Product recall

I have lost my hearing almost entirely again due to not being able to take my usual medication daily, due to a product recall.

This means without a hearing aid constantly in my ear, I can’t hear even the loudest of sudden noises and because I can’t take my medication the infection it has caused means that it’s not wise to wear a hearing aid at all now unless desperate!

Paul had to try and buy the medicine online as the NHS can’t get access to it and so he found a warehouse online which still stores some safe medicine for me to use and we have to wait a couple of more days to get it, but they are only allowing one per person and it is only a one week supply!

Without this medication the eczema in my inner ear gets really bad and causes a thrush like infection of the inner ear, which often makes me go deaf and in pain.  Without this medicine controlling it I could risk another cholesteatoma and that would mean another mastoid surgery but on the left ear instead!

This medication is a lazy and cheap way for the NHS to manage my condition, before the NHS became bankrupted in this area; I was often called in once every six weeks for an aural cleaning and a precautionary spray and never had infections for several years.  But now, I get an infection in just five days of not using the medication I need literally daily, this is not ideal as it means I am using antibiotics every day and could build up a resistance eventually and I am severely allergic to their back up plan!

This is part of the reason why I have been quiet recently, the infection is making me sleepy and the pain is making it hard for me to concentrate and sleep comfortably.

My face swells too and makes me look round faced when my ears are full like that – making me even uglier than before!

I hate silence, it drives me mad!  I could never cope being deaf long-term, I get headaches, I don’t like it, it’s not peaceful – it’s frustrating and makes my depression extremely bad!

Just a heads up for people who want to know!

Thanks for reading!

Falling fool

Can somebody stop me now?

I am falling hard

Falling fast

Into a sea of sharks and pain

Falling hard like rain

Falling down the drain

Spiralling out of control in the air

Can somebody stop me?  Do you care?

I am in pain right now

It hurts so bad

It drives me mad

I am clad in thick grey clouds

Falling through the crowds in despair

But nobody sees me there

Am I alone in this world?

Is everyone deaf and blind?

Or have I really lost my mind?

Do I exist at all?

Why do I exist to fall?

I can’t keep falling more

There has to be a time where I can soar

And fly these heights on a feathered wings

A time where my cries leave me and I can sing

It can’t always be this way

Falling more and more each day

Things surely have to change

Or else I am deranged

I’m a falling fool

With nowhere to land

Falling onwards and onwards into dreamland

About my deafness

I think it was a 48 hour cold, though I am still a bit chesty but I am getting over it faster than I usually do – perhaps maintaining this high protein diet has helped?  I don’t know, but I do know that along with that I primarily drink water, green tea or lemonade instead of Pepsi and coffees these days.

I have been very tired and I feel as though I should sleep a lot, because I sense something is going to happen soon where I will be on my feet a lot of the time and I won’t have time to dilly dally anymore and laze around.

I haven’t a clue why my instinct is telling me, get all the sleep you can right now so you can be prepared for what’s coming!

I just hope it’s not going to be too much for me, whatever it is!

I have been bed and housebound sick for eight years now and it has only really been since Easter that I have managed to do approximately 45 minutes away from a chair at any one time.  What the blazes is coming into my life?

Whatever it is, I hope I ease into it and not get exhausted by it!

I really can’t think what it can be.

Puzzling, but my instincts are to be trusted, because I’ve ignored them in the past and I have been very sorry about it too!

But I have had this feeling about sleeping a lot for two weeks now.  But I hate sleep.

I have never been a person who loves their bed; unless there is some sort of activity going on if you get my drift?

I find it hard to sleep more than six hours unless I am unwell, simply because I am paranoid about missing out on something or not doing something I want to do.

In any case, I am glad things aren’t getting worse.  I was getting worried last night because two huge zits appeared on my face and I thought I might have had some kind of pox, monkey pox or something – but it was just the two and I seem to feel ok.  They are embarrassing though, not used to getting zits in that particular place of the face, weird!  Though upon reflection two nights ago I had an unusual amount of dairy in my diet for me – fatty foods can do that!

I am not happy about being requested to sleep more, but there you go. 

I also wanted to point out that I am deaf as many of you know – but I am not a signer.  I thought I had better put that out there as someone indicated they were worried about not being able to communicate with me offline.  I am fine, just follow these rules;

I can’t hear you if your back is turned away from me.

I can’t hear you if you cover your mouth.

I can’t hear you if you stand to my right – my right ear is completely dead and can’t have a hearing aid there.

Stand to my left and face me when you talk to me as I have a hearing aid sometimes – I don’t need it all the time as my left ear hearing fluctuates a lot due to the auto-immune inner ear problem I have.

Let me read your lips

Don’t take me to places that echo as the vibrations get distorted and I get disoriented and anxious.

You don’t need to sign for me, because I don’t understand it much.

But if I can’t wear a hearing aid because of infection in the left ear, you may need to shout or use a mini white board!

I am eligible for a hearing dog, but I don’t have one.

I can’t use a phone unless it’s very loud or on loud speaker – preferably a zoom call or something is better for me if there is no lag – for lip reading!

I rely on hearing people to take phone calls on my behalf, as a lot of places in authority and finance do not have alternatives for the deaf, yet – which is bloody disgusting!

On a positive note, when I get 10k – if I ever get 10k I can have surgery to repair my hearing in the right ear, all I need are ossicles, little bones to help vibrate sound and a new tympanic membrane.

Thanks for reading!

