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!

Good Morning

A good morning kiss

A sweet hello

A warm loving hug to make you glow

I wish you joy and goodwill

I hope today you’ll have a thrill

I hope you smile and I hope you laugh

May all your movements be a happy choreograph

Don’t give up, just carry on

And someday you’ll sing a happy song

For I am with you in everyway

And I will love you every day!

So stretch your limbs and get out of bed

And put some positivity in your head

For today is the day where you start anew

And as always I am rooting for you!

Flux to Fluck?

I am in a flux today.

I am experiencing deep depression and high motivation and there is no real in-between.

On one hand I feel extremely down and tearful and struggling to even think that I’d get to April and on the other I feel pumped to exercise and morph my body over a time into how I really want it to be.

I’ve been staring in a mirror for months trying to see myself through other people’s eyes and occasionally I see something, but then I move my head a certain way and the ugly comes back to haunt me.

So, exercise raises endorphin levels when you do it after a time, but it’s getting the will to get up and just move today that’s eating at me.  Because I just want to hide under my fleece blanket and cry about things, cry deeply – I’m wearing hoodies a lot lately to hide the fact I’m crying so much to other members of the household.

They really haven’t noticed, perhaps my friend is right – I’d be a good actress?  Who knows!

When I have got used to never dreaming because things never happen for me, someone comes along and tells me that life is soon to be great and it’s like another tease.  More disappointment for the future and more broken dreams and an even more shattered heart – that’s the forecast for me I think.

I used to be a positive person, a Pollyanna and I used to tick people off with my ray of sunshine and words of encouragement – it’s like someone was bothered by it so much they’ve cursed me!

I’m told regularly, I will have great things because I have a great talent and this person and that person likes you – it’s all bullshit really, because I haven’t seen these people tell me things.

There are lots of talented people in the world who don’t have those great things – I’m not the only one and it’s not things that I want.  It’s love.

A few rich men haven’t got that into their thick heads yet – they think they can seduce me with things, but they can’t.

Why are the simplest things in life so hard to obtain?  A persons time, snuggles; words of love, support and encouragement, a good time and a laugh without judgement?

A tactile relationship that feels real and not based on lies and broken promises, a relationship where we encourage each other, instead of one of us being a sponge and draining the life out of the other in order to make the other one feel better?

I know I have had a life of abuse, but it sounds strange to roll this off the tongue, but I was always a happy kind of person, known for being bubbly and friendly and since I’ve moved here slowly and steadily I am being drained of life.

I remember before I moved here that I could never imagine the day I’d die, I was scared of death and wanted to be immortal – but now I crave death.  It’s so contrast!

My willpower for survival is weakening.

Paul told me the other day that when a problem used to occur when I first moved in and I wasn’t moved by it and stayed relaxed and the same, that it bothered him, frustrated him even.  Now, whenever there is a problem I am at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, where a problem can become a huge drama quite quickly and it’s a big contrast and he thought that I’d be more supportive and take it more seriously, but instead it’s made me fall apart.

I know why.

When I lived with my parents, emotions were not tolerated if it made a person loud or unmanageable and unproductive. 

When I came here, it’s ok to be loud, shouting, ranting and raving at the slightest problem and to not let go.

I’m a huge empathic sponge, I soak up the energies of people around me and become like them – I’m a spiritual chameleon of sorts.  This is why it’s essential I remove myself from this environment somehow, but it’s difficult when the energies around me are apathetic, depressed, defensive and aggressive.

On the rare occasion a visitor comes who is of lighter energy, it rubs off me quickly and I feel like the old me again – their energy can boost me for a couple of days in fact, but it never lasts.

I remember having such high energy when I first moved in that I drained Paul instead.  Paul looked awful and exhausted all the time.  Because I was always on my feet, being bubbly, finding joy in the smallest thing like a child in a candy store, no matter what happened in life – everything was like a novelty to me and it was.

