Hi lovelies, finally an update! It’s a bit all over the place because my memory isn’t great at the moment but this explains what I’ve been up to and how my health has been.
Vlog
Update – Why I’ve Been Unable to Post for 18 Months (05/12/23) – Video Post
For the last 18 months, I’ve not felt able to record or post vlogs because of something that happened last year. This video explains what happened and why I didn’t share about it. The vlog I mention in the video is linked in the description box.
Update – MHBlog Awards, Therapy and Exhaustion (30/05/22) – Video Post
An update about the Mental Health Blog Awards which I’m in the nominations for (links below), how therapy is going and the exhaustion which mental illness brings.
Mental Health Blog Awards Voting link – https://s.surveyplanet.com/nr1nm3nv
Mental Health Blog Awards Nominees – https://www.mhblogawards.com/2022-nominees
Voting closes on the 6th of June 2022.
Update – Anxiety and Therapy (23/04/22) – Video Post
An update about how I’ve been for the last 6 months, my anxiety worsening and starting therapy recently.
Update – Mental Health Blog Awards, Anxiety and Physical Health (18/10/21) – Video Post
In July, I was lucky enough to win Vlogger of the Year in the Mental Health Blog Awards, here I talk about that, the worst period of anxiety I’ve possibly ever experienced and the physical health problems I’m currently trying to deal with.
New Year Update – January 2020
So, it’s 2020, my brain still can’t get used to that but hopefully it’ll catch on soon. Happy New Year! It’s been an absolute age since I blogged or vlogged. I had intended to update you all shortly after I moved but that was all just crazy and now here we are, nearly 3 months on. I’m never sure why I make these plans and goals because I know when I make them that I’ll never manage to stick to them and lo and behold, I haven’t! As ever, there ends up being so much to tell you all and so much happening that I often get overwhelmed or put off by the sheer amount of stuff to try and get out and so I put it off. But I’m finally here writing and hopefully making sense.
The biggest change and update is that Joe and I bought a flat and have moved. We bought at the end of October, I spent the whole of that week frantically decorating so that it was ready for us to move into and 8 days after buying, we moved in with help from family and friends. Unfortunately, we moved during a storm with 60mph winds and sideways rain so we did have a few casualties in our possessions but mostly it went fine, especially under the circumstances! It’s been quite a whirlwind since then. We’ve had various issues with the previous owner that have really taken the shine and excitement out of moving. We’re hoping that most of those major issues are now dealt with and we’re finally starting to calm down and enjoy the place but even on completion day we had some horrid news that we had to pay an extra £5200 that we were unaware of ahead of time thanks to various misunderstandings so we didn’t have a typical completion day at all and we spent a lot of that day in shock. It meant that we didn’t take any photos of us, no champagne to toast such a monumental day. I’m really sad that it all transpired the way it did because we’ll never get that back. It was completely understandable given that so much bad stuff was going on but it’s such a shame that we’ll never have those experiences at our first home again. We didn’t do it when we moved in together 6 years ago because we moved into the property on different days and this time it was because of shock. We completely overlooked our 8-year Anniversary the week after we moved in too because we were just so swamped with tasks to do in between Joe starting a new job and trying to navigate our way around the insane number of boxes that were piled up to head height in every room.
Since then, we’ve settled a lot more and although we’re not completely sorted out, we’re mostly unpacked and hopefully by next week things should be much more under control after a furniture delivery at the end of this week. We’ve had various issues to contend with including problems with windows that we weren’t aware of, various bodged jobs that we’ve discovered and bailiffs turning up at our door on my birthday, the week before Christmas, seeking out the previous owner. It’s not been the best and it’s meant that I’ve not really talked to most people about our move or shared anything on social media because most people are so excited and full of positivity in this situation and that’s not been the case for us. I’ve found it quite isolating to be honest because I had struggled so much in the lead up to the move after it was dragged out for an additional 2 months beyond what we were expecting. I was thinking I’d be sighing with relief as soon as my solicitor phoned and I could collect the keys and that was exactly what happened until 4 hours later when we found out about the huge fee we had to pay the following month. I was all ready to give the flat back and unpack our stuff at home and just live out our days there. Ultimately, it’s all worked out. At least I think it has, I say that quite tentatively currently because it’s not been that long and with the amount of random, unexpected curve balls that have been thrown our way recently, I’m not holding my breath that we’re beyond all of that yet. But hopefully we are and if so, then it was worth it and it’s worked out. Though it has put us off moving for a lot of years and it has made us less trustful of other people thanks to how much our seller has messed us about.
