Emotionally depleted

I’m trying something incredibly counterintuitive right now.

I am suffering in a lot of areas in my life, I am hugely stressed and growing in apathy for almost everything and I am finding it hard to get the get up and go.

I am losing my fight.

So, usually, when under so much tension and uncertainty and sickness, people tell me to rest, take it easy, don’t overthink things, don’t do this and don’t do that and most certainly don’t start anything new – you need to calm down and rest up.

It would be natural to think I am crazy because I am going to do the opposite.

It’s based on an idea by Mel Robbins called “Bluewater”.

She took a glass of water and filled it to the brim and put dirt in the cup, lots of dirt and she mixed it up to show how a person looks when they’re feeling overloaded and stressed out.

She then explained how people then try to deal with each individual problem they have at a time, to try and lessen the load, she did this by demonstrating how people try to spoon out the dirt little by little and over a time, their cup gets emptier and emptier and this emptiness is representing the persons emotional health. 

Over a time, as you’re spooning out the dirt, you are becoming more and more emotionally depleted and burned out and the idea of doing anything becomes so exhausting you just can’t bear to do anything anymore and you lose yourself and you feel that you might never be happy again.

A dangerous situation for anyone!

She said the simplest thing to do at a time like this is to make yourself do something for yourself, something that you think you’d enjoy or if your apathy is so bad, go back to something you once enjoyed – force yourself to have some time in the week to yourself to do it and gradually ease more and more things that you like into your life – make the time to do some self-care and find yourself again!

So she showed what happens when you start adding more water into the dirty cup, it eventually cleans up, not entirely, there will always be a little bit of dirt, but as you add more and more back into your life that you enjoy, that makes you feel like you have some kind of purpose or soul again, your cup is going to get cleaner and cleaner and you will stop feeling so depleted in yourself and you will be stronger and healthier in the long run for it.

I’m trying to force myself right now into going into autopilot and doing some of the things I used to enjoy from the past, whether I am tired or not, whether I feel like it or not, whether I am currently enjoying it or not and no matter how bad the physical pains are in my body – I must do them. 

Because, maybe that’s what I am missing right now?

I’ve been encouraged to take it easy, stop and relax so much over the years that I have come to a virtual stop and any notion of doing anything makes me have this kind of feeling of MEH!

I’ve allowed peoples advice to make me lazy and I don’t like it!

I actually started about a couple of weeks ago.

I started to force myself to read 30 pages of a book again per day, like I used to a year back. 

I am forcing myself to write anything, no matter what it is, whether it intends to be published or not.

I am forcing myself to do some kind of exercise again.

I am practising art at least once every couple of days. 

I am forcing myself to take an interest in thinking about my future again and start planning things and maybe even start thinking about chasing dreams again, because around four years ago I gave them up.

So I am thinking about creating an inspiration or dream board again, I used to be a big fan of those but got out of the habit of it because Paul started pinning his things onto MY board!  He wouldn’t get his own.

I completely forsook any dream because I was convinced I was about to die at any moment!

Along with this I have been trying to remember to do the “High five habit” Mel Robbins also spoke about, but I need more practise with that and I am also trying to remember to count down from five when I am about to go back into a negative habit.

My memory has issues because I have been on survival mode and doing practically nothing with my life for the last eight years, because I have been recovering from bed bound sickness.

I have also had a scare recently.

I know as I am getting older, certain health problems, particularly mental health problems are getting much worse.

I came across a video online purely by accident, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular when I came across a video titled “loneliness is dangerous for your physical health”.

I knew it was dangerous for mental health, but not physical health.

It turns out people who have been isolated or lonely most of their lives have a hugely high risk of developing auto-immunity issues as well as memory loss.  Now that woke me up, because my memory is unreliable and scary at times and I have four different types of auto-immune disease.

Much of the abuse and neglect I had as a child was due to isolation, my mum refusing for me to socialise outside of tight family and friendship circles, even home educating me most of the time!

So I never really had a healthy social life that lasted, it always came in dribs and drabs.

Knowing this and knowing that people who have lived in isolation a lot are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s or dementia before they are 60yrs old, worried me a lot!

They did say though that reversing this can be very quickly done actually and socialising for at least 30 minutes week outside of your home regularly or more can put you back on the right track in not getting that type of dementia, as it’s a specific type apparently.

So there is a lot going on in my life and according to the Bluewater technique there really should be a lot more going on too.

But right now, I am trying to concentrate on solving a mystery in my life and getting my passion for writing back.  Because I haven’t felt passionate about anything for a long time!

Tell a white lie, I have, but then I quickly felt, what’s the point someone will ruin it…

So, yeah, that’s what’s up lately!

Thanks for reading!

Currently reading May 2023

I am currently reading quite a few book according to my Goodreads.com list, but I would say I am only really active in four of them for the past week now, despite there actually being 22 books on the list, a handful have been slowly slogged through for the past year!

But never mind – it’s just the result of an ever increasing chaotic and information starved mind!

The four I am currently reading are from the library so I have to whip myself to read them before the 21 days is up!

They are;

The High Five Habit by Mel Robbins

Grow your own poem by Kate Clanchy

A nature poem for every day of the year Edited by Jane McMorland Hunter

Eating to extinction by Dan Saladino

“The high five habit” by Mel Robbins is being read the fastest because I am trying to get my act together basically!  I finished a free Mel Robbins course a couple of weeks back and I wanted to learn more about this “high five habit” I’ve heard about and although I have been doing it for a few days now I have forgot on two days, so it’s not ingrained to do that yet for me. 

