So it finally has happened!

So yesterday I made one of many changes I am in the process of implementing, some of which may not be relevant to you, but they are changes that I must make all the same for myself.

One change is to seperate myself from twitter for a while, it could be for a week, a month, 6 months who knows.

Why am I needing to this, well for starters I have been on twitter for nearly 2 and half years and when I began there were very few people on it, now I have amassed 2400 followers and I am following 1600 of them! Dont get me wrong I love all my followers and I also love the majority of people I am following, but Twitter themselves in my opinion have destroyed what made twitter the success which it has enjoyed the past year, in a few ways.

Retweeting nowadays is just annoying and relentless, the spam bots are taking over, finding new ways to infiltrate your twitter stream and even direct messages. Marketing people are now following me which I thought was great since I am in advertising but when all they do is spam their stuff at you it starts to get a bit grating, the most important thing for me that has changed on twitter is the fact that it is now proving hard to follow conversations between people cause you no longer see tweets that are directed to people you dont follow, this is how I have found a lot of the early people I follow and still do to this day, I found this to be the biggest mistake that twitter HQ made, finally the time spent on twitter for me is insane.

Obviously since you are all on twitter you should be able to understand where I am coming from.

I will also say I will be checking into twitter every now and again so DM me if you need to talk or whatever!

Leisure

William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

The state of the (welfare) nation

The rate of unemployment and the sheer scale of it, has really given me so much to think about this year. Actually its given me a lot to think about. My heart goes out to all those who's situation has changed and they find work is tough (impossible even) to come by. The social plan in Ireland in particular, was so flimsy to start with - the hope always was (in my mind at least) that with a few more years of sustained economic success we could have built a capable society. Even though we never seemed to discuss what our society should be...

Ireland has become so expensive ... and in recent years if you didn't have a money you didn't have a place in society. Houses became so ridiculously overpriced. We've put a whole generation in debt that they can probably never recover from and we don't have the social support mechanism to help them. No doubt the many that will lose their mortgages and deeds will be moved into properties owned by NAMA and rented to them because they can't sell their houses because they owe more now than they're worth. Its just so sad.

I was brought to write this post when I heard that the government wanted to reduce payments because people were tempted to stay on the dole instead of look for a job. I dont want to turn this into a political hijack, so back to my post.

Is this really the best society we could create? I'm not blaming anyone - I refuse to blame property developers, bankers, politicians. I blame us. Too many of us sat back. Too many of us rode the wild waves of the property bubble like sea biscuit. 

We all need our health, food, housing, education, a job and a holiday. With the huge billions we spent over the last few years, I just feel like we really fecked it up. We have more houses than we need ("housing stock oversupply" if you're a central banker) yet we've never had more people worried about losing their (the banks) houses.

Anyway, the situation that so many people find themselves in makes me feel really sad. I don't know how they're going to recover, I wonder how worse it will still get and I fear terribly that it will get worse. What will the health service be like next year? 

I feel like I've cheated the dole queues myself. 2008 and 2009 were not kind to the IT industry, particularly the web industry. I'm self employed and I feel just how fragile a line it is between having an income and not. I dont think the monthly dole payment would meet our mortgage (not because we have a big house but because my mortgage interest is so high because I'm self employed). I don't have all the default standard benefits entitled to regular PAYE people and to be honest, I just don't how I'd survive. 


I really hope this improves and I hope we, the people, can come up with a solution. I dont know how or what but I want to help. Thats gotta be the place to start right?

Boob Job

So ends two weeks of hell, this morning finally got the all clear on the breast lump I found.

Thank god I was a lucky one who after a mammogram was told the lump was just rogue breast tissue and nothing to worry about.

The relief that the whole family feels is immense and much as you try to tell yourself that 90% of breast lumps are benign you cannot really stop yourself going to dark places where you wonder will I get to see my babies grow etc etc, how will my husband and children carry on without me, being the extreme ones.

Other ones about coping with what to some is a horrendous treatment with no promises.

 

Breast cancer treatment is getting better all the time with prognosis for many very good but I didn't even know if I had the internal strength of spirit to cope with that alone.