Because I rarely got to choose anything and go out when I lived with my parents.

I had comments from Paul that I looked at the world in childlike wonder and innocence and that I was so excitable, he kept telling me to slow down, calm down, sit down, lie down, everything had to come down.

Till I emotionally fell down and can barely get up with the weight of it all.

Words can’t describe how I truly feel – all of this feels like intense whining of a bitter heart who hates the world for the joy it has because she hasn’t got it.  Jealous slurs, that’s probably what you’re thinking about this post right now.

If you aren’t thinking that, then I apologise.

Art would show the world more of what I feel inside, but then again I can’t use my art table right now can I?

I really miss doing art.

I think the reason why I look younger than forty is because as tragic as it sounds I cry so much my tears sometimes dry on my face and make it feel taut after a while.  Like now, my face feels tight because the tears have dried.

I try to keep my sense of humour and find something to laugh about, which is part of the manic depression I have.  One minute extremely low and playing with sharp objects near my wrists and then the next moment cracking jokes about my darkness.

I might be depressed but with the tear treatment at least it keeps me young.  It’s a little light, but still gloomy and incredibly pitiful.

But that’s where I am today.

No in between – motivated to exercise and cry my heart out at the same time whilst being at my most deeply creative. 

Lack of sleep, slept four and a half hours again last night, my average for the past few weeks actually.

Motivated to exercise because I saw a glimmer of hope in the mirror the other day that I could look exactly like Diana Dors (Diana Mary Fluck) my main idol after all!  Just dye the hair, tone up and lose around forty pound and yes, I can see its possible I could be like her…

Maybe someday I will get myself out of this dump and sell my work and get myself a red dress covered in rubies and diamonds and wear a pretty wine coloured faux fur shrug with a silk ribbon?  Maybe someday I can walk in high heels without looking like a rookie tranny and actually be elegant and swan like?

Or maybe someday I will be found in a pile of my own poems covered in blood and white as snow, cold and still like ice and maybe my finders will publish my work for me and I will become posthumously famous?

Sods law that.

Thanks for reading…

Blessings

Blessings come and go

Will you take them when they show?

Or will you ignore how they flow?

Because you are scared to know

That better things are out there for you

What are you afraid of?

Do you have a clue?

If you don’t then what exactly is stopping you?

Who am I meditation

WHO AM I?

This meditation was literally me singing and chanting “Who am I” over and over again slowly and elongating the words each time until I heard a voice speaking to me. I sat in silence for 45 minutes listening to them and writing things down in a trance like state.

This is a meditation reading I did today to find out if I really did truly know myself and I am happy with the response, because it looks like I was spot on as this reading really does reflect who I am! 

Though I am too humble to accept some of it!   

I can zone out in meditation and write, it is a similar technique I use for writing and so here is the reading… enjoy! 

Decent and law-abiding, someone with a strong sense of right and wrong.  A mindful person who cares a lot for other people! 

You always try to be balanced and harmonious, you do not like letting your emotions consume you in a way that would affect another person’s energies negatively, and you would rather remove yourself from others so you do not drain them!

You are a well-connected person who guards their heart ferociously and the hearts of those you care about.

You are not happy with yourself unless you are achieving something almost all the time.

You have a strong maternal and nurturing spirit about you! 

You have trust issues and guard your heart and emotions too much that it can sometimes be hard to let others in fully, especially if there was the slightest bit of negativity between the person and you in the past.  You easily wear your heart on your sleeves with people who are kind to you though.

You are a very affectionate and fun personality around family and close friends, but distant with strangers until you warm to them over a time – generally your instinct for new people is usually very accurate – keep trusting that intuition of yours! 

You are creative and make friends easily if there is nothing negative going on with new people.

You don’t like being alone, you are all about togetherness and being in large warm groups of people!

You celebrate the smallest achievements in other people wholeheartedly!

You are a person who is afraid of using their creative talents in case it burdens you in some way!