Junk, craft & gardens

Rummaging through old boxes and bags around the house, I have found things I have lost because Paul had moved them and placed them in towering piles at the corners of unregulated rooms, I have come across things I have completely forgotten about for years.

I didn’t realise at the time I made them, but I was a really nifty knitter and crochet thing (maker)? I have found two pairs of fingerless gloves I Knitted for myself as well as knitted hair dangles, two scarves, a babies blanket and a cowl.

Funny thing is I remember giving it up as I thought I was rubbish, but there you go.

I also remember giving it up because it was one of the main causes of my carpal tunnel syndrome as I am addicted to fidgeting so I took up the hobby as a kind of fidget toy that was productive idea.  However I got addicted to making things and I was knitting 100 stitches per line 100 times a night and my arm became almost unusable for three months because of it.

If I knit more than fifteen minutes it comes back.

Such a shame as I had a lot of projects I wanted to do.

I’m traditional and so I often like to knit cardigans, blankets and dungarees for babies as presents, so it’s hard for me to choose not to knit when I know there is a new baby on the way for friends and family.

Weird thing is that sewing and embroidery doesn’t affect me as much as knitting does.

I hand sew, scared of sewing machines because of things that happened to me as a kid; mum didn’t like my love for fashion and design, so when she was resizing curtains she bought one day I asked her to let me help her sew the seam with the machine and she deliberately nudged my hand where I had three inches of stitches go through my hand.  “There’s it’s your own fault, now stop bothering me about it”.

I want to get brave with using sewing machines as I have always thought about making my own clothes someday; Paul told me there is a lady in town who will make clothes to my specifications if I provide her with a comprehensive pattern for her to follow and she will do it with any material I give her for £25 an hour.

It would be nice someday to be able to do that.

The silly thing is I was the most excited about finding some playing cards I haven’t seen in a while; the donkey cards, snap cards and the old maid.  I have loved those cards since I was a kid, but Henry isn’t really into playing pairs or snap with me, unfortunately.  He is completely absorbed with robot making and learning geography.

I have loads of board games too; nobody wants to really play anymore.  We used to make a point that every night, or at least most nights we’d play a board game for one hour before bed, but Paul and Henry grew out of it and I was the only one who wanted to play.  Too much resentful arguments during gameplay ruined the fun for me, so we don’t bother anymore.  Even on special occasions like Christmas and my birthday, they just can’t help but make a scene.

This year on my birthday I got a lovely three course meal home cooked for me by Paul, a rare treat and it stretched our budget badly!  It’s a landmark birthday and I got no landmark present.  I don’t mean to sound bitchy but it was very disappointing.  Paul has always known this landmark birthday was something I wanted to be special for the last three years.

But I guess it’s not his fault the oven broke down two weeks before my birthday.

I understand in Paul’s mind, birthdays mean nothing to him; but for me, my life hasn’t been celebrated past my seventh birthday.  The last ever proper birthday party I have ever had was when I was seven years old.  All other things were always two weeks after my birthday, never parties and always something my brother wanted to do in the façade that it was really for me.

Is it really bad to want to feel special from time to time?

I am always made to feel unreasonable.

I try to look on the bright side though; at least people won’t circle around me smiling weirdly at me whilst they sing out of tune “squash tomatoes and stew”.  Ugh I really hate that version of happy birthday.  But I’m no kill joy, honestly.

I am starting to sort the house out, finding all my stuff, moving it to my bedroom as we’ve moved apart now me and Paul.  I don’t mean I’ve moved out of our house, I mean, we’re living sort of separate lives whilst still living together and I want to organise my stuff.

Mostly because it destroys me that I worked hard to keep things being thrown away over the years by my mum, only for it to come here, get lost amongst Paul’s mess and when I find it, find that its broken irreparably.  It bothers me when it’s an ornament or an item of clothing that was thrown in a corner out of the way being ruined, instead of going in a laundry basket – but it hurts a lot when I find it’s a handwritten story or a watercolour painting I have done.

Paul is a recovering hoarder (pack rat).  When I first moved in this house was quite something… It took me nearly two years to get the house into some sort of liveable shape and it was a very tumultuous time emotionally between us as Paul had to let things go in order to give the growing baby their own space too.

When I got sick, the house got bad again.  But for years I struggled to try and clean at least one room a month to keep on top of things, but the problem with that is energy and health.

I have asthma; one of the biggest things that set my chest off is dust.  Cleaning is not his priority, so this house is never dusted by him, always me.

Once a month it took me about three to eight hours in one day to clean a room, just one room.  To always find that three days later it looked like it hadn’t been touched, because Paul will shift items from other places in the gaps I made.

Years of struggle and arguments over it – new friends I have made since living here has no idea of Paul’s past and Paul is quite sneaky in letting people believe it’s me who has the problem… look at all the books, they are all hers.  Because I have bookcases downstairs visible for everyone, they see it as a truth and it’s not.

If you were to see the house, you would see all of my areas is clean and tidy most of the time.  You can clearly see where Paul spends his time, as it’s the messiest corners of the house with very dangerous high piles of whatever.

My bedroom is heaven in comparison the whole house.  The dining room is not functional for its purpose and the kitchen is just downright dangerous.

I used to care for our front and back gardens up until two years ago when the bad neighbour moved in with his girlfriend and decided to start sexually harassing me all the time whenever he saw me in the garden.  The gardens are now dangerously overgrown, because I won’t go out there and Paul has no spine to tell the guy where to go.

