I looked it up.  It means ‘to toil; long laborious work; a long tiring walk or march’.  And that’s how I feel.  That right now is a hard slog. I realise I am unrealistic and possess very high expectations.  But I am a stranger to relying on the kindness of strangers, and at the moment I seem to be doing that a lot.  It is not comfortable.  

But it is not the end, or even the middle.  It is the beginning.  And as Emily Dickinson put it, hope doesn’t stop singing, so I stand here, slogging away and allow hope to sing deep in my soul…