NYE,

New Year is not my favourite time of year. This year I had plans, but they got cancelled what felt like pretty last minute, so instead I'll be at home making sure that the fireworks don't drive my dog crazy, but the truth is it's making me feel more than a little bit crappy. 

People like to think of New Year as a new beginning and the chance for a whole new you. For one thing, I hate the pressure of that and for another, tomorrow is just the next consecutive day in my life, where I will be writing the same novel, doing the same job, reading the same book, and, oh, the big difference is I'm diving into Veganuary again, because I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment. I've been going a bit more vegan anyway, but I still don't imagine this will be the moment, or month when it becomes a permanent feature, purely for the fact that I know how difficult I find it. 

Thinking ahead to 2019 though, there is something I'm really excited about and that's my first half marathon. I'm doing it for Macmillan Cancer Support (if you would like to support me in this, thanks, and please head to my Twitter page where there's a link to the Just Giving page) and I'm trying to decide whether to book in a few more runs as well. 

This year has been incredible for several reasons, including finally being trained as a First Aider and Mental Health First Aider, getting to do some amazing things at work that I would have doubted myself for only a few years ago, meeting someone who made me believe in love and romance again (don't judge me because of my age, stuff happened and it broke my spirit) and even though that didn't work out, I have some amazing memories. I went to San Francisco, and I'm not sure that I stopped grinning about it the whole time I was there - except the bit where I stacked it down the Powell BART station stairs; that really hurt. I met some incredible people this year, read some really incredible books and spent some amazing time with my canine counterpart. 

That being said, I also had a really crappy year with my mental health. Some of this year has been really difficult, and there were plenty of times where I wasn't sure it was ever going to get better, but it did and I'm still here. See you all next year. 

C

It Gets Better, It Gets Worse,

Sometimes I like re-reading old blogs because it reminds me that things get better, even when I read about times I was feeling worse. If there was an uphill from there, there can be one from here, too. You may have read the one about the Mental Health First Aid awareness course, or you may not, or maybe you just don't remember it, but the upshot was it was a difficult day because I had to think about why someone committed suicide and how they did it, and how seven years later, it still hurts that they made that choice. It was a tough day, but it had nothing on the actual practitioner course for me. 

Let me start this by saying that I would never try to dissuade anyone from attending an MHFA practitioner course. There are a lot of people in crisis out there and there are not enough of us. We cannot fix everything, we cannot help everyone, but we can listen and at the moment it could feel like the very opposite of a brief shout into the void (like a small ear to a great cacophony of sound or something similar...) My personal experience of the course was a bit difficult, more than a little bit actually, but at the same time, there was a heck of a lot of value in it. 

So, firstly, I am well aware of the fact that I can be my own worst enemy. Talk about having Generalised Anxiety Disorder can be quite difficult for me sometimes, but I do it. Sometimes I do it because I want to encourage other people to be able to talk about it. Sometimes I do it so that other people can understand what it looks like, or feels like and such. Sometimes I do it because it is the only way that I can tell people what it is I need from them in order to be okay. 

When you're talking about Mental Health in that sort of capacity, people need to know what it looks like hands on. We were really lucky, in some ways, to have people with a few different conditions involved in the course. We all talked about our experiences, our demons, and everything and it helped. Those who don't have problems, or have only experienced short-lived problems in the past made sure we felt safe, and what we were saying was valuable. Well, most of them anyway. 

It's hard because sometimes people are told to get themselves onto one of these courses to try and deal with people better and actually, they then say something stupid that makes the course harder for other people on it. That's kind of what happened to me. 

When I'm upset, or rather my anxiety is running the show, I need to chew things. Mostly it's my nails, or it's gum, hard chocolate or crisps or nuts also works, but I need something tough. I have a clicky thing (like eternal bubble wrap) and I had purposely worn one of my big hoodies that I can just dive inside of, and it's like my own cocoon. I struggled to make anything work right then, but I grabbed as much as I could chew on during the lunch break and then headed back into the room when someone asked me what I wasn't going to eat today. 

Eating disorders are anxiety based. There are times I struggle with food. It can be a consistency issue, it can be a heat thing, a flavour thing and all sorts of other things. Sometimes I have to remind myself to eat. Sometimes I have to remind myself that forcing myself to eat can make me sick, and not eating can make me sick and I have to balance everything against each other and try my hardest to be okay. Sometimes I eat the only things that I know my stomach won't freak out at because anxiety hits my stomach and causes IBS symptoms. I went through a period where I was sick no matter what I ate because of how stressed and anxious I was. If you're wondering how I managed through that, I drank a lot of Lucozade and I struggled. Until I sat in that course, I didn't really talk about it, which was partly because I didn't want people to watch me - I didn't want people to comment on it. I control it pretty damn well; I don't need anyone else looking over me to make sure I'm eating enough and the right things. 

But then someone commented, it was meant to be a joke, about what was I not going to eat today. And suddenly, after just having to listen to someone talking about eating disorders and sitting there chewing my fingernails, feeling like I wasn't sure if I could get through the rest of the session, I was having to think about telling that person, and all of the people that they had said it in front of, that my eating habits were not to be the subject of jokes or discussions, but actually, yes, I struggle with it, and pointing it out only made that even harder. It made for the hardest couple of days I had had in a few months and it made me want to scream. 

I wrote yesterday that I was feeling content, and I was. I felt like today was a good day, and it was, but I have been carrying it around that the comment hurt since it happened and it's hard to shake something like that. I'm hoping that writing it down means I can try and let it go now, even if just a little bit. 

