Just one game…

I’m a recovering gaming addict.

I used to play games for hours when I was bedbound sick every single day, right up until around Easter 2022 when I decided enough is enough!

I am tired of being sick and gaming and doing nothing else – I am tired of pretending to be a farmer on Sims4 because I can’t garden anymore.  I am tired of being a Sims character with a dog, because I can’t have a dog.  I am tired of living a virtual life!

I knew that once I gave up gaming that I might go round the twist pretty quickly because it was the only thing that took my mind off the pain I have every day.

But I came to the conclusion that if I wasn’t gaming as much, then I would be practising art and writing more and for a time that was true.

You have no idea how much I actually miss gaming!

Especially since today I learned that Sims4 updates are becoming cooler than ever!

Sims4 wasn’t the only game I was addicted to when I was a gamer in early 2022 – no – I loved Rome Total war and a Warhammer card game – I loved Bee swarm simulator on Roblox and other games on Roblox too, since I was a toddler I have been a gamer chick!

It was something I held in shame for most of my life, but around the end of 2021 I started to become proud of it and even thought about being a gamer on YouTube doing reviews because of free promotional stuff peeps get on there!

But then I started to try and get mature.

I don’t know why I wanted to do that, because giving up gaming is the only thing that I did – everything else about me is as immature as ever and I am not ashamed to consider myself one of life’s Peter Pan types.

On Twitter today I posted how I want to play Sims4 again today and how I want to eat popcorn and game all night and I really do – but it won’t actually happen… why?

My big gaming machine is downstairs in the living room and we only have heating down there for two hours a day and those two hours are around the time I would eat dinner approximately.  Henry has the habit these days whenever he sees me on that machine he either wants to play himself so I can’t enjoy my time on it – or he will try to control which games I play so he can observe or play with me through his laptop – so it’s never my time anymore!

I am starting to get back into the gaming mind-set for the last three days because Henry demanded I go on Facebook Trainstation to play with him for half an hour because he wants boosts and international trains from me to help him get an achievement.

I don’t particularly like Trainstation because its more or less the same all the time and I am bored of it, I got bored of it around five years ago.

But I have got roped into about an hour of that a day since the weekend and its boring – plus I am a little upset it is eating into the time for the only game I play these days which is FlightRising.

I play flightrising as my writing warm up exercise for about 45 to 90 minutes a day, thanks to Trainstation I am only there for ten minutes just to feed the dragons and turn their eggs and scavenge.

I am upset because I have projects I wanted to do on that; I wanted to gene up some of my baby nocturnes from the Night of the Nocturnes festival and level them all up to 25 in the coliseum to sell, because they are all 1^st generation babies, which makes them extra special to other gamers.

I can earn approximately 300k of treasure in game per day, but at this rate, with Henry’s demands for Train station, I am barely able to get 30k a day now.  Ordinarily that would mean I could splice a gene every two days, but now it could take a month!

I seem to be losing more and more ability to do what I want or need in every manner these days, even eat – it’s all so dumb – everything thing has been taken out of my control!

It’s not just Paul interfering anymore with what I do, it’s now Henry.

I can’t eat most of my dinners anymore, because it’s really stressful.  It’s stressful to sit at the dining table with my family, because of the arguments and when I get tense I can’t eat or I start purging, so oftentimes I am going hungry or eating in vain because I can’t keep it down!

Since Henry has been diagnosed with autism it’s like it has given Henry permission to completely revert back to being a toddler!

I go to the toilet and I am disturbed all the time, because he is demanding attention.  I wouldn’t mind, I would love to give him attention and get him off the laptop and talk with me – but he does it every time I go to the toilet – I am deaf, I can’t hear him through the door and when I finish he doesn’t want to talk to me anymore.  This is starting to mess up my system if you get me?

Not that you needed to know that, but this is how highly stressed I am these days living here – I have stomach ache a lot and the only time I can relax toileting these days is after 1am when I know the whole house is going to be quiet and not disturb me!

It’s not right living like this and when I talk to people about their behaviour here, it gets vicious – it gets nasty, I just can’t talk to them anymore, they just won’t be civilised with each other or to me anymore!

I am severely depressed by it all because I feel so trapped here and I am!

I just can’t seem to do anything!

A simple thing like eating a meal, going to the toilet or playing a half hour game on my big machine can cause huge ructions and stress!