But I have noticed a difference with me approaching mirrors nonetheless, I have a faint smile these days, which is something – because I was a pretty miserable person whenever I look in mirrors before this thing.

I’m really trying to motivate myself to fight for a life and I tell you it is hard, it is a battle and I have virtually no support in doing this – I am on my own!

So I have to haul my own ass to change, as Mel Robbins says time and time again “nobody is going to save you, only you can save you”.

So that’s what I am trying to do.  Save myself.

“Grow your own poem” by Kate Clanchy has been borrowed and reordered to borrow from the library with small breaks in between since November!  Why?  Because there are a lot of small tasks in them and I would like to do them spread out, so I could learn better that way – it will stick better.  If I read the whole book then go back to do the essay one after the other I am more likely to forget what I am learning.

So I am doing it my way and it works!

I have noticed an improvement in the quality of my work and so has Paul and I thank this book for it!

“Eating to extinction” by Dan Saladino, is a gripping read about how humanities social progress and diet is actually going to eventually starve out humanity because it is unsustainable and not very diverse; monocultures and picky farmers are literally making extinct thousands of alternate food sources around the world yearly, in order to condense our diets down to a few of our favourites.

Which by and large is not healthy for us and not a wise thing to do in the long run because of climate change, but also our microbiota is starving which is causing all kinds of auto-immunity problems and other health risks.

And if you know me, from reading things about me in the dim and distant past, not only am I a huge advocate for sustainability and paleo thinking, but I am also incredibly geeky about microbiomes!

“A nature poem for every day of the year” by Jane McMorland Hunter – again I am reading this to kind of study poetry but also because of Ray Bradbury’s idea of reading a poem, an essay and a short story every day. 

I read a lot of non-fiction daily anyway, it’s a habit I’ve always had, I don’t read much fiction to be honest but when I do I tend to like picking up short story anthologies and I virtually never read poetry until recently, so I felt like a kindred spirit of Ray Bradbury when I read this quote the other week!

I used to read fiction a lot when I was younger but I got out of the habit of it because I started to panic that my ideas were like this and that and this too!  So it made me worry constantly about plagiarism.

Again, if you know me, you’d know by now I am an incessant worry wart!

So to ensure I don’t give up my current words in progress (WIP) I got out of the habit of reading too much fiction.

Which is kind of stupid, but there you go.

Thanks for reading!

The little things

Each time I accomplish something, no matter how small I am learning to celebrate it.  Because no matter how small that thing is, I did it and it is a part of a progression of that small thing turning into something bigger.

It has been said in my blog before that I am a huge fan of a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins and currently I am reading her book “The high five habit” and though I am not seeing massive results three days into forming this habit.  I did notice today a small, very faint in fact, smile on my face when I went to the mirror this morning.

I’m not presuming you know what “The high five habit” is all about, so I shall tell you.

Mel Robbins suggests that each morning you high five yourself in the mirror in order to acknowledge yourself, try not to criticise yourself the first thing in the morning – self-love is key to making solid foundations in other relationships, if you don’t love yourself or take care of yourself enough, you can’t do that for other people, can you? 

Why? 

Because you will feel depleted in yourself and you won’t give it your best shot. 

Many people feel that high fiving themselves in the mirror daily boosted their esteem and performance throughout the day.

Why? 

Because a high five is a positive reinforcement and it makes you feel you have value.

Three days, that’s all I’ve done so far, though when this post goes out it will really be five days, because I am posting this to schedule.

I have barely done any writing since September 2023 but I am celebrating any writing I do even if it’s only a small sentence now. 

Why?

Because I am feeling depleted and I don’t like it and it was with Mel Robbins that I learned I felt depleted in so many different areas in my life through a free course I finished last week ran by her.

https://www.melrobbins.com/takecontrolthanks

I learned all these tiny little areas of my life built up and gradually I became overwhelmed and because my social circle died around four years ago – I never found a way through other people to pick myself up again.  It’s all self-reliance only, 100% pure self-reliance and most people can’t pick themselves up when they are being 100% self-reliant, but I have no choice right now so any little thing is going to be great progress for me right now!

Today I have written two poems, this blog post and approximately 1600 words towards my vampire project, not a lot really – not for me and how I used to write several years ago!  But I am learning to be kind to myself, not to whip myself so much because I have learned recently I am an incredibly mean slave driver to myself and a tyrannical bully – as I always felt I was so darn lazy, yet I wasn’t.

In the scheme of thing, in the law of averages I wasn’t.

I’ve been working under overwhelming conditions for a decade and didn’t realise it and the more I was putting onto myself the harder and harder I would beat myself up about it.

No wonder I struggled with suicidal thoughts for so long, no wonder I had no drive and energy to get out of bed and try harder.

I was beaten, purely by myself – no one else did that to me!

I escaped abusive relationships and I became free from all of that and I became my own abuser, pushing myself constantly, being hard on myself for the smallest thing and mistake, because that’s how I was trained by people from my past and I was carrying over in my head, their idealism of what I should be doing and putting it on myself. 

Effectively I escaped abuse from other people but replaced it with me abusing myself in the same way they did to me.

It takes something like doing a course by someone like Mel Robbins or reading their books to really get deep inside of yourself to realise these things are happening to you, because of you.

What’s more, these things can change because of you too – only you can save yourself from yourself!

It’s a weird world, but it’s true for all of us!

You don’t need someone else to get things to happen in your life, you do it for yourself.  Letting someone else hand things to you;

A; is very unusual to find someone who will do that to you anyway and…

B; handing your power over to them, thus disempowering your own potential!

