The bliss that once was

Have you forgotten how to laugh?

How words fell out of mouths to bring joy not discontent

For the want of a light hearted time and prosperity

To throw away the darkness of a day and just forget

When did we lose our sense of humour?

When once we frivolously bantered in the want of fun

And nobody took it seriously, the words, mere words spoken by a jester because of sardonic irony

Never any real malice was its intent

And the sun shone bright back then, for we people forgave the attempt to alleviate

When did we all deviate from the light of the world?

When did our blood run cold to jocund distractions and bent ourselves up in anger and bitterness?

When will time show us what we have lost in pleasure?

Cautious to laugh as sacred joy has become a sin

It’s no use now, use it or lose it and we are nearly lost

Lost in the darkness, fearful to inject blithe reflections of the human state

Swamped in the sensitive depressions of those who have strayed from their souls too long

And together we will all stand in the shadows of our former selves

Unthinking, unfeeling and silent

Soon to forget the bliss that once was

The irony in procrastination

I learned something today which has helped me feel a little less frustrated about myself and accepting the fact that I am not lazy when I have procrastinated in my work, because of something a motivational speaker on Instagram had said.

“When a person goes into procrastination it is the brains coping mechanism, a response to coping with too much emotional trauma and overload”.  I may not have quoted them correctly, but it made me understand why I have procrastinated so long in my work.

Since September 2022 I’ve hardly written a thing towards any novel, because I have undergone a lot of emotional turmoil in my life.  A grief, followed by a diagnosis in my son, followed by erratic behaviours and arguments and a break in a long term relationship – coupled with the emotions I was already trying to tackle of loneliness, recovering from long-term sickness, trying to start foundations for a new routine, career, every aspect of my life I was trying to concentrate on all at once and I got overloaded and emotionally burned out.

This is why I have procrastinated so long, because I was trying to fix too many problems in my life at once, that I ended up exhausting myself on an emotional level and found I lacked the energy to think creatively, because I’m tired.

I’ve tired myself out by overthinking other problems that I did not have the energy to throw myself into the problem solving of make believe problems.

I understand this now and it has taken a huge weight off my shoulders, the weight was the anger that I had become lazy, when in fact I was the opposite.  I was working myself like a slave to do everything and being hard on myself when I failed my personal creative and career goals and dreams. 

I have also sat back and reflected that some of the things I was angry about because I felt I was lazy about them, I had actually accomplished great things but didn’t notice because I was bogged down in over perfecting them or just simply not noticing the progress I had made.

For example, March 2022 I could barely get out of bed and walk downstairs and up just once without having an asthma attack and shaky legs. 

From Easter 2022 I started to do small exercises, forcing myself to do the little things, until they built up.  Well they did build up over a time and I didn’t notice the physical achievements I was able to do.  Now I can walk up and down the stairs five times before feeling shaky.  I can do 70 reps of side reaches before I feel I need a break and for the past week I have been able to start preparing my own meals and even cooked a meal for the whole family the other day!

Things I haven’t been able to do in almost eight years!

But did I praise myself for doing all that?  No!  Because I didn’t notice until I sat back and reflected on the past year.

No more than had I noticed last week that I’ve lost 14 inches around my waist in 2yrs!  14 inches!

I’ve been on a high protein diet and I have cut out a lot of the unhealthy snacks and caffeine I used to drown myself in, not all of them, but most – to the extent my diet is almost unrecognisable from last year! 

Certain aspects of my health have improved immensely, though I still have two major problems which will never go away completely because it’s part of the auto-immunity problem I have. 

I’m reading emails daily, whereas this time last year I used to go three weeks without checking them! 

I’m spending a lot less time on social media too, I spent my whole day on social media last year! 

I’m starting to read more books.

I’ve finished an art class online.

I am halfway through two more free courses, one ran by Mel Robbins. 

I’m posting on my blog more often than not, whereas early last year I could only really post about once a week. 

I’m cutting my nails instead of biting them. 

I am replying to friends and family as soon as they message me instead of taking weeks to get back to them! 