The Recipe for Happiness,

If you've clicked on this link hoping for something akin to exactly what the title suggests, I am afraid you may be bitterly disappointed. The first thing I need to get out of the way is the idea that happiness can be achieved by a list of a few things, the same for everyone and puff, everything is perfect. Maybe not quite boiled down to this extent, but a lot of people seem to believe that this is the case. 

Happiness is something that I think about a lot, and it's something I've read a lot about. One of the reasons for that is that I have been working in Mental Health for approximately the last fifteen months (a year and a quarter - however you prefer to read it, the time line is the same) and part of it is the fact that I have my own mental health diagnosis. Something I have learnt because of both of those things is that happiness can be an elusive beast and we seem all to able to look back and see happiness in the past, but only be able to see our current misery. There is a reason for this. 

One of my big beliefs - other than God, true love and the fairies who are currently irritated that we don't have a garden - is that it is almost impossible to be permanently happy. That's not something which saddens me at all. I've studied philosophy for long enough to understand and accept the theory that "bad things" can simply be a privation of the thing we want. Darkness is simply the lack/absence of light, evil is the lack/absence of goodness (though I am far less sold on this one in particular) but I don't think that depression, or sadness, or any other synonyms you wish to use are solely down to a lack of happiness. I think they're something different and they're actually down to a lack of contentment.

The easiest way to describe it, I think, is that happiness is like an orgasm. For most people, it takes time, it takes some effort, whether by yourself or with someone else, and it's relatively short lived. Now, that's not to say that sex is boring, it's not to say that there is no pleasure or worth in it, but it's like happiness is that pinnacle moment, so really we need to look for something else. What is that feeling that we have before hand, at the same time as and following that pinnacle moment? That's when it's important to be content. 

I've heard of people talking about contentment as a bad thing. It's almost as though you're choosing to "settle" for something which is "lesser". There is a reason I have marked those two words out. There have been studies that show that the environment that we have created for ourselves within our society isn't structured to bring about happiness, and I think that part of that is because we have been designed to not be content. Think about it - how far out of your home can you get before you see an advertisement? And what is that advertisement there to do? To sell you insurance - firstly they've got to convince you that it's possible bad things will happen, and insurance is the only way to cope. How about make up? First, they have to convince you that the way you look anyway isn't good enough. Okay, what about clothes and cars and stuff? You need to be convinced that you either don't have enough stuff or it's the wrong stuff. It's the out of date stuff. Hurry up, get the next thing or you'll be left behind. We're in this environment where it's not about having enough to be content, or to be able to live easily or anything like that - there's a pressure to earn more money, to spend more money, to have more stuff and then to display it to everyone. How on Earth is that going to make anyone happy? It's even more momentary, even more fleeting, because you get the thing and then minutes later it's no longer good enough. 

I don't want to sounds like one of those pompous idiots who have revelations in the shower, but I was sat in my reading chair (the acquisition of which did actually provide me immense happiness, partly because it was cheap, it was second hand and it wasn't leather and also it was so perfectly the vision of what I wanted that I had to pinch myself to show I wasn't dreaming) and I was reading Jojo Moyes Me Before You and I realised that, as little as two months ago, I had been sat around elsewhere in the flat and I had been listless and restless and unable to decide what to do, but had no motivation to do anything. It was partly my diagnosis, it was partly my medication to deal with that condition and it was partly this idea that I was looking for something quick to make me happy. Even today, I was sat there wanting to devour that book and get to the ending - partly, I believe, because it is an excellent novel and I just love every second of it, but also partly because I am not perfect, and I think finishing the book will make me happy - but I could feel myself smiling. Granted, I wasn't over the moon elated, but I was, and am, content that I don't need to do anything more with my weekend than sit in a chair that I love, reading a book that I love, and I don't need to get out of my pjs yet, because I am content in this moment. Now maybe that's because it's the post-NaNoWriMo high or maybe because I spent some time with friends watching Christmas movies yesterday or maybe it's because I start a new job tomorrow, but I would like to think it's also a little bit because I've accepted that not every day can be an adventure, and actually, I can be happy right here. 


Also: Sorry I haven't been writing here a lot. There's a lot that I have wanted to write, but my anxiety has got in the way. I think I'm doing better now, so might be around a bit more. Catch you later. C x 

The Anxious Writer,

I'm sat here thinking about how tired I am already and the temptation is to go to sleep, but if I get into bed for a nap now then I won't get up until the morning and I really want to start writing tonight, because I finally have a goal in mind. The problem is that the anxiety is kicking my ass. 

Part of it is anxiety that I won't finish NaNoWriMo, even though I also know that that is not an option for me these days. Part of it is the anxiety that comes of looking at a blank page, but the great thing about the new software I downloaded is that it let's you put a graphic as the background stationary instead of just a blank page, which is comforting, and relaxing or could be inspiring. I'm really concerned that I may have taken on too much this year, but I also know that I need to use NaNo to build myself back to being okay. I need to do this to build my confidence back, because it took a massive knock recently. 

The thing is that anxiety does a couple of things when you're writing - some are horrendous, like making you doubt every single word. Some of the things it does though, some are amazing. I channel my anxiety through my writing. Writing soothes me and makes me deal with things that I haven't wanted to. It helps me to process things and that's what I love about it. Though, it does make me very snacky for sugary foods and coffee which is less than ideal since caffeine and sugar put anxiety into overdrive. 

This NaNoWriMo is going to be fun...

In a Perfect World,

I had this dream once, that I woke up and started writing, and everything just flowed perfectly. It sucks that this is most often a dream and not a reality, but in some ways it does have to feel like work. It doesn't need to feel like exerting a lot of effort, but if my emotions aren't involved, the characters are flat and that is fatal to a novel. 