If you feel you need to rely on someone for ANYTHING then you have chosen to be at another person’s mercy.

Now for me, to a certain extent this is fine for me, because I am happy to have some direction from others. 

But most people want to master themselves fully and that’s fine too.

However, even the most ambitious people can often fall into the trap of disempowerment because of their reliance on another person and they will become frustrated and even vicious with that person if that person doesn’t live up to their expectations to receive what they want from them.

Some people do this in romantic relationships, in fact a lot of people do.  They mistake their need for love with a need for resource and often confuse the two.

If you love someone, you don’t use them – you love them, you care about them, their happiness if your happiness and you will protect that the best you can… if that’s not true in your relationship, then there is something seriously wrong with the relationships foundation and it will fail.

Do you know how rare it is to find someone who will love you selflessly?  It’s actually very special and many relationships fail because one or even the both of them fail to look at the relationship from a selfless perspective.

Now this wasn’t something Mel Robbins said, this is me talking now.  This is what I have experienced – I am not perfect, I’ve done the same in my past too and it’s not right and it’s not fair!

Where am I going with this?

To be honest, I don’t know.

But then again, nobody really knows what’s going on in their lives do they, let’s be honest?  We’re all just learning as we plod along, doing our thing. 

So, today I’ve done 1600 words towards my vampires – I celebrate that!

I did three lessons on DuoLingo for Italian – I celebrate that!

I wrote two poems – I celebrate that!

I read several pages of a book and magazine – I celebrate that!

I managed to eat a breakfast which is rare for me!  – I celebrated that too!

All these micro things are a progression to something bigger – foundations of something that will be big for my future.

The little things count, because doing nothing doesn’t.

Sitting back and thinking doesn’t count as productive time, because you’re not doing anything in action, you’re just thinking!

Anyone can think!

Anyone can waste oodles of time just sitting back doing nothing but plan everything to the letter!

But action brings things into motion, action is progress, no matter how small – it counts, it’s a manifestation, it is beyond thought, action is tangible, thought is not.

So when you write 50 words towards your novel and other writers laugh at your dreams of being a writer, remember this… you wrote 50 words, you didn’t just think them and that counts towards creating a book.  Sitting back and thinking about 50 words and not writing them, doesn’t make you a writer, it makes you a thinker!

Honestly how many writers out there think away hundreds of words per day but fail to write them down because they weren’t confident about it, didn’t trust the process and felt they needed those words to be absolutely perfect before they wrote them?

Also, how many days go by, weeks, months, years even because of the same thing?  Because of writers block?  That doesn’t exist actually; writer’s perfection does and guess what?  It doesn’t have to be perfect until you send it off to be published and even then it won’t be!

Just get the thing written, because you’re going to have to rewrite it anyway, so why waste time trying to be the impossible?

Nobody is perfect!

Not even the bestsellers, it doesn’t exist because perfection can’t be defined as everyone has a different idea of what that means to them!

So what you find as perfect is somebody else’s trash, basically.

Cold hard truth and I am not sorry for saying it.

The only successful people in the world are the people doing the things they want to do – doing, not thinking, not waiting on a hand out, not sitting back a dreaming – doing!

So celebrate the little things you actually do, not the great ideas you thought about and didn’t do anything with!

Thanks for reading!

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!

Top of the wheel

I’m not setting goals anymore in regards to novel writing, they get done when they get done but I haven’t given up; Yes I’ve had a respite since September 2022 and that is a long time, unreasonably long, but I had to have it due to mental health healing.  I had a hard time, there were lots of things happening in my life I had to think about – think a lot.

Lots of things in fact, lots of different problems to solve and many of them just needed me to try and calm myself enough to allow myself to think, then once I had managed to do that, I needed to calm myself again and stop thinking in order to heal from it all.

There was grief, death of a relative, a revelation I wasn’t sure was a trick or not, an announcement, an opportunity, a break up, a diagnosis and so many things all rolled into one major thing for me – that I could not cope.

Ultimately my entire life has been turned upside down and I am still in the situation of not really knowing if it is a good or bad thing just yet, I am still teetering on the edge of trying to determine which – it could be either!

It’s a strange situation to be in.

I feel at the moment I am standing on top of a wheel and if I fall backwards I will land in shark filled waters and if I fall forwards I will fall safe into someone’s arms.

At present I am still on top of the wheel.

It’s like sitting on a bomb really.

My mind has been so preoccupied with all these things that I haven’t been able to keep to my reading goals, my writing or practising of my art.  I haven’t even been able to hold a conversation without my mind wandering off, worrying about things.

It’s only been this past week I have manage to slowly and surely restart my habits.  I have started to write a little again, I have started to read a little again and I have even done some art.

Not as much as I would normally do in a day, in fact, I am doing less than ten paragraphs every couple of days towards anything, my one poem a day has become three or four again; my art practises are happening every couple of days.  It’s more than what has happened between September 2022 to March 2023 in any case and I am proud it’s coming back together again.

The frustrating thing is this – my typing speed has got extremely slow and I can’t seem to speed it up again.  I used to write 90 to 120 words per minute and now I struggle to get above 40.

I am making a lot of spelling mistakes and errors, cognitively I am suffering a lot and I don’t know what to make of it.

My Easter Project and Project AD has hopes to be finished before Midsummer, but I am not going to force myself, it’s still early days for me, I still haven’t fully healed.

In reality, I need a holiday – get out of this environment, get out into nature and remember how to laugh and play again – playfully scream – wash my hair with the rays of the sun – chase faeries – hug trees – and try to learn how to feel happy again.  Because happiness is a distant memory, one I am not sure I can remember how it feels anymore.  Strange as that sounds…

I also need to learn to trust again.

