The End of an Era

Thursday 8th Feb

As I'm sitting here curled up on a couch in the lounge room of our house with a pen and exercise book listening to Dad's Alex Lloyd CD, I'm thinking about a few things. One, how I haven't blogged for weeks, and how I think I may be over it. Two, how I haven't been to the gym for a week, and won't be able to next week because of my trip away to BG. Three, how I have to head off to work in about an hour for a 4.30 until 1.00am shift, and how difficult and deathly it could be. Four, how good yesterday was in terms of talking to three friends on the phone, all of whose presence in my life I really value and enjoy (N&A&O). Five, wondering why I'm listening to Alex Lloyd, and when it was exactly that I became too lazy to walk the six steps from the couch to the stereo.

There's no doubt that this will end up as a blog, hence making the first thing I was thinking about a little bit silly and a little bit wrong. Although I've only been blogging for a handful of months, I've come up with quite an eclectic mix of posts. There are the all too common "unburdening of emotions" posts, which I'm sure no one really wants to read! The "attempting to be funny" posts, which probably don't do me many favours. The "recounting of recent events" posts which are informative at best. And the last major group would be the "contemplative" posts, in which I just ramble on about myself and what the future might have in store for me.

Probably the posts of which I am most proud are the "Intolerance of Intolerance" ones. The constant hopping from first to third person and past to present tense aside, I was happy with them and the plethera of comments they received... In comparison to my other posts. The Daley News Star posts were nice too I guess, although they were short lived, and it was naive of me to think I could get through all those important to me. There's one that I wrote but didn't post... I'll probably just show it to the person.

I guess more than anything blogging has been an outlet that has helped to keep me writing on a semi-frequent basis. And as I'm writing this I'm realising that for some strange reason I just don't want to do it anymore. I think that with this, my blogging days are coming to an unexpected end. I could have made a few jokes there about how devastated everyone will be, and how the world will never be the same again, but if I've learnt anything from this it's that I don't do funny very well, so I'll spare you the pain. :) Besides, my blogging was for me; for my own benefit. Sure, I put it up for public display, but ultimately the reason why I blogged came down to the enjoyment/relief/release I got from it.

Having said that, thank you to everyone who read and commented. I'm pretty sure that this is a comprehensive list of all those who did comment: Paul, Adam, Jess, Sharyn-Ann, Wendy, Luke 3, Karl, LouLou, Owen, Alan, Kiel, Luke T, Tom, Sean, and Nathan. If I missed you out I'm sorry! Thank you all for your encouragement, support, and (mostly) kind words/input.

I may return to this, but if anything I think it will just contain updates about how my writing course goes this year.

So I guess this is goodbye...

Thanks a bunch. :)

Yours truly,

Dale Stephens.