I am having nightmares about it – seriously!

The amounts of boring things I used to do day to day is actually becoming something like Ground Hog Day dreams at night time – so I am not getting any respite from reality lately.

I am waking up, thinking certain things have been done, to find they haven’t been – then the realisation it was just a dream starts to eat away at me and I start feeling hopeless and tearful again – because I was pretty sure I swept the stairs last night!

I was pretty sure we bought the new mop.

I was pretty sure the bad neighbour was seen moving out yesterday!

I am pretty sure I found my missing vampire files last night! 

It’s all really sending me around the twist now.

I really feel like I am descending into madness and everything is like déjà vu or repeating itself! 

Maybe I am already dead and I am trapped in limbo like my mum always said I would be, because I am not baptised and was born out of wedlock – I am after all, in her opinion “The Devil’s child” anyway! 

Thanks for reading and pray for my sanity please!

Broken things

This has been bugging me for a while now.  Around once every six to eight months something breaks down in this house – usually Henry’s laptop or power supply.  Since Henry was seven years old it has happened regularly, he will be thirteen in May.

I learned the second time it happened that we should really be strict with how Henry uses his laptop; Paul still hasn’t learned this and is endeavouring yet again to try to afford buying a new power supply for Henry – just so the screaming fits about not having laptop access, stops!

The power supply breaks because Henry is a mindless twiddler, he twiddles on the sofa at the power supply cable mindlessly and ignores us when he is on it.  I told Paul that Henry is on the laptop too much every day, so an hour to maybe an hour and a half should be his limits and the power supply should be plugged in when he isn’t using it!

However Paul lets Henry have the laptop every waking second the boy wants it!  He is on his laptop more than I use mine!  As soon as Henry wakes up in the morning around 7:15am he is on that laptop, spooning his cereal into his mouth whilst playing Roblox until it is required for him to get dressed by 8am to leave the house by 8:20am, often leaving the laptop on to die out whilst he is at school!  To me this is and always has been unacceptable, to Paul it’s convenient.

As soon as he comes home from school at 3:25 he raids the kitchen cupboard for several snacks, plonks himself down in front of his laptop again and mindlessly eats until we say stop, or take the food away, usually with huge tantrums in tow!  He will struggle to get off the thing to come and sit at the dining table for dinner and will rush his food to be back on it ASAP until bedtime! 

The arguments I have had with both Paul and Henry over this and I have exhausted myself, because nobody cares what mama has to say – I’m a nobody here! 

Whenever it is the weekend or Henry isn’t at school he is on the laptop from around 9am when he will usually wake up until his bedtime’s which school is usually around 11pm if there isn’t the next day.  Again to me, this is highly unacceptable!

But for Paul, it’s convenient, because whilst he is on the laptop he is relatively quiet; whilst he is on the laptop he isn’t making messy robots and Lego designs or doing messy art!  Whilst he is on the laptop he is out of the way!

I am always made to feel unreasonable by both Paul and Henry if I were to criticise this routine they have.

I am such an unfair parent who doesn’t want him to have any fun; I just want to take away his freedom and happiness, because I like hurting him apparently.  Henry is allowed to say these things to me when Paul listens on, Paul says nothing other than tell me that he is alright, leave him alone, at least he isn’t getting in the way of the ironing or the cooking etc.

So every six to eight months, Henry gets a new laptop replacement from Paul and we get extra credit debt, because of Henry’s carelessness and Paul’s idea of an easy life!

Just before Christmas our oven broke down, Paul went into credit to get another one, it isn’t paid for yet – then the microwave broke down around ten to twelve days later, that hasn’t been replaced and then the washing machine around two week ago, that hasn’t been replaced yet either – but Henry’s power supply breaks down and Paul breaks into savings to get him a new one immediately – because that’s how much Paul values convenience.

You have no idea how hard it is to keep my mouth shut about all of this!  Time and again it happens; time and again needful things are kicked under the carpet for that boys addiction to computer games!

What is worse is that recently Henry was weighed by the doctor and the doctor told us that Henry is becoming obese!  I saw it, Paul didn’t!

For a year I have been trying to get that boy off his butt to do the exercises he used to love doing – he used to love running in the local field training for marathons and this year he couldn’t be bothered to do his usual annual charity run – which I was disappointed in and he gave up litter picking with the local environmentalists three months ago, purely because he wants more laptop time!