30 days of the year my only real focus is writing. It is the centre of my universe, but that doesn't mean that the rest of the world stops spinning. In fact, as I have already admitted, this year is going to be busier than most. 

Tomorrow night will be the night to start it all and it will be like parachuting into the middle of the madness. And I just can't wait. 

A Girl's Gotta Do,

Sometimes in life there are things that you have to let go of, dreams that have to float away, and then sometimes there are things that you just have to do. 

Nine years ago I started "competing" in NaNoWriMo and a couple of years later heard about the wonders of The Night of Writing Dangerously. It's a fundraising event, but also a ridiculous amount of fun for all involved, but it's in San Francisco and there were always other things which seemed to take priority. Unfortunately this year will now be the last Night of Writing Dangerously, and I half convinced myself I could let it go. 

The problem was, I just couldn't. I'm really glad that I had the option to not give up on it, but it is also completely crazy to think that in less than five weeks time, I'm going to be flying to San Francisco.

I've got a plan for what I'll be doing for the week that I'm there (not in ridiculous amounts of detail, but enough to know what I'm doing) and it's kind of incredible. I'm going to be able to go to several NaNo events and have some time to explore a city that I've always had a bit of a romantic fascination with. 

I might not end up writing very much in terms of blogs when I'm over there, but I'm hoping to get a lot of writing done! Anyway, more on this later! 

It's That Time of Year Again,

Ah, October. How have you come around so fast? I would swear it was only a small number of weeks ago that we were ushering in 2018 and now we're almost putting on it's coat ready for it to leave. Whilst I will, probably in December, be writing a 'where did the year go' post, this is not it. 

I've always loved October. It's my brother's birthday, which was amazing when I was little because my parents called it my un-Birthday (and the same for my brother on my birthday) so we got a present on each other's birthdays. It was kind of cool. After that my favourite holiday was always Halloween. I loved dressing up as "something scary" and I loved the chocolate and the sweets. I still love Halloween. I still love dressing up. I never really hit the Americanised "slutty animal" costume phase, but my costumes tend to be comical in a different way these days, such as the university Pikachu, because a friend was dressed as Ash and it gave my an excuse to jump on his back and scream Pikachu all evening. I stopped short of getting those zapper rings and giving people electric shocks, though deeply regretted it later because that would have been awesome. 

Several years ago though, when I was about 16, I met my soulmate in competition form and started a long term relationship with National Novel Writing Month. It takes over my life in November and has been responsible for some of the very best (and one of the very worst) times in my life. The best advice I can ever give anyone - BACK UP YOUR NOVEL!! CONSTANTLY!! Since that day, October 31st is terrifying and exciting for a whole other reason. As soon as midnight strikes, the witches and wizards and aliens and heart throbs and everything else come out and the literary abandon begins. We do crazy things like eating pizza for breakfast and staying up all night writing. We forsake our communications with friends, family and other loved ones for a single goal - write the novel.

I've started thinking of October now as NaNoAdvent. It is the time where I stock up on pizzas and snacks that will hopefully tide me through at least the first week (though normally I tear through them in a mad panic in the first few hours...)

So this is it - Nano2018 is nearly upon us. It's time to brace yourself!

You Won't Like Me When I'm Angsty,

I'm suddenly hyper aware of how I sometimes write these things in such a rush, and on a computer that doesn't have Grammarly watching for mistakes over my shoulder and it's starting to bother me...

When I get angsty, or passionate or generally riled up about something, punctuation gets missed, spelling is off, and unfortunately I commit the cardinal sin of not closing brackets around separate clauses. I know, it's really triggered. It's horrendous. My only excuse is that I don't realise when I'm doing it!!

Tonight I read back over the post on here that has been read the most times, and for one thing, I would like to apologise most sincerely for all of the errors, but for another, I recognised a passion within myself that is sometimes absent of late. It was both wonderful and heartbreaking to see because the girl that wrote that looks a lot stronger than the girl in the mirror today and that's a very hard reality to face, 

But then I have to remind myself of the conversation that I had with a work colleague today about Parkrun. Some people might want to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, but I want to drag the entire world out of bed and to their local parks for 9am on a Saturday morning and get them to walk, jog or run, even if they don't do the full 5k.

Running is amazing exercise, is great for your mental health and the fresh air is good for you, too. You don't have to love running, you don't even have to like it, you can like seeing the same people week after week, watching them and yourself improve, seeing the community that has been created by some really amazing people. You could tail walk, or be the lead bike, or the photographer and help other people strive to achieve their goal, whether it be to run an ultra marathon or just trim a couple of inches off of their waist line. 

You can bring dogs and kids, even in pushchairs. People of all ages are welcomed and people will support you. Everyone had to find their starting line. It's getting people into parks too, which I hope makes people see the problem that litter causes and makes them clean up after themselves or others, but also, using that green space is a way of protecting it. Okay, having a few hundred runners thundering over sections of grass week on week might not be great for individual blades of grass, but we know that land is at a premium, so it's not too hard to believe parks could be downsized or removed entirely if they are seen to be unused. 

Basically, ParkRun is a healthy, free, family-friendly, fun experience and I can't really see any downside except perhaps the early alarm clock!

Why Do I Have To Write This,

Okay, first thing - I know I don't have to write the blog and I don't have to write about specific subjects, but my God this needs saying over and over and over again and I feel the need to say it. 

When I woke up this morning there was a really great post on my Facebook feed. It was about the way two women had supported each other when they were out at night and they felt they were in a dangerous situation.