The positive things of living here are that the flat is larger so there is more space for our stuff and I feel much less claustrophobic and trapped. The space also means there’s more room for me to sort through my possessions and hopefully clear out some of those at a later point. I was able to decorate with the colours that we’d chosen ourselves and those have worked out really nicely and I’m really proud of the job I did and how homely and “us” it feels. It’s also so quiet here. I really struggle with noise sensitivity and we had pretty noisy neighbours at our last flat and it’s so much quieter here. There’s a real sense of community here too, our neighbour opposite is an absolute sweetie and really looks out for us – we were out for the day on my birthday and he heard the postman knocking and getting no answer at ours so he went out and requested the postman leave our parcels with him to save us a trip to collect them from the post office (he didn’t know it was my birthday and we have no arrangement with him for this, he just did it off his own back). We got 3 Christmas cards through our door from other flats having only lived here for 7 weeks; the same number we received in the 6 years we lived at our last flat. People say hello and talk to each other, it’s tidy and clean in the communal areas, almost everyone had a wreath on their door at Christmas. It’s just lovely! We have really nice views over a local park and we’re not properly overlooked in any of our rooms. We’ve got huge windows that let in lots of light, despite no longer being south facing and we have gas central heating, instead of night storage heaters and that’s just such a luxury! It’s hard to explain and probably doesn’t make much sense but despite my anxiety being worse at the moment, I feel calmer here. I don’t feel as stressed or unsettled in myself and I feel more able to keep on top of cleaning and tidying and managing the flat than I did before.
That being said, my anxiety is worse and in particular my agoraphobia. I don’t have any specific plans or reasons to go out and so often, I just don’t. I didn’t go out this year until the 12th and that was only because I realised I’d not been out yet and forced myself to go with Joe to collect my mum and her partner from the airport. I’m trying to psych myself up to go out more often but even when I think about that I can feel my brain pulling away and coming up with reasons not to. I’ve also hit my yearly period of questioning my life, my purpose and what on earth I’m going to do with myself and my time. As ever, I feel completely lost and useless as well as bored and I’m spending an inordinate amount of time trying to work out what direction I want to go in and if there’s any way at all of earning money and not feeling so rubbish about myself! I have various plans that I’m really hoping I might actually get on with this year and I’m desperately hoping that some of those might bring in some money. It’s hard not to blame yourself or lower your self-esteem when you see other people succeeding in so many ways and doing all of the things you want to be able to do and realising you’re nowhere near being able to do any of that. I spent time last week researching how to train in various types of therapy and realised that the chance of that happening without a lottery win is minute. It’s SO expensive and time consuming to train and my brain so often feels like complete mush that I have no idea how I’d ever go back to formal education despite absolutely loving learning. I’ve already mostly ruled out my dream career of becoming a Clinical Psychologist because it’s so competitive, high stress and difficult to get into but I had really hoped that I’d be able to become a therapist and now even that is looking further and further away. I’m a very goal-orientated person and find that life makes far more sense when I know what I’m working towards and how I intend to get there. I’m also very career-orientated, especially as I don’t plan to have children and so most of my goals are focused on work and how I’m going to spend my time and so when I have huge wobbles or my plans fall through or change drastically, I really struggle to make sense of that or catch up. It makes me feel really lost and very panicked because I don’t cope well with the unknown and I’m very aware that I’m turning 30 at the end of this year and my life is absolutely not how I’d hoped or planned and I seem to be drifting further and further from what I wanted. It doesn’t feel like my life is changing direction, it doesn’t feel like I’m now travelling on a different path towards a different goal. It just feels like I’m lost and drifting aimlessly but further away from all of the things I’d dreamed of. I keep hoping that my purpose will reveal itself, that I’ll stumble upon a career that’s meant for me, that doesn’t require thousands of pounds of investment or unbearable pressure and demands on my already frazzled mind. I’m not sure that I believe it’ll happen but I can’t keep torturing myself by researching things at the moment, only to find out just how unattainable my chosen options are so I’m trying to just focus on the present and do the best I can with that.
Another thing I’ve noticed recently is that my ability to start things is hugely diminished. “Well” me would be shocked at how much “ill” me changes and how differently my brain works. I’ve always been someone who thought it was better to start, and to try, than to not give it a go for fear of failing or not finishing. At the moment, I struggle to start most things because I’m so worried about failing or making a mess of them. A lot of this is down to lack of confidence which is an ever-present problem for me. I question myself about everything and it’s what’s stopped me from blogging or vlogging and what’s stopped me from reviewing, doing any of my hobbies or beginning anything new because I talk myself out of it all before I’ve even started. I’m never sure how to get beyond this. I try to just ignore it and start anyway but I end up freaking out and not doing it because there are so many ways in which I could mess up or regret starting. It’s infuriating but very real at the moment. I’m trying very hard to push past it and do the things that I can do in the hopes that I’ll work up to the scarier things at a later point. It’s still early days since we moved and I know I’ve had to deal with a huge amount of changes over the last few months. It always takes me a long time to process and catch up but it does feel very unfair to be plagued by so much self-doubt and lack of ability to ‘do’ things because it means I don’t have much distraction or much to show myself about my abilities or uses. Hopefully I’ll find a use and purpose for myself again soon.
