Interview With Esmé

One of the joys of blogging is the sense of community that develops with our followers and with those whose blogs we follow in return: many ‘chats’ take place in the comments section! I’ve mentioned before that I’m a contributor to the Senior Salon, which is a community for the more mature blogger. It was originally started by Bernadette, of the Haddon Musings blog, and has since been taken on by Esmé, whose blog is called Esmé Salon. Some weeks ago Esmé started a new series of interviews with fellow bloggers and I had the honour of being the first to feature there. These interviews appear on her blog every Friday, and she has now published (I think) twelve in total. My apologies, Esmé, for taking so long to get around to this but I thought I should share it with my own readers too. If you’d like to see the interview in its original location it can be found here but for your easy reference I’m re-publishing it below. The interview ran as follows:

“1. What is the name of your blog and how did you decide on your blog name?

My blog was initially the very original ‘Clive’s Blog’ but I decided to change the name when I retired, to reflect my new status in life. ‘Take It Easy’ seemed to fit this, and it’s taken from a song you may know.

2. What prompted you to start on this blogging journey?

I was off work for nearly ten months in 2011/12 with depression, and part of my rehab when I went back was to take a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). My counsellor set me writing tasks as part of this, to record my thoughts and feelings, and it was his suggestion that I turn these into a blog, as he said my writing was ‘inspirational’ and would help others. This is how I started, in late 2012. Those first posts are under the ‘My Story’ tab in the menu at the top of my blog, and give people a good idea of why I began.

3. To date, what blogging achievement/s are you most proud of?

I don’t think I’ve any real achievements to speak of. I received several blogging awards in the first year or two, but I’ve removed the badges from my site – they felt like bragging, and that isn’t really me. My sense of achievement is from the many interactions I’ve had with people who have read my posts – particularly the ones relating to mental health – and who tell me that my writing has helped them in some way.

4. How would you describe your own blogging style?

Open and honest, there’s no point in doing it any other way. I also pride myself on writing to a good standard of English – I do, after all, have a degree in English Literature! I like to think that what I post has some semblance of form and structure, to make it easy to follow.

5. What excites you most about blogging?

The thought that I can post something into the ether and it can be read by anyone in the world, providing of course that they have an internet connection! I don’t have a massive regular following but it is always good to meet new bloggers who pick up my posts.

6. What platform do you use and why?

I use WordPress. I have one of their free accounts, and this has given me all that I’ve needed. I’m not a professional blogger, I don’t do this for money, so it’s good to enjoy my hobby for free! I kind of stumbled into the WordPress platform, as I knew nothing about blogging before I started – I just googled ‘blogging platforms’ and chose from those I saw. I’m very happy with it, and see no point in changing.

7. What genre/topic/theme do you blog about? Do you ever deviate from that theme?

As I said, I began writing about depression and mental health. I followed that with a series I called ‘Dates To Note,’ which was intended to raise awareness of a range of health and social issues. I’ve since widened into more general thoughts, often along the theme of how times change and, in particular, on music, which has always been an important part of my life. I do return to mental health issues too, as this is very much something that matters to me. Really, I guess I just ramble on about anything that takes my fancy!

8. How often do you blog per week or month?

I don’t blog to any set pattern, I’m not that organised! On average I probably post a couple of times a month, sometimes more and sometimes less. I occasionally take breaks, if there’s nothing I want to write about – the longest of these was seven months!

9. Do you have any wisdom or tip/s regarding blogging to share with us?

I wouldn’t presume to think I could advise people! All I would say is that, whatever you write about, be sure that it is something you care about. Be yourself, be natural, and your enthusiasm will show through. There’s nothing worse for me than reading something written because the author feels they had to write something – anything – to keep to a schedule when they really don’t have anything to say.

10. Do you participate in linkup parties? How do you feel about it?

I’ve done a couple of them, but I’m not sure they are for me. The one that has grabbed my attention is the Senior Salon, which was created by Bernadette for writers ‘of a certain age’ and which you have recently taken over. I’ve met a number of good blogging friends through this, and look forward to finding more as it develops.

