It’s dementia, of a vascular kind.

It was the morning of Monday 15 March 2010 when Dad was given a reason for the forgetfulness and confusion that have plagued and frustrated him over the last few years.  It’s been a slow process now compounded by a steadying decline in physical health.

My wife Avril has decided to journal her journey with her 81 year old father and his dementia.

I know I’m biased, but she writes beautifully and her few entries have already moved me and others deeply.

You can follow their journey at http://ateightyone.wordpress.com/ and perhaps add your own stories…

If you follow the blog then you’ll know that I’m at the end stages of my Masters in Research.  That means I’m in the all consuming land of dissertation.

At the moment my days consist of listening to interviews, trying to remember why on earth I wrote cryptic notes during said interviews and trying to work out what said interviews and cryptic notes mean.  It’s lots of fun.

Anyway, my engagement in such fun activities means that I won’t be blogging much over the next month or so.  I will when I have time, when I’m procrastinating (there’s a good chance my post count will go up rather than down!) and when I have something I just really need to say out loud.

In the meantime why not click on one of the things on the right?  You can get great book, a free e-book, listen to some great podcasts, find out about Christian Aid week or sponsor David’s London Marathon run for Kidney Research… or all of them!

Thanks for your support and patience.

I’m not big on resolutions.  I’m not sure they serve much purpose, especially when they are things we don’t really intend to do or stick to for long.  So, instead I’m going to set some personal goals for the year.  I have a forward plan for my work so these goals are just for me.

In 2010 I will:

complete my Masters in Research

I don’t have a lot of choice in this one but I hope to have my dissertation complete by the end of April. I’ve changed the whole concept of my research and instead of something on social media I’m going to be doing a project evaluation with a church in Linwood.

run / cycle / walk more

In 2000 my brother-in-law and I ran a half marathon.  Since then he has completed the Maggies Monster Bike & Hike, I’ve sat on my couch!  I’ve never felt better in my life than when I was running regularly so I’m going to start getting out more.  Avril got some running gear from Santa so I’ll have company.  I also bought some lights for my bike so I have no excuse for not getting out on it over the dark winter months (apart from the snow and ice!) and we are going to climb more hills this year as once I get my Masters out of the road we should have some more leisure time!

learn to play the guitar

My oldest son is learning guitar at school.  I have one and I can’t play it.  I want to learn. Hopefully this will be something we and I can do together.

read

I like to read but don’t do it often.  I go through little splurges of reading a lot then maybe nothing for a few months.  The TV is going off more and books will be read.  After The Guns of Navarone, obviously.

write

They say that everyone has a book in them.  I want to see if mine is ready to come out yet.  I’m not committing to a huge project but I want to write more in this blog and write a related e-book about one of the topics I’m passionate about.

take more photos

Perhaps that should be ‘take better photos’ but I read somewhere that your photos get better after your first 10,000 so perhaps quantity is important.  I started a 365 project last year, trying to take a photo a day, but it ended up in scrambling about to find some random thing to take a photo of.  Instead, I’m going to try to take my camera with me more, take it out of my bag and take more photos.  You can see the results on my Flickr page.

I know that doesn’t sound a very exciting or even particularly ambitious list but I will be very pleased if by the end 2010 I can run 10 miles without stopping, have climbed a dozen hills, can play 10 songs on the guitar, have read 20 books, have an Masters degree and some decent photos of all that.

So, what are your goals for 2010?

Fed up having to insert links to twitter usernames in your blog posts?  We my friend @jdblundell has the answer. Check out his Twitter Link Plugin and forget all that linking stuff.

I’d like to hear Gordon Brown speak like this more often.  The biggest criticism of him is that he doesn’t communicate well and that he has no vision.  If this is anything to go by then he has plenty vision and his communication skills aren’t bad either.  But then foreign policy doesn’t seem to win (or lose) elections!

I’m a bit here and there with work and holidays over the next month or so so please be patient with me if I don’t blog much or lots all at once.  I was tempted just to say that I’ll be taking a holiday from blogging but some of the things I’m doing are way too exciting for that so I’ll try to keep you all up to date with some of the things I’m up to.

More than likely lots of that will be after the fact as I have absolutely no idea if some of the places I’ll be have Internet access… but if they have I’ll post here, on flickr or more probably some updates on Twitter.

So, pop by every now and then, but don’t get too frustrated with me if there are long gaps between posts.

Have a great summer.

Stewart

today the team are starting blogs. Oh dear!!!