All sorts of other stuff has been going on since I last posted an update but this is already massive and before I lose confidence and chicken out from posting this I’m going to take a deep breath, press upload, and send it out into the ether. I’m working on psyching myself up to post more often both about mental health and about colouring and I’m hoping to one day be brave enough to do a video tour of our new flat. I have no idea when any of that will happen; it always takes way longer than I plan or hope for but know that I’m working on it and I hope to be back soon!
* The photo was taken during the first week of owning our flat during a quick lunch break whilst decorating my bedroom
Video Post – Unboxing How to Draw Inky Wonderlands (UK and US Editions) by Johanna Basford
Disclaimer – Please read this disclosure about my use of affiliate links which are contained within this post.
Today I received the most exciting parcel of goodies from Johanna Basford. Check out my video to see what was inside, see the UK and US edition of her new book, How to Draw Inky Wonderlands, due out in October, and to hear me get so excited that I stop being able to make sense. Reviews, flip throughs and comparison videos and written posts will be coming soon!
If you’d like to pre-order a copy it’s available here:
Amazon UK – How to Draw Inky Wonderlands
Book Depository Worldwide – https://www.bookdepository.com/How-Draw-Inky-Wonderlands-Johanna-Basford/9780753553190/?a_aid=colouringitmom
Confidence
This is a word that comes up on my blog time and time again and in fact in conversation with me too. I seem to somehow come across as this confident, extroverted person who means business and even in the throes of an anxiety disorder I exude this to others. I have literally no idea how. You see, deep down, in fact not that deep, you barely even need to scratch the surface most days, I’m a bundle of nerves, worries and self-doubt. I have absolutely no idea how I manage to cover this up and yet time and time again I’m described as confident despite feeling anything but. I don’t overly mind this but I do sometimes worry, especially when I’m doing videos, that people think that I’m somehow different from them because although I’m ill, I’m still confident, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Although I’m good at talking and am known for my inability to shut up, ever, I spend a lot of time worrying about it, analysing what I’ve said afterwards and time just rolling my eyes at myself and wishing I’d said something different or just stopped talking altogether. I annoy myself often and yet somehow I can’t stop and carry on talking rubbish. Just because I talk a lot and am viewed as loud doesn’t mean that I have any self-assurance about the value of what I’m saying or my authority to say it.
You probably wouldn’t believe the amount of time that I spend comparing myself to others and wishing I was different. If I spent half of that amount of time actually doing something productive or changing myself in a specific way then chances are I’d be more like the people I so admire. But I’m never sure in what way to even change, what bits to add, what bits to take away, and so I just continue to compare and wish I was more like them. It probably sounds ridiculous and I always feel that way when I talk to people about it in my real life but I don’t even feel like I’m ill in the right way. There seem to be acceptable ways of being ill and unacceptable ways and I’m pretty sure that I’m mostly in the latter camp. I’m not half as productive or effective as the majority of people I know who are mentally ill and in terms of social media advocation, I’m really low down. I don’t have the energy, capacity or will power to stick to a posting schedule and I have literally no idea how other bloggers and mental health advocates manage to create the sheer volume of content that they do. I often look at the list of posts that I’ve published for ideas and come to a halt because I just don’t know what to write about anymore, I’ve done the big and obvious things like describing what it’s like to live with depression and anxiety, what my appointments with my psychiatrist have been like and sharing updates when I’ve had big positive or negative changes in my health but apart from that my ideas seem to have run out. For someone who absolutely always has something to say, I seem to have a lot less to write than I’d like to admit.