He is even starting to think about giving up his charity clubs that he goes to once every two weeks, because he loses a whole three hours a time away from his precious machine! 

Young Carers will do him well in hard times, he needs their support – but still he is considering giving it up, not worth it you see… he hasn’t the time you see, the club interferes with his plans!  Paul is OK with the boys obsession, I am livid by it!

I have always wanted an active, social family with strong family bonds – instead I get a bunch of bums who hate spending time with each other and often sit in separate rooms!

I am the only one who lifts a finger to actually tidy and clean anything in this house, but when I live with two people who addicted to their machines and don’t give a rats ass about how sick I am and what efforts I’ve put into the house – its hard to maintain.  I spend three hours cleaning one room because it’s excessively messy and dirty, only for the mess to be back all of the next day without any sign I have actually vacuumed the place at all!

You can clearly see my areas in the house, I am very territorial, my areas are spotless and organised the rest of the house is disgusting and sort of represents a junk yard or pack rat house!

The back garden is definitely a junk yard, old washing machines dumped out there with a rotten old sofa and computer desk because we can’t afford to get a skip and the junk man rarely comes this way anymore!

I find the whole thing, the whole house and the attitude of the family very humiliating, I am ashamed of the lot of it and Paul knows, because I’ve broken down in tears during my worst days telling him what I need in order to feel sort of normal again. But he whines like a kid and chants “I know, I know” it’s not like talking to another adult at all and to be totally honest – I don’t think he really does know what I am on about!

The other day, when I had my bout of suicidal thoughts and dark poems, it was such a day!  I told Paul again about how I can’t hack it anymore how I am trying and he snapped at me and said to me – “I do my fair share around the house, I do the cooking, the washing and the ironing” and I said that’s all you actually do though, that and cleaning the rabbit, you do nothing else, the house rots around you and you often forget to check on me or talk to me anymore!  He snapped and swore, he rarely swears “he said fuck it, I won’t do the laundry then, I won’t do anything anymore – I’ve had enough”!  So this is what happens when I ask for help – I get threats like this, that fewer things will get done.

I am afraid these days to ask anything extra of him anymore, because of these big outbursts!

I didn’t ask him to do anything other than to check on me from time to time, as he just doesn’t bother.   Even when I go downstairs to sit there, he will actively ignore me whilst he plays solitaire or a Facebook game. 

I was angry that day because I slept so long – I slept for thirteen hours solid, which is weird for me!  I didn’t wake up until 3:55pm, which is disgusting – but he didn’t once come and check on me to see if I was OK – his excuse was, he was busy hand washing the laundry all day and couldn’t spare the two minutes to check on me as he passed my room on the way to the only toilet in the house that he uses an average of once an hour because he drinks copious amounts of tea all day!

When I used to be very badly sick and bedbound, I was often afraid I’d die in bed and he wouldn’t find out until dinner or bedtime, the only two times per day I can actually guarantee he’ll look for me!

I once rose a concern to Paul how if I ever became paralysed or had a stroke, I’d die of neglect – the horrible thing about it is, he sincerely agreed as he wasn’t sure he could care for me either!

This was a huge wakeup call and this is why whilst I sat in bed several months ago I tried looking for bedbound to fit exercises on YouTube to try and help myself out of it.  But I had to do it in secret, because Paul doesn’t like knowing, I am doing anything out of the ordinary!

This is why my depression has been really bad since September. 

I am well enough now to spend around an hour a day cleaning, sometimes more – but you see I can’t!  Because either Paul gets in the way, or both Paul and Henry kind of leaves a trail of their mess behind me as I move to clean the next thing. 

When Paul suddenly knows I am cleaning a lot, he will (I believe) deliberately stop buying cleaning products to slow me down, as all of a sudden, he can’t find them in store or he had an unexpected bill so the bleach has to wait a week!

Yes, this house can go a whole disgusting week without bleach!

Paul claims he was never like this before I moved in – when I moved in I came with so much extra stuff, so that is why he can’t clean.  But you see it’s a lie, he was a pack rat before I moved in, I remember one of the first things I did when I moved in was to pull up all the carpets because of how thick the grime was in it that the whole carpet was hard like black gum and hundreds of silver fish crawled out as we pulled it up!

