100 Posts!

This is my 100th post on the blog!

As I said way back in my first post on 25th August last year, I've had several blogs over the years and now have really stuck. None of them, I can tell you, made it to 100 posts!

I like to think of them now as first drafts - I learnt a lot from them even though they failed. I learnt that not being open about my life leaves my writing stilted and I learnt that I'm not really interested in creating a space dedicated to one thing only.

All of that led me here - a very Nikki space on the internet.

I feel like an awful lot happened in 100 posts, so I thought it would be fun to have a re-cap!

I moved to Portsmouth
Leaving London was always one of those things I was going to do in the future. I was going to settle down with my family somewhere else, somewhere, I imagined, with trees and fields and maybe a sea view. But there wasn't a plan for this, I had no deadline. I figured it would happen one day.

And then it did. Rich got a job near Portsmouth and here we are. I'm still a little surprised at my situation, I have to admit. It's been a difficult one, while I was totally prepared to move, leaving my city was a wrench, not least because I left behind all my friends and family, who were handily settled in nearby zones 1-3 on the tube map.

But here we are and it's good. I'm near enough that going back to London (back 'home', still) is not a pain, but a straightforward and relatively short journey.

I was open
... Perhaps too open? Rich moved to Portsmouth in September and I didn't move here until the end of March. I was open about the stresses of Long Distance Love and wrote about the intensity of missing the person you love here and here.

Do I regret this honesty? No. It's good to be able to look back and see that we got through it. It helped me at the time. Life is messy and imperfect and it is good for me and for whoever is reading to share that.

I shared the things I love
There are things in life that are supposed to be guilty pleasures - things that you like in secret. But I kicked off this blog with a list of my guilty pleasures and continued to write about bullet journalling, Harry Potter and cross stitch, no matter how 'uncool' it is.

Here's to 100 more posts of honesty, creativity and - let's face it - just a dash of dorky.