I thought it was incredible that, despite being able to leave that situation sooner, the second woman stayed around long enough that she knew the first one, the one who wrote the post, was safe, too, because that is the world that we live in. Women need to be a community. Women need to have each other's backs. Now, that isn't to say that everybody else doesn't need that - different races, religions, sexualities, ages, and list goes on, suffer abuse or vulnerability simply because they left the house. Sometimes it happens before they leave the house. This story should be an inspirational look at community within a vulnerable group and in some ways be celebrated even though we should also be able to hold it up as an example and say that this is what society and rape culture pushes us to. 

Things went downhill really fast when I went on the fool's errand of looking at the comments section. In my total ignorance I was hoping for more similar stories, but what happened was idiots. Idiots are a fact of life, unfortunately, but that doesn't make them an easier cross to bear. 

The main issue seemed to be the idea that these two women have labeled the man who made them uncomfortable as dangerous. Maybe that's the word that the original poster used, I can't remember, but hell if that's the label in your mind then go with it, but I always think of it as that person is a risk. In your mind, you constantly do risk assessments, and where someone falls on that scale of risk assessment means a lot to you and really, unless you go out of your way to tell them where they sit, it shouldn't mean a whole lot to them for them to get offended by it. The only time it should mean a lot to them, is if they think their behavior is fine but they want to reassess so that they don't make the same error again and make someone else feel uncomfortable. This happens, but it's rare. 

So, we're risk-assessing and then we do this thing of either saying, green, everything's cool, or there's something we need to do about this situation to minimize or eliminate that risk. Either it's an amber situation, and you call someone and loudly tell them where you are, or you find someone to be your buddy, or it's a red situation, and you get the hell out of there by the nearest available safe route. You order an Angel Shot or Ask for Angela. You use the escape methods that society is oh so very slowly (painfully, painfully slowly) realizing the need for and you get out of that situation. The labeling of the other person is not what is important right then - the important thing is that YOU FEEL SAFE. And there are people that still don't get that. 

One of the comments and this really makes my blood boil, but one of the comments said, but he's not done anything. Oh, okay, so at one point am I allowed to feel unsafe? What point of him doing something is it acceptable for me to need help to get out of that situation? Is it when he puts his hands on me, whether he thinks it's friendly or not? Is it when he's following me, and I'm thinking, he's going to know where I live. He's going to realize I live alone. Or is it not until he's committed some sort of criminal activity and I'm suffering the consequences. I'm making this first person for a reason. This is always personal. 

How is it acceptable that even in a court of law, we can talk about the way we felt as part of a decision-making process in something as serious as Critical Incidents? We can talk about making a decision based on the information we had at the time, but we can't do that in day to day life? Yes, he's not done anything illegal yet, he's not physically put me in harm's way, but he's also not done anything to make me feel safe. Why should I implicitly trust this person when I feel unsafe and I know that it's likely that he could overpower me if he wanted to. The information I'm working off of might be vague, but whilst some commenters were crying, YOU HAVE NO REASON TO MISTRUST THIS MAN, part of me wanted to and did, and I'm not even sorry, scream back BUT I HAVE NO REASON TO TRUST HIM EITHER! There was a comparison to labeling your male family members as dangerous - SOMETIMES, THEY ARE. 

I'm lucky. The worst we have in my immediate family are some people that are really annoying, but some people are not so lucky. Whether that be the case or not, we should not be required to trust Joe Public because he's not done anything until the point he does. Feeling scared, or nervous or anxious is valid and if you see someone feeling like that you have a choice. I would hope that I try to always go the way of the second woman in this story and help that person to mitigate the risk that they feel, or would do something to make them feel safe. I would hope to always be that person, partly because people have done it for me, and I've seen situations where they haven't. Being overcautious is not a problem. If that's what we need to do to feel safe, why is it seen as one? 

Not a Day for Dancing,

I was going to write this several days ago, but the events of the day stopped me, but I figure I will write it now. 

A few years ago I made the decision that I didn't want to faff about taking the pill because I would forget to take it at the right time, or I'd forget when the week off was supposed to be. It just didn't work for me as my scatterbrained self, so I made the decision to try something a bit more drastic and get a tiny piece of plastic shot into my arm. That's not even me being that dramatic. You get anesthetic stabbed in first - I really don't do needles so this was always going to be me being a bit dramatic - and then it's kind of like a piercing gun, just without it coming out the other side of your arm (thank the gods!)

Well, anyway, these things only last for about 3 years and then you have a decision to make - is it working for you, or are you going to try something different? (Or, of course, do you want kids, which is currently a firm no from me.)

For me, it was a pretty simple decision that I had made months ago and it was one of the things that kicked me up the butt to finally changing my GP. I knew I needed to get this seen to and also the whole vegetarian/blood donor/not being careful of my iron intake causing anemia, but it was probably mainly this... This little thing in my arm means I don't have to be taking pills every day or worrying and it also means I'm not in what was pretty crippling pain one week out of every four. I mean, on the bathroom floor, in the fetal position in the middle of the night kind of pain, so to say that this was an easy decision for me is an understatement. 

Now, saying that I knew what was going to happen to get it changed and it wasn't exactly taking me to my happy headspace, to say the least. Whilst I've previously had to attend A&E for having stuff embedded in my hands (cinder from a disused railway line - there is a good story there, but I'll leave that one for now) I've never had to have an interaction with a scalpel before (at least, not to my memory) and to say that I wasn't looking forward to that bit would be one of this century's biggest understatements. 

If you're squeamish, don't read the next paragraph. Or the one after. Look for the TL;DR.