I’ve accomplished more milestones in the past year than I have my whole life and I didn’t notice them!

I was beating myself up for being lazy and yet I was doing so much – the irony!

I also noticed another thing – I felt I didn’t have the energy to write towards my novels and I was journaling my life pretty hard in private for the past two months and guess what?  I noticed all my journal entries about my life amounted to 350k words, 350k in just two months!

I was writing approximately 2k in private journals and 4k on another one which I sometimes share with selected people a day, I say was, I still am.  This is not including the word counts for my blog posts and poetry by the way, I never counted those up! 

I told a friend online about this and I said why can’t I write like that towards my novels?  She asked the same question back at me too!

Yes, why can’t you?  Why can’t you implement changes in your style of writing so that you can do that just to get the first drafts down quickly?  Maybe you are overthinking your first drafts way too much?  You are trying to perfect first drafts immediately because you feel it’s urgent to write your novel, yet you are not writing your novel because of it. 

Irony again!

Once again I may not have quoted her 100% but that was the gist of the conversation.

Using the same method I do for journal writing to write down first drafts would mean that I would get the first drafts of four or six novels down per month that would be amazing if it is as affective as my journal writing is!

However a novel is more than just a first draft, so that was just over optimistic thinking!  But you get me, right? 

I haven’t started implementing this yet, I am talking about it today, because it is today I am trying to start with that, today is the day I am going to change my first draft method.

Wish me luck!

Thanks for reading!

Romance with death

So many things are taking up space in my mind over the past few days; I am finding it hard to concentrate on anything but emotional presence, which is strange because I usually try to avoid acknowledging my emotions as much as possible, or at least as minimal as possible.

I don’t really know much about meditation other than what I have learned in books and on YouTube.

I have never had a guided meditation – so I don’t really know if the meditation I did a few days ago called “Who am I”? Has anything to do with it, but it’s a strange coincidence if it hasn’t.

When I am not drifting off into trance-like stupors losing twenty minutes a time, I try to sit and focus on writing something for my blog or towards my stories or reading a book, only for me to be absorbed yet again in my emotions.

There is a voice at the back of my head telling me that I need to go through this process as it is healing me in preparation for something big coming into my life.

If I want to cry, do it – but I still try to hold back.

I never did get into the crying yoga I said I was interested in – I kind of know deep down it is something I need… but I still hold back.

I often try not to be emotionally present so it is all new to me.  I try to shut away my emotions into a coffin, put it into a wardrobe and throw the wardrobe into a lake tied up with ropes and rocks so I don’t remember them… until a drought comes at least.

Not that I fly tip or anything, I am being metaphorical – some people can take things too seriously!

I think there are some readers out there that takes me too seriously too – sometimes when my depression kicks in and I make all these creative works of poetry, I sometimes sit back and laugh at how tragic I was for those moments and I feel stupid and slightly embarrassed by yet another emotional outburst. 

I think it is good for you to know that sometimes when I have got it all out creatively, I do laugh at myself – because of how pathetic I come across.  Some days though, I am quite serious and often think about death very seriously after writing such things… but a good third to near half of the time I find humour in my tragedy, like some kind of sad clown story.

I do see myself as a pitiful sad clown a lot of the time.  The kind of clown that will sit in the grey in dirty dusty clown clothes, with a black cone hat and grey pom poms on it, sitting miserably alone in their own grey tragedy – then suddenly opens the door of their house to jump off the cliff that’s waiting just beyond the threshold only he is saved by a rainbow bridge and whilst he is standing on that rainbow bridge he magically transforms into a colourful rainbow clown and laughs at his own sorrow and skips off down the curve of the rainbow to play with the faeries!

Well that’s how I visualise myself anyway.

Dark sense of humour at times!

But you have to admit though, the depths I go, the sarcasm at times, the irony etc. – I see myself as ironic, my humour is definitely ironic and I know because I have been told multiple times that my humour is lame – but you’ve got to admit, sometimes it’s funny?