As good as I am feeling sitting here, and I am, a all singing dancing good feeling, It doesn't take away from me that some are not as fortunate as I.

If one thing has come out of this, it is that I will be a lot more diligent about breast checking, something I only occasionally did and always half heartedly.

I urge you all check your breast's do not ignore lumps and bumps, as my consultant said he would rather see fifty people ( men & woman ) who he can say everything is fine to, than a few that he has to tell, that though it might not be fatal this will change your life.

I appreciate why some women say nothing when they find a lump, it is a scary roller coaster of worry once you step on but if like me you are lucky enough to step off the other side it is a great feeling and if sadly you are not one of the lucky ones the sooner you get your arse to the doctors the better it really is.

So get into the habit of giving them a feel, even better get someone else to feel for you, make it fun, make it quick, even make it soapy but make it a routine.

Oh and that goes for you blokes too, get checking your bits.

To all the societies I've loved before

How relationships form and operate has been the subject of literature and gossip for millennia but what you don't hear as much of is how societies work.

I've been in and out of societies all my life - kids on the block, school, youth groups, work crowds, blogging set, college crowd, people from different evening classes, dance crowd, friend's families, twitter people. I'm always infatuated when a new society comes along and then it pans out and a new one comes along. I've never liked it, but I only ever see people in the context of the society they belong to, and so how much I enjoy someone's company will depend on how much I enjoy the society I associate them with.

As a society, twitter offers something new and brilliant in its continuity. No matter how much it might annoy you at times and the unfulfilled attention etc, it's always there. I noticed this especially after the Web Awards last Sat. A great night was had by all, said goodbye, then I went onto twitter and everyone I just left was there having one last farewell. There's no long goodbye. It's always there and that's a great thing to have.

But I have to say, in terms of all the societies I've been through, early 49£ had something even more special. It had the new infatuating society but because it was anonymous and I was new to the virtual world and didn't think anyone was looking, I felt open to write anything and 49£ became a unique means of expression. And having that combination new exciting expressive society is very rare and won't happen again. So I'm glad it did back then.

For fucks sake

Well to blog or not to blog, hard decision

Before I start can I just state I am not looking for sympathy in any way, more needing a place to do a big, big mental scream.

So where to start, well I guess an apology to some people around me, friends and nearest and dearest may have picked up on the fact that I am more than a little bit cranky, the last week or so, I never mean to be, cranky or snappy or snide but it seems that is where for me, worry manifests.

Ok start at the beginning two weeks ago, ( right slap bang in the middle of getting some bad news about a family member) routine shower like we all do, not that exciting until you run your hand over yourself and find a lump, instinct is"what the fuck is that", keep checking, keep checking, keep checking, get out the shower and say to hubby..... nothing.

Spend the next two weeks ignoring any worries and keep going back and checking and checking, maybe it has gone away, right? 

All the time feeling sick to the stomach on one hand and carrying on as normal on the other, only you don't, you get cranky you snap, you feel tired, stressed 

So you make a decision ask hubby if he can feel anything, he is gonna tell you nah your imagining it, right? wrong, he felt it and insisted that you go to a doctor straight away.

Ok, ok calm down, I will go to the doctor and she will say "ahh yes a normal part of the breast nothing to worry about my dear..."

Went to the doctor yesterday and she has a feel which in itself is no fun, only to be told yes there is a lump, we need to get you scanned and a biopsy as soon as possible, is there any family history etc etc, well yes there is my mom died of cancer at exactly this time last year.

Oh right I see, to which she said I can't tell you anything which will make you feel better, only that we must get it checked and work from there.

Cue me going home, bursting into tears at the realness of it, dog barking, kids wondering what on earth is going on, to which I obviously lied and made up some story about Mummy having a headache or something equally lame.

Now I know, that there can be many, many reasons for a lump in the breast, a cyst a fatty deposit, etc etc and breast cancer.

 I am shit scared

Speed dial..

The speed dials on my phone date basically from 1999. Most of the people on them I don't see very often now, they've moved down the country or just moved on, but for no reason I just never updated my speeddials so now they're set in a piece of history.

Funny.