Trust in the process, trust to love again, trust that I have self-worth, that I am someone deserving and someone who can be free to laugh without someone complaining about the noise or worrying I am going to get over excited and hurt myself.

Because a couple of years ago I was bedbound sick and laughing really did hurt me, because it would cause a coughing fit and my spleen was swollen and so it genuinely was rather painful to laugh – but those things are behind me now.  But still, out of habit I have people trying to calm me down, because they’ve forgotten how much I have healed.

I need to lose myself in feelings that are opposite to negative ones – I need to, because I don’t feel very human anymore.

There are times I have sat back and realised all the negativity around me, all the bitterness, envy, jealousy, contempt and discomfort and I wonder what am I becoming exactly?  Am I becoming a demon?  Because the only things I can feel are variations of darkness…

It’s a scary place to be – see, there – fear – another negative emotion… but you see, I try to remember something a motivational speaker called Mel Robbins once said – that fear is the exact same chemical in the brain to excitement and that you have to change your perspective and realise when you fear something that you might actually need to try and tell yourself it’s exciting, rather than something to fear.

Odd… but I am trying this trick.

I am on the cusp of something amazing which is about to happen in my life and all I can think about is how scary it is – I know there are wonderful things coming with it, especially a lot of love and tenderness and protection – but I still can’t help but focus on that one major problem.  I have like 30 pros and only around five cons to this chance, yet it’s the cons that are taking up brain space!

When you see it like that, you realise there is something seriously wrong with how you are wired!

Wired might not be correct actually… trained is perhaps the best way to describe it.   Because I used to be such a Positive Pollyanna and it has only really been in the past decade that the Pollyanna in me has started to die.

I need to do what happened in the book Pollyanna – I need to find my tribe to help resuscitate me, bring me back to the light.

Although saying that, I think I don’t need to, I think – if I am reading things correctly, my tribe has come to find me and all I need to do is wait a little while longer, then reach out my hand fearlessly and say to myself – I am excited to be a part of your life!

Thanks for reading!

Bleak to positive

I’m trying my best to try and think of more positive things lately, it is actually harder than I thought it would be and that is a huge contrast to the person that I used to be; I was often considered a bit of a Pollyanna – if you don’t know who Pollyanna is, Pollyanna is a little girl who always found something good about things that happened until one day she had an accident and couldn’t walk anymore and she found it hard to find anything good to say and the people she shone her light on – all came in mass to remind her of her old way of thinking when she was in her darkest hour.

For the past nine years I’ve suffered from very bad depression bought upon initially by illness and then extreme poverty, around 2015 I had my first true thoughts about suicide and have been struggling with them ever since.

I am trying to find the old me again as it is very clear in the near future, I will be moving out of this home and into a new one and hopefully things will be a little better for me emotionally.

I still have no date for that yet, but I know it will be coming before the end of the year at least, Paul is determined and Henry has resided himself to the fact that he wants to stay with his father and not follow me, because he doesn’t want to make new friends in a new school.

Wherever I go, they have to tolerate a house rabbit, because Ray is coming with me too – because I am the only person who gives him any attention and he would literally pine to death without me!

He is 5yrs old and a dark grey Dutch, so dark in fact you’d mistake him for black, he has dark blue eyes and loves reggae, gardening shows, rugby and Peter Rabbit – seriously he has his favourite types of music and TV shows, he is a house rabbit after all. 

I can’t eat a banana without sharing it with him; he gets grumpy and throws his food bowl at me!  He can be quite violent when affronted!

He needs neutering because he stinks.

Well anyway, there are still dark days to get over and when I have those days I tend to write dark and morbid poetry – but I am trying to break it up and space it out, so sometimes when the poems are being published, I may not actually be having a bad day at all, it may have been days or weeks ago.

I haven’t had a major depression bout for over a week now, but I am slowly slipping into it again as tonight I have been feeling on the verge of tears and being quiet and sleepy, but I am not sure what bought it on.  But at least I am not suicidal tonight.  I am just a bit dozy and I suppose sulky due to loneliness.

I am writing these words at 2:30am on the 19^th February 2023, this will be published in the afternoon – again, to space things out a bit.

Sometimes when I get writing specifically for my blog, I tend to write three to five poems all at once and about two or three diary updates and it would really annoy my readers if they got all of this one day and then just one tiny poem for a few days after.

So I space things out.

I am trying really hard to think about things that are not bleak – anything really so not to focus on the dark thoughts, because I am trying hard to push my old life away for a brand new one, that I believe is very close to coming to me and it’s going to be amazing but terrifying!

Seriously terrifying – but you know what?  I heard Mel Robbins a motivational speaker say once, that psychologists have proven than fear and excitement are formed from the same chemicals in the brain, they are in fact the same thing and you can trick yourself into believing your fear is excitement quite easily, so you don’t panic so much!

So when you are frightened, just think to yourself – it’s all so very exciting – I am excited – let’s do this!

So yes, I am terrified but it’s exciting…

Do you think I am ready for the nut house yet?

Thanks for reading!

It’s not vanity week, honest!

Why did I confess about my supressed vanity and why do I seem so proud of it?

Because, it is a major part of my natural personality that got the hardest beatings and chastisements over the years, to me it feels like it was 50% of my personality and that since my suppressors took a hold on me – to get me out of the mind-set of it, it was like I have lived my whole life a lie.

