimes accidentally appear in google searches. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s also an opportunity to create your own special world where you are in control. Nobody dictates what I can write about here and that I love. It’s a special kind of creative freedom which helps you develop your own style and enables you to work under your own set of values and beliefs.

So part of my rejigging, reorganising is to reinvigorate the blog but this time, according to the very sensible financial person and her highly structured spreadsheets I need to monetise.

I’m not a 100 per cent sure how that will look, if any of you have any ideas please don’t hesitate to share. But over the course of the next few months I’m going to look at ways to do it.

There’s lots of work to do, I have to organise a bribe for Hippie Child’s boyfriend who conveniently is studying computer science and makes really great websites for people who pay him money to do it. I just have to convince him to brighten up Shambolic Living for, well free, or a nice roast dinner at most.

In the meantime,  tell me what you used to like about the old Shambolic Living, what you would like to see more of or any new ideas you would like me to have a go at. I’m open to any sort of suggestions, nothing is too crazy.  You can comment or if you want to tell me privately the email is shambolicliving@gmail.com

It’s great to be back!