I wanted to go back to live with my mother so bad, but I grinned and bared it because I saw freedom and was intoxicated by it!

It took me nearly two years to get this house into a liveable state and remember I got pregnant within the first six weeks of living here, so it was no easy feat!

You have to also take into account, both gardens were severely overgrown and I levelled it all, by myself.

I was so proud by what I had accomplished and within six months of being ill – it’s like I never touched the place!

This is why I struggle to see the Brightside of anything these days, living in poverty with two pure bums.

I can’t really remember what true happiness feels like anymore, true relaxation or comfort, or even love… but then again, did I ever really know what love was?  I kind of had it once… funnily enough with another Paul – not this one, there was another Paul once… but that one let me down.

I kind of new love once I guess!

No doubt I will get an earful if Paul reads this, that’s another thing – he is becoming very watchful of all my online activities lately, which is making me wonder if he is actually jealousy looking for anyone who might show an interest with me.  It’s weird because there was a guy who liked me a few weeks back, but they reckoned someone warned him off.

Didn’t know who, they didn’t either.

Anyway, just a heads up and thanks for reading! 

The wonders of technology

I have been learning a lot about what to do with the technological gadgets I have; I have always had various social media accounts, but never really got to grips with how to make the most of them.

I have only just realised that the “notifications” I get in twitter are not all messages the public give to me, but are actually random posts from people or subjects I follow.  It was very confusing for me for a lot of the time and my wires got crossed a lot!

I have since learned how to tell if something is actually for me or a random public post and it has destressed me a lot!

One thing I am still not clear on in regards to twitter is how to reply to thank someone for retweeting something without having to go to their actual profile page to do so?

I didn’t fully understand the value of twitter as a writer until recently either.  I was always told that as a writer you need a social media presence, but I didn’t understand why.

I realised it’s not all about self-promotion at all, like I was told by other writing friends – It’s all about your personality and who you are.  It’s fascinating to think that I have gained over sixty followers this past week, purely on a heated topic I took part in earlier this week on twitter about gender identity.

I really didn’t think that people really cared about a writer until they’ve read copious amounts of their work and then decided to become a fan.  I didn’t realise in this day and age, your personality accounts for a lot.  People are really into this “influencer” ideology and I have been behind the times for years it seems.

It’s opened up a whole new world to me, I didn’t know this was a thing until I actually bothered to research all this stuff as I am preparing myself for a career in art and writing and I am taking it all very seriously!

I was distraught the other day when I learned that Goodreads was taking away their ability to recommend books to friends option – but then, when mooching around the site I found that there are three little buttons at the top of every book I’ve read where you can share your book on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest; why get upset then?  I can merely click one of those buttons and do it another way anyway!

Although I had a Pinterest account, I had never really wanted to use it as a proper social media until Goodreads took away the recommendations options.  I have made new boards on Pinterest about the kinds of books I read, so my followers can go there and have a look and perhaps get inspired to read something that inspired me.

I have since learned that Pinterest can be monetised without ruining your follower’s relationships and it will earn you a passive income – this is something I will delve into more deeply later on in the month, to see if it’s something I may or may not do.

I have had an Instagram account for a few years now and have never posted a picture on it – but again I learned it can be monetised without affecting follower relationships too, again earning you a passive income each month.  I got an Instagram account because I was friends with a lot of artists who wanted to share their artwork with me and a couple of relatives who like to show their holiday pics up there too.

I have wanted to start doing short poems, art and wildlife photography to put up onto Instagram, maybe with a few inspirational quotes as well?  But not sure when I will take the plunge on that yet! https://www.instagram.com/tardycreative/

I will share my profile from Instagram but you will see its empty more or less.

I am @CreativeTardy on twitter these days.

My Pinterest is https://www.pinterest.co.uk/naturescreativecomrade/ it is called NaturesCreativeComrade because that is my account on google and will be the name of my up and coming YouTube channel.

I bought the webcam and microphone a year ago and still haven’t learned how to set it up; I really ought to get around to it! 

Why did I choose that as my YouTube name?  Because my YouTube channel is going to be about my journey as a writer and an artist, but also a gardener and wildlife photographer; I will also include pet care in the videos.  Writing is not my primary focus on this channel – it will be about my relationship with nature and how it inspires me to become creative.