You are very good at communicating your feelings to other people to offload yourself and them!

You are always trying to grow yourself spiritually and emotionally and sees life as an opportunity for transition and continuous flows of change

You are a person when in love that has tremendous patience with your partner and the capacity to accept them for who they are and to empathise with them, though you can be very smothering with affections most of the time.

You have very strange quirks and habits and some people may find you too weird to socialise with, you aren’t suitable socialising with very conservative folk!

You are quite submissive in nature regarding intimate relationships and very self-sacrificing.

You are not known for your logic at times and sometimes depending on the situation you may have a little bit of a vengeance spirit in you – but the vengeance never overtakes your integrity for true justice in the matter!

You may have a hidden masculine side to you, a side that likes the idea of power in work and society, even though at home you’d rather be the peace keeper and surrender everything to your special loved one.

It is easy for you to walk away from negative relationships without looking back as you have had enough of people trying to deplete your self-worth, you submit to the worthy only and the worthy has to be just and kind.

You mirror the negativity in others if they try to do you down or crush you in anyway; it is how you have learned to survive!  Therefore it is essential that you keep away from violent people, because it could hinder your growth spiritually. 

You are a true hedonist that has addictions to both fun and sex and general all round pleasure pursuits.

You have a small mischievous sadistic streak in you, which is usually fun and playful but can be a little nasty when you think people need to be taught a lesson, as we have mentioned before, you have a vengeance nature to you and if you are around physically aggressive people you will try to match them regardless of gender and ability!

You are a responsible and focused person when around the right people, but you are not easily motivated without them.  You need the right people around you or you will stagnate and become a lazy mess!

You are quite disciplined around the right people and you are quite ambitious, loyal and practical if you think that you have the right and supportive people by your side!  You will never achieve anything alone, you are a pack animal, and you don’t thrive in solo situations. 

You are curious and adventurous and nobody can ever call you truly boring once you have the courage to do things!

You tend to find your courage in the support of other people; you are less confident alone and tend to close yourself off into a corner and rot away when you haven’t got them around you! 

You are a natural leader with a natural charm about you, but you may not utilise this very well if you isolate yourself and socialise with the wrong types of people!

You need gregarious people in your life, because you are a naturally gregarious soul! 

You have a very clear vision of the future and is very innovative and creative!

You are an unconventional person with some traditional leanings, but you like to do things on a new more liberal stance, you are open minded and broad in what you accept and dislike those who try to suppress other people’s individualism.

You can be ferocious in supporting people who you like, even if you don’t know them very well! 

You have the tendency to be very passive in relationships and committed to the person to your own detriment at times, you will forego so much of yourself when you are in the wrong hands.  You can be vulnerable, insecure and persevering too much, that sometimes you forget that you too have needs!

With the right kind of relationship, a relationship that supports and nurtures, you will fly high and succeed at almost everything you put your mind to!  Because you were meant for great things and only great people are worthy of being in your life!

You’d do well with a partner who expects the best from you and motivates you each day! 

You are a highly intuitive and lucky person, the good things in life easily fall into your lap because it is your destiny to have those things – you were not meant to have a mediocre life and an existence of hardships and solitary confinement.

How best can you be who you truly are?

Seek out people who are successful, motivational and supportive, leave those which do not fit these categories.

Do not forget to take time out to meditate and reconnect to your spirit family, they are there to guide you in every aspect of your life.

Do not neglect your inner child but also keep it in check, because sometimes it can get out of control with the pursuit of pleasure! 

Take care not to soak up the negative energies of those people around you whose zest for life has virtually depleted.

Keep with your daily affirmations and visualisation of the better things, because this energy you exude when focusing on such things creates it for you in abundance – when you focus on negative energies, especially self-pity you are putting a blockage in those things you are trying to manifest!

You are on the right track for eliminating negative people from your life mercilessly, keep doing that and only keep the people around you that you deserve, because this is the way that you will personally thrive!