I have wanted to call the police, but being deaf I can’t use a telephone; Paul has flat out refused to call them on the grounds of lack of evidence.  I suggested we use a camera to film me in the garden so they can observe his actions, but of course our poverty is the perfect excuse for Paul not to do that.

As my illness has been the perfect excuse for him not finding a job. 

I miss my garden.  It was one of my ways in staying sort of fit.  I miss walking on the ground barefoot as I pick strawberries and columbines.

I miss doing “what that mad cow” is doing as the bad neighbour called me once, when I decided to go in our front garden and sit directly behind our privet hedge amongst the tall wildflowers because there were tamed frogs, toads and magpies who liked to visit me out there.

I remember hearing his girlfriend and daughter telling him to shut up and leave me alone, because they knew what I was like and they liked what I did.  They often commented about how my garden seems to steal all of nature’s beauty from them, all the butterflies and birds visits my garden but not theirs.

Their garden has decking from door to fence with only four small pots of violas, is it any wonder?

I’m a bit of a hippy, nature’s child – actually I might have under exaggerated, just a little…

Since I watched Shirley Temple’s Heidi when I was 5yrs old I have always wanted to own a homestead with my own goats and chickens running about me free, feeding them at 6am singing like Cinderella.

Before I got sick, I was very much a morning person.  Waking up like a new-born every day, excited to start living again, throwing open the curtains and singing “Good morning” by Doris Day making everyone in the house want to kill me as they recoil under their covers like vampires hiding from the sun.

I can’t do that anymore; when I wake up around ten to fifteen minutes after I have walked about a bit getting washed and dressed the coughing fits start for about an hour on a bad day.  If I wake up and don’t move out of bed, it’s not so bad, but as soon as I get moving it comes.  The really bad days scares the crap out of me.

When I do eventually move out of Paul’s house, it’s going to be tough on anyone new I make a relationship with.  Those early morning coughing fits are scary for even Paul who has been used to them for eight years.

My consultant believes he knows the cause of this, but he will not treat me because our local hospital is almost bankrupt and has a policy of treating life threatening conditions only.

I have enlarged adenoids that won’t shrink and broken cartilage in my nose made it worse.  I broke my nose around 5yrs ago which made the coughing worse, they won’t repair the cartilage, it’s considered aesthetic.  Although they call it aesthetic, it won’t improve my looks; my nose will still look big!  But there are times the cartilage moves and makes me sneeze uncontrollably and it hurts.

The biggest thing about all this stuff I am finding is that I don’t want a lot of it anymore.  I want to give it away to a charity/thrift store.  But Paul, ever the hoarder, told me not to do that.

He then caved in and said OK, I take some stuff for you.  But it’s all talk.  The bag of things has sat on the floor hall for a week now.

Hopefully someday we’ll sort things out here.

Happy reading!

Some clarity on me

There is a problem in my life at the moment;  Paul and I are trying to work out how to handle this together, because things are moving faster than the both of us has planned.

It all has to do with the open-relationship we have.  Paul has found someone else, this means that we are in a predicament about what to do with me?

It’s not simple for us both to part like any other couple would.  Paul is scared this lady might run away from him no sooner had she got to know him more personally and then there is the issue of me.

What’s the issue with me?

I have never recovered properly from PTSD and I have a lot of anxiety issues, self-care issues and I have been struggling with dark suicidal thoughts for a long time.  Paul feels it is positively dangerous for me to live alone, at all!

In his mind, even at the loss of his own new found happiness with another woman, he is not happy about letting me move out unless he knows I am going to be cared for by someone who understands what is happening with me and who can take that on willingly.

Sometimes my mental illness can be so bad that I self-harm, but also my physical health can sometimes leave me zoning out at inappropriate times because it’s the way I manage pain.  I am also not reliable in medicating myself.  I have no mental health medication, it’s all physical.  But still, I forget it.

I am also not known to eat and drink regularly and often needs to be prodded to do so.  Though Paul often forgets the food aspect himself, I only really reliably eat a dinner every day, every other meal is usually skipped or I just snack.

It’s not as simple as just moving me out and Paul won’t have it.  Also Paul has told me, if I found another relationship that is willing to take care of me properly but they then decide that they no longer want me – he wants to just let this be clear, he would have me back here anytime.  Which would put a strain on his new relationship, but Paul feels responsible for me, like a father really.

He kind of adopted me when he helped me get away from my parents and he takes this role very seriously. 

But there is another problem with this.  He also agrees he is not the best person to care for me, because he is so absorbed in other things, he doesn’t have the time to talk to me or snuggle with me like he should.  He has also admitted that he feels quite neglectful towards me, because he is absorbed with caring for Henry and being chair of the governors for the local schools. 

We don’t share a room anymore and only hug each other to say goodnight or goodbye and he has told me that this is not enough for someone like me who has been attention starved most of her life – but he can’t spend more time with me, because he is exhausted with everything else.

I am only just recovering from a long standing sickness which made me bedbound for nearly nine years.  It has only been since Easter that I have been able to move around the house more, do some small exercises and even help a little with chores again.

The notion of just moving away into my own home without anyone living with me is not realistic right now and Paul wouldn’t let me anyway, as its too dangerous for me.

We are also in quite severe poverty, where paying taxi fees to see doctors is an issue.  I should be seeing the doctor very regularly, but we just can’t budget the taxi fares without starving ourselves for it!

