The responses to yesterdays blog were thoughtful and insightful, thank you. You have given me some wonderful ideas and lots of food for thought. Rather than responding to you individually, I decided it was a good ‘topic’ for todays blog!

Vanessa – I agree, it is important to just keep saying it. My message about what it is like living with dementia is important.

VK – the idea of writing about happier things is useful, and the notion that writing about the unhappy or sad things has a negative impact on me is valuable. I’ll have a long hard look in the mirror and see what springs back at me! You have also given me some really good ideas to think about.

Yolanda – the idea of thinking laterally is spectacular! Sometimes I get ‘lost’ in trying to work out what I am doing, so having set days for specific things is a good idea. Re-blogging is already happening, and is already often my way of saying, ‘I have nothing in my think tank today!’

Jenny – thank you for this one, I agree, if I deliberately cut back on my daily blogs , then it would become more difficult to remember when you last wrote one. And like has already happened with my food blog, I feel I might get off track completely.

Thanks everyone for creating more in my life with your words.

Perhaps Sundays could in fact be a day of rest, with just an image or reblog or one of my poems. And Saturdays could be a recipe for the weekend, which I can then add to the food blog, which kills two birds with one stone!! Wednesdays could be about positive psychology, positive living, positive thinking… positive anything, but related to living well with dementia to fit with the wider audience of this website and the Daily blog.

As this blog is now an academic resource in a number of tertiary and online dementia institutions around the world, it is important for me to stay relatively focused on dementia. I said in a presentation at a Positive Psychology congress yesterday, it is important to remember to help people with dementia ‘to turn up in their own life’ – not just the post diagnosis one, but the pre-diagnosis one. And of course, this applies to everyone.

Dementia is in my life, but there is so much more, and therefore writing about the other parts of my life is as relevant as writing about dementia. Let’s see where your words, and my responses to them take us!