Do not be afraid to dream big, because big things are destined for you – VERY BIG THINGS!

The animal in me

What animals are in my soul according to how I see it… what quirks and personality traits do those animals have that I see in myself?

This is my honest opinion about who I am, in my animalistic side.

My strongest personality I believe is the spirit of the dog or the wolf, which I believe are the same animal really! 

I consider myself very friendly and easily excitable around my favourite people, people I trust and the better I know somebody the more playful I tend to become.  I am also very emotionally insecure and always out to get affection of some kind or another, or give affection and be amongst my pack in general.

I am a pack animal who is outcast as it were, right now – I am without a pack and it is killing me inside, it really is!

I mean it when I say I am excitable around my favourite people!  I exuberate the energy of “oh my goodness, you’re great, you’re this and that, I love you, come here, give a hug, who hurt who?  Let me at them”!  It’s quite funny to see me at times…

Yes I am needy I suppose, no shame in that I guess?

I want to be everyone’s friend but the world seems to fight back against people like me, fiercely it would seem!

I can easily adopt people if they are nice to me, it’s my nature but also like a dog or a wolf I don’t forgive others who bite or bark at me if they’ve been too fierce!  But boy can I be a bitch (pun intended) if you hurt the ones I love and who mean a lot to me!

Like a dog, I can easily feel shame and guilt about the slightest thing, rolling over trying to win back the favour of those I have disappointed if I love them, like some attention seeking hussy!

The other animal I am like is a squirrel – in the right places I tend to have a lot of excess energy and excitement, a bit like a hyperactive dog – but it can be more extreme.  Like a squirrel I love nuts, to eat them but also I like nuts as in people who are considered oddballs of society or Bohemian. 

Like a squirrel I am a bit of an airhead and can forget a lot of things, because I store away knowledge and items all the time and what’s worse, I move them around in case other people borrow them a lot, so sometimes those items can be lost to me… forever… so it would seem!

Also squirrels plant trees, I plant trees too, lots of trees, I like trees.

Give me caffeine or candy or a combination of them both I start talking like a horse racing commentator and speed walk everywhere at high energy for several hours, laughing my head off!

And like a squirrel I can often freak out about things, like the worry wart I am!  When I am stressed or worried, I talk so fast and so high pitched that people just stare at me wide eyed and think rightfully so… “What the fuck”?

Paul has got into the habit of grabbing me by the shoulders after I’ve told him things and then looks at me calmly and says to me…. “Breath, now tell me again… SLOWLY”!

So sometimes I start off again at the same speed and he patiently says “tut tut tut, slowly and focus”… to see us together like this makes you think I am demented or something, but sometimes even I feel I might be at times!

It’s more fun when I have had caffeine and candy and I am worried or have been recently affronted by something… its full steam ahead then, won’t get sense out of me for hours!

An ex of mine had the right idea when I get like that – just snog my brains out and I calm down and become passive almost immediately and then I manage to talk like I have actually got a brain instead of a hamster on a wheel in my head!

Another animal I am like is self-explanatory – rabbits.  You must know me enough by now to know what I am on about here!  The innuendo of what rabbits representation to society is enough for your imagination – but it is also one of the major things which boost my energy!

I am definitely an energiser bunny!

You can also see the rabbit in me when I garden as I often like to kneel on the ground and dig deep holes like I am making a warren… I don’t do it aimlessly, I am not insane!  There is always a purpose for the hole, such as a plant.

I lied.  I am insane, don’t you believe otherwise!

A cow is another animal, I am very nurturing by nature and I tend to graze rather than eat meals, because my body struggles with volume these days, a sandwich is a huge meal to me of late.

If we had the budget my diet would be reminiscent of my grandma’s advice, 7 small meals a day, no bigger than a tea plate (sandwich plate), because volume is an issue!

I remember I thrived when I lived her, it meant of course I seem to constantly eat – but I was thinner for it and I never had stomach ache!