So, even if I did find someone online to take me on – they’d have to literally go out on a huge limb to get to me and make so many compromises, that both Paul and I are very uncertain anyone is up for the challenge.

So we see ourselves as pretty much stuck together.

What hurts Paul the most is that this new lady of his, really wants to marry him ASAP and she is so much like a former fiancé he had, that died before they got married, thirty years ago.

Paul is twenty seven years my senior.  I am forty years old now, Paul also worries that if I cannot find a new relationship quite soon, that I may be alone anyway, because he might die of old age whenever and that scares the both of us, because it is likely at this moment in time – if I were to lose Paul tomorrow for example, I am likely to be made to go into a residential home for the mentally vulnerable and my son may spend a temporary time in welfare care, whilst they make arrangements to a distant cousin.

That’s my situation in a nutshell.

However, it’s not that simple again…

There is big interest in me from a handful of men.  I am not leading any of them on as such, just a little friendly flirtation with one or two, but I am not looking seriously.  Because I think nobody would be interested in someone like me… not with the problems I have.

Not genuinely and not in a non-toxic kind of way.

I don’t drive, we don’t have a car, we rely on public transport and we can’t afford to travel outside of our town Rugby in Warwickshire and I don’t have a passport.

When I said in the past posts about my isolation in life, I was being VERY sincere about that.  Until I met Paul, I rarely went out without anybody being with me.  I have always had someone accompany me to places; I have been that badly micromanaged.

I virtually never do anything alone outside the house; the idea is alien to me!  It’s alien to people reading this, but it’s normal to me.

My PTSD has never been treated properly because when I refused medication for mental health, the therapist refused to further management of it.  I am triggered by tiny things; things which can make me zone out and even lose wads of time, black out or panic.

I am not a social phobia person like my mum would make you believe; on the contrary I am quite an extrovert.  I prefer being around large groups of people, I am more anxious in quiet places that are unfamiliar to me or haven’t got anyone familiar in them. 

I am more secure when it is an open space with lots of escape routes, because I have experienced a lot of outside violence too, not just abuse at home, but it has to be filled with lots of people as it makes me feel safer in crowds. 

What I am trying to say is, I am even nervous alone in my own home.  I have always strived to live in places where the idea of being alone will be at its minimum.

A lot of people hate the idea of always having people around them, but for me, it’s what helps me thrive.  I need people.

Also I dislike handling people at the door, I would rather someone else deal with them because new people make me anxious, because again, I have experienced a lot of violence even on my on doorstep with people coming in to attack my mum or brothers! 

I don’t talk on the telephone either because I am deaf, texting is OK, but most people conveniently forget I am deaf, so all telephone calls are taken on my behalf.

Well, that’s me and my situation.

Happy reading and please understand!

A little bit of me

Sorry I forgot to schedule something for today, didn’t mean for this to be late.

My ultimate favourite colour is Royal Purple, followed by lime green, orange and chocolate brown.

I dislike the colour grey in anything other than suits and rocks and I dislike large blocks of white or ivory colours.

My ultimate favourite animal in the whole wide world are dogs, followed by goats, guinea pigs, rabbits, cheetahs, corvids (crows, magpies, ravens), snakes, bats and bears.

I didn’t have arachnophobia until I have been bitten several times because I picked spiders up and I developed an allergy to their bites, which is saying something because in the UK our spiders aren’t venomous generally.

I laugh, cry and talk in my sleep.

The more nervous I am or worried about anything, the less likely I am to shut up, I can talk for hours!

I say “ooh” quite a lot if I am excited or find something interesting.

I am like a squirrel with a huge caffeine rush generally, but especially after eating sugary food, exercising or having sex. Energiser bunny indeed!

I always forget grape tomatoes squirt when cut wrong!

My nervous stomach can be quite loud at times and often the subject of embarrassment.

I can’t be physically active or go for a walk within fifteen minutes of eating, as I have slow digestion issues and activity after eating will make me ill.

When given a hot beverage, I am the last to drink it because I can’t drink molten lava like the rest of the world, so in order to be social I shrug and ask for water as people tend to take my undrunk tea away before I am ready and I never get to drink anything!

I struggle to be graceful with biscuits/cookies as to me they are all bite sized… in public I am well behaved but at home, I am faster than the cookie monster and put them in my mouth whole like a greedy little gannet.  This is why I like American cookies; it makes me look less savage as they are so big!

I appear to be in a constant state of awe and wonder, primarily because I am – the world is baffling to me and beautiful.

I am prone to mixing my words up and having what is referred to as “spoonerisms”, or I am prone to forgetting the name of things, people and words in general.  You know, like that big round thing that bounces?  A what you call it… sphere like thing… ball!  That’s it – ball!

One famous spoonerism I had whilst living with Paul was “buttered nymph” I can’t remember what I actually wanted to say to him.

Sometimes my brain works too fast and that’s why I have them.  For example I might want to say “what a superb plinth” but it might come out as “Splinth”.

My spleen swells when I have mustard or soy, I am also sort of allergic to pineapple –cooked pineapple is ok, but sometimes raw makes my mouth swell for some reason.  I can’t eat flax/linseed either because of the spleen. 

I hate marmite.

Favourite ice-cream flavour is probably raspberry ripple or chocolate mint or strawberry. 

I hate pistachio ice-cream.

I have insomnia and hypersomnia, so weird and so I sleep whenever I can.

I have asthma, rheumatic arthritis, IBD, IBS, Auto-immune inner ear disease, pernicious anaemia, PTSD and a disabled left hand due to twisted tendons as 100% confirmed conditions.

