Positive vibes only

When you can't find what you're looking for, maybe it's time to just create it yourself.

Whatever your life centres around, it can be hard. We snatch breaks and distractions where we can. Those of you hiding in the bathroom from your kids right now - I see you! And you, in that team meeting with your webcam turned off, reading this instead - yeah I see you too, hello!

Whenever I snatch those breaks (never in the middle of a meeting, never ever...) I pick up my phone and hit all the usual places. All the social media sites, news feeds, magazine sites. Wherever I go, those 5 minutes I crave to just drop my shoulders and breathe, are interrupted by the sadness and anger of the world.

For every tweet that makes me laugh, 5 more make me despair. A seemingly innocent snap on Instagram invites a pile on from people across the globe. And all the light hearted, uplifting news stories are swallowed up by the ominous, gloomy headlines of politics, pandemics and disasters.

Now, I'm a realist and I don’t in any way advocate hiding from reality. Burying heads in the sand doesn’t bring about change. I know that to fight these things, we need to be aware of them. We need to understand and debate and challenge. But I also know that we can't do it all day, every day. We need time out. We need to find and absorb the positivity in the world, which is, after all, just as real as the negative. With positive energy, a clear mind and refreshed soul, we're at our strongest to tackle the world.

Which is why, from here out, there’ll be no more mentions of politics, pandemics and disasters, at least not in a negative form. No sir, they are banished. Instead, we’ll be eating sunshine and shitting rainbows!

Full disclosure: this is the first time I’ve attempted my own website. And the first time I’ve put anything personal that I’ve written out in the public eye. Quite frankly, it’s terrifying. So before I talked myself out of it I thought I’d better fully commit and publish the site with the bare minimum. So here we are, with a homepage, a page about me and the site, this blog, and an accessibility page.

I'm hoping to publish a new blog post every couple of weeks. You can expect random and varied themes, based on the things that bring joy and positivity to my life. Like my sheer delight when I looked out my window on last weeks snow day to find this masterpiece across the road.

But I hope over time I’ll start to get to know you too and can bring some of what you love into my posts. You are who I’m writing for after all!

If you haven’t already, I’d love for you to scoot on over to the accessibility page. Usually you wouldn’t click on this page unless you needed to. All sites should have one, you just might not have noticed it because typically they’re hidden away. But accessibility is one of the most positive things to talk about, so it’s only fitting that I make it a proper and ongoing feature.

Lastly, if you’re on ‘the gram’ (why say insta when you can be different), then give writtenbylyds a follow on Instagram. I’ll be posting every time there’s a new blog post or article to read, and spreading some uplifting energy in between.

For now, welcome to Written by Lyds. I hope in some way I’ve helped brighten your day. Even if it was because of a snowdick.

Lyds, out x