Sociable Stamp Society

This is our blog for current stamp news and views of interest to the philatelist and beginner. Daily updates provide items on shows, new issues, events, what's selling, and timely facts.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Here and There and Back Again.

I’m back.

Mike Mills, the Glassine Surfer, is back.I was away for much too long, and it feels good to be here. It feels great to be back where I belong.

About two years ago, I gave up writing my ‘Glassine Surfer’ column for the APS magazine and I stopped contributing my USA column to ‘Gibbons Stamp Monthly.’

I stopped updating the website and I dropped out of most stamp activities. I actually stopped all my stamp activities, even buying and accumulating items for my collections.

There were reasons for all of this. I was the victim of my habits. I was stressed, overworked. I had health issues, like amazingly high blood pressure, and long bouts of insomnia. Depression was diagnosed. I felt like goldfish swimming in a fishbowl, or a mega-star checking into a clinic for exhaustion, but at the time it was worse than that.

In the last two years, I wound up ending a 25-year marriage, losing my best friend, since I was 16, to alcohol, and coping with reduced finances (ouch!). But medication, zen, and exercise has put me on my feet, and now the Rx’s are being phased out.

I wound up being vegetarian, finding out I’d been buddha’ish all my life, connecting with my self, and reigniting that that wonderful spark of life. I even found someone to love, and so did she but it wasn’t me (a very long story).

Through it all I just held on and had faith in my friends, and family, doctor and counselor. And now I slowly look back over my shoulder and find it hard to believe that what is so clear now was utterly unimaginable then.

That’s where I’ve been and what a long strange trip it’s been. Like I said, I’m back and I’ll be here for the next 25 years when printed stamps are considered antiquities and viewed as quaint reminders of life gone by.

All this may seem too personal for a blog and site about “stamp collecting,” but it’s also the direction this blog, this website, and I are taking.

the lanai guy | 8:25 AM | 1 comments |

1 Comments:

At 9:15 AM, Booklets And Panes said...: I bet it took a lot of courage to say that in a public forum and as your opening words in your coming back story. Courage is a rare and difficult thing to muster these days, so I congratulate you and welcome you back!

I have been / and still going thru a similar personal battle, but ironically i have found peace, calmness and meditation in my stamps and stamp collection. I have recently lost my job and I'm now in the process of trying to fulfil my dream of becoming a stamp dealer specializing in booklets and panes.

Keep up the good work!