I have had fifteen operations in my whole life, only three of them major. The worst one was when I was a teenager I had a full mastoidectomy which took to years to recover fully from. For two whole years I couldn’t bend over, turn suddenly, move my head fast, or wash my hair without assistance. My mastoid infection was ignored by my mum until it was really too late, almost.

The consultant who saved my life said he had never seen an infection that bad in his whole forty year career, give or take forty eight hours and the infection would have eaten into my brain he estimated.

This is why I gave up swimming and judo as potential careers.

My PTSD is triggered by aggressive people, shouting and sudden moves near me that is fast and unexpected.  I am quite jumpy to sudden things, if I know what to expect I am generally quite calm.

I have to have special treatment when I go to the dentist because medical procedures of the mouth are a bad anxiety trigger for me, because of bad things happening to me when I was young.  Being forced fed to the point the fork ripped my mouth, having a doctor be impatient with me they split my lip when they needed to give me treatment in hospital and a bunch of other things.

If you look very closely to my mouth, you’ll see they are uneven because of the scars, well maybe not; Paul has been looking for years and reckons he can’t see it.

I have a hearing aid for the left ear.  I should have one for the right too, but I have a condition of the inner ear which causes my right ear in particular to have eczema inside it, so I am advised never to wear a hearing aid in that ear – so I am completely deaf in that ear. 

Despite being deaf I have never learned to sign.  I am considered profoundly deaf and eligible for a hearing dog; I rely heavily on vibration, like a bat really… and lip reading.  Echoic places are difficult for me as are dense places where sound can’t flow from wall to wall.

I have to wear corrective lenses all the time because I am so short sighted I can’t see my own feet without them, thanks to a head injury I sustained from my mum when I was 10yrs old, lucky she didn’t blind me as I have astigmatism.

My biggest goal in life was to have five children and I haven’t succeeded in that, yet; awfully jealous of large loving families.

When in a relationship I like to touch and be touched a lot as I was attention starved as a child and crave physical attention almost all the time, unfortunately I consider myself to be a bit clingy when I find someone who reciprocates.  Touch is addictive, except the times when your hands get too sweaty because you held them for too long and me being in a constant state of anxiety means that too long could be a whole minute – lol.  Well time to lock arms then, eh?

Outside of my hobbies, writing, reading and normal schedules, I do tend to need to be guided to do other things as I get stuck in a rut a lot.  It’s difficult when I have a partner who just lets me get on with things too much and if I chose to do nothing, well, that’s OK to them.  I don’t like that, I hate not being useful and challenged.

I am very competitive and I end up with very humble unassuming people who are very laid back – it’s hard to improve around people like that.  I need the stimulation from others to improve myself and I love competition!

I am a very goal oriented/motivated person, but it’s hard doing it when no one else is reminding you or even nagging you about it!

I remember going for a jog before I got ill and found it hard to do three laps around the park, Paul’s attitude was, well let’s go and sit down then.  I didn’t need to hear that, I needed to be told, come on you can finish this lap at least and have them motivate me by showing me they aren’t tired yet either.  Pah, but people like that are gold dust to me!

I have to admit living with Paul has made me incredibly lazy as there is nothing to push me and I have progressively got less fit, this is why I made the changes in my life early this summer.  It was all a way of me getting fit enough to socialise and find those kinds of people to bring into my life again – because this life I have right now is really boring.

But as much as I like to be humble and modest, I will admit one thing and that is I am a huge attention whore!  I like praise, I like to be noticed, I like people being friendly to me and I love compliments!

Why?

Because I love feeling loved and I love loving.

There is a dark side to me too, one thing I am slightly, only slightly, ashamed of and that is when I was slimmer, I enjoyed peoples envy.  They envied my hourglass figure, they envied my hair, they envied the attention I got from men and I do miss that.

But despite the envy I was never horrible.  I always tried to make people feel good about themselves if they are nice, but I did enjoy that they envied me, because there is one major vice I have and that is I am prone to being the green eyed monster and so it made a change someone else was envious of me instead.

I hold grudges if people are mean to me.  I try not to, but I was raised by a mega bitch and the apple didn’t fall too far regarding this trait.  If someone hurts my feelings, I will pay it back sometimes.  But mostly I am just passive aggressive or I keep away from the person for diplomacy sake.  The problem comes when I avoid people and they ask why – because I am so damned blunt and honest!

Paul has often said I can destroy a person with just one sentence, ouch.

Luckily though, I think I’ve changed a bit.  I am slow to react these days because I have realised people generally can’t help themselves for being rude.  So I plodder on until they get too obnoxious.

But gosh am I easy to rile up if I know someone else thought the same as I did about a person?

I prefer kindness. Treat everyone as your favourite cousin and make them feel good wherever possible.

My creativity is a funny thing; I find inspiration in the weirdest of places.  I am a cloud gazer for example and I see funny shapes in shadows on blankets etc.  Sometimes when my glasses are off, I mistake a leaf under the table for a fairy peeking at me.

But that’s a little insight to me.

Happy reading…

Lonely and tardy confession

I dither a lot.

I mean a lot!

Perhaps that’s why I am called TardyCreative.com?

But I am not like this in most things – in most things I am very decisive in life generally, but when it comes to creative pursuits, it’s more challenging to make a firm hard decision!

I fear choosing one idea for a particular story, because then I can’t play with that idea anymore – because nobody wants multiple stories of the same thing happening with several endings, or do they?

