I’m not very techno literate and always years behind the madding crowd. I mean, I’ve only just started using and loving Skype. I’ve only been on Facebook for a couple of years. So, yes, a bit of a dinosaur. Partly my age and partly not having anything resembling natural aptitude.

In spite of this, I have learned to stumble and lurch around well enough. I’m so very grateful to live here and now and have all this scope for intimacy and resonance, via technology. I understand the argument for more ‘real’ communication in the ‘real’ world. I understand that the internet can isolate and mechanise the human experience. And yet, my very personal experience is the opposite. I know that without the internet, I would be defeated by my depression in a markedly different way. What I can manage is often tiny. A ringing telephone doesn’t always get answered. The front door can be several steps too far. These ridiculous but true parameters can make my world feel limited, and lonely, even though I don’t really want company.

I’m delighted to report, that for me the internet is proving an intimate and relational place. I’m finding I can manage a surprising amount of company, through the cracks where the heart pours in. The astonishing immediacy of exchanging tendernesses, a flash of understanding, the simple humanity of touching and being touched. In my litany of mumbled thanks, that run like underground trickles of water through my bedrock, you will always hear me whispering, ‘thank you techno’.

And, I do want to nod to the blog. Its taken a while to drop my clothes on the beach and walk out into the waves. And though Postcards still feels very new, I am starting to settle in. I’m alive when I write and offer myself like this. As depression weighs heavily, it is truly good medicine, to write and offer myself up and feel read/received. A generation ago, I could never have this. I’d be writing into isolation, or I’d have to be officially published. Thank you for reading me, for whatever reasons that you are. This morning, feeling particularly overwhelmed by another new day, I saw from the stats on my blog, that people from various different countries, are reading. Those little spots of colour on the world map are telling me that my hand signals are being seen as far away as Vietnam, and that the fine line between waving and drowning, knows no human bounds. This is profoundly comforting, ever reminding me I am never really alone, even when I am or need to be. And that taking your clothes off on the internet can mean more than one thing.