I lived as my shadow self for too long, though many people feel that vanity is the shadow aspect in itself, maybe my mind is all muddled up – but to me, this is what came naturally to me and it is this what got moulded out of me.

I know a lot of people, my mother included will tell me that vanity is the shadow self, because vanity is a sin.

I don’t see how it’s a sin to make the most of what you have, why shouldn’t you adorn the precious body God gave you however you like?  Why should you not worship God through your temple, which is your body and give thanks and honour him for a job well done?

Why is it more holy to hate yourself and live modestly about your looks or abilities, surely revelling in it all is the biggest form of gratitude to the creator?

I remember slaps across my face as a child when I actually used to have the guts to ask these questions to my mother!

“How dare you” she used to say as she’d drag me to the bathroom to wash my mouth with soap, literally!

To wash those dirty words out of my mouth, because I say something that can’t be redeemed, her long nails scratching the back of my throat as she washed my tongue deeply!

I hate Imperial Leather soap to this day!

All the women I admired growing up were the vain glamorous types, I always kind of screwed my nose up at the ordinary woman and lived in amazement at how much some women put the time into their looks above everything else.

I always wanted to be like that too, but I was only like that for two short years in my adult life before I moved in with Paul and about a year when I moved in with Paul – funnily enough the year before I became sick.

Its sods law that I want to get to grips with my true self now and I have long Covid alopecia which is ruining my idea of what great hair is!  I have learned these things over the years, your hair is your crowning glory, and the thing that gets you judged the most; second to that are your shoulders, people look at your shoulders and your neck and judge your posture a lot!  Thirdly to this is the clothing or accessories you choose to wear and it’s generally make up as the last thing people will notice about you. 

Though going back to the clothing, people don’t look up and then down, they look down and go up, they judge you from your footwear.  This is my experience in any case.

Your smile is another factor that probably comes before the cosmetic application judgement!  Which is why I have a closed mouth smile, I am ashamed of my mouth.

My mouth is the most abused part of my body, my voice suppressed a lot, my mouth has had a lot of abuse – forced feedings, mouth wash outs, slapped across the face a lot, squeezed to keep silent, hand over my mouth, is it any wonder my throat chakra is hard to unblock?

So what is going on here, why is it vanity week?

Well it’s not intentionally vanity week – it’s just I am really working on my inner child in the past two or three weeks and it just so happens to coincide with a few of the self-therapies I am doing.

Waking up the true me, the unblocked me, the real me.

I want to take you all on a journey with me – weight loss and changing my image and I hope it will be fun for all of us!

I am not going to be happy until I can rock a pair of suspenders better than Dr Frank n Furter!

Just don’t think of me in them now huh, don’t want to have nightmares now do we?

For me one of the big things I hate about living here is the inability to get access to someone who can do household maintenance when it needs to be done, instead of having to wait years between projects!  Our shower broke down in 2016 and I bought its replacement in 2018 and it still hasn’t been installed!  I need my twice daily showers and twice weekly exfoliations!

I miss lathering myself in shea butter for an hour and then showering it off, the stretch marks were reduced a lot and it does a lot to help with cellulite, but you can’t get into a bath to wash it all off, ew!

I think my biggest goal since childhood was to have the confidence as well as the body to rock a velveteen cat suit too!  One I’ve dreamt of designing since I was a nine!  When I had the figure to wear something like that I didn’t have the guts!

Its really weird how since doing all this inner child stuff, I am seeing a lot of butterflies, dragonflies, caterpillars, flamingos, ibises and peacocks – all representatives of transformation, flamboyance, vibrancy, vanity and confidence.

I have been taking care of my body with a high protein diet, a little exercise per day and face yoga and I am seeing a major difference to my face and figure personally.  I am starting to like myself a bit but I am thinking that’s a lot to do with the change in my mentality, thanks to that Mel Robbins technique I shared with you a couple of weeks back!

I am now able to plank for about one minute, which is impressive when you think that I struggled to hold a squat for fifteen seconds at Easter!

Six weeks ago I could only do ten reps of bicep curls without weights before needing a two minute break to continue to the full thirty reps – now I can do fifty reps off the bat without resting, though I am slightly out of breath by then.

My main focuses in toning up are my triceps area, as that is not a very nice part of my body, as well as my abs, because I look five months pregnant if I am being honest right now.  The rest of the body seems to be doing itself naturally and appropriately, I don’t know why these two areas in particular are being stubborn!

The aim isn’t to become too muscular, but to tone it up and not be horribly flabby.

At the moment my arms look alien to the rest of my body, which is why I pose with them tightly behind my back, because I look like an ape… well I am an ape, all humans are… but you know what I mean!

So, I just want to be beautiful and feel good for it, I want to be in a position of belief when someone tells me I am beautiful.  But I don’t want to be a mean cocky bitch about it like some women are. 

I just want to wear what I want, feel great in it and be who I want to be, when I want to be it, instead of cringing and thinking I am making a fool of myself, or that people are going to think that two little boys are fighting up my skirt as I walk down the road!

Thanks for reading!

Toxic quotes

My personal development is increasing exponentially in the past few weeks, particularly in regards to mental strength and adaptability.

My thoughts are starting to change about myself and other people, since I have decided to follow the flow of things and look at things from a different perspective; a perspective of a separate person to myself.

Basically, I have started to detach myself from my own thoughts, because my thoughts aren’t really my own, but the toxic memories of what other people have put into my mind about myself and others.

In other words, my negative thoughts about myself and other people are purely quotes from my suppressors reliving themselves in my mind, time and time again.  The only way around this, is to decide to detach myself from those normal thought patterns and regard myself as a separate being – a being I love and want to protect and nurture.