Was never meant to be, but boy I can get too deep at times cant I? Its almost like a romance with death and despair!

Well, if I didn’t laugh I’d cry and which one is better eh?

I’m trying so hard not to be a Sylvia Plath, not going down her route.

However, my depression is very real.  Have no doubt about that.

Thank you for reading… 

Being the balance

I will only talk about the progresses of my novels from now onwards and I am not going to reveal as much as I have over the past few months, because of good advice from a published author friend of mine.

I will go back to my outlines I used to do a year ago, I won’t go into depths about the inspiration and so forth as it is too revealing and some people have rightly guessed what some of my work might be before it has even got out there and has played with the ideas themselves.

This hurts – but I knew I shouldn’t have done that, but the writing community aren’t social with those who conceal their work too much, I can see why actually.

In fact people have been using my poems as prompt ideas on their own pages and some are using them as short stories for their blogs.  Shame people can’t think for themselves – but never mind.

Recently I have been trying to learn how to write in comic and graphic novel formats as well as learning the business side of writing, because despite my obstacles, I am still determined to do something with my creativity.

The obstacles are increasing, there is nothing I can do with that, because the biggest obstacle is a toxic atmosphere with a family that just can’t get along with each other and I am in the thick of it being forced to be piggy in the middle a lot of the time.

But enough of that – I am not going to lose focus today.

I am trying ear plugs upstairs and I am trying to get used to writing without my usual stimulus of music and I have to say it’s hard.  Silence gives me a headache, I’ve never liked long bouts of silence, I am weird like that, and about an hour is all I can take when I am awake – when I am asleep, silence helps me but other than that – no thanks.

If I am ever unfortunate enough to lose my hearing I know I’ll go madder.

I am in terrible need of good luck with these new tactics.

Especially as only thirty minutes in writing just this and a poem beforehand, Henry rushes into the room makes me take my ear plugs out because he wants to talk to me about wrestling news for the umpteenth time today!

He knows I follow the wrestling news on Twitter, I don’t need this!

It’s hard to stay happy and positive for him when it happens so often, but I have to put on a false happy face for him and tolerate it because there is no balance with the other parent for him – I have to be that balance or my child would fall apart faster!

I have to be happy to see him, be the smile he needs and give him those hugs he requires.  The guilt is too much on the times when I snap because I just want to work!  Those times are Hell because Henry will go off; rightfully upset about the rejection and then his dad sets on him like a raging Rottweiler for twenty minutes solid and there’s a screaming match.  There is no civility between them and there is no compassion from Paul to Henry.

That’s what I am living with.

I said I wasn’t going to lose focus, but look what just happened! 

I have to re-read what I have said because I’ve lost my flow, its worse when its fiction, it’s hard to get that flow back, because sometimes I believe the stories I write might be channelled by some spirits of bygone authors as some of the ideas are too clever to come from me!  I’m not smart enough to write like that on my own volition!

So yeah, ear plugs help when they’re killing each other downstairs but it doesn’t stop them barging into the room with news.

My AD project is still in my head and not fully on paper yet, I will get there, my steampunk will get done as will my Christmas and Easter project, because these ones are the ones driving me into the asylum as they don’t want to be ignored!

Actually being driven into an asylum might be beneficial for me because at least I can write in relative silence because I’d ask to sit in the library with my laptop to write as part of my creative healing process.  They have libraries in asylums you know; well they did the last time I was in one, when I was a teenager.  I don’t think they’d allow the lap top though, because some doctors believe any outside link could cause setbacks.

Funnily enough I am trying to be upbeat about it all and ironic, lol.

Today I am in a pickle, I have these tools to get around the interruptions, but I want to write towards two things at once and it’s the decision I am battling with.

Something instinctively tells me that the AD project needs to be the priority because this one is going to be a huge success, but I can’t help but think about playing with the Easter idea as the main character is just super fun!

As much as I want to write the Easter project, I can’t listen to the music I want to whilst I do that today – so, meh, has to be project AD right now I guess?

Thanks for reading!