A few things about me:

11. What do you like to do other than blogging?

I read a lot, mostly newspapers and magazines. I should read many more books than I do! I also watch a lot of sport on tv, especially football (i.e. soccer) and cricket. I spend a lot of time with tech, too: I’m addicted to my iPad and computer!

12. Where do you reside?

I live in a small town (pop. 12000-ish) called Epping, in the UK. It’s about 20 miles from London, but is much slower paced than the big city. It’s a town with a long history, and a very pleasant place to live.

13. Are you an indoor or outdoor person?

On balance I’m an indoors person. I do enjoy going to live sporting events and to live music shows, but I have a long term health condition which restricts my movement. It’s frustrating, but I don’t let it get me down. There’s always the balcony to my flat, where I can enjoy the good weather – if we ever get any!

14. Do you still work, and if so, what is your trade/profession?

15. Or are you retired? If so, what do you do besides blogging?

It feels easier to take these two together. I retired in September 2013, when I reached the grand old age of 60. Prior to that I had for twenty years been a manager in our National Health Service – I had many jobs in that time, but a recurring theme of these was working with our clinicians to help develop new services. As to what I do apart from blogging, please see answer 1 in this section!

16. Do you wish to be 20-something or the age you are now and why?

It would be great to be young again, with all the dreams and expectations of youth, but I’m happy the way I am now. We get a little older every day – that’s a fact of life we can’t change! Not having to work for a living is a huge bonus, too.

17. What makes your day a good and happy one?

Doing the things I enjoy, the comforts of a relaxed lifestyle.

18. Describe yourself in 3 words.

Short, content, easy-going.

19. Share with us 3 interesting facts about yourself.

I’ve been divorced and living on my own for 10 years, but have two beautiful daughters from the marriage – I love them both to bits!

I was born and brought up by the coast but never learned to swim – I was afraid of the water!

I’m an awful cook!

20. Do you have any other tidbits to share with us about yourself?

My older daughter is expecting a baby at the end of May, so I’m going to be a grandfather. I’m so excited! There may be a mention of this on my blog at some point 😊

Please share with us your social media links, in order for our readers to follow you:

Twitter: @clivechip

Instagram: @clivechip

Pinterest: clivechip (I really should update this, haven’t touched it in years!)”

I’ve followed the series of interviews as it has developed, and am finding it fascinating to learn more about the featured bloggers. Some are new to me, others more familiar, but even with those I already ‘knew’ I’m discovering hitherto unseen aspects of them. If you’re interested in what makes other bloggers tick do take a look at Esmé’s blog – the link is in my opening paragraph, and you can find direct links to some of the previous interviews in her menu (and others are linked at the end of each post).

A little update on me to end with. In the interview, which was published on 4 May, I mentioned that I was due to become a grandparent at the end of May. As it turned out, the little one was in no rush to get here, but duly arrived on 6 June: that is D-Day, but I don’t think there is any significance to that. And fortunately her parents avoided any temptation to call her Vera Lynn! If you missed it, I wrote about this in I Hope You Dance and a follow up in Teach Your Children

You may not be a senior blogger like me but, if you are and haven’t yet found the Senior Salon, I can recommend it both as a place to share your own posts and to find others to follow. And even if you aren’t so senior in years, there is plenty of good reading to be had there and on the rest of Esmé’s blog, not least the interviews. Do try it!

 

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69 Months Later

A couple of bloggy things have happened in the past week which have got me thinking about why I’m still doing this. The first was this:

Never in my wildest dreams did I envisage that as many as 70,000 page visits would be made to view my ramblings. Admittedly, in the peak years of 2013 and 2014 the success of BlogSurfer was significant in generating site views, and this has subsequently declined. But nowadays, I get more ‘likes’ and comments for my posts, and this more than compensates for not having the bigger numbers any longer. I’ve never considered myself to be a writer – just someone who dabbles and has taken advantage of the ease with which the interweb permits anyone to make their mark, albeit a very small one. And those interactions make it worthwhile: there is a sense of being part of a community, of belonging, and we all need that in our lives.