The theory is that after a local anesthetic is injected into the arm and given a short amount of time to work, a small "nick" is cut into the arm where the previous implant is to expose the end and then this is pulled out before the new implant is put in. The problem I had was that I have gained a good 2-2.5 stone in the last 3 years, so several layers of fat have been deposited on top of the thing, so that small "nick" ended up being my GP digging around in my arm for about ten minutes trying to get to the damn thing and get it out, which also meant that I had a massive bruise where the new one was put into a different place, so it was back to the surface of the skin, as intended. My GP asked me if I wanted to see the old implant, but I was pretty sure I had bled like a stuck pig and, while my fear is not blood, I was doing really well at keeping my vision straight and not feeling like I would lose my stomach contents, so I was more than a little reluctant. 

My GP then puts adhesive stitches over it, then a big plaster and then a bandage around my arm, telling me to leave it there for a week, but be aware of infections and heavy bleeding. She also told me not to run for a week and I had to stop myself from laughing. 

A couple of days in, I got really worried that doing very little with my arm had actually caused the wound to reopen and bleed, so I took all the bandaging off, cleaned it up and redid it, but my big mistake was using micropore to attach one of the bandages. That evening it savagely tore a section of my skin off, and so the zombie bite was complete. Partly a surgical scratch, partly a large colour changing bruise (about the size of a credit card) and partly this new bit where it looks like my skin had fallen off. 

TL;DR It was a bit of a hellish experience, compared to what it should be and it's why I was talking about having a zombie bite on Instagram. 

Whilst it's not an experience I am falling over myself to repeat, what I would say is that I recovered pretty well from it, despite some pain in the first few days, but paracetamol cleared that. I am going to have a small collection of tiny scars down my arm, but it's worth it to have one less worry on my mind. I can just leave it where it is and live my life, and there's a lot to be said for that, even if dancing around my living room like a loon was off the agenda for a few days due to injury.

How to Be a Duck and Not Be a Duck,

I think that the idea of talking about ducks and mental health is quite a nice idea. Maybe I'm wrong, but hear me out (well, read me out, I guess). 

There are two ways I have either heard or used the image of a duck in talking about mental health. 

Duck Number 1

Duck number one is the sort of duck that is very resilient. I'm going to use Daisy Duck as an example, because why not? Daisy Duck let's everything roll off her back. She's a good duck. Everything rolls right off, she rolls with the punches and nothing much really phases her. Being a duck like Daisy is a pretty good place to be, but then you have...

Duck Number 2

Donald Duck. Donald isn't the same stroppy duck he's always been in the cartoons. He's a well turned out duck, a duck that looks well like he's coping. He's bobbing along on the top of the water, and he's looking good, but that's because we're only looking at the surface. Under the surface, Donald's feet are going ten to the dozen to keep him either still or going in the right direction. Donald Duck is struggling and if he keeps going like this he might have a little ducky heart attack and that would be all folks. 

If there was one thing I could say to everyone about mental health it would be, you don't have to be like Donald Duck. It's so tempting. Unfortunately even now there is a big bloody stigma around mental health. It's getting better, but the temptation is still to hide it. We're expending so much energy treading water that we haven't got time to recover, but it's fine because it looks like we're coping. Let me spell this out for you very clearly - THIS IS NOT OKAY! 

A lot of people with mental health issues will feel the need to do a Donald (make as many MAGA jokes as you want right now) but it's worth recognising that the only time that it works is when you can talk to the people around you about it. I'm really lucky - I have a boss that empathises really well, listens to me and tries to help accommodate my needs when I'm struggling. I have a really good group of friends who will try and do everything that they can to support me. I know that some people are not understanding, I know some workplaces don't make accommodations, but you can only be a Donald if something else is happening as well. You can only tread water for so long, especially at that speed. 

What's In a Name,

I'm not talking about roses or anything sweet. 

It has taken a damn long time for people to accept that my name is Charlie and not Charlotte, and I still encounter issues with it. My old landlord had this exceedingly rude habit of calling me Charlotte, not Charlie, but didn't have a problem with calling Christopher, Chris. It made him more comfortable.

Since when is my name about other people's comfort? 

Okay, I get it. People I'm romantically involved with don't always like calling me Charlie because it's traditionally a male name. I, sometimes, give them a bit of room with that because the likelihood is that they're going to get somewhere in the region of 19 pet names and I will expect them to respond to every one, but for anyone else, I'm sorry, but that's my name. 

People wonder why I make so much of a fuss about it. It's not like I'm transgender or have some sort of heinous name that doesn't bear uttering, and I know that. There are occasions where I have to be called Charlotte - it happened when I graduated, it happens at job interviews, it'll probably happen on my wedding day - but there is something different about it. I'm "Charlotte" in formal situations and mostly that's because I don't have a choice. It's not a name I really identify with a lot, and it's not something I often answer to anymore. Being Charlie is as much a part of my identity as a different name is for anyone and it's neither fair, nor right, nor anyone else's place to try and tell you what your identity is...

So, why am I bringing this up? 

Recently I signed up with Macmillan to run the London Landmarks Half Marathon in March of next year. I'm looking forward to it, but there was one thing that did upset me and it hasn't been the training. When I ordered my running shirt I was told that I could only put 6 letters on it. Charlie is 7. Charlotte, well, thankfully that also don't fit, but I spent a long time pondering over all sorts of options (Chuck, Chucky, Lucky, Peanut would even have worked...) but finally decided that I would go with my childhood nickname of Lotti, but I was far from settled with it. In fact, I was dreadfully upset. It's ridiculous really but I resolved, after much upset, to take it to a t-shirt printers and get Charlie put onto it myself in whatever lettering would fit. And then the thing arrived...

When I opened the parcel last night, a C-H-A-R-L-O and 2 Ts dropped out. Clearly, provided there is space for your race number, they don't mind how many letters you put on it, so I was straight on the phone requesting an I and an E wondering why this had to be such a drama from the start. 

In other words, panic over, crisis averted, but my God, did they have to wind me up in the first place?

