Happy birthday TPD

It has been exactly a year since I put finger to keyboard to start writing this weblog. Since then, I have written more than a hundred postings and received hundreds of comments, good and bad, about my views. Most of the time it has been a pleasure writing because I love to write and haven't had the time or inclination to do so for years; this online diary gave me the opportunity to get started.

Some of the time I agonised over whether it had been worth the aggravation I received at work. I was as close as I could possibly be to quitting the diary this year and there were days when I simply did not want to go to work because this blog was creating a division between me and a few of my colleagues - men and women who never identified themselves to me and still haven't. I lost sleep and became quite depressed. It affected my home life and impacted on others in my life quite profoundly for a short time.

Now I don't care about the few who simply don't like this idea or the way it is written, thousands of readers have had their say and have been positive about it, including many colleagues.

When I started writing, I had no idea that there were other ambulance-related blogs out there; I barely understood the idea behind blogging but I had wanted to record my professional life for years and this is where the diary comes from. It was always my intention to write a book about the job and since I had been recording my experiences in a reflective diary anyway, it made logical sense to translate that into a blog.

So, on with YEAR 2 and hopefully, plenty of things to see, try, do and say. Thanks for sticking with me for the past year.