Commenting issues

So you may have noticed we have reverted back to a template, something similiar to what we used to have here on Forninepounds.

Let me explain why.

Over the past few months comments have been a serious problem on the blog with people commenting and as soon as they hit the submit button their comment disappears into thin air never to be seen again. This is a very serious issue and one which hopefully by reverting some things back will fix please bear with me over the next day or so until I resolve the issue!

Twitter and Me!

God I remember this place, but my time has over the past while been taken up with decking and organising a tweetup, but on Tuesday night I was invited out by @niallharbison to EnoWines and La Cuvee for a fantastic meal and wine tasting and drinking of course, but with a good few people around the table, many of whom I had never met, twitter came up in conversation, and it was then I saw just how in love with it I am.

Twitter and I have had our ups and downs, when Twitter treats me bad I feel angry but when Twitter works I adore it.

I used to talk about blogging like everyone in the worlds lives depended on it, well Twitter was devised to be a way of, as the creators, Biz Stone and Ev put it, a way to have a miniblog.

Well now Twitter has become my blog. People know much more about me from the past 2 years then they have learnt over the past 5 years on my blog. Are blogs dead, are they a thing of the past? I dunno but I am starting to ask the question in a big way now!

Another amazing thing about Twitter is the amount of people I have met through it, I would not have been invited by Niall last Tuesday were it not for Twitter, I would not have ended up with 19 other photographers been treated by royalty at Mondellopark for a huge Event they held were it not for Twitter, I would not be heading along with maybe 60 other strangers to London on the 14th of November for a tweetup were it not for Twitter and most importantly this blog would not be alive now were it not for Twitter.

My phone now has double the amount of phone numbers in it now due to Twitter, I have Advertising agencies wanting to listen to me talk about Twitter, I have made a little bit of money using Twitter are you catching my drift, Twitter is a huge thing.

But all good things obviously have bad sides too, there are a lot of evil sorts out there spamming their filth to one and all on Twitter, one person in particular I revealed to a lot of people last week is conning her way through Hawaii, and in my opinion praying on some people on Twitter. What will she gain I dunno but it is horrible to see. Then of course Twitter is glitchy, servers slow down, DM's go missing and mental stability of its users get frayed.

One of the latest trends I have noticed on Twitter are the peddlers of misinformation, the people who signed up 6 months ago to twitter and claim to know the secrets behind Twitter, I consider this to be total and utter bullshit, as Twitter themselves dont know where its going, twitter is constantly evolving. An example of these sorts spouting shit was told to me by 3 clients of mine, all from different companies but with advertising as a background.

2 weeks ago I had one of these clients come in to me in work and start telling me what an eejit I was going on since 2007 about Twitter, its a load of shite. You should cop on Shanachie blah blah.

This caught me by suprise since I knew this client in particular had never used Twitter, so what the hell would he know!!!

Well it transpires, he knew all about Twitter because himself and about 30 others went a twitter conference for business and these gurus were there telling them all about twitter. Every single person who paid for that conference left saying they would never ever touch Twitter or ask their clients to use twitter!!! I had to know who else was there!

I know of the gurus that held the talk and I am appauled, the organiser of the conference should have coped on at an early stage that these were not the people for the job, thing is one of these speakers will talk again tomorrow to a huge crowd hopefully the crowd will have the common sense to walk out! Fortunately I did find out who the other 2 clients were and all 3 have now, after a speech of 1 hour from me, for FREE might I add, signed up to Twitter and have seen the positives from it.

So to all you Gurus out there please fuck off, Twitter believe it or not, actually worked better when you guys had never heard about it, go sell your goods somewhere else.

Quick update and apology to those who attempted to comment on this in the past few days and have had their comments deleted I am testing some things and apologise for it.

Les Feuilles Mortes (Autumn leaves )

My favourite time of the year is about to come to the U.K.  I love the Autumn (or fall as they say in the USA)

The colours are spectacular, I love the sound of children's feet kicking up leaves, I love the bite in the air while going for a walk.

But mostly I love the cool dark nights after a day of watery sun, I sleep like someone who has not slept for months.... which is what I am