Let’s give an example of what I might think about, by using an already known piece of work by someone else – let’s say, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley!

If I was writing this and it was my masterpiece (which it isn’t – we’re just hypothesizing here) these things would flow to my mind;

The monster decides to stand and fight the mob and so piece by piece the mob pulls him apart!

The monster runs away to the North Pole and survives!

The monster falls in love with the doctor who made him and they have an awkward existence together!

The monster runs off with a local and attempts to have children with her and the result of that!

Or the monster decides he is too lonely in this world that he will build himself a wife and he will become a doctor himself and try to keep his creator alive forever, whether he liked it or not.

Loads of ideas could come into play and this is me all over!

Which one do I do?  Ok, I won’t be rewriting Frankenstein anytime soon, but you get my point don’t you?

This is where my confession is about to reveal itself…

I hate writing.

There!  I have said it!

I loathe writing, especially when I have to make that final decision!

I love brainstorming that is fun, the research is fun too and sharing my ideas is fun – but sitting down in the solitude of writing is boring!  The writing process and the editing is boring!  All I want to do is play with ideas and make visuals.

This is why I will say I have no confidence in becoming a published author.  I will try, but I know me… I know it won’t happen because I have trouble finalising!

It’s especially problematic when I am doing this alone.

I have no one who truly loves brainstorming with me, to share my ideas with, to hear their ideas and to feed off of each other’s energies and enthusiasm!

I am in it by myself and it is boring!

Not only this, but I am surrounded by people who think so highly of my work that they believe I will become a multi-millionaire sensation within a year of approaching an agent… I’m a realist; I know it’s not going to happen!

Too many things will get in the way of that – one major thing is my accessibility to be contacted outside of email.  I am deaf, profoundly deaf and I have no technology available to me to get around that.  I rely on Paul to take all my phone-calls for me – we have never sought help because we don’t know how to do that in Warwickshire, also I rely on Paul to have the energy to phone these places on my behalf.

Yeah, so, I am stuck.

So, I have decided to do things the hard way… the way I usually do things anyway, I am weird like that, one of these people who finds simplicity in difficulty; like I burn eggs on toast, but I can make a soufflé, however I digress!

I am going to get around this, though I am certain I will fail the October 21st deadline, no matter how much I am writing towards that!  Based on the idea that I don’t think I’d find representation! So, what am I going to do?

I have never done this before, surprise, shock, horror!  I have never had beta readers outside of friends of family, I have never joined a writers group – but I am going to do that.  Not yet though, because I really can’t afford the £10 a week bus fare at the moment, but our finances is improving in November because Paul officially retires!  So until then I am pretty much stuck in the house.

This particular group I have occasionally spoken to online are really super, because at least half of the members of the group are also into amateur dramatics, something I am keen to get back into!  I want to write a play as well as books, I want to screen write, so they will help me gain the experience I need for that as well as making much needed friends!

Gosh, I sound so sad!

Also I have found a friend that has given me access to a free course in learning how to make my own short films and get into film making; hopefully my new friends in this writing group will take a part in that, I hate doing things alone!

I am also keen to get back into music, because musical theatre is particularly interesting to me and I miss singing and playing my instruments tremendously!  Most of my poems were meant to be songs as I think about composing music for the lyrics as much as I think about writing stories! 

I don’t think you realise that I am a lyricist, composer and performer as much as I am a writer?

My dad and my aunts got me into almost all of this, because they played the piano, bugle, trumpet and the harmonica, they were always singing and they were into amateur theatre as well, mostly as comedians and worked with cockney performers for monthly specials for local nursing homes!

Also they were members of the Salvation Army and played musical instruments in bands around malls and markets at Christmas and my own grandmother was also a majorette and taught me some of the moves, though I am not very good at it like she was!  She also told me that her own mother was a cancan dancer in America before marrying her dad – imagine that, because I can’t! 

So, I think I found the group I want to be part of.

I have to admit, I don’t have much support about it from my immediate family.

They only want the writing done, because I think they believe there is money in it!  Insert eye roll here!

Nobody is happy that I am planning some kind of social life and independence that doesn’t include them in every tiny detail, because they are so used to be being home all day and doing nothing!  As I said before, it’s like they resent I am getting better in most things!

So this time next year, I hope to be a part of this local writing group and maybe starting amateur dramatics again?

I need something to be excited about, since my main thing has fallen flat on its face lately.  I won’t go into that here; it’s a bit too personal.  But let’s just say, I really need to find something to look forward to that won’t disappoint again, because the dark thoughts are creeping back again.

I’d rather brainstorm with people than anything else, do art or motivate others or make others happy or entertained. 

I will write books, though I find the process boring, because I have too many good ideas to waste them.  I’ve always been motivated to write because of movies, not because I love writing.  Let’s be very clear and honest about that.  It’s not the writing I love, but the process of thinking about ideas and sharing them with others.

Maybe I am a shallow needy person?  But that’s what makes me happy and I can’t help that!

So, yeah, that’s what I wanted to say.

Sorry to disappoint anyone.

But the work will get done, despite what I said.

Happy reading!

A day in serious writing

People have asked me to share what my hardest working day in writing looks like generally; basically from what my friends have experienced when staying with me, it contains too much stimulus during my work that they get terrible headaches within the hour of just watching me, let alone having it as part of their own writing regime!

But I will give you the general gist of what my serious writing days look like!

I wake up and it can take around ninety minutes for me to clear my chest before I can even get out of bed!