Like the dogs, cows like to go around in herds or packs and I do miss having people in my life.

I miss having a nurturing role, Paul has made my ability as a mother almost obsolete since I’ve become ill, he has taken over everything and there is a huge power struggle for me to become an active mother again with Henry!

I can’t even nurture this family in other ways, such as baking or cooking because of finances but also because Paul has kept the kitchen in a manner that things I need are out of access for me or the kitchen is in such a mess that it takes me three hours of cleaning before I am happy to do anything in there!  It’s not as simple as pop into the kitchen to make a tuna sandwich, because the tuna is in a section of the cupboard I can’t reach because of a mound of boxes in the way and Paul is much taller than I am – I am 5ft 8 and still struggle to get things!

Even on tippy toes I can’t reach the highest shelves of a cupboard and that’s where most of the snacks are stored, so Henry doesn’t binge behind our backs, but it also means I am heavily reliant on Paul to reach them for me as he has forbidden me to use the step ladder, due to my vertigo issues.  I don’t have a fear of height; I have vertigo because of ear damage.  I am fine using them, but he is over protective.

Like a cow, I like to be around children as much as possible and I love to mingle with others in nature.

Another creature I am like is a peacock, though it strongly depends on who I am around.  I am heavily influenced by other people who are in my life the most.  If I am around people where image doesn’t matter, I fall on the wayside with them and don’t make an effort because it’s never noted or appreciated when I do.

I absolutely adore people who are vain, narcissistic or believe that image is everything… they are my kind of people; they are the kinds of people who keep me to my standards!  But I don’t like the ones who make things too personal.  Yes, nag me to take care of myself, my hair, and my fashion, give me tips and advice, but don’t go getting personal about weight and things I can’t change like nose shape and eye shape etc.

I know I am overweight, I am working on it, I don’t need to be told, I am already deeply ashamed about that aspect about me without being reminded or judged for it!

There is nothing I can do about my nose and eyes other than surgery and I don’t want to be the Bride of Frankenstein, no offence.  Though I do need surgery on my nose, because I have broken cartilage that has never healed, but it’s not aesthetic. 

Also I don’t like the ones who think there is something I can do about my big scars.  Yes I know make up works wonders, but some of my scars go into my hairline and messes my hair up if I use cosmetics in those areas!

Always be kind in your advice, never vitriolic.

I love glamour, but I am not well versed in using make up – I never had a feminine influence who taught me things like that.  It’s something I need to learn!

Like my mother never made a point about hygiene, I learned from other people who took care of me over the years.

I remember when I had my first menses as a child, I was unusually early, 8yrs old – my mother gave me sanitary towels but never told me how to use them and for the first few months I wore them with the glue attached to my vagina and not the underwear – when I got my first hairs I learned I had been doing it wrong, because I complained to her about it one day and she called me a fool!

But anyway, I love fashion and I like to stand out a little.  But I do love my baggy comforts and rough and ready looks in dungarees and what not on a day to day basis.  But generally, I love to play with my looks whenever possible because I am a suppressed attention whore, I know I love attention if I can get it and showing off my latest outfits is one way to get attention!

I know when I was a lot younger I was very much the “notice me, notice me” type – but I got beaten pretty badly off my pedestal over the years.

I refuse to believe that as I get older my ability to be a peacock is less and less obtainable, I mean just look at some of the classic stars in Hollywood still bombing around at their best at ninety!

There’s life in the old dog yet, lol what am I saying?  I am only forty!

Growing up I loved the egotistical and I have a playlist called “Vanity” where I have all sorts of songs on it, one of them happens to be the theme tune “Sexy boy” from the wrestler Shawn Michaels – “eat your heart out girls, hands off the merchandise”!  I had Shawn Michaels as a pin up in my bedroom but the bigger poster I had was his quote rather than him “IMAGE IS EVERYTHING”!

Gosh, if I hadn’t of been brutalised, what would I have been like right now as a person?