I focus a lot of my gardening on permaculture, polyculture, food forest, no dig ideologies and completely 100% organic, I heard the bad neighbour is moving by the end of summer, so hopefully I can get back out there – saving the world starts at a garden a time, after all!

Thanks for reading!

Not hiding, just not focused

I have the annoying habit of not connecting.  Unlike most modern people, I am not someone who carries a phone with me all of the time nor am I someone who remembers to check emails more than once a month either!

It is not a matter of choice though, it really isn’t!  It is the matter of both memory and lack of social contact.

I have forty friends on Facebook which only message me when they want something, or want to update me on events – all of these friends except for four individuals are actually relatives.  I only remember to check Facebook approximately once or twice a week, just to see if anyone has bothered with me or have something interesting to say on their thing (post thing).

My personal emails are checked at best, once a month, I have four email accounts for different reasons and I am often late in responding to opportunities that arise.  It really annoys Paul, in fact, sometimes makes him downright angry!  But he forgets to tell me to check my emails daily as much as I forget to remember myself!

I go through bouts of activity on DeviantArt and Twitter but again, those bouts are sparse! In fact I haven’t been on Deviant art in months and as for Twitter I haven’t been there since June… I think!

Therefore this post is an apology to the people who try to befriend me but feel often ignored… I don’t mean it; I am just used to people not wanting to talk to me, lol.

This is something I am trying to work on, “TRY” being the key word here!

I am not only just a tardy creative, I am just generally tardy as it is – though funnily enough for appointments, schedules and events I am never late, I am in fact, usually quite early… weird really.

I’ve said it before and I shall probably say it again, several times that I thrive with schedules and doting motivational communities.  Without these things I never do anything!

If you want to talk to me, do so, but do so with massive patience and help motivate me!  I invite you!  Just remind me to be present and expect me at a time and well… just nag and probe me and I will be around more.

Sorry, but it’s just me, I can’t help it and my illness doesn’t help much in allowing me to concentrate on just normal everyday stuff.  So, yes, I am literally begging for your help to get me focused!

Perhaps you are just like me too; perhaps we can make a pact to help each other?

Happy reading and don’t forget to leave a comment if you feel this way and perhaps we can work as a team to help each other?

Social media confusion

I am learning about so many new things lately in an effort to make myself more connected to the world and even myself, because as I mentioned in a previous post, I have never had the chance to define who I am.  I have learned that various websites I am apart of are actually forms of social media, I never thought that DeviantArt.com and Pinterest.com were classed as social media until today.  I never thought that people from Pinterest would be interested in what I pin, I thought it was personal and an invitation only, this is how naïve I am regarding the online world, despite having access to the internet for twenty years now.  When people have asked me in the past what social media do I have I simply state, just the main two, Facebook and Twitter, but no, I found out I seem to be a social media addict, but I don’t socialise on those things very much ironically.

Here is a list of things that are social media of which I have accounts on.

Facebook – Tina Cousins, but I don’t accept anyone on there unless I personally know them, so unless we get along well, I may refuse your friendship invite.

Twitter – @FantasyFed – I will add anyone, I am friend of the world, lol. I use it on a desktop computer currently… stop looking at me like that, we can’t all be fashionably techno

Instagram – FantasyFed – I don’t have any pics on there because I don’t have a working mobile phone currently and this might not change for a couple of months.  But I follow people I am interested in and know on there.

Patreon – Fantasy Fed – I haven’t put anything up there, I simply have the account to support online friends who are artists, writers, disabled, campaigners and magicians!

YouTube – Fantasy Fed – I don’t have any uploaded videos, I am addicted to the motivational archive, old wrestling videos, life hack videos & artsy music videos.

Deviant Art – FFGallery a lot of my art in there is amateur stuff and old, I rarely upload my stuff, so don’t judge my work on there it is all old stuff when I was starting out and some of it is pretty good, but not my best.  I don’t use it to sell anything just yet.

Etsy.com – misstcousins – again not selling anything on here yet and not for ages either.

HubPages.com – @MissTCousins – I haven’t posted anything on there in years, but will start again someday soon.

Chess.com – MissTCousins – if you want a game let me know, but I only tend to play this during school holidays with my son Henry.

WattPad.com – FantasyFed – not au fait with this site and unsure what it is really about, but trying to learn.

