Hello Dear Reader from a rather sunny corner of France! My mood is like the weather. Warm and blue skied, and my disposition as sunny as you could wish.
I have had it said to me that my last few posts have been far too inward looking and intopestcive. So if you’re reading this then it means you have been patient with me and I would like to thank you for it. One person even said that “I had flogged it to death!” Again fair criticism and with hindsight this is probably true. Thank you for being honest enough to tell me. Tough love…
I would however like to try and explain myself. To start off with this blog was going to be about photography and showing photographs from when I went out every week with my camera. It was going to show the photography that doesn’t get shown anywhere else.
Like most creations it seems to evolve and change over time. The Covid19, the crazy bat fuelled light beer disease came along and changed all our lives. The writing, as a creative experience, evolved too. Then I wrote my first article with no photos. Wow, what a rebellion against my original goal.
So, when writing, one can have a tendency to write what one knows the most about. Well,for me, that would be me, my past and present and what I hope my future might look like. Stuff came out of my head and onto the screen. I would write with no censorship. It became a therapeutic exercise.
The article I wrote in November was a liberation for me and a new experience. Ok, a bit dark, darker even than he dark side with their cookies. But over the next articles, with some ever so important therapy, it has allowed me to heal and has given me so much peace of mind. I would even say it has helped me vanquish my inner demons, that have been there for far too long.
It’s like I’m so happy that I want to share this happiness with you too. It’s new for me so just let me get over the novelty value of the whole shebang, and then we can go back to boring photos of cats, Nantes, and other places. I might even share some of my photographic processes with you.
When this person told me all this, I was furious, although calm. But in retrispection she wasn’t all wrong. We all have issues, all of us. The past always creeps up on us and can shout “Boo!” at the most inopportune of moments. And let me assure you, this has happened. But, evacuating and exorcising these troubles has been a revelation to me. I have been told, “we don’t do therapy.” And I get that. Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone. I’m lucky. But you don’t have to cry alone, I had help, and this help has changed me, and I like who I am right now. Not perfect, but perfect enough for me.
Thank you for bearing with me up to here. Again I would like to offer my apologies for making anyone uneasy, or even shocking you. It is my story, and I accept each and every detail of it. I possess it and it no longer posesses me. Let’s hope my story can have a happy ending, but get this people, it’s not over yet. And that’s great.
IJM Photography 
Hiya IJM, Thank you very for your brilliant posts. I ghost write without censorship, it’s also very therapeutic. I love to post my life photo’s and video’s on Flickr, people get a kick out of them, Bev and I have had a few million views, which is nice as we don’t advertise, people just come across our stuff…
We love to blog/Vlog on “The Gutter”, we follow Greg Gutfeld, who’s a genius political and life commentator. https://gg.locals.com/about
People get
We’ve had biblical rain and big floods here in Southern Phoenix, Arizona. We love our very southern retirement suburb of Phoenix, called Casa Grande. There’s no traffic, well there was an accident last night in the rain, but boy the torrential heavy rain only happens once a year, the rest of the time 300 days or so is bright, good for the soul and spirit sunshine. Now, winter is a glorious time, the weather is in the perfect, 70’F’s from November to May. Miserable 115’F’s the remainder of time. But we summer in the White Mountains of Arizona, in our lovely, 4 season , Artic Fox, camper, where it’s 40’F cooler all year round.
We are making hay while the sun shines improving our camper with solar panels etc, and building a wall and gates around our property
Please keep up the good work!
Best wishes Mary Smith (aka Paul & Bev Slade)
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Thank you for being so kind. It is therapeutic, and for me using my real name etc was even more so. It was really putting myself out there. I like the idea of the American camper van. They can get quite big over there and solar panels to boot. Wow.
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Je vois ce que tu veux dire, Ian. Ecrire, et particulièrement, bloguer, est thérapeutique.
Quand j’ai commencé ce que j’appelle “ma grande aventure des blogs”, c’était en 2004. Je n’allais pas bien, souffrant moi-même d’épisodes de dépressifs sévères. En plus de ça, ma vie était un vrai bazar ( le boulot, le fait que j’élevais seule ma fille, ma vie sentimentale catastrophique, bref, la totale). J’ai commencé sans savoir ce que je cherchais, faisais. J’ai finalement rencontré des gens, virtuellement, puis IRL (quelques personnes qui sont, d’ailleurs, toujours des amies). Je racontais beaucoup de choses personnelles, sur cet ancien blog. C’était libérateur. Les commentaires étaient, généralement, bienveillants, encourageants ( bien sûr, quelques fois, il y a eu des soucis, mais avec Internet, il faut s’y attendre).
Le blog était mon espace perso, ma respiration. Peu à peu, je me suis remise à écrire ( de la fiction, ce que je ne faisais plus), je me suis aussi mise à la photo, sérieusement, etc, etc… Le blog a pris une autre tournure, moins personnelle, aussi. Finalement, je l’ai supprimé car les problèmes n’étaient plus les mêmes et je ne sentais plus le besoin de me confier ainsi. Mais une chose est certaine : il m’a été utile et je n’ai jamais regretté de l’avoir fait.
La seule limite que je m’étais imposée avait été de ne pas utiliser mon nom ( le “Leya” devenue “Leyarts”, vient de ce temps-là), ni ceux de mes proches, ni même de mentionner l’endroit où je vivais, seulement la région.
Trop de soucis avec des harceleurs et des gens mal intentionnés IRL et IVL.
Un blog, c’est l’espace de la personne qui le tient. Si quelqu’un se sent mal à l’aise avec ça, avec le contenu, il y a une solution : ne pas lire, ne pas regarder. Nous avons tous et toutes le choix. D’arrêter. Comme celui de ne pas nous connecter à Internet.
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Déjà merci pour cet encouragement. C’est un voyage et en même temps un enfant que l’on voit grandir. En effet quand on a un critique c’est tellement facile d’oublier ces encouragements. Tu as raison bien sûr, il s’agit comme un certain thérapie, ainsi que la thérapie que j’ai pu faire. Je vais la laisser maturer et voir où ça m’emmène. Merci encore de suivre et de me raconter ton histoire.
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