I have mentioned before, that Mel Robbins has said that when you look in the mirror you need to see your own reflection as a person you love, you need to high five yourself and treat yourself with the love, respect and kindness you would, a relative that is close to you!

This seems to be working a lot for me, also my self-value is changing. 

I still have a long way to go in regards to my confidence, but I am no longer pushing my toxic quotes onto what I think others may or may not be thinking about me. 

For example; I feel I am too ugly and fat to be loved by someone genuine.  This is a toxic quote from many people in society that I have put into my own head and believed for many years.  However, many large people and people who are not aesthetically blessed are deserving of love and are loved by people.  So why am I not saying this to myself more often?

I am worthy of love too and I am presuming that the entire world is shallow with this view and it really isn’t.

I should not define myself by my looks, but by who I am inside.

When you detach yourself from your toxic quotes, you begin to see clearly – you begin to see the pain that you are in and you tend to yourself as you would someone you love and support.  You would never lie to that person, you love them, you don’t say dishonest things to them to just bolster their confidences if it wasn’t true, would you? 

So why should it be any different for us?

Why have we allowed these toxic quotes to brainwash us into believing our self-worth is less than we deserve?

Because we care too much about what other people think!

So we think, it’s all true and it’s not.

Is it fair to believe that someone who is interested in you is really a shallow person with ulterior motives? 

Is that a good way to start a new relationship? 

No it isn’t, you are judging the new person in your life because of your own insecurities and that is unfair to the both of you!

Detach yourself from your toxic quotes when you identify the negative thoughts about yourself and a new person you believe could be judging you, when you don’t really know it’s a fact or not. 

See yourself as an observer of your thoughts and act in accordance to them, as though you are someone you genuinely want to love, support and protect.

These methods are working for me and please believe me when I say, I have had a lot of push and pulling in my head over this, but love is winning as it always does!

Happy reading!

New energy

This high protein diet is doing wonders for my health and body, I am getting more good days than bad.  Despite currently having a throat infection with a mild chest infection, everything else is improving a lot!

I believe the throat and chest infection has come about because of my birthday weekend splurge of sweet treats and refined sugars, something I am not known for usually, but I wanted a change this weekend.

I don’t normally have a sweet tooth more than three or four times a month and that’s because of hormones and then I usually opt for fruit.  But this past weekend I have splurged on cream cakes, chocolate, jelly babies and a lot of honey and maple syrup – shock and horror!

It’s my birthday weekend, let me live a little.  My weight is stable, I am managing to exercise more often and I am feeling happy for it, but I still have a lot of fat to lose and toning up to do.

Since I started a few months ago to do just squats and standing from a seated position several times a day, I have noticed a positive increase in my mental health. 

I knew from the past that I loved exercise and being active, but when I got sick, I just lacked all motivation to try again.  It is especially hard when you have a lot of people tell you “take it easy, don’t rush things” all the while.

Paul was always stressed out by the idea that I may be rushing back into exercise after poor health and would often moan me into submission about it, so I found it hard to get back into the swing of it all.

I have had some harsh and strong words with Paul about this recently, when he noticed I was doing exercise. 

“Well I got news for you” I said defiantly; “I have been doing these things in secret for the past few months to get back into the flow of it and now I am ready for harder tasks”.  He almost went white.

I am not satisfied staying fat and lazy, I love exercise, I love doing things – I am not content in sitting on my ass all day whining about how poor we are and what we don’t have… if there is something about me that I can say in a positive and confident light is that I am a go-getter.  But like the water dog I am; I flow with the energy that is around me the most and at the moment I am in stagnant waters and I am trying to make some currents.

In my youth my mother encouraged a peacock attitude, but as long as I kept to her lame fashion advice and her fashion advice really was lame!  I have always been a lover of fashion and I strongly believe that your clothes can show the world your personality. 

Unfortunately that is really hard to do when you are obese and you have virtually no budget to play with! 

People do judge you for the clothes you wear as well as your general looks and I am not happy by the kinds of reactions I get when I wear the clothes I do currently, I get very little respect and I am treated like an ignoramus.

I want to be a peacock again, well, you know what I mean right?

I have too much work to do, it’s scary!

I also have to be cautious because in the past I had severe issues with anorexia, bulimia but also another condition where I was addicted to exercise to the point of exhaustion and collapse!

Paul knows this and thinks that any exercise outside of walking everywhere and twenty minute boring aerobics is too much, he is very cautious.

My ideas are very different.  The only lengthy work out I like is forty five minutes long and it is Billy Blank’s Tae-Bo workout, gosh I miss that – this is one of the things I am working towards, being fit enough to do the whole workout again.  It’s fun!

I am also working out to try and get back the flexibility I used to have when I was a contortionist – yes, that’s right; I used to be a contortionist.  Not professionally, just for fun!  Don’t sideways glance at me like that, it was fun!

A friend recently suggested I take up yoga and I laughed, because, I wish… But my body needs a lot of work before I can cock my leg up over my head again!

When I am writing in a calm and peaceful environment I have noticed I work better creatively when I am doing stupid things like this; Fifteen to twenty minutes writing, getting up and doing three minutes of HIIT exercises, followed by jumping jacks and jump rope exercises, then getting back to the desk. 

Not only am I happy doing this, but my brain works better for it!

I wished I had an office which could also be a gym and library all rolled into one, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon by itself, so I have to work for it!

At the moment I am really trying to develop a positive mind-set and a healthy body and a handful of online friends have DM and told me that they really believe, in their hearts of hearts I should avoid sending my work to an agent in October so I can focus on all this other stuff first. 

