Snappy blogger I am, I can access this long ago family photo. I think I save it on the cloud. It is the last picture I can post from a limited four saved. This is a photo of mother’s cousins with their parents. There is no story here. I need to determine much in the way of using both the cloud and WordPress.

There are so many stories about my mothers family. Stories about her uncles who panned for gold, struck rich & lost everything during the depression. Some made it back, one died in a psychiatric hospital. My mother’s mother is standing beside the car outside of her home. The driver is her brother but I cannot identify the others in this photo.

I romanticized my great-uncles who panned for gold in Northern Ontario. Lately I have wondered how they treated their employees.

But as a blogger, a new blogger, trying to pan for gold in my stories, in what I see, hear, loathe, adore, fleeting obsessions and aspirations. I am totally comfortable with pouring my heart out, sharing my fiction, poetry, non-fiction, fleeting obsessions, banal worries and or any residual bitterness. I want to blog about fear, courage, and putting one foot in front of the other.

I am behind at blogging school but am pleased with my progress. Publishing a post was a huge accomplishment, in this pandemic world I live in.

I adore the idea of writing and publishing with abandon to my ghost blog. Except for my blog school colleagues, I have no intention of passing on this link.

With my fiction, I could only submit my work convinced no-one in my outside life would ever read a word. I would love to write life affirming fiction but my pieces tend to be bleak and a strange. The stories come alive when they go out into the world and out of my control. I just assume my work won’t fall into the hands of anyone I love.

My cousin who is a couple of years older than me and who I used to think was too proper and convent bred for her own good, called me, and told me she had read one of my stories.

I felt as though I had been caught in an almost illegal activity. Her hair stylist is a Can lit fan and keeps Canadian journals and magazines at his salon. And my cousin picked up an issue with one of my pieces. She wanted to know why I had not told her about the piece, which she seemed to like.

Getting a book published and trying to host a clandestine book launch is the least effective way to proceed. Fortunately I was published by a very small press. I have had to learn to let go. It was a great time. The launch was held at Supermarket in Kensington Market in August 2017. Against my better judgement, I sent out invitations.

So, this blog. Every day I learn one more small thing. It is a place to be. I am going through changes and do not know where I will live a year from now. I am so happy to have a home on the Internet.