Hello @LookingHopeful and @Paperdaisy
@LookingHopeful, From what you have said, things have changed since you last worked away from the coast; at least for you. I note that you have also mentioned being on your own and it seems that you are probably feeling pretty isolated. That can be particularly so in very hot weather. Our top here today is just under 40 deg C, depending on which side of the tree that you are standing under, and if you can find a tree nearby.
While I don't want to take you too far down the track of overthinking, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about any issues that concern you. Being alone over Christmas would be a bit of a downer, unless the aloneness is what you had intended. Quite a few people on the forum say that they wish they could be away from all the activity, shopping and general stress of the Christmas / New Year period. Sometimes, when "the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence", it is just different, but not much greener, if at all.
Reading the guidelines, you would be aware of the need to retain anonymity, so, while acknowledging that, maybe you could tell us which state you are in so that we have an idea of your time zone. I live in what is known as the Mid-West Region of W.A., which, for comparison, is more than twice {2.076x} the area of Victoria. {This to give an idea of relative areas and distances.}
"The Mid West region is one of the nine regions of Western Australia. It is a sparsely populated region extending from the west coast of Western Australia, about 200 kilometres north and south of its administrative centre of Geraldton {Population ~38,000} and inland to 450 kilometres east of Wiluna in the Gibson Desert.
With Best Wishes
I have added the following tips which I hope will be of help in using the functions of the forum. If you have any problems just ask from wherever you are and someone should be able to assist.
- Click the REPLY oval to the bottom right of the post to which you intend replying
- With the cursor in the Reply box, type the "@" symbol {without inverted commas} which will open a drop down menu with up to five or six forum addresses of people who have commented in the thread to which you want to reply
- The @ symbol cannot be adjacent to any other letter or symbol in order for the dropdown menu to appear
P@ ,X P @ ✔
- Selecting a forum address from the list will enter that forum address into the reply box, and, in turn, will send an alert to the person concerned, which will appear in the "Your Notifications" page list for that person
- Repeat steps 2 to 4 for additional forum address entries into the reply box
- Enter the comment that you wish to offer, then click POST and click POST again. {Two POST clicks are normally required. If the comment does not post on the second click, check above and below the reply box for Error messages.
- There is often a message below the reply box regarding an "invalid HTML" { - see 8. below.} That message can normally be ignored unless it changes to read a different message. The message just seems to be stuck there, for no apparent reason.
- " Your post has been changed because invalid HTML was found in the message body. The invalid HTML has been removed. Please review the message and submit the message when you are satisfied. "
At the top right of the forum page to the right of Guidelines & Info is placed the word New .
- Clicking on the word New will open the "Your Notifications" page
- The "Your Notifications" page displays a list of the notifications to you, by other members, from threads to which you have posted or been active, or where they have entered your forum address.
- In the "Your Notifications" page, Left click on the link, which will be displayed like this; " Re: Wanting to have a general chat " to open the link and selected message, in the same browser TAB as the "Your Notifications" page or
- Right click on the displayed link to open the link and message in a new browser TAB
- If there are a number of message alerts, I find it easier to open two or three of them in new browser TABs
- However, if you see this timeout message
Authentication Failed.
- Authentication Ticket Mismatched, failed authentication.
Copy the whole of the message that you have typed into the message box, refresh ⟳ the page, and then paste the copied message back into the reply box, complete the message and click POST and click POST again.
{ This is what I had to do with this message because I took so long to write it. That is when the dreaded Authentication Failed message most often appears }
That should complete the message process unless there are any other error messages that require attention.
Cheers @HenryX
