Monday, October 16, 2017

Still Here



Well, here I am. I didn't mean to go silent for so long but I've simply been overwhelmed with various jobs and the whole blog-writing thing has been pushed to near the back of the pile in terms of priorities.

First off, I apologise but the anthology of stories will not be going ahead. I've contacted some of you directly about this, but not all of you. The reason it isn't going ahead is because there was not enough material. I thought I had enough but then a couple of the authors have proved uncontactable and others were unreceptive to feedback about their stories. So, what I was left with would have filled a very slender volume. It's a pity, but there we are. If you would still like to see your story published then contact Joel Carris at Into the Ruins, who will I'm sure consider it.

Anyway, I'm currently sat here in a very blustery (but, so far, sunny) west Cornwall, awaiting ex-huricane Ophelia. It's not expected to strike Cornwall in any big way, but there will likely be a lot of rain and wind damage, so I'm half expecting the lights to go out at some point later today. Ireland will likely receive the full brunt of it, so if you're in Ireland and reading this, please take care.

I hope to be back to blogging shortly, and am reconsidering the best way to breathe life back into it. Since I started this blog a few years back, my personal interests have shifted somewhat. Yammering on about collapse has proved to be mostly ineffective in terms of shifting the issue into any kind of media spotlight, and so now it appears that we are going to be hitting the brick wall of reality headfirst anyway. I hope you are all wearing crash helmets.

To that end, I'm thinking about focusing my writings mainly on resilience. What can we do to make the best of our situations? How can we help one another by building networks and making our individual nodes more resilient? I've been working on future-proofing myself (as much as is reasonably possible) for these last few years, and so I'd like to share my thoughts on this and open up the conversation a little. Becoming personally resilient, I have discovered, is an iterative process and can only be part-learned from books and blogs. What's more there are many aspects to it and many weak links in the chain that can trip you up.

Bye for now.