I seem to have lost the enthusiasm to write in my blog these days. It's most definitely a cyclical thing, and seemingly quite common amongst the casual bloggers elsewhere in cyberinterwebnetspaceland. It's a shame, but I'm being honest.

That said, I did some writing here.

The events of yesterday evening teamed with a complete (to)day of doing absolutely nothing guided my thoughts to taking stock of where I am now and how it compares with the past. It feels like I've spent much of the afternoon thinking about it, and I try and post some conclusions here. None of this might make sense, but you never know.

Things are just great at the moment - never better, really. I hadn't really thought about it until now, but inside I'm really comfortable with myself and where I am now. A big change from the end of 2001 and the start of 2002 when I was a bit depressed, but as early as the start of this year I still wasn't sure of myself inside. Pinning down what has changed between then and now isn't easy, but I think it has a lot to do with self-confidence.

I have more confidence to be myself - the actual me, as opposed to the me I portray. I don't think there's a difference between the two anymore. I think my priorities have changed, that I'm more thoughtful about things and that I've more enthusiasm for everything. If all that's true then the way I approach things, the decisions that I make and the way I behave generally must be very different to before.

For the last two years, and for the vast majority of my life since I left university in July 2000, I've been single. That has definitely had a influence: negative and disruptive to start with, but ultimately very positive. Over time I adopted a way of approaching the initial negativity (the detail of which I won't bore you with) which meant that instead of looking for others to like me, I just had to like myself. It may sound easy but I don't consider it so and, as I said earlier, back then I didn't.

It got worse before it got better, but today I realised the journey I'd been on and that I can give myself a little pat on the back for staying on track.