Huge welcome to my new, yet predictably-same-old-broken-record, mental health blog.

Those that know me, know this is the third serious blog I’ve started on the topic of mental health.

My first successful blog, Modern Day Girl Blog (MDGB), reached a million page views. This was many moons ago now, though. At one point, as I watched in awe, 300+ people were viewing my page every minute on one viral day. The post in question wasn’t even anything note-worthy, I’m sure.

Then, finances and mental health got the better of me and I just stopped being able to afford the website fees any longer. I regret not making any backups of anything, it just ceased to exist.

Some years later, I started a new blog which was geared towards both men and women. I knew that 45% of those reading Modern Day Girl Blog were men at the time, and I wanted to help men, too. I’d researched a tonne around men’s mental health, and knowing men’s suicide rates, I started again, but trying to please all.

Inevitably, I caved under the pressure and found archived MDGB posts, re-uploading with little thought. SEO I’d learned in the two years of MDGB told me this was a bad idea (Google and other search engines don’t like duplicate websites; it’s seen as plagiarism and you get shunted to page 200+ as a penalty). I may be exaggerating the 200+ page penalty, but it’s bad when you copy people’s stuff, even if it was yours originally. But, I was more bothered about pushing out the posts.

As you can guess, that one also ended up in the blogger graveyard. The domain of mentalhealth.guide definitely was the best though 😅

And so, here we both find ourselves.

So, this is me:

• I’m Jess
• I’m a secondary school Geography teacher
• I love teaching, and thrive under pressure, especially during crisis moments
• I have three cats, not through choice, but would choose no other now
• One my of cats, Gizmo, probably only has 2 brain cells
• Here are my cats…

Gizmo is top – you can’t see it here but his primordial pouch is voluptuous and sways from side to side when he trots. He is a phat one. At nearly five years old he is my one true velcro and lap cat:

Bottom-left is Nuttie (I know, but she responded to that name almost immediately as a young and fiesty missy kittie). Her current fickle-ness has her perch on top of the kitchen units, where she will scream at me for pets that I have no chance of reaching 😅

Bottom-right is Benny – the ‘alpha’ as such. Yet, his meow is somewhat feminine and has a hankering for burrowing in my hair. He also likes being bounced on the knee by me. His meows change in pitch depending on his current demand.

Other interests include:

• Geopolitical stuff takes up more of my brain power than it probably should
• Trump is an flipping idiot
• I have a stationary addiction – the hundreds of stickers I own can’t be used because they are too nice to use

I’m sure I’ll think of more as I go!

As always, huge welcome and hope you enjoy the blog!

Jess xoxo