I often wonder why this is and I think it’s because of the topic of this exact post – confidence. So often, I’ll talk myself out of even starting a post because I question it or decide that no one will care or I won’t do the topic justice. I spend a colossal amount of time now wondering who the hell I think I am and why anyone would care what I have to say when I’m one tiny voice in a sea of much more competent bloggers. They are able to function, even to make a career out of this, to get paid for their publishing, create regular content to an actual schedule and even go viral! I know it’s silly to be competitive about blogging but I tend to wonder what I’m doing wrong and what I could change in order to reach more people or make more of an impact. I’m not interested in fame or getting rich from this but I’m desperate to make a bigger and more meaningful difference than I currently am and I can never work out an effective way of doing so. We all go through blips of low confidence and second-guess ourselves but I seem to be the complete opposite and have blips of belief in myself followed by weeks and months of not even wanting to try because I just know that I’m not capable and feel like I’ve got nothing valuable to say. Lack of confidence regularly goes hand in hand with setting the bar increasingly high and so now I feel extreme pressure to post something really valuable and worthwhile because it’s been such a long time between each post and so I really need to share something worthy of people bothering to read it. The more I think like that, the harder it is to conjure up an idea that could possibly match those criteria and hence I go for months at a time of posting nothing because nothing ever makes the cut. I even start posts and they just get lost in a drafts folder, often never to be seen again. I wish I wasn’t such a perfectionist and would just share more frequently in the hopes that doing so would help me get beyond this. I try to talk myself into sharing some of the posts that I don’t think are up to scratch or finishing off some of the half-written drafts that I’ve lost count of the number of. I get to the point of thinking that any video, no matter how random or disjointed would be better than sharing absolutely nothing but then I get whatever the YouTube equivalent of stage fright is and just can’t be coherent. It’s a real nightmare! I’m lonely, I’m isolated and I know I’m one of what must be thousands of people in the world who feel the same way. I want to be able to voice our experience, to shine a light on what it’s like and to get some of the thoughts that spend hours swirling round and round in my head, out and into the world in the hopes that it might quieten my mind just a little and have at least one of you reading or watching saying “hey, that happens to me too, I’m not alone”. But the lack of confidence renders me mute. You’re probably sat reading this half shouting at the screen that it clearly doesn’t and this must be a lie because there you are reading a post that I’ve written but this was actually written ages ago and it’s taken until now to muster up the courage to post it. This lack of confidence isn’t an act and it’s something that try as I might, I’ve not won the battle with for over a year and I see no end to that arriving anytime soon. I question myself constantly, I try to talk myself into posting something, anything, and yet the vast majority of the time I don’t even get as far as starting before I’ve talked myself out of it and decided it’s pointless and no one would be interested anyway. Once I finally have written something I usually feel that it’s not coherent, is far too negative or just sounds whiny and after getting a particularly hurtful comment from someone I know after sharing one of my last blog posts, my confidence is even lower and I second-guess myself even more.
My hope in posting this post, albeit quite late, is that it might spur me on with continuing rather than starting again. I continually try to not leave huge breaks between posts and then time just passes by and my anxiety about needing to post something spectacular increases to an unbearable point. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve opened this document and wanted to just post it on my blog and then chickened out. Normally when this happens I’ll get a friend or family member to read it and check it’s ok and get them to make suggestions for edits but I don’t even have the confidence to do that. I finally asked my partner earlier in the week to read this but he forgot and I’ve not been brave enough to ask him since. He never judges me and always tries to boost my confidence but I’m so worried this is bad or whiny that I can’t face getting someone to check. By the time this is posted I’ll have almost certainly had to psych myself up, hold my breath and mentally scream at myself to just hit the damn ‘publish’ button and I’ll probably feel sick for ages afterwards waiting to see what reaction it gets and whether I’m going to be criticised again. I think I’ll always be amazed when people describe me as confident when a constant stream of all of this is permanently running through my mind.
I normally try to end posts on a poignant note but I’m all out of those. I’ll try to be back soon with more posts and videos. If you have any suggestions or requests then do let me know in the comments or via the contact me tab where you can contact me privately. I don’t have any ideas for future posts at the moment so any ideas are gratefully received.
Update – Caring for Relatives, Life Changes and More (1st May 2019) – Video Post
This video was recorded on the 1st of May, 2019. It provides an update on where I’ve been, how I’ve been and what I’ve been doing that’s kept me busy and away from recording or writing. I talk about being a carer for my Grandad and what life is like now I’m not one anymore and how lost I’m currently feeling.
Five Years On – Five Years Of…..
I never know where to even start these posts. You all know by now that I’m one for anniversaries but as more of them pass, I’m increasingly put off and seem to mentally avoid them. I haven’t even known what to title it because how on earth do you sum up five years of being ill? How do you title something detailing what it’s been like to be unwell for such a long period of time?
Whenever I write a blog post, I try to have a plan. I’m quite a spontaneous writer, I break all of the writing and blogging rules about having a word limit and a posting schedule. As you’ll have seen, I post as and when something comes to me and sometimes that’s multiple times a week and other times I go for months without having anything to share at all. But, I do usually have a reason to post and something specific I want to say and that’s why these anniversary posts are so difficult to write because usually the only reason to write them is the date and because I feel I ‘should’ have something to say rather than actually having anything to say.
