The 11 Year Blog Anniversary Post!

Warning: brief references to grief/loss and mental health problems

Yes! Dora Reads is now eleven years old.

...Somehow I've made it this far!

Nerd Church - Shout Out To Those With Mental Health Problems In This Clusterf**k Timeline!

 

Sh**'s messed up.

...Like, it's been messed up for a while, I know. But our current level of 'historical' is feeling more like 'biblical' (in terms of scale, rather than religion,) every day.

It's one thing on top of another on top of another. 

I came across a blogpost I wrote in 2018 where I was like 'the world is bad at the moment,' ...and I genuinely can't remember what I was talking about. That was 2 years before 2020, and none of us really know what normal is any more.

Maybe, five to ten years from now, I'll look back and think, 'what was I complaining about in 2025?' but I really hope not.

Against that backdrop then, I, like many people, have mental health problems. And have for 10+ years at this point.

And it's f**king tough.

So to all of those with mental health problems, or anyone struggling, right now - this is a shout out to you.

Nerd Church - Fighting the Pointlessness

 

Warning: brief reference to feeling suicidal, discussions of pointlessness, grief, mental health, existentential dread, and all the things that make up the general sh**ty state of the world.

Things have been tough for me, lately.

When you lose someone you love... it's damned hard.

Everything feels pointless - if that can happen to them, then what is the point of anything?

What's the point of writing a blogpost? What's the point of writing anything?

And since my purpose in this life is to read and to write... if I can't find the point of that, then what's the point of me?

(...I'm actually an optimist, if you can believe that. I just have mental health issues, and have been through some tough sh**.)

Nerd Church - The Fractured Web: Our Socials are Scattering

Warning: this post refers to the bad things that happen on the internet; wide variety of topics, be careful!

The internet is fragmenting...

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: My Brain Is Unpredictable, Right Now

 

[Warning: this post discusses mental health problems and grief]

Look, I've been through some stuff lately, and it's definitely affected me.

My mental health has not been good for the last 10+ years, and now, after losing my mother in February... my head has given me a whole bunch of Very Bad Days lately.

I can't bring myself to go into details, but... it was hell. As a family, we've been through absolute hell since October 2024.

Schedule/Blogging Update

 

[Content Warning: brief references to death, cancer, grief, and mental health issues.]

For those who don't know, my mother passed away from cancer in February.

Things were pretty awful, generally, at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.

Another Life/Blogging Update

(CW: death)



Hi everyone —

My mother passed away last week.

Thanks to everyone who’s been so supportive the last few months, it really means a lot.

I will get back to doing more on here and on Medium — although possibly the social interaction side of things is going to take a lot longer — but for now it’s just… awful.

Hope you’re having a better 2025 than I am.

Life/Blogging Update (...Again)

 

Cards on the table time: I have no idea when I'll be able to get back to my regular blog series.

I'm hoping to put out the odd post here and there, but I honestly can't guarantee anything for the foreseeable future.

My mother is dying.

My mental health is terrible.

I don't know if/when I'll be able to put the time and effort in that I want to.

This is not me giving up blogging - I don't think that's ever going to happen at this point. 

This is me saying that things are going to be sporadic around Dora Reads, my Medium account, and my socials, for a long time to come, so apologies for not being great at the whole social interaction thing for a while.

Life/Blogging Update + Updated Blogging Schedule

 

OK, so... life continues to be tough AF for yours truly.

So while I fully intended to bring my regular series (Comics Wrap-Up, Friday Fics Fix, Nerd Church,) back in January, for my own mental health and ability to use my free time for such luxurious things as sleeping and eating, that's not going to happen.

I'm tentatively aiming to bring them back in February, but honestly the way my life is right now, we all could have been hit by a meteor by then.

Still, I'll keep you updated when I can!

Look after yourselves, and remember to shelter from meteors... somehow.

Nerd Church - To-Do List Struggles

 

My to-do isn't that long - at first glance.

But that's mostly because I only write down a few things that I need to prioritise and/or think I'm in danger of forgetting. 😅

My mental to-do list? Much, much, bigger.

Like... I expect a lot of myself.

The 10 Year Blog Anniversary Post!

 

YES! It has been a full ten years since the start of Dora Reads -

which back then was known as Diary of A Reading Addict, later shortened to DORA, which is how we got to Dora Reads (- and some people insist on calling me Dora even though I'm clearly marked as Cee everywhere *shrugs*)

- and somehow-or-other, through it all, I'm still here.

