It's been a while. Hello, again.

Hello. It's been a while. I'm not quite sure how to come back to this page now. I guess I'll start by filling in the gap where it started.

I disappeared from this blog in January of 2020. I sort of shut down and I wasn't sure how to write about what happened to me or where I disappeared to when I came back. I've popped on to this page so many times and thought about saying something, anything. In short, and just to fill in a huge gap and offer some explanation, I got very, very sick last January. In the end, I didn't have any real answers about what happened. No explanation, no positive test results, no diagnosis. I was incredibly, acutely sick, I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, I was hospitalised, and I was then released days later with no real answers. (This was before COVID was a 'thing' we were all talking about. Actually, I was in the hospital when the first cases outside of China were confirmed. It was a bizarre set of events, but I can't dwell on the details or speculate about my own illness anymore.)

So, after that, I wasn't really sure how to write about myself again. I felt like I'd become untethered from any certainty about my life. I felt like I couldn't trust my body anymore. Across the course of the last year, I've been dealing with more health struggles and any trust I've managed to cultivate between my self and my body has become increasingly defeated. I'm still working on that. Anyway, there's a very brief explanation. I hope that's enough.

In the last year, I think it goes without saying, the world has changed so much and, in some ways, not really at all. I guess I could write about all of that (the pandemic, racial injustice and protests in America, the 2020 US elections, Brexit, lockdowns, vaccines, the Kill the Bill protests in the UK), and how I've experienced or coped with those parts of the last year, but it just doesn't feel right.

So, I guess I'm back. I think I'll keep this space sort of professional from now on. At least, I'll write in a less personal manner and only maybe about things that I care about outside of my research. I'll start posting more short research pieces and professional development tools and skills. I will spare you all the personal details. It feels like a healthier way (for me) to approach this blog moving forward. I hope that's okay.

I'll write again soon. I hope you'll read.

Best wishes, wherever you are.

Emily