Checking in: Sydney, Australia

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Hey Guys! This is somewhat of a post to tell you that I'm still alive and another post explaining my recent online absence.

There’s two reasons why I haven’t been online as much as I would like and I’ll explain them both down below. The first is, since coming back from Hawaii, I dove straight back into work and then 3 days later, university started up again. My hours all together dedicated to those two activities are actually not enormous, but as always life gets in the way. Then at the start of April I had everything planned, but unforeseen circumstances changed everything. My supposed mid-semester break saw me switched to a full time roster at work and then to add on top of that, I ended up getting sick with one of the worst headaches and fevers I've ever had. As I started getting better, my assessments also started and so I've been frantically studying. They don't stop until May 3rd, and as a little reward to myself I bought tickets to a concert. Actually I bought them for my sister's birthday, but she didn’t want to go alone so I bought one as well. Can you believe that this will be the first concert that I'm going to in my life! I'm so excited!

The second reason and this is a bit more personal is the online presence of trolls and hate mail. If you don’t know already, any comments posted are moderated before they become public and whilst I was in Hawaii, I received a really hateful and disturbing comment from an anonymous. It didn’t bother me at all, partly due to the fact the grammar and spelling was absolutely terrible, but also the topic discussed seemed irrelevant to me, even though it was addressed to me. The comment though, did make me self-evaluate what I wanted, whether what I was doing was worth it. I told myself it most definitely is and that the presence of trolls is a frequent occurrence online. I had waited a while after that, to post my latest post Meadowbank, but the commenter came back. I don’t know whether I should be happy to know that they are a frequent reader on my blog or whether I should be upset that they write these comments. The one thing I’m sure of is that these comments won’t be published. So I hoped by prolonging this post maybe the commenter would go away.

In some way, writing the last paragraph makes me want to discuss the issue of bullying, whether online or physically. I want this blog to be able to talk about bigger topics, but I feel unqualified to discuss the bullying topic. I was fortunate enough in primary and high school to not experience any form of bullying and so I can’t describe first-hand what it would have been like to experience bullying. These online comments might be a form of cyber-bullying, but I am confident enough in myself to disregard these. I do however urge those that are being bullied to confide in another, it may be hard, it may be shameful or embarrassing, but you have to know you are not alone.

x - J

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