For the most part, I try to ignore the time of year, ignore the dates and don’t let them mean anything. But five years feels like a hell of a milestone and feels like I really should be saying something even though I don’t actually know what that is. My life is currently in upheaval with a huge amount of change going on and even more on the way. My grandparents who are a huge part of my life and who I’ve spent increasing amounts of time with over the last few years are moving away, it’s not that far but for me it’s a world away. I’m currently at their house at least 4 days a week, for about 30 hours as I’m a carer for my Grandad and in the next few weeks they’ll be an hour’s drive away and I currently can’t get there. I may discuss all of that at a later point but those are the basics and it’s the reason why I’ve been so quiet on social media and my blogs and YouTube Channel because all of my mental capacity is taken up being there or processing everything that’s going on and changing. It’s a hell of a lot to take in.
In some ways, I’ve been really glad of the distraction because although I’ve noticed the date approaching of me being ill for five years, I’ve not really had a chance to focus on that or be sad or really feel anything about it. I’m quite grateful for that. Five years is such a long time, it’s over a sixth of my life and I still don’t know how or when I’ll get better. Being a carer and being needed has definitely helped me to push myself harder than I thought it possible to push and I’ve certainly been noticing the changes that that has caused in my confidence levels and belief in my ability. However, it’s a very specific set of circumstances that those changes have occurred within and I feel very worried and doubtful that I can translate those to any other situations. I’m not being negative, I’m going to do everything in my power to continue to go out and not go backwards when my grandparents move and I no longer ‘need’ to go out but even though I’m managing that, I still can’t just make myself go for a walk or set foot inside a shop. There is such a mental block in my brain and somehow ‘needing’ to do something overrides that a bit but as soon as the task is a choice, I can’t do it. Even artificially ‘needing’ to do something isn’t enough to make me go. There are so many things that I want to do but wanting it isn’t enough to get me out of my front door. The situation with being a carer for my Grandad seems to have special status in my brain and overrides all sorts of things that little else manages to do. Mostly I’m just grateful that it has, that I’ve been able to build up my confidence and start meeting new people (the other carers on the team) and for it not to be so obvious outwardly that I’m suffering so badly with anxiety.
I do worry a lot at the moment about how I’m going to cope once my grandparents leave though, everything in my own life has been on hold since before January because I just can’t concentrate on anything else and some time soon, they just won’t be here anymore and I’ll go from every waking hour, and many asleep hours too, spent thinking about them to this void where they’ll be gone and my brain will probably still be so full that I won’t be able to do anything to redirect or distract myself. I’m trying really hard to be kind to myself, to be forgiving and accepting and just let myself feel whatever comes up but oh my God, it’s exhausting! My emotions are all over the shop and I can’t keep up. I’ve always been quite emotionally stable, often not in a great way but still, I’ve always felt quite stable and so I never know what to do when these periods of turmoil come up and not only is everything in my life changing, I’m also all over the place with my feelings about it all too. I’m worried about the time immediately after they leave. I have so many things and activities and projects to work on but they all seem to require concentration and even the most basic levels of that are out of my reach at the moment. I keep wanting to record videos explaining what this is like to live through because I know I’m not alone in experiencing this but I never get as far as even setting up a tripod and always remember at ridiculous moments when it’s not appropriate to be filming. I also have no idea what would come out of my mouth which is the status quo for me but when my concentration is off, it’s even more of a surprise and I feel like a liability so I tend to just avoid all of that. At least when writing a blog, I can edit it and take chunks out if I really need to, though that is something I try to avoid as I don’t like filtering things.
As you can probably tell, my brain, my thoughts and feelings are all over the place and my life circumstances are too, there is so much change coming up and I don’t know what’s happening from day to day, let alone from month to month. I have a lot of hopes about things I want to do and things I hope to achieve and I’m hoping that maybe once I have more time to myself and once my brain has finally cleared a little that I might be able to concentrate and focus and achieve some of those things. I’m hoping I might also be able to make some more significant and sustained improvements that aren’t so situation-specific. That’s a lot of hoping right there but that’s something I’ve learnt throughout being ill, I can’t plan, I can’t expect or demand but I can hope and I put all of my energy into that and then trying to make those hopes come true without placing expectations or time limits on it. It means that I’m always working and travelling in the right direction and not failing just because I’ve not achieved something yet.
Five years on, I’m not where I hoped or expected to be, but I’m still here, I’m still fighting and that’s enough for me.
In The Midst Of Madness 