Hello everyone,

It's been a while since you've had an update from me. As some of you know, I suffered an ME/CFS energy crash in the summer, where my ability to function both physically and cognitively dropped significantly.

I'm still largely housebound, my workday consisting of doing Egypt Exploration Society work on my laptop in bed, and most of the rest of my time is spent resting and pacing my energy. I've been undergoing various tests to see if there's anything other than the ME/CFS going on, some of which I'm yet to hear back about. It's been a really tough few months in many ways, and it's taken me this long to pull together an update for you.Thanks so much for your patience!

What does this mean for my photography?

At the moment, the future is an unknown quantity. I thought the crash might last a couple of weeks (as they have in the past). But, here I am, over 5 months later, only now feeling able to write to you.

Obviously, I love my photography and desperately want to carry it on. That hasn't changed. What's uncertain is how long it will be before I can even start to consider going out with my camera again.

That doesn't mean, however, that I have nothing photographic to do. First off, I'm still working on the photos I took at the Garstang back in June. I've done most of the editing on my laptop, but laptop screens aren't ideal for checking colour and contrast properly, so I’m really glad I’ve been able to start sitting at my desktop with my photographer's monitor. It’s only been for a couple of short bursts to check my editing, and I have to pace very carefully, but it’s great to spend some time on that again.

I have a backlog of other editing to do: the Amarna clay seals from Bolton, the tomb models and statuettes from the Tomb of the Two Brothers at Manchester, and an array of amulets and stelae from the Garstang and Manchester. So, even though I haven't been able to get out to museums, I still have plenty to work on.

Tiny Egypt Society

Unfortunately, there is an annoying issue with the membership system on the Tiny Egypt website. The plugin (a software extension for the website) I've used to manage member subscriptions and the members' area has become prohibitively expensive. My licence for that software has now expired and although I have a grace period, I'll soon lose the ability to collect membership subscriptions and maintain the gated members' area on my website.

As disappointed as I am by this, it is a good time to simplify my set-up. In my quest to build my ideal little corner of the online world, my websites have become too complex to keep maintaining while living with chronic health conditions.

Rather than try to do everything myself on my website (there are advantages to running everything myself, but it's a lot of work), I think the best option is to move the Society and much of my comms to another platform, so I'm currently getting myself set up on Substack.

Substack was originally aimed primarily at writers, but it's become a popular platform for all sorts of people, including photographers. I can have members’-only articles for the Society, as well as public ones for email subscribers.

The big advantage to Substack is that it’s easy for me to use, meaning less friction for me for keeping in touch, and when I write updates to post to members and subscribers, they're also sent out as emails. For those of you who prefer to read emails rather than logging into a website, there's no need for you to have to keep logging in.

There’s nothing you need to do right now, as I’ll be importing my existing mailing list, and I’ll write again soon explaining in more detail how things will work. For those unfamiliar with Substack, it's essentially an email newsletter platform with a few extra features, so you won’t receive anything other than my emails. If, however, you already have an account there (or wish to make one), you can also follow me (https://substack.com/@juliathorne) and you’ll be able see the short-form notes I’m already starting to post.

I also want to streamline all of Tetisheri to make it more ME/CFS-friendly. I'm not sure what that will look like yet so I need some time to consider my options. My priority right now is setting up an alternative for the Tiny Egypt website.

I completely appreciate it's a pain for Society members to have to set subscriptions up anew, and I’ll be in touch soon to let you know how things will work. Your support is invaluable, so I look forward to seeing you on the other side of the process! 

Thanks for sticking with me through these tougher times :)

All the best,

Julia