I Hate Writing Blogs Like This,

Blogs like this being the ones that I write because I'm never going to sleep anyway, so might as well do something productive. I didn't used to post them, but now I do.


This morning I woke up and felt much as I have for the last few weeks. I was a bit perkier, I was up a little earlier, and I made an effort to wear something nice and put some lipstick on. These sorts of days are not my good days - my good days tend to be me in jeans and not really caring who objects. Thinking about it right now, they look a lot like my bad days...


Today was supposed to be an easy enough day before going back to the doctors to say to them again those words that I hate - the bad days outnumber the good, my anxiety is the one in the driving seat, I need help. I hate it because it makes me feel weak, I feel the stigma that is being "crazy" or "nuts". I've been called it to my face before, so why would people not say it if they knew I was in therapy or on medication because of an actual problem? It's part of this thing that people do called Catastrophising and I have to stop myself and ask, so what? Even if people do say that, and there is no guarantee that they do, so what? What does it change? Nothing, unless you let that be the reason not to do something about it. 

So, I used the phrase "supposed to be"... Suffice it to say today was not an easy day. 


I never know if it's unfortunate or not that anything at work that says "mental health" and "needs volunteers" I jump at, but it's something which I'm passionate about, so I jump and mostly it works out pretty well. Obviously it's something I have experience of myself, but it's also something I have seen around me a lot, and that only fuels my drive to talk about it, to learn about it, to share knowledge with other people because I whole-heartedly embrace the movement we are making away for a world that says "pull yourself together man!" to a world that allows men to cry over dog rescue videos or two guys to hug without being considered to be overly emotional or gay. Being able to express your emotions, or even just identify them is a big part of mental resilience.

Today was an event where I could learn more about Mental Health First Aid - something that I love as a concept, but in practice it's something that can feel a little bit brutal, and for me the hardest hit, and the one I should have seen coming, was the talk about suicide. I tried to just listen to it, tried to just be a duck and let it all wash over me (though in the context of that course a duck is something slightly different which I might actually write another blog about thinking about it...) but I couldn't. Today was not a day where I felt resilient enough to let it all just roll off of me, so I left the room looking rather frantic with only enough time to say no, I'm not okay over my shoulder when the trainer asked. The only thing I could do right then was extract myself from the situation.

I think if it had just been the stats and the figures, the red flags and how we can step in to prevent over 5000 people a year from taking their own lives I would have been fine. In fact, I know I would. It's hard to talk about, hard to hear, but it's about hope. It's about finding it, showing it, being it, whatever, but the difficult one is when we were discussing how a certain kind of suicide happens. How long it can take. The process of it. And I just broke and now I don't know how to fix myself.

Suicide itself is a tragedy. It doesn't matter who, how or why; it's just brutal for everyone who is left. Most times we forget that. It's easy to forget that in the midst of everything else, particularly when someone has jumped in front of a train and it causes delays. I'm sure everyone has heard someone in a train station telling people how selfish it is because of the impact on everyone else's day. We seem to be able to talk about it in the aftermath, but not before and we need to get better at that. 

Tonight, I don't want to go to sleep because I don't want to see my friend's face. I don't want to have to live through a memory created by a very unhappy bit of my brain and remember how he chose to exit this world, particularly not with this newly gained knowledge of how it happened. Thinking about it when I'm awake is hard enough. 

It's Night Time Again,

I'm slightly worried that this might start to sound like a story. It isn't a story. 

It's night time again and this is the hardest part of the day for me. I have anxiety and it has been playing up for the last few weeks, possibly a bit longer. Most times I cope pretty well with it, but right now is not most times. Unfortunately I always struggle more at night time than any other time. 

Now, there are a few reasons why it sucks that I'm worse at night. For one thing, it is really hard to get to sleep and not sleeping actually makes things worse. Another is that most of my friends, my support network, are asleep and they need their sleep. Finally, night time makes it impossible to be productive. During the day you can get in touch with your GP to try and out appointments or you can do other things that are going to help to either give you a bit of respite in the moment, or they are going to be contributing to the overall end goal of making you as resillient and well as you can be again. At night, most of that is not possible. 

Personally, I feel like anxiety eats away at my personality. Without it, or when it's back in the tiny box under the stairs in the corner of my mind, I am a happy, extroverted, extraverted, spontaneous and very silly person. I laugh a lot, at everything, sometimes at nothing. I launch myself headlong into things and enjoy the few moments of being unsure. With anxiety, I become introverted, I become self-conscious, I second guess myself and chastise myself for everything silly that I have said, every moment that I think I could have embarrassed myself. I overthink everything, and can't just relax. 

It's something I have learnt to live with, it's something that I manage most of the time, but occasionally I struggle. It's really difficult, partly because it makes me feel so introverted and so silly, to try and talk about it, but I do because I know that there is no other pathway around it. Sometimes you just need to talk about it.

Really Crappy Decisions,

Surprisingly, this is not about the myriad of really crappy decisions I make on a weekly basis because I hate making decisions sometimes. I have a couple of very crappy deicisions to make at the moment about the future of "the" book. Thee is in ""s because, as I think I have either stated or eluded to before, I work on a few at once. The one I am talking about was supposed to be around 31000 words by the end of Camp NaNo and to say that that did not happen is an understatement. 

This is another of these things that I've been trying to write for what feels like something close to forever. It is something that I love, have tried out before and then either gotten annoyed with a character or took a stab out, the middle came out gooey and I figured it needed another few minutes (well, months) to stew and take shape. The first iteration of this thing was started in tiny notebooks bought from a giftshop because it was the only thing available and I was bored with time to spare. The characters are sweet, the storyline feels beautiful and half of it is set in Manchester reliving some of my favourite parts of childhood. And writing it hurts. 