Nerd Church - Blogging Schedule Update (...It's Been A Stressful Week)

 

I don't usually write Nerd Church posts like this, but since Nerd Church isn't really tightly defined (...or defined at all, OK, I know,) I figured why not?

You may or may not have noticed that there was no Comics Wrap-Up (CWU) post, or Friday Fics Fix (F3) post this week.

- Which wasn't a planned break.

My life turned into another whirling ball of chaos this week, with my mother's health being very Not Good.

(Thankfully she's doing so much better now.)

Life/Blogging Update

 

Hey everyone!

My life is once again chaos, so there won't be any Comics Wrap-Up tomorrow (Thursday 24th Oct), or Friday Fics Fix on Friday (25th Oct).

There will be a Nerd Church on Sunday - but whether it'll be a 'proper' Nerd Church or another update, I don't know.

Thanks for the patience!

Nerd Church - I’d Love To Have A Cat’s Self-Confidence

 

Originally published on Medium

This started with a prompt, and then meandered far, far, away from the original idea… 😅

Prompt set by Dr. Casey Lawrence on Medium:


“ The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are stronger at the broken places.”

— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms: Library Edition [x]

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: You Don't Have To Publish Everything

 

Warning: brief discussions of Anxiety/mental health issues

This is a reminder to any of you fellow writers/bloggers/whoever-s out there who need it:

 

You don't have to post everything.

You don't have to publish everything.

Nerd Church - Prioritise Small Steps

 

...brought to you by me, once again, giving myself a pep-talk and posting it on the internet 😅💪

Listen, the world is rough and tough and kind of awful sometimes. 

It feels like everything is crashing and burning and we live in a frankly batpoop timeline.

Month In Review(s) - August 2024

 

August reached my bar for a good month 

- which is admittedly so low it's practically touching the floor, but I'ma take it as a win 😅

Unfortunately, August was also pretty damned bad in terms of hay fever

- like, I've had hay fever a lot (more in recent years, because climate change,) but I've rarely felt this unwell with it.

So, yeah, that sucked. 

Wales got it's first woman First Minister with Eluned Morgan.

...Which would be a lot more celebration-worthy if her predecessor, Vaughan Gething, Europe's first Black leader of a nation, hadn't been forced out after deeply unfair (imho) and personal attacks, which crossed the line into racism more than once.

So, mixed bag.

Eluned Morgan, btw, fully supported Gething until the end of his short tenure - so the blame shouldn't be placed at her door for this.

In other parts of the UK (England and Northern Ireland,) there were racist riots.

...So not a good look for the UK in general in August, racism-wise. *Sighs*

People suck sometimes.

My regular series (Comics Wrap-Up, Friday Fics Fix, and Nerd Church,) went on break in August, and I didn't post much all-in-all.

- I try to do that every so often so that posts don't start feeling like too much of a chore. 😅

All three are back in action now, though. So September's post-list will be a lot longer than this one.

'Other' Posts

Month(s) in Review(s) - June + July 2024

Poetry: An Echo

So that was my August - how was yours?

Talk to me! 😎💬

You can follow me on Twitter @CeeDoraReads, on Pinterest, and on Dora Reads @ BlogLovin. For more ways to support me, check out the Support Me page

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Nerd Church - Celebrity Birthday Buddies!

 

It's my birthday today (15th Sep) so I figured I'd have a little fun.

(...of the nerdy sort, because that's on-brand, let's be honest.)

So, y'know that thing where people talk about their ideal celebrity dinner guests, either living or dead, fictional or real?

This isn't that.

But it is somewhat adjacent to that.

I thought that instead I'd talk about my celebrity birthday party list - with the twist that they also have to have their birthday on September 15th. Just because it's an awesome date, let's be honest.

So, here's my celebrity birthday buddies:

Month(s) In Review(s) - June + July 2024

 

Warning: discussions of Depression and pet loss

...OK, doing this as a two-monthly thing is becoming an unintentional habit 😅

The only excuse that I have is that sometimes Depression messes my memory up - and the fact that I entirely (and I mean, entirely,) forgot to write a post for June coincides with some pretty sh**ty mental health days over the past two months.

So, yeah. I'm blaming Depression. And I don't feel bad about that, because it blames me for stuff all the time 😅

Nerd Church - Sometimes You Need To Take Things Slow

 

Do you get the feeling, sometimes, that everything out there in the big wide world is kind of... rushed?

It's kind of fast, kind of hurried, kind of urgent.