I’m about to fall

Have you ever had a bad mental health day where you feel so down that when you walk around, you feel like you are about to pass out or that whenever you hear yet another bad thing turn up in your or your loved ones lives, you feel like you are about to drop where you stand?

I’ve been living in this kind of state for about a month now and it’s getting worse.

 I suppose if there has to be a positive note about it, at least I am not as suicidal as I was between 2013 and 2017, I suppose that is something.  But I can’t describe exactly why I feel on a constant state of near fainting, just because of mental stress…

This is one of the major reasons why, in spite of being physically ill, I have struggled to put words to paper for a while.

I have had two nervous breakdowns in the past, this is not like that, it feels different and the difference is scary!

It’s scary because it feels like I am so down in the dumps that my own heart is starting to pack up – because I have palpitations and my blood pressure is sky-rocketing even on Ramipril!

No I haven’t spoken to a doctor about it, because I don’t want therapy (of the mental kind), it makes things worse (experienced it, thank you).

The thing is, I have identified my problems, I have acknowledged what they are and worked out a method of overcoming them, but it is totally impractical right now, when I am too sick to do those necessary self-care essential things and what is more, I do not have the money to make one major difference possible.  You might say that money isn’t everything, but you know, for me, right now, it is a matter of if I have more money; I have a means to move out of one home and into another.

Now this is where the big Catch-22 comes into play!  You see, I know I need the money to do the major thing that will uplift me, but I am too sick and depressed to motivate myself to do it.  So until I decide at some point that I must suffer through the work in order to get some money, I won’t get through this!

I don’t have a support network that I can lean on and say… remove myself for a respite break from my current situation and get my thoughts together, then come back to it in a month or two – otherwise that would be exactly what I would seek out right now, someone who’d tolerate me for a month or two.

Because I don’t have that reprieve, I am more or less stuck, until my depression allows me to do the work I need to.

I am not using my depression as an excuse not to do the work, but if you knew how my depression is presenting itself right now, you would know that I am sleeping thirteen hours a day because I dread waking up each day, I wake up with the instant thought of “oh fuck it, I survived the night, how delightful” with the most sarcastic stance you can think of!

“Why, oh why, couldn’t I have drowned in my COPD mucus during the night?  What other kinds of shit experiences does the universe want me to experience today?”  Yes, I wake up with such enthusiasm.

Then I am made to feel guilty at 8:00am when my son bursts into the bedroom full of smiles and love for me and wishes me a great day, as he skips off to school!

Conflicted – much, I stay alive for him you know…

I think he knows it, he has planned as soon as he leaves school to become a father, so I must care for his grandchildren as a glorified unpaid babysitter for him.  Oh joy, no that’s not sarcasm, that is sincere, but then when can I feel that nobody needs me so I can just die?

That’s how I feel these days, I am literally plodding on like a zombie, one that is about to falter at any moment and it’s scary, but it is also exciting because… have I gone so far in my depression my body is finally going to give out?  Because, though I want things to get better for me, I feel hopeless, so in a big way, I am excited about death.

For those with a dark sense of humour you may find comedy in the fact that despite what I am saying here, I am drinking eight glasses of water a day, reducing sugar and fat wherever possible and has a mostly plant based non-vegetarian diet, meaning I do eat meat but it’s like 25% of my diet.  On good physical health days, which are not often, I do try and partake in high intensity interval training (HIIT) on my exercise bike and jogging or skipping on the spot five to ten times a day for 3 minutes a time.

To say I am not at war with myself would be laughable.

But that’s how it goes.

Thank you for reading!

The irony of darkness

Yeah, as I know suffering I walk in the shadows of the valley of death

I fear no evil, for with them I have coalesced

I have sold my soul and without shame

I will never feel the light, not ever again

My dignity outstanding though my soul may burn

A freedom is wanted, no it is earned

A freedom of the stress of being pure

Of being a good one I cannot endure

A life of passion and greed without shame

I turned from the light but am I to blame?

I happy here in the darkness I dwell

Don’t try to save me – that would be Hell!