People that don't really write (and some people who do write, but are built differently) don't understand how much it hurts if you feel every emoition of the characters. I would hate to think of them as flat,, emotionless pawns which are used to narrate and navigate a story, but the problem is that I draw on experiences I've been through to fuel the characters feelings and going back over some of that can hurt like hell. I've already been struggling with my mental health for the last couple of weeks, and last week was just heinous and I know that I just, if I put myself through too much of it at the moment, I will suffer and those around me will, too, and I've leaned on them a lot these last few weeks. 

Here in lies the problem though. Even when I am as close to okay as I ever get, this novel hurts. I'm not sure I can count on only one hand the amount of times that this novel, in it's several forms, has had me in tears already. Granted I wasn't always sober, but that's not the point. It seems ridicuolous to try and write it whilst knowing that parts of it will hurt, and they have the potential to make me struggle and I find it hard to knowingly do that to myself. That being said, it is really hard not to write. No matter how uncomfortable, one day I will have to come to a decision as to whether to just do it, or just drop it and it feels pretty crappy. 

On that note, I should probably go to sleep, but I think the writing bug might have paid a visit. God, he's an inconvenient git! Catch you later. 

Are We Adults Yet,

I have heard the above question so often from people of my generation and slightly younger, or the other iteration being, I don't want to be an adult yet... And frankly, it's starting to make me sick.

Being an adult seems to me to either be an insult, whether directed at yourself or others, a way to admonish behaviour that is undesirable to some people or this false sense of achievement. It feels like a cumbersome word which often grows too heavy and we have a desire to put it down and can't. Quite frankly, the idea of being an adult can get lost.


If we were really going to talk about it, I think there is one thing that is quite important to me and that is that being an adult is something either biological - you are now past a particular point in development where you are to be considered an adult - or a journey, a bit like happiness, rather than some destination which we reach and then stagnate in. If we're going to talk about it, it can be that more gentle maturing - which is not gentle at all - in your twenties and thirties, which is more the process of getting your **** together. At some point, most of us get to the stage where home improvements and granola are facts of life, even if they don't make us as truly happy as they make some people.


The reason I would like the whole thing to take a long walk off of a short pier is because I think the concept is more damaging than helpful.


Today I got through some things that a lot of people would call "adulting". I made my lunch to take to work with me, I did the work things and I even did laundry (there is a certain pride point there because I normally leave it until my wardrobe looks ransacked and you can't see the laundry hamper, so go me!) but I also sat on the floor for most of the evening, not because I don't have a sofa, and put together a Lego statue of a panda bear. It says 5+ and I'm over five, so it is technically my age range. That's something that a lot of people would see as childish, but I bought granola for my breakfast. Also a point, I have started eating breakfast. Periodically. Not all the time. Depends how awake I am.


I am rather unashamed of the fact that I will sit on the floor and build Lego toys or do other things that are called childish, partly because I enjoy them and partly because it's good for me. There are proven benefits of things like finger painting and playing with Lego bricks for wellbeing and stress relief and I am all about that. Granted, I may hide my Lego figures the next time my mum comes over...

The reason I am writing this is because I still feel a sense of, guilt isn't quite the word, but I can't think of a better one, when I indulge in childish things. It's almost like, this is acceptable behind closed doors, but outside, we must be perfectly put together career driven adults on a particular path, and really, I want to get that idea out of my head. Being an adult isn't from a particular age and there isn't a rule book, so let's just go with it.

I Don't Feel Like Sharing,

I haven't written a blog post in three months.

There's a reason that the above line has a strike through it; it's simply not true. 

Whilst it has been three months since I published a blog post, that doesn't mean that it's been three months since I wrote one. I feel like I have a list of drafts on here as long as my arm, but most are only half finished, or I couldn't bring myself to press the 'Publish' button. Even though the readership of this blog is pretty small, it can be really hard to share what's on my mind sometimes, but writing it down, saving it into the drafts and hoping I feel braver later, that can help. 

I recently had to accept that I wasn't okay. I wasn't quite at the panic attack stage, or close to the depression stage, just the alarm bells are going off and we need to do something now before it all goes to crap sort of place. There were a few reasons and there have been ups and downs since, but I'm, thankfully, getting back to something that looks like normal (for me).

Surprisingly, one of the ups was Manchester. 

I'm not talking about spending two weeks with my amazing (even if a little clingy) dog or seeing friends that I've not seen in months, or even just getting to chill out in the city center and realise how Manchester is still, after all this time, my home. Strangely I'm talking about the response to the attack.

I had warned a few people in the office that I was likely to be less than my normal self on the anniversary, and it was amazing to see that when someone made a crass joke that was probably all I needed right then as an excuse to go into full-on meltdown, my colleagues "handled" that person so I could pull myself together a bit. 

When I think of what people have done in the wake of that attack, I am amazed, I am stunned, I am so proud to be a Mancunian, but I am never surprised. Even the bee colony moving into the Trees of Hope in Manchester City Centre didn't surprise me really - it just seemed fitting, as did the sing-a-long. I wanted to be there, but listening to it on Key103 was almost good enough. Whilst the song 'Don't Look Back in Anger' has become as attached to that event as the worker bee, it's amazing to see people doing just that. Solidarity over sadness, Love over anger. The message of hate of one almost nameless man has been drowned out by the wondrous outpouring of love, pride, and togetherness showing such a strength, and it inspires me to feel stronger, to be stronger. 

What's a Doc To Do,

Today I really will not rant, though this is something else about which I am passionate. 