Tumblr.com – MossDragon – most sharing stuff from my favourite online games and pictures of my pets!

Goodreads.com – https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/8725823-tina I use this daily.

Mix.com – formerly Stumble Upon – but my username there is FantasyFed again

I didn’t realise until reading a book about social media this weekend that many of the above were indeed considered social media websites.  I have since researched all individually and what they all offer and I am surprised by how much I have missed out on – quite a few of them are very beneficial on a fun prospective, let alone a networking one.  So I will definitely be trying in the future to become more active in them.

I am not technologically savvy, it takes me ages to learn how to use something new like these websites.  Unfortunately many websites, such as Facebook and twitter update their systems regularly to the extent that by the time I have learned everything about them, they have changed yet again.  If I find a subject boring (like technology I do) I am an extremely slow learner.

I may be a daily user of facebook, twitter and Goodreads, but I don’t know everything that is available just yet and in particular I find twitter confusing as sometimes I feel that people are personally messaging me, only to find out that maybe it is a public announcement and vice versa!  I haven’t got my head around it yet and sometimes, it can take me days or weeks to find a direct message from someone.  Just letting people know about this, because when I have a bad day regarding my health, my concentration gets much worse and it makes it harder for me to understand where everything is!

750words.com & updates

750words.com is a highly recommended website for anyone who wants to get into the habit of writing and who might have or might not have read the book “The Artist Way” by Julia Cameron.
I found this site through twitter yesterday and so far I’ve written two entries. Needless to say I hope that I will write more regularly with the sites help, but we all know what a huge procrastinator I’ve become. I am not even reading as much lately, why? Illness makes me want to do mind-numbing things to help me cope with pain, I play very boring, and tedious games to keep me occupied and this has took up a lot of my time for creative pursuits. On the up however, I have discovered that my illnesses can be linked to childhood medical neglect by my mother, because she had a stand up argument with my ENT surgeon when I was 5yrs old about me not having my adenoids removed when I was having my tonsils out; her motive for that? Nobody knows, but I had a CT scan last month and got the results Friday evening and that claims I have unusually large adenoids, so I will be having surgery before Easter to deal with it. The doctors reckon that I won’t be ill as often as I have been all my life once the adenoids are gone; in fact it is the adenoids that have caused the damage to my ears by causing blockages. It is also a factor in my breathing troubles for the last 3yrs.
If this does seem to be the BIG thing that’s made my immune system very weak for the last 28yrs then I am very excited to go through surgery, because that means I can finally have a normal life.
I’ve been living with ear-ache, rhinitis, severe migraines and sinus headaches for so long; I have literally forgotten what health and no-pain feels like. I have been suicidal for the last two years in particular because the condition had got so much worse for me and I was literally thinking about an easy way out of all the pain I go through.
I am ecstatic that I can be there for my son’s future and that we can have a normal family life soon, without mummy being bed and housebound because she’s always ill.
So 750words.com go there, write 750 words a day, see what words you overuse and enjoy yourself. Hopefully I will have more regular postings, but until the operation who knows when that next post will be?
The games occupying me lately have been…
Ovipets.com (not entirely brain-numbing or boring, but certainly time consuming and social)
Pirates; tides of fortune – was fun, but makes everyone’s computers lag and is a money pit, meaning that when you spend your money on the game, you lose half the things you buy when you are raided or go on special brethren missions. I lasted this game for 10 days, but I am not going to bother to play anymore because that is time consuming, slow and personally far too expensive!
DeviantArt.com – OK not a game, but time consuming anyway because I browse the pictures and imagine scenes there, which I should really turn into stories!
Pinterest – similar to DeviantArt for me
And various Gothic, horror and fantasy groups on facebook!
Not to mention “The Rugby World Cup”.

Punctuation and grammar pedants

I have not socialised with other writer’s offline and not too much with them online either; the reason for this is unclear, I do try hard to socialise particularly in the Facebook writer’s clubs but they seldom reply to me direct unless offering criticism to my lack of punctuation or grammar.

I have often reminded members of these clubs that I have had very little education, due to being home-schooled and I have never gone into higher education and that most of what I know is self-taught; it is for these reasons that I lack confidence in creative writing, particularly when it comes to publishing anything on my blog. I have been told by many people that publishing things on my blog can be detrimental to my future of becoming a published writer because blogs are often considered too personalised and once published in an online media, it is considered published anyway.