Though I say all this, yet I am nothing like how I want to be right now – I am a shocking mess, enough to make the true inner me heave whenever I look in the mirror.  But I do feel – why bother when nobody cares and you’re just spending money on your looks that you can’t afford?

I spruce myself up occasionally but it doesn’t get a reaction from anyone around here, not even Paul.

I am embarrassed to say, my depression got so bad in 2016 I found it hard to get the motivation to do basic things like brush my hair etc. around the house – I wasn’t going out as I was bedbound and so often times I didn’t bother.  It made me go around the twist a bit and I think I went stir crazy, because one day I woke up and decided to literally buzz cut my hair clean off!

With the alopecia I have, I am near wanting to do that again, but scared I’ll regret it, especially as my hair is long now and it’s becoming a pacifier for me to brush my hair through with my fingers when I feel insecure.

I think I am also like a snake – it hurts to admit this, because my mother used to call me that a lot when I was growing up and made me feel guilt, shame and disgust for it. 

Why do I think I am like a snake?

Because when someone hurts me, I am quieter than I used to be – I am more observant and I tend to strike at their weakest moment and strike hard!

I think I am a snake because like a snake I sit in the grass watching my attackers, seeing what they are doing to me or trying to do to me and I am calculating… calculating their next move, then WHAM!  I find out their weakness and it’s not pretty. 

I have always been the quiet observer – as my auntie always said “you’ve got to watch the quiet ones”, she kept warning people not to push me too far as I am one they’ve got to be more careful of!

A snake isn’t untrustworthy; it’s a misunderstood creature because it has a superior intelligence for survival, which is unique in the world.  Because they do strike when you least expect it, because you never respected the snake, you underestimated it – you thought it was small and helpless and an easy touch – but the snake will always show you!

If someone criticises me and I give a small strained smile and go quiet, just understand, you’ve hurt me more than you think.  I tend not to be vocal about my hurt feelings too much with people I hardly know.

But also that same smile can be confusing I guess – because it is the same smile I have when I feel anxious or not very confident.

I am also like an elephant… I never forget – I forgive sometimes – but I never forget and I will always make sure you never forget either, if you’ve ever hurt me!

I am also big and a klutz and I survive with my hearing loss because I rely on vibrations, like elephants do!  I also don’t know my own strength, I am unusually strong really.

I mean, before I got sick I could carry a two hundred a fifty pound man over my shoulder!

I used to have big aspirations as a glamazon strength contest woman, this was a thing in the early 2000s in the UK – like the strongest women in the world contest but they were also glamour pusses too!  Not all of them had grotesquely huge muscles; some looked like normal women, but could bench press three hundred or more pounds.

I got out of that ambition when I was 21 because men found it a turn off.

I still kind of dream about doing something similar again, like I used to dream about being a gladiator or a contestant on that show or a female professional wrestler, yes, these are genuine past ambitions I once had!

I loved fitness a lot and it is something I really want to get back into again in a big way – but again, without other like-minded folk in my life, it’s hard to motivate myself!

I like to think that I could get fit enough again where I could potentially do those things in the future and maybe go on the new show Apocalypse Wow too!

But I can be a bit rough with people and I have been known to break the stems of wine glasses by holding them too tight – really I sometimes wonder if I am half orc or something!

I look big and muscular whether overweight or not and people are often shocked when they hear me talk when I feel anxious or shy, because… yeah… my voice doesn’t match my physique and no… I do not have an annoyingly high pitched voice… I have a really strange calm, soothing voice by all accounts that sounds slightly young, but it’s not high pitched unless I am excited or angry.

The closest British actress I can think of that has a voice similar to me is Camille Codari, she is definitely a close sound alike – Americans will probably know her from the John Goodman and Peter O’Toole movie King Ralph!  But also Jackie Tyler from Dr Who; I can be a sociopath at times and put on voices depending on the situation, I am self-conscious of my childish common natural voice, so I do try and suppress it a lot.

