Reflections - five years of blogging

This blog has been going for five years today, sometimes with frequent posting, sometimes with infrequent.

At times, the blog has been a refuge, at others an obligation.

It has also been a practise run for the news blog which is now my job.

Five years ago - even one year ago - I certainly did not expect to be running a frequently updated website, which was read by hundreds, even thousands of people a day, including journalists from the national press, but it happened.

The life I have now, is the life I want. An exercise for the Open University's T160 course involved writing about your ideal life. Mine involved doing bits of research, bits of writing, bits of talking to people/giving speeches and possibly even going to meetings. And a month ago I realised that's the life I had.

In the last five years I have a new interest in the history of maths, although that is sadly neglected at the moment.

I'm also doing more craft then I was. I've learned that it is the number of things you finish that matters, not the number of things you start. I'm braver about trying new things - designing embroidery for instance.

I've met lots of interesting people, some only virtually, some in real life as well. The separate strands of my on-line life now merge, whereas I always kept them separate before.

There are many lessons I have learnt over the years. But the idea that really transformed my life most was a question: "looking at your life over the last week what would someone else say was your priority?"

The idea that you have a goal, a one-true-purpose in life is a straighjacket. Find something that interests you, that makes you alive, do it, head in that direction for a while. Don't expect to arrive whereever it is the signposts list, just follow the signs for a while.

When you find the purpose that matters, it will be almost impossible not to do it. If you haven't found it yet, head into the unknown, fearfully or fearlessly. The value in working out what your ideal life will look like is not so you can craft it, but so you can recognise it when you have it.