The second thing was the annual congratulatory message from WordPress on my ‘anniversary’ which, for some reason, they think falls in June. I know this to be impossible as the chronology just doesn’t work for me. But, as you do, I harboured a tiny doubt that they may be correct after all – I’m approaching 65, I have memory lapses more than I used to – so I thought it worth checking. I couldn’t find anything in my settings that would help, so I resorted to checking my previous posts. The first was made on 2 October 2012, and makes reference to my having set up the blog around six weeks earlier. Now this does indeed fit my memory, so maybe I’m not heading into my dotage just yet! Reading that post again was slightly surreal: I’ve never had an out of body experience but I imagine it may feel something like this. Was that really me? Did I really have the nerve to assume that anyone would want to read anything I wrote, that it would hold any interest for them?

I thought I’d share it again, as very few will ever have seen it. In its unedited glory, here it is:

“Hi!

I’ve had this blog set up for 6 weeks now and have somehow acquired 3 brave followers without having said anything, so I thought it was about time I introduced myself and told you what this is about (cue rapid exit of aforementioned followers!). So, I’m Clive (but you guessed that from the blog’s name, right?). I’m 59 (but only just!), divorced, living solo, and I have two beautiful grown up daughters who are the centre of my world. I work in the NHS, for a large Trust in London, and am planning to retire on my 60th birthday. I love books (on a Kindle), music (folk, rock, Americana, alt-country) both at home and live, I enjoy TV sports, especially football and cricket, and am a long-time supporter of Dover Athletic (home town team) and Spurs (someone has to!). All very ordinary then, so why am I telling you any of this?

Almost exactly a year ago, I was diagnosed with depression, along with a still unspecified sleep problem. This eventually kept me off work for nine months, and I went back in July, part-time working up to full-time after a month. As part of this process I was referred for counselling to help me adjust back into the real world, and I’m about two-thirds of the way through a course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This has involved a lot of thinking and writing, in ways I’ve never really done before, about me, my feelings, hopes, self view and the whole experience of the past year. And this will continue into the future – I’m still on a high level of medication, barred from drinking and advised to be careful when driving, either separately or together, and still have big problems sleeping. But my counsellor has said that he finds my writing ‘inspirational’ and has encouraged me to start this blog, both because it will be good therapy for me to open myself up like this, but more importantly because others suffering from the same debilitating illness may see something they recognise in this and will hopefully draw some comfort and encouragement from it.

A subject like this could well be, erm, depressing really. But that’s not my way. I intend to write this from my perspective, of course, and I can’t do that for long before throwing in elements that could generously be considered to be ‘humour.’ In no way would I belittle the subject, I’ve experienced too much for that, but there’s no point doing this if people find it depressing or boring to read. And I’ll go off at tangents along the way too – things which strike me as interesting, usually but not necessarily related to my current experience of being ‘in recovery’ from the illness, which I hope you’ll find interesting too.

Enough for now, I’ll start the real posting soon. In the meantime, the three of you, I’m relying on you to help me spread the word and get me millions of followers. No pressure then! See you again soon.“

That post received a princely 3 ‘likes’ and 4 comments – and 2 of those comments were my own in response to others’ kind words of encouragement! Viewing figures were a little higher than either you or I might have imagined, though:

In those days I was much more active on Twitter than I am now, and had a number of people with whom I had regular twitchats. I imagine that they were prompted by Twitter to read the post though, as I say in it, it was only a brief introduction to what I really regarded as the starting point for this blog: when I posted the three parts of ‘The Story of My Illness’ over consecutive evenings in early November 2012. I know that many of them were ‘eagerly’ awaiting these – impatience was growing among some of them! Viewing stats at the time specifically for each of those posts were 52, 40 and 45 – although, as WordPress users will know, most of our page views become part of the large amorphous mass known rather unhelpfully as ‘Home Page/Archives,’ which doesn’t really permit a true view of the ‘popularity’ of a post, does it? If you haven’t seen those posts before, or want another look, they can be found under ‘My Story’ in the menu at the top of the site. They give you a good idea of where I’m coming from.

