It’s a 7 thing

Seven. It shows up everywhere, from major religions to popular book titles. Naturally, the days of the week, the wonders of the world, the continents of the Earth and the colours of the rainbow are arranged into seven. It’s the prime prime number, truly. (Be still, spell check. The repetition is intentional.)

So here’s my big seven: it’s been seven years since I last wrote a post on this blog. There are no excuses – although I could try to not take responsibility for just being tardy by blaming that tendency to over-busyness that may have disrupted my work-life balance. I won’t. It’s a precarious thing, the work-life see-saw. And you wouldn’t really want to keep it permanently level, would you? What kind of see-saw keeps steady? Only a very boring one that none of us would want to play on.

New beginnings: The journey starts with embracing reinvention

And now it’s time. I’ve missed writing for the sheer pleasure of it and hopefully sharing something useful or thought provoking at the same time.     

Some things have changed in seven years. Blogging advice, for example. Back then, the predominant advice was to keep posts as short as possible and to publish as often as possible. Now, apparently, the ideal length of a blog post is 1,600 words, which will take seven minutes to read, because readers are more likely to engage in it. Luckily, the experts still see value in shorter posts, a minimum of 300 words. And they advise publishing quality, not quantity. That part makes sense.

And people change; they evolve. I have changed to become far more focused on sustainable living, finding ways to be kind to the Earth. It’s critical, actually, that we do this. Our home is in big trouble. And so are we.

Some things haven’t changed, like the name of this blog. I did consider wiping the slate clean and starting again. But for me, everything comes back to the milkwood tree/s in my forest garden – its survival on our damaged Earth. The milkwood (I wrote about it here) is a symbol of what I hope to get across, which focuses on recycling and reuse and reinvention of you and me and the things in our lives.

If you’ve read this far (barely more than 300 words), then you’ll realise that the subject matter of Under the milkwood is shifting from post-corporate life to using our own power to make choices in our own lives to stop harming the Earth and hopefully to even see some recovery. But we don't exist in boxes. So I'll share places and people and my ongoing battle to keep that see-saw gently rising and falling.

Join me for the journey.