When I have been active on these groups, I have never actively criticised another person’s work unless to praise their efforts, I seldom post any of my own work because of fear of plagiarism and it being noted as being published online. Perhaps this is the reason behind having so few writing friends?

Because the majority of those who talk to me about my writing concentrate a lot on my grammar and punctuation, I have become self-conscious of my writing, enough to start reading books such as “Eats, shoots and leaves” by Lynne Truss, “Improve your punctuation and grammar” by Marion Field and to try online punctuation and grammar games. I have been so affected by the criticism of the polishing of my work that I have even considered spending out more than I can afford for software called Grammarly, which I may have to put on hold for a while.

Despite trying to educate myself more on writing professionally I really don’t think it’s sinking in. I know I shouldn’t worry too much about it because if I was to approach a publisher they’ll have editors to help me in this matter, but for some reason or another it is a big issue for people within the writing communities online.

A friend of mine (who is a lecturer for Leeds University) feels that there isn’t too much of a problem with my punctuation, though some of it does need brushing up – but they feel that my critics are pedantic beyond need, as writers groups are generally there for socialising and for fun, not shooting down other members lack of abilities.

My blog may become quieter for a short phase because I am trying to brush up on these inconsistencies.

 

 

daily pages 2 2015

I am not going to fall at the first hurdle of writing my daily pages, though currently it is hard to do when I have a constantly screaming 4yr old boy in the room with me and I have a mild headache with a double ear infection. Trying to think positively and trying to imagine I am well, I am healthy and I am not irritated by senseless and mindless toddler noises… trying, but not successfully.
My husband wants to take the family for a walk around the estate and village, but I am also interested in not only writing these daily pages right now which could take me about 90 minutes if I can’t think of anything to say, but I also want to watch whilst typing this a documentary about Neanderthals, of which I am convinced my son is one.
Also my brain is occupied with the music theme tune of a children’s program called gigglebiz, a program I hate, but the tune is annoyingly catchy on a religious level; that’s how I believe religion became so successful, good music, great lyrics, catchy and annoying tunes that you keep hearing yourself singing or whistling and before you know it, you think you’re religious because you like the music… scary stuff.
Want to control the world? Be a great musician that can create catchy to borderline annoying tunes that people will love to hate, and your work will never be forgotten and before long people will be living what you’ve written… think hippy! Think happy clappy!
People hate happy clappy because it gets into you so much if you allow yourself to listen to it.
Positive energy is just as catching as negative energy, though some positive energy can be difficult to get rubbed with, because there is always some kind of recoil from others… they’re so used to feeling negative and seeing things in a bleak way, that the light scares them… think about being in a cinema during the day then leaving the cinema at high noon with clear blue skies… painful huh? Energy works pretty much the same way.
Anyway on another note I have been playing word tornado on facebook a lot this afternoon and losing dramatically, seems like the whole world gets over 700 points and I only get an average of 580 – you know I doubt the authenticity of their so called talent because I play scrabble a lot offline with people and I am always the winner. I have a very broad vocabulary and a very cunning way in using the board and I hang around with people with very high IQs, so I guess there’s a lot of internet game cheating going on there.
What is the point? It’s a game, you don’t feel the same way when you cheat and win in a game than when you play honestly and win, so why?
I cannot believe that everyone I play against is a genius.
In fact I absolutely refused to believe it.
Anyway, rant about game cheating aside, for the last 3 months I have repeatedly borrowed one book from my local library called “The art of Gothic music and fashion” by Natasha Scharf. It’s quite a read and quite inspiring.
It’s one of those books that have double pages on each page, I am unsure what it is called, but you can sometimes find old Sherlock Holmes books that are like that, like newspapers.
In the books there is a lot about all types of gothic people, from Lolita goths to steampunks, unfortunately there is nothing in there about some people I know in the BDSM scene who are what is known as “Cyberdogs” gothic, black leather wearing dog roleplayers that where fetish dog masks, something that I have seen once or twice during my travels to Camden Town.
However, talking of cyberdogs the fashion company was mentioned there.
Woof, I think I would have liked to of come under that category if I was still available in the BDSM scene, though with my weight I’d probably look like some overweight bulldog… which no offense to bulldog enthusiasts or bulldogs in general, to me that’s not a good look.