My instant reaction is to drink a small glass of water and then find some caffeine, either Pepsi original or a black sweet coffee and a salty snack or apple.

I open my computer, wait for fifteen minutes for it to load up and update stuff.  My instant reaction is to update goodreads, if I have been reading the night before.

I put on my choice of music to get me into the mood for writing a specific scene I left off from last time. 

To warm my brain up I write a blog post, some poems or research the latest in fantasy, horror and sci-fi entertainment or I look at my aspiration quotes in my positivity diary, depends on my mood when I woke up.

This can be a further ninety minutes before actually writing towards a novel.

I tend to avoid emails until after writing, because a bad email can completely throw my day!

Whilst writing, depends on the scene and my mood, I may switch the music to some TV or YouTube background stimulus, of scenes and subjects I am working on, it’s my attempt to try and move myself out of reality for a while.

When I am writing, I tend to write in fifteen minute bursts, pause, read what I have done, talk to someone who is around for a few minutes, watch or listen to more stimulus for around fifteen minutes, before continuing on different work entirely.

If I am on a roll, I generally can keep the roll for up to three hours if I am completely undisturbed, this never happens in this house before midnight!  So if I want a long roll in my writing, I have to start this after midnight generally!  Depends on how busy my household is during the day – what I mentioned here, is my serious working day when Henry is at school.

But a majority of my work is done between the hours of midnight and four AM, when I used to take my writing more seriously!

Because of the kinds of stimulus I need and I am deaf, I have to rely on headphones to get the full benefit of the stimulus at those hours in the night, because how loud I need it to be to be functional is anti-social!  My hearing is at just less than 1 hertz in my right ear and 6.7 hertz in my left!

So generally I work in fifteen minute bursts, rest for fifteen minutes and whilst resting from novel writing, I am actually preparing blog posts, writing poetry or increasing the stimulus to prepare me to write more.  Reading books and watching appropriate similar scenes elsewhere or looking for art similar to the scene I am writing about.

So, in fifteen minutes I average at writing two hundred and fifty words!  On my serious writing days, towards one novel I will sometimes get three thousand words done, my record has been twelve thousand words, but that was when I couldn’t break my roll and even went hungry for it!

My average words in a serious writing day I would say is anywhere between fifteen hundred and four thousand words, depends as I said, on my mood, stimulus and household noises.

But ultimately I write towards one of four projects day to day and only treat one as the serious project, which is likely to get the fifteen hundred to three thousand words done in the day – the others may get anywhere between two hundred and fifty to a thousand words done.

My average daily word count on a serious writing day towards all current projects could estimate anywhere between two thousand and eight thousand words!

But on my not so serious writing days, it averages around eight hundred words to three thousand towards all projects, including blog posts and poetry!

I think in the past five years, since my burn out, I have a serious writing day about once a week, when I am sick, like I was between February and May this year, I got nothing written whatsoever.

For the past three weeks I have got back into the swing of writing again as I am not as ill as I have been, still sick, but it’s not enough to completely keep me in bed!  So I have been writing around two thousand five hundred words per day, usually towards practise snippets, ideas, blog posts and poetry.  I have not yet started to add towards my current projects.

Though saying that, I have scheduled this post in advance, this post was written on the 24^th May 2022 and I believe in the next couple of days I will be writing towards my comic project and one novel project a lot, because it’s really grinding at me in my head, it won’t let me ignore it anymore.

So I think the brain is going to win by the 26^th.

The reason I haven’t written towards the novels now is because I am trying so hard to decide which way I want the character to go.

The character I am working on is a complexed character with a complexed past and a huge twist at the end of the plot, but the thing is I need to be sure how he is going to react to his daughter’s decision accurately and realistically, in order for it to feel believable to my readers.

Because what she does is a pretty big thing that will take some digesting!

The problem comes at this – Paul is the only person I can talk to about my writing and he is so neutral all the time and says that everything is good, I can’t be sure if it really is!  I am too sick to go to regular writer’s group’s offline and I have been trying to decide if I should do an online group instead.  But I am scared of sharing my work with strangers, because once bitten twice shy and all that!

I’ve had my work stolen by longstanding family friends before!

I don’t like being on my own regarding this, I do need a group, but a lot of my friends who write abandoned me as soon as they knew I was having a baby in 2009.

Happy reading!

Being deaf & not being published

There are some biting comments in DMs on twitter and other places I get regularly about my quantity of work; yes, my blog is not as active as it should be, but no, I am writing a lot more than I admit to you all! 

One of the biggest things that is asked in DM is “why are you not published yet”?  My answer is – personal choice.

Once in 2003 I felt I wanted to get published but because of personal reasons, I refused to go ahead with it, when lo and behold a miracle happened, my first ever attempt at publication was accepted!

I still believe to this day it is a fluke!

I turned it down purely because my mother was salivating over the proposed advance and had already spent my money in her head – I was still very much submissive to my mother back then and I knew that only a small margin of any money I gained would be mine.

My mother tried to force me to take the opportunity but I feigned losing the letter and forgetting which company I contacted, she believed me.

Since leaving my mother to live with Paul in 2009 I had wondered when I will be ready to do so again.  The reasons up until now is purely fear, because although I want the work published as books and potentially made into a movie, the idea of becoming famous is very unappealing.  I know most writers don’t have a lot of glitz and glamour and huge fame, but I reckon it would be sods law that I’d be popular – and I am easily lead into things by good and supportive friends.