My friends think I should send it out around February, as the agents will be more prepared as I am sending the work out at the start of the busiest time of the year.  I don’t know what to do to be honest, but I am wondering if I am dumb if I ignore their advice?

I believe the high protein diet is really fixing my body.  As much as I love fruit and vegetables, I know I could never be a vegan because you can’t get Vitamin B12 as a vegan; with my digestive and bowel disease I already struggle to get enough B vitamins my diet as I don’t absorb them very well; not only this but I have allergies to soy and mustard, which can cause my spleen to swell.

According to google;” Vitamin B12 deficiencies can lead to megaloblastic anaemia, a condition where the bone marrow produces large abnormally shaped red blood cells that do not function properly. Dementia, paranoia, depression, and behavioural changes can result from a vitamin B12 deficiency. Neurological damage sometimes cannot be reversed”.

I have pernicious anaemia and rheumatic arthritis, but I am stabilising that the best I can with supplements and a healthy diet where I have to be mindful about what I eat and can’t get stuck into food ruts.  My body really struggles absorbing vitamin B because of those conditions.

My arthritis is the first noticeable change since starting a high protein diet.  Since starting this diet, my pain is getting less and I am starting to get some muscle mass back again, because around Easter time I loss a lot of muscle mass where it started to become very scary for Paul, my doctors and I.

I have a protein metabolism and I am an hourglass shape, I know what I am doing with my body because when I was younger I brainwashed myself to try to be the best that I can be, but Paul encouraged me to get lazy about things, because he was scared I was pushing my body too far and I had such a long term illness after pneumonia due to mono, that I flaked out, literally for years.

Slowly gaining back the fifty pounds I had lost after moving out of my mother’s house, but that’s changing now!

I noticed the worse parts of my ill health came back after three days of slipping up with my protein intake; Paul has noticed it too and has said that losing the high protein diet is unnegotiable now!

I forgot the high I get when I exercise and it’s great!

When I am sad or stressed I eat a lot, it’s a compulsive habit. When I am happy I forget to eat, so I have to watch that too! When I was twenty four my mother took a bigger control of my life and took a lot of things away from me that made me happy, I gained thirty pounds a year in depression and would have got fatter if it weren’t for Paul coming into my life and saving me when he did! I have always struggled with body dysmorphia one way or another. The thinner I get the fatter I think I see myself in the mirror and weirdly enough vice versa.

I have been using Mel Robbin’s technique recently whenever I look in the mirror, don’t see me as myself; I see myself as another person who I am deeply in love with and care about and weird enough it is helping my body dysmorphia a lot! I know it can lead to another problem of disassociation, but if it makes me happy in my own skin then I am all for that!

So look in the mirror, see another person in the room, don’t associate it with yourself, and high five that girl or boy you love!

So that’s what’s happening in my life right now.

Thanks for reading!

100 things of joy

This post exists because I am trying very hard to buck myself up, heal myself mentally and find a purpose in life other than just what other people tell me my purpose is.

Since becoming bedbound and housebound sick around eight or nine years ago, I slowly fell into a depression that lead to suicidal thoughts and I forgot how to feel happy; even certain hobbies I used to love, no longer bought me joy and because of lack of space and money, those things diminished more and more to the point that I no longer had a way in feeling even the slightest bit of joy.

A majority of the things that bought me happiness was physical activity, I love sport, I love exercise, but my illness made me slow down to the point of stagnation.

Slowly I am rebuilding my health, I have a new diet which is helping me get there halfway but I am out of practise in moving my body in general and so I am starting the slow process to get my mobility back – it’s going to take months, if not a couple of years to get to the level I would like!

I have been watching a lot of Mel Robbins videos lately, instead of honing my writing skills and learning about graphic novels like I said I was going to; because I felt I couldn’t market myself or do things confidently unless I was actually feeling confident and capable.  Mel Robbin’s videos on YouTube are helping me find my capabilities in baby steps.

One of the things was to learn to find ten things that bring me joy or excitement and try to do three of them about once a week each; instead I decided I like a lot more variety so I spent three hours last night just sitting down thinking about one hundred things that bring me joy, happiness and excitement and wrote them down, with the goal of trying to do three a week.

Although Paul was disappointed I didn’t add any word count to any of my current projects whilst I did this, he did agree that this list needed to exist too and that my mental health is just as important as my writing, if not more so!

So here is my list, unfortunately many of the below cannot be done until either finances improve for me to travel, get a dog or get the fitness level I need to do them, but there are plenty things in my list that work well for a sedentary impoverished life, it was just my task to try and find them!

Now these things below really do make me happy, relaxed, confident, excited and I can spend hours doing any of these activities below – ironically you won’t find much about writing down there, because I lost my joy of writing a few years back and I have been trying very hard to get it back!

Writing is literally a job now, or it will be once I start getting paid for it, but it is not something I would say brings me joy these days and I know why!  Writing bought me joy when I was brainstorming my ideas with friends and family, but there is no one available to me in recent years to do that with other than Paul and Paul lacks the enthusiasm I used to get from people of my past.

An asterisk in the list means there is an obstacle for me at the moment for the thing I wrote down. 

Some of the things with asterisks are things I used to do before there were obstacles and I miss them.