I am listening to beautiful Greek music whilst typing this, yes the Neanderthal program was turned off about 90 minutes ago and I had a long game of online word tornado.
My toddler is sitting on the sofa bleary eyed with tonsillitis and all I can do is recoil as I am only just getting over severe pharyngitis where my GP felt I was nearly hospitalised earlier on this week.
I mentioned the Greek music because I remember a time I heard this exact song played at my mum’s friend’s house Niki and my mum mistook it for Asian music and told her, in an offensive tone to turn off the said music in the most derogatory term of phrase she could come out with – my mum’s friend Niki replied with zeal and shock and horror, that it’s not that type of music at all it’s Greek! To which mum seemed very embarrassed.
I love all cultures, I love their music, their food, their ways, I love learning about people from all walks of life, my only prejudice is religion of any mainstream kind, especially if people kill for the sake of their religion, or if their religion has a history of killing people when conversion was impossible.
Now my randomiser has turned on some medieval music, I am very eclectic (nearly wrote epileptic), my brother is an epileptic and I was told I have a minor form of it by a Rugby GP because I said I get some sensations on my head like people are stroking my hair from time to time which seems to be getting more intense lately, I don’t believe him personally.
I started these daily pages about 4 hours ago, still not finished. I am not in a creative mood today, today is a day off after all, it’s Sunday.
It’s not that I am not dedicated to my work, but today I woke up late and I felt in a reading or scrabble like game mood, particularly as my back is still getting over the fast bumpy bus ride I had into Coventry yesterday, I think they’ve sprained my back!
I am by far a hypochondriac by the way! Seriously not one, just bloody unlucky!
I also have a craving to watch the first episode of Game of Thrones on DVD rental by lovefilm, but when my 4yr old son is awake I won’t, he will not be allowed to watch such violence, I demand that! Also, if I couldn’t watch that then I would like to watch Van Helsing because in my opinion that’s very mild for a child to watch in comparison to other vampire movies, but when a female vampire threw the cow at a building Henry freaked out and got very upset over the mistreatment of the cow last year that he categorically hates vampires – bursts into tears, how can anyone hate them? They’re my kindred spirits!
My son hates me since; especially when I told him I love vampires and that I am one in my books.
All jokes aside our relationship did change after that movie.
I have at least another 600 words to write before the 3 pages are done for the day.
I still find it annoying that some relatives watch this blog, just so they can stop me talking about things that are TRUE AND REAL but they’d rather hide it under the carpet like some dirty secret. They keep brain washing me about skeletons in the closet and my brother isn’t the only relative either, some other relatives are encouraging me to speak the truth, some of them will shock my immediate family because it’s not who they think they are, it’s the most unlikeliest.
Because I was raised in a very unhappy environment, but no one is allowed to know that as I will be sued for defamation apparently.
So yes, like always, I am living under the shadows of blackmail by my bullying family.
It’s infuriating because originally this blog was set up as a form of therapy to overcome my problems, by the advice of my psychologist.
If I ever became famous, I would want people to know the whole me, no holds barred – not because I am an attention seeker, but because I don’t like skeletons in the closet. I would rather be honest and forthright to people, instead of sitting back meekly being a mystery – because let’s face it, before I moved in with my husband I hate no life before the age of 26yrs old… so that’s going to raise a lot of uncomfortable questions in itself, because my life, my experiences up until that point were very, very minimal and people will think that there were bad things about me directly, when in fact it wasn’t – it was things happening to me by bad people.
I also want to raise awareness of certain things once I am famous or even before I am famous, because there are a lot more ways to abuse a child or a relative that people originally think.
Isolating them, home-educating them to isolate them further, when they become adults, making major life decisions for them because if they refuse they will have bad things happen to them and they live constantly in blackmail. I put my foot down against my mother in 2013 because she tried to force me to commit fraud, that’s the truth behind why I don’t like contact with her now. Because she tried her best to make me commit a crime which is not within my nature, Paul was abhorred and it was him, along with a family support worker and my psychologist that felt that the break had to be made as I cannot raise a child around a grandmother who thinks that fraud is OK on certain conditions and that you’re a bad person if you don’t do it for your mother/grandmother.
Awareness of different kinds of abuse needs to be raised.