Having a sense of purpose is associated with good mental health and also with longevity. The Okinawa lifestyle is something to check out if you want to explore that. I don’t believe that any of us has a specific purpose, although if you do and find it helpful than don’t let me get in your way! I have more of an existentialist outlook and I think we have to create our own meaning in life.

For me then, being purposeful does not rest on the idea that I am in this world to do something specific. My sense of what is purpseful derives instead from thinking about what would be good. What would help, uplift or inspire? What can I do that would bring joy or comfort into the world? Of late the answers to those questions haven’t looked like much at all. I have struggled with feeling adrift and not feeling purposeful.

Being able to type again helps greatly. Having more scope to communicate has given me back some sense of purposefulness. It’s also fair to say that writing – in all its many forms – has been so central to my life that the loss of it was disorientating during the months of not being able to see much at all. This week I have regained a part of myself, and that makes a lot of odds.

During the months when I could do very little, I thought a great deal about what I wanted to do. Writing poetry loomed surprisingly large. The first thing I physically wrote was a poem – on paper and using a marker pen. At the moment I’m not sure how anything will work, it is all baby steps at the moment, wobbly and nervous. I need to focus on doing the best and the most that I can with what little I have. I need to figure out what that would mean, and what is most important for me. It is all a process.