Saving the world, one post at a time…

Hello to you all and a very happy 2023.

This is my 11th year on The Mermaids Purse and the blog has taken a lot of twists and turns, died and been born again. Most recently, this time last year, I began a series of posts called Coast Diary. The intention was to post short observations, with sketches, to preserve a small record before creeping developments change the coast here in Waterford forever. I thought it would be cute and lovely and quirky. So much for that. A proposed road upgrade for a small woodland near the sea here got me hot under the collar (again) and posts got longer and longer. I don’t think I do cute and lovely so well. The same thing happened previously when I posted on proposed windfarms.

I realised that both efforts – and any previous efforts to change the world here on the blog – had fallen far short when, in October 2022, a local journalist published map of the proposed windfarms with the caption (in CAPS mind you) FIRST TIME SUCH A MAP HAS BEEN PUBLISHED on his Instagram account. Of course the bloody map had been published before and not just repeatedly here on this blog but on social media as well as being available on the source website of a protest group down the coast for at least two years. Journalist my bottom. But it makes a point: why waste time focussing the blog on the outside world when to that world you are invisible?

Sigh. It’s one thing to be fighting a losing battle – and fighting it badly – another to realise how its disproportionally impacting your quality of life. And for what? For the children and grandchildren of those newly rural SUV drivers who, when they aren’t trying to drive you into a ditch, are driving you out of the local property market.  So, I have come to the conclusion that it’s not my job to save the planet, even a little bit. I have a decade or two left at most and after that I won’t care. I don’t think I care now.

This is actually a relief (to me and you both probably) but it begs the question – why should I keep this blog going? I do like to read about and hear from my blogging pals here and in the UK, and NZ (CJ, TT, April) even if I have been erratic about contact over the last while. I also think blogging is a good way to periodically review my week, my life. It’s good for writing too, if not honing it, seeing where you are going wrong.

So I am thinking of trying again to fill the (proposed) vacuum. But I am not sure how. Any ideas? A Coast Diary reboot? Something else? What do you want to see, if anything. Let me know, if you can be arsed, in the comments below.