I am terrified of privacy invasion, I am prone to panic attacks and I do not like surprises and I do not generally like strangers unless I have someone with me on first contact.

Ironically it is not social phobia, I am actually afraid of myself – for two reasons, I am afraid that I am quite co-dependent and get talked into things whether comfortable with it or not; another reason is that I can sometimes become attacked verbally by people because they think I am being ignorant with them, but in fact I am profoundly deaf and rely on lip reading or people remaining on my left side, to hear them.

Another reason I am not published is because I haven’t sent anything off since 2003 and not only this but because I am deaf and poor at the same time, I have not got a telephone which is OK for me to use and phone conversations I heard are quite common in this industry.  Nobody has bothered to educate me about what is available, FREE for someone like me, so I have no idea what my options are!

All I do know is that on my previous hearing assessment, I was surprised to learn that my hearing levels are so low, that I am eligible for a dog for the deaf if I want one!

My biggest fear other than fame is disappointing people I will work with by my inaccessibility to talk with them on a 121 level and my inability to travel due to health.

Paul gets his navy pension next autumn; this will mean he will be able to afford technology for me to become independent in communications.  This is one of the major reasons why I will not be approaching publishers until autumn 2022.

During this waiting time, I plan to finish six books to final draft quality; this is more doable than you can imagine for me.  There is potential for more finished drafts too, but I am being realistic for now. 

In a few days I will post just for my naysayers photographs of all of my files, ring binders, envelopes and notebooks, so you can see how much work has already been done over the years!  Because there are a very tiny handful of people who don’t believe I work towards any novel at all and that it is all a lie!

I am determined to prove to you how much I have done, this is giving Paul a massive headache, because it is going to mean that the equivalent of 8ft by 3ft of papers are going to be collected for a photoshoot!  I am not exaggerating by the scale, either; I have been writing novels since I was ten years old!  I have kept at least half of them, the others were burned in a bonfire when I lost heart aged twenty one, when I was for the first time ever suicidal!

Happy reading all!

Reflections of consequence

Upon reflecting at my notes for new stories, I realise that around a third of everything I plan to write is vampire based.  So this is a revelation because I thought I wrote vampires more than any other subject, but no, it is second to fantasy.  Horror is actually not within the top three subjects I write about but is actually fourth, behind dystopia. 

The poetry I write is really just a means to fulfil the frustrated composer and song writer in me.  Poetry is a way in keeping me sane from the loss of composing music via Cubase, I no longer have Cubase and there is a void in my heart because of it.  I can’t read and write music properly but I have been trying to learn recently, so I can try and learn to cope without Cubase, as I miss it a lot.  I have no desire whatsoever to be a singer though; I just love making music and writing lyrics.

I think about music as much as I think about my stories, but I have learned to give up music for various reasons.  Occasionally ignoring it can make me go literally insane enough that I have to blurt out poetry just to shut the thoughts up in my mind, but it is starting to get quite loud in my mind lately.  Not sure how long I have before I will give in and sell stuff just to get another type of music software to help me.  I bought a glockenspiel last year hoping to sate my need for music and around once every eighteen months I notice I buy a new instrument just to try and sate the musician in me, but I think my brain is getting wise to these distractions.

I do believe that if you are creative and you have many outlets, to ignore any one of those outlets for too long can both make you go nuts, but also seep into your other creative works and make you resent the attention you give them, because you are ignoring the other.  All creative outlets are both food and poison for the other ones, depends on whether or not they feel neglected or not, a bit like a polygamous lover, you know?

I am an Artist, Gardener, Musician, Writer; I do sing and I used to like acting in drama classes at college, I do voices too.  It is strange that since I totally gave up practising my voices, that I have been getting a lot of illnesses that affect the throat, some spiritual healers tell me they are not surprised, because it is the throat chakras way in responding to this creative neglect.  I suppose too then, that when I don’t write for a while, the migraines I get in my head are to do with the stories having a civil war in my mind too?

I’m very spiritual, so to me, everything happens for a reason and I believe that sickness can be caused because you are neglecting a spiritual or creative part of you.  I think love and freedom has a lot to do with a person’s overall health and I suppose that it is this reason that I am ill.  I don’t have much love and I never had much freedom, I don’t mean to sound whiny but it is true and therefore, it is unsurprising that I have autoimmunity issues.

I am very unsurprised that a vast majority of my illnesses are ear, throat and stomach related.  Because throughout my life I have heard things I do not like to hear, I have never spoken about what has happened to me and I hold back when trying to stand up for myself verbally, I also ate things I never wanted to.  So when you reflect on things like this, you can plainly see how it can all make you ill in those parts of you.

I find myself a lot, saying to people I don’t want to hear this, it is not kind, I don’t want to hear this, it is too negative.  I am such a sensitive person, I don’t like hearing negative things spoken all the time, I don’t like hearing another person’s distress.  I lost my hearing when I was a teenager in my right ear, because I kept hearing things I didn’t like, now I still hear things I don’t like and gradually I am losing hearing in the left ear too.

I either have to become harder and more tolerant to what I hear, or completely isolate myself from society altogether, lol.  If I chose the latter, it will surely affect the health of my heart due to a lack of connection and love?  So I will have to learn to harden up and become tolerant to the negativity around me, I don’t know how I will do that, but it needs to start happening soon, or I won’t be able to hear music anymore, let alone play it.

Anyway, happy reading and I will post again tomorrow, thank you for being here!