So let’s show you the list…

1. Writing vampire stories even though the world hates them! One of the major reasons why I don’t get much other writing done in my other genres and projects, spending too much time with my vampires.
2. Gardening * I have a really obnoxious neighbour who is abusive so I don’t do it anymore
3. Reading in the garden on a swing hammock or by a pond *same as above
4. Playing with dogs and training them * don’t have a dog anymore but working on getting one when finances improve
5. Painting
6. Carboot sales * can’t travel to them, they are out of a bus route
7. Watching vampire, demon and mafia movies
8. Watching aquarium or pond fish * don’t have either of those things yet
9. Cooking for people * Paul worries too much about me not coping that I find it difficult to cook without interference, we argue about it frequently
10. Board and card games with 3+ people
11. Drama classes and amateur theatre * at the moment there are other things I need to work on before taking this hobby back up again!
12. Practising musical instruments
13. Shopping * finances need improvement can even be daring with an extra £2.50 these days! 
14. Visiting libraries
15. Visiting garden centres * none within a bus ride even if I just window shopped
16. Going to parks, gardens and woods
17. Going to museums * none in bus ride I haven’t exhausted
18. Brainstorming my creative ideas with a group * don’t have a trustworthy group again yet
19. Swimming  & diving * can’t afford the fee for the local centre
20. Doing tarot readings for people
21. Having picnics
22. Rowing on lakes * no rowing lakes nearby, no one to row with and I can’t be the only rower, because sometimes my carpal tunnel syndrome or my arthritis flares up, my arthritis is worse in my left shoulder than anywhere else! 
23. Rock pooling * nowhere local to my knowledge to do it
24. Playing with sand
25. Painting stones and pebbles
26. Making prisms
27. Watching horse racing * no one likes to do this with me yet
28. Watching cruft’s and other dog sport events
29. Watching gymnastics
30. Watching rugby
31. Watching wrestling * can’t afford subscription tv to see them and it’s on too late here in the UK so often miss it
32. Halloween preparations and parties
33. Firework displays and parties
34. BBQ parties
35. Going to the Severn Valley steam railway * finances need improvement
36. Whipsnade zoo & picnics * can’t get there easily and I like large picnics with lots of people
37. Zip wires – the longer the better!
38. Trampolining * need more fitness first
39. Netball * same as above
40. Arcades * financial improvement needed first
41. Pub lunches * same as above
42. Going to musical theatres * same as above, also a willing companion needed! 
43. Going to circuses * same as above
44. Going to fetes, country fairs and fairgrounds * same as above
45. Learning new languages
46. Giving and receiving massages
47. Research for my stories
48. Upcycling things * same as above
49. Playing darts * don’t have a dart board anymore
50. Snuggling with people and pets * not even my rabbit likes to snuggle cries*
51. Building cushion forts * no room, not enough cushions for fort making
52. Playing Ovipets online
53. Playing console games * TV broke and the ones we have don’t have the thingys according to Paul
54. Word games, particularly with other people
55. Tae Bo workouts * need to get fit again first to do the proper 45 minute work out
56. Singing * people complain too much in this house
57. Belly dancing and watching belly dancers * I’d love to try and dance them someday too, if I ever become a published author or famous enough, I’d like to be invited to come dancing, one of my fantasies! 
58. Watching tango, paso doble and flamenco dances
59. Reading books on culture, religion and mythology
60. Charity work and volunteering * can’t get to places lately
61. Daydreaming on long car journeys * – I don’t talk on long car journeys, sorry! Also we don’t have a car and there is no one to take me for a ride! 
62. Long over ground train journeys – again I don’t talk much on those, unless it’s about the scenery or if its urban sceneries then I’d have my nose in a book!
63. Blowing bubbles for myself but it is more fun with dogs and babies! 
64. Hand making things with children
65. Organising children’s parties
66. 1000 piece or bigger jigsaw puzzles – like to have one set up all the time!
67. Watching the RHS show
68. Reading gardening and fashion magazines * had to give up four subscriptions recently, can’t afford them anymore
69. Looking for hag stones and other things in nature
70. Being inside the darkness of dense mossy woodlands, meditating * the local place is too dangerous now as there are too many avalanches into the lake it’s sealed off!  Need to find another dense mossy woodland elsewhere! 
71. Playing swing ball * don’t have one anymore and not doing it with that neighbour around – found out recently that they aren’t leaving after all because he spent the deposit money to move behind his wife’s back!  I think the whole neighbourhood heard that screaming match!
72. Walks on frosty mornings – weather permitting
73. Walks particularly at the top of hills at dawn or dusk taking pictures!  * Can’t get up the hill in Quarry Park since 2015, working on trying to get fit for it again
74. Moon bathing… yes it’s a thing!
75. Watching the local bats flying around
76. Midnight walks at full moons especially but never alone! *
77. Photographing wildlife and plants
78. Baking
79. Sugar crafting
80. Making soups and casseroles for people
81. Making seasonal decorations
82. Running and jogging with dogs * don’t have a dog currently and not fit enough anymore, but trying to get it all back!
83. Watching short movies and art movies
84. Whittling or carving art into wood with knives
85. Designing clothes, especially ball gowns
86. Playing marbles
87. Playing jacks
88. Flower arranging and making elaborate arrangements especially for formal occasions!
89. Making puppets or soft toys for kids
90. Having an Indian head massage
91. Motivating others
92. Walking in the summer light rain
93. Writing in cafes *
94. Making wands, staffs and homemade natural weapons
95. Learning new skills, that are fun
96. Playing the discus
97. Playing Frisbee with dogs and children
98. Strategic war games
99. Collecting specific things – buttons, dragons, seeds, books, trump cards & crystals
100. Knitting for people * brings on my carpal tunnel syndrome if I knit more than fifteen minutes a time

Happy reading everyone!