It has been a while...

.. it has been a while since I last posted here. Life, as usual, has kept me busy.
That and trying to decide what I want to do with this blog, and I think I have decided on that now; this will become where I write up things on my mind that are not intended to directly link to my real life, almost becoming like an online diary (yeah I know many blogs are like that).

I'll also post some things related to nudism and naturalism, so the initial intent of the blog will stay. And with that will be an attempt at keeping this artistic.


What spurred me to write this post is related to the title... "It has been a while..."
Recently, within the past few days, a couple 'ghosts' from my past have in a way come back to haunt me.

On Saturday I got one of those spam emails (as follows) from an old boy-friend:
hey,
how are you ?
Just received my iphone 3gs 32gb from this website. www (dot) gsineh (dot) com much cheaper than others and genuine . if you would like to get one,you can check it out.
cheers
J--

This old 'boy-friend', if I can call him that, was someone I dated for most of the summer back in 2006. He was young, so I kind of forgive him for never officially breaking-up with me.... he stopped calling me and, when I purposefully ran into him at where he was working, he claimed his phone was in for repairs (that was about 1-2 weeks after I'd last heard from him).
Because of how he never spoke to me after that, I still feel it is a little unresolved.

I am the type of person to only wish harm on those that deserve it (like the guy I dated in early 2008, who convicted of fraud, and nearly caught me in his web .... thanks go out to his ex landlords who warned me!). So I in part wish to meet up with J. again to see how he's doing, hoping he is well....

Now, related to that I did a little cyber-stalking on him... looked up his Facebook profile from his email... we have a mutual friend, so if I really wanted to contact him, that could be a way... (now should I?)

Facebook is a powerful tool at finding old friends, and walking down memory lane....
First, a good friend of mine posted an photo from 2001 as her profile pic (I sent her the photo on her request), a couple people commenting on the photo are old classmates from back in the day... once again I am thinking of sending out friend invites to them....

But the one I wanted to comment on, since it has more emotion attached to it (again unresolved issues), I literally stumbled upon... I happened to click on an old colleague's profile, and at the top of his comments was the name of our old supervisor... back story now...

I worked in the UK for an engineering company in 2004-05. It was the first time I was a significant distance from home, and it surprised me at the number of cultural differences even in a culture of the same root language.
(I say root language since I use the following spoken phrase to illustrate the written difference: I ask people how they think one would spell "the tire hit the curb" in the UK... the answer, for those who don't know, is: "the tyre hit the kerb"). So little things like that, along with a miss-communication of expectations at the start, lead to me having problems in the job, and quitting.
When I quit I recall seeing relief and shock on my supervisor's face. However I was one of few people in the department, so by me quitting, that didn't help her work load....

... now we jump ahead a few years, to 2008...

I was applying for membership in an professional organization (even though I may not be a member for long... but that's another story).
In the application they wanted my work experience for the past 5-10 years, and references for certain ones, such as my job in the UK.
I managed to track down my old supervisor, she had left the company we had work at together. I asked her about providing a reference. After a few emails to her (and no reply), over a few months (about 1 email per month, so as not to appear too pushy), I got a reply which simply was:
'I can provide a reference, but you should know it will not be positive. Otherwise please don't contact me' (paraphrased from memory).
That shocked and disappointing me, not for the type of reference (I kind of thought it might be that), but in her request to not contact her again....
.... the day I received that I started writing a letter that essentially said: "I'm sorry for what ever I did that made you feel that way about me. I appreciate what you taught me while I was in the UK, and would like to thank you for that." True statements.
I never finished that letter, feeling if I were to write it I'd want to hand deliver it to her work place to show how much I respected her guidance despite what ever my problems were.

I ended up telling the professional organization a half truth... that I could not find someone to provide me a reference for that time. They still granted me membership (last summer), pending passing an exam I'm writing this summer.

Seeing my UK supervisor's name on a mutual friend's Facebook reminded me of those unresolved issues, and bridges burnt that I'd not know I'd burnt.... The up-side of it though, is I have a link to where she works should I want to pass on the letter.... however the 'new' letter will tell more about how my experience in the UK helped me decide on following a different path (one into teaching... which I'm sure I've mentioned earlier in my blog).

Whew, nice to purge some of those thoughts and emotions... and now that I've restarted this blog, hopefully I can continue with more frequent updates.

Feel free to leave comments on these topics, other issues you'd like to read about, or things you'd like to see in my blog.