My grandma did a lot of elocution lessons on me as I was growing up and so I do know how to talk more mature and aristocratic when I need to and keep it up for quite some time!  It was an essential survival tactic I needed as I was growing up in mixed religious and class cultures.

I can put on a voice that does suit my looks but it is the kind of voice that gets you noticed in public and I don’t like that – it’s a rough and ready school ma’am type of voice, that sounds like I won’t have any funny business!  Lol!  That voice can sound reminiscent of Pam Ferris or Martita Hunt, scary contrast if you ask me!

But there you go me in animal form.

A sleepy explanation

I have many projects on the go at once and so this category will get full quite quickly!

I tend to concentrate on up to three ideas at a time for bursts of up to one month, but I do still add to other projects outside of this.  I have a huge amount of unfinished ideas and some that are finished but are in storage for a later date when I will read them again with fresh eyes and determine if they need altering or not!

If a project is marked down as 1.2 or something like that, this means that this project is part of a series I am working on, I have some series I am working on but generally I prefer writing standalones.

My vampires are considered both series and standalones, because some vampire ideas are far removed from my main series or rather saga idea in the first place.

I am updating my categories along with my diary entries for Wednesdays that will start back up again, because I am determined to show people how much I do actually work towards my creativity, regardless of finished products!

To me it is lovely to have a final finished product that I can show an agent eventually, but right now that is neither my primary goal nor motivation!

My goal is to get into the swing of writing full-time – a set amount of words daily to a fixed project in order for me to feel like a real professional author.  To me that goal is to have one project that has had at least 3k words added per day consistently and not to write just a little each day to many projects.  Though added words per day to many projects is something I will never get out of, it is the focus on one particular project having 3k words per day that is my intended focus!

If you follow my drift?

I am exceedingly tired today so I may not make that much sense, because I didn’t sleep until 5am and I only had four hours of disturbed sleep and no access to caffeine for the past thirty hours!

So to break it down, my primary goal is to focus on adding 3k words to one story per day until it is finished without breaking that streak!  Once I manage to do this and finish a novel without breaking my daily streak, then I will feel like a professional author!

Though if I never accomplish that, do not fear – because this is has no basis on whether or not I approach an agent or a publisher first, no, no, no!  I will still do that, but I will not feel confident in my professionalism that is all!

Another thing that will add to me feeling professional will be the day I am actually writing 3k words to a project in an unbroken streak and also editing another finished project by at least three chapters per day – I am serious when I say I am trying to become full-time here!

Before the 11^th November 2021 I would work approximately six hours per week towards my writing, that wasn’t my blog!  Since November 11^th 2021, I am now writing or working towards my projects approximately four hours per day, broken up, so it is not full-time yet, to me!

I am forcing myself to do this, even when bed bound sick, I am taking work with me on the laptop in bed and with handwritten notes too!

I am determined to do this!

I think it is because my brain is so filled with so many ideas and unfinished projects that it is starting to taunt me, make me crazy a bit – so I need to get on with it!

I actually had a dream last night that various characters from my own stories were mocking and laughing at me because of my excuses, this was weird shit and I just don’t have time for that kind of thing in my dream time!

By and large this post was meant to tell you that I have so many ideas on the go and I do not struggle for ideas at all – but I am beating them off with a stick and I would like to share what those stories may contain without giving too much away! 

If you find an idea you like, let me know, it will really help to motivate me more to write it, if I feel someone out there likes the sound of it!

I will write it anyway, but at a slower pace, you have no idea how fast I can work when I feel like someone is waiting for it or there is a deadline set by someone outside of myself!

Honestly, I am a workaholic, especially if I know that my work pleases another!

I know I sound needy right now, but I am being honest, I work best when other people’s expectations are higher than my own regarding my work, I am like this in everything in my life!

As I think I have mentioned before, I live for others, I don’t live for myself!

Happy reading everyone!

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?