To those of you with large, popular blogs, with thousands of regular followers who ‘like’ everything you post, those stats will probably seem pathetically low. But that’s not why I do this. I’m content for this to be a hobby and if people are kind enough to read, like and comment then I’m very grateful for that. It’s not as though I make any money from this, nor would I want to: I’ve had many offers of hosting guest posts from commercial organisations, or of reviewing products in return for freebies, but they were all politely rejected. For me, although it is probably being po-faced to say it, it comes down to a question of integrity. I wouldn’t sell my body for money or trinkets (assuming I could find someone sufficiently desperate to take up the offer) so I don’t see why my words should be any different!

Reading that initial post again has given me several ideas for future posts: some things in my life have changed, some need updating, and as what I’m really doing here is sharing me with you I think you deserve to know. Of course, you’ll have had many clues about what is going on with me from my posts, so you will know that I did indeed retire on my 60th birthday – my thoughts on that are in the menu item ‘Retirement’ and I rather belatedly covered the celebrations in this post – and that I still enjoy my music, for example. But you won’t know that one of the lasting legacies of my long spell of depression is that, while I can cope perfectly well with newspapers and magazines, I have read very few books in my retirement: the powers of concentration just aren’t there any more! Life changes, and we adjust!

You may also have noticed the reference to the blog’s name including my own: when I first started out, with absolutely no experience of the blogworld, I just called this ‘Clive’s Blog.’ It was me, and it seemed to fit! I renamed this after I retired, both to reflect my new status as a gentleman of leisure and also my love of music. In case you don’t recognise the title (how could you not?!) I covered this in the first of my occasional series of #SaturdaySongs.

The main reason for starting this blog was to be supportive of those suffering from mental health issues. Whilst I may have digressed (a lot) from this, it is still a regular underlying theme, and you will see more on it from me in the future. Speaking of which, this is my 298th post and I’ve been thinking of a suitable way to mark the 300 milestone. Keep watching – I hope you like what I’ll be doing for it! And maybe I’ll mark my actual 6th anniversary in some way, too, though I haven’t given that much thought yet: it’s three months away, anything could happen before then!

The underlying message behind this post – yes, there is one, and thank you for getting this far! – is that those two little triggers have got me thinking about why I started blogging and why I still do it. I’m not unique or special, and I suspect you all have a variety of reasons for your blogs. But it is worthwhile taking a step back every once in a while, both to reaffirm our intentions and to confirm that we want still to be doing this. I know about me: how is it for you?

When The Wheels Touch Ground (A Slight Return)

This post, from a year ago today, popped up this morning in the ever-reliable Timehop. I wasn’t sure about sharing it again, as I tend to dig further back into my archives, but I thought on balance that newer readers might appreciate seeing it (he said, hopefully).

As I said in the original piece, I’m spared the disappointment of televised Glastonbury this year, but there seem to be plenty of opportunities to be let down: Sky Arts appears to be on a one-channel mission to broadcast every festival there is! We’ve already had the Isle of Wight, next up Download. At least this year I have the World Cup, and the almost unheard of phenomenon of Germany being knocked out before England. As many said yesterday: do the Germans have a word for ‘schadenfreude?’

I hope you enjoy this little reminder of my thoughts on ageing, musical taste, television presenters who act like children, and why I think open air music isn’t for me.

Take It Easy

It is an obvious truth that none of us has ever been older than we are today. But do we always feel our age? Over recent months I’ve been ill a fair bit, and have been feeling way short of my best, but that had never made me feel old. But, last Friday, I did. The reason for that is shown in this post from my Instagram that evening:

For anyone who doesn’t know of it, Glastonbury is the biggest music festival in the UK. It began in 1970, when it was more of a hippy trip than a fully blown extravaganza, but has grown to the point where it sells out 200,000 tickets at around £200 each, within hours, and without having announced any of the acts who will be playing. I guess the punters want to be there so much that they’re happy to take the risk that…

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