I've written about organ donation on here before, but one of the great things to happen (relative to your views on the issue of course, but in my opinion it is great) since that time is that the UK parliament has passed a law to introduce an "opt-out" system for organ donation. Naturally, as is customary of our time, I shared the article on my Facebook page with words of celebration for the lives that this will save. 

A friend has pointed out that very few people die on the waiting list in comparison to the number of people this new law will affect, so I Googled. These stats are from the Guardian in September 2017, so are slightly out of date by now, but they were the best I could find:

As well as the 457 people who died last year while on the transplant waiting list, a further 875 were taken off it, mainly because of ill health, with many dying shortly afterwards. As of last week there were 6,414 people in need of a new organ on the UK transplant waiting list.4 Sep 2017

To me, that is too many, though to me 1 person dying when we have the resource to stop it would be too many quite frankly, though it could be worse. In America one person dies approximately every 20 minutes waiting for an organ, so small mercies I guess.

Like with blood donation, my very logical side likes to ask "Would you be happy to receive it?" If the answer is yes, which it is, then I don't see why my answer to giving that donation should be any different. I tried to explain this to my mother, who you would assume would be used to me by now, as just an extension of my recycling obsession. My kidneys are going to do *nothing* that is good for anyone if I'm in the ground or otherwise, so why would I not want whoever my next of kin was to say to the doctors, if someone can use it, take it. I'd much rather the doctor be in a position to say, well that's a kind offer _____, but there's no one on the waiting list than have 457 people die in a year because no one wanted to think about signing up to the register.

This is my big sticking point: very often people either don't want to think about it or they don't care. That's not to say that they don't care about the 6'414 people on the waiting list it's that they don't care. They have no issue with donating their organs, but they don't feel strongly enough about it to go out of their way to sign up to the register. It drives me up the wall.


I get that it's a horrendous conversation. I recently got a pension statement which stated that I hadn't designated my next of kin who would receive the money if I died before getting it (really depressing though) so had to speak to my mum about putting her down as my person. And what I wanted her to do with the money. It was not a great conversation and I didn't even get into the whole living will thing of please don't leave me on a ventilator if there are no signs of brain activity, but my mother is the type to call it Blackpool illuminations if there are lights on in rooms you aren't in, so I'm not too worried about that one (Mum, if you read this, I am joking, but seriously, off switch, please). I don't know if it's a society thing or a humanity thing that talking about living wills and everything is just branded as morbid and we shy away from it, but really I would prefer to make that the legal stipulation, rather than a blanket opt out system. 

If we all had to answer questions regarding our care at the end of our life, since that can happen so quickly with an accident, then our upset relatives wouldn't have to make those decisions in what can already be the most upsetting period of their lives. 

Since that's not going to happen though, I'm going to celebrate this as a bit of a win. 

I Will Not Vent, I Will Not Vent, I Will Not,

Screw it, I'm not even going to finish that sentence because I know that I can't stick to it... Let's just get this over with. 

I am fed up. I am MASSIVELY fed up, and I am annoyed that when I try and vent my fed-up-ness it gets put down to rant-y women or rant-y vegetarians or event just rant-y environmentalists. Yeah, aren't all of the above people such butt holes for wanting to make the world a less crappy place? Anyway, this is not about that, this is about: 

REALLY STARBUCKS, REALLY??? 

Okay, so forget for two minutes that Starbucks is expensive. Forget for a minute that a lot of people cannot afford to buy food, let alone the luxury that is take out coffee (because I can only keep a lid on the lava of my personality if I only have a Venti Mocha Chocolate Rant about one thing at once. Single shots, people. (I'm sorry. I'm funny in my own head!) 

Taking all of the above off the table and any other issues you have with Starbucks (be it tax avoidance or them charging London Fire Brigade staff for water during the July bombings, because I know that was also pretty unforgivable) and having a clean slate: why is it my problem as a consumer to carry around a reuseable cup to use in your cafe? Okay, it's a five pence charge and actually that makes most of your drinks cost an even whatever instead of me getting five pence pieces in my change (I don't, because I live in London and never really carry cash, but just go with it for a second) but Starbucks, why is this my issue? 

I know, you've tried to make it easy for me by making a reuseable cup with your "legendary" design, it's only a pound and there is normally a basket of them sitting somewhere where I can conveniently grab one in the store. You're even so nice as to offer me a 25 pence "discount" if I reuse this or any other reusable cup, but actually, it's five pence. I'm probably only going to give a monkey's left proverbial because you haven't previously charged me for this and we all hate price hikes. And Starbucks, I know it's not just you. Pret do the same damn thing (actually, in some ways they are worse, because they provide biodegradable cutlery only in their Veggie stores and not across the whole brand and still called it a trial on Facebook the other day despite the fact that veggie Pret has been open for a significant period of time (not completely sure if it's one or two years on the original place now, but still - how long is this blooming trial???

My big issue is, it's a token effort. I hate token effort. 

Suppliers of biodegradable and compostable cups and lids and cutlery all exist. Instead of encouraging a behaviour change in your consumers which is unlikely to have a big enough effect to prevent whales from starving to death with stomach's full of plastic bags of us using a ridiculous amount of landfill to essentially bury and forget about our sins, why not just make the change yourselves? Okay, so not every cup is going to go into a compost pile, there might still be a significant number ending up in the ocean, but at least it's not made of something that is likely to outlast the sun. At least it is far less damaging than what we currently have. 

Or how about, do both? 

How about you switch to these kind of cups and lids and cutlery and other packaging and then say, we screwed up. We as humanity screwed up when we started to rely on plastic, because it was easy. And to pay for our screw ups, we are going to donate money from every drink sold to research into sustainable resources, or ocean clean up projects. Hell, we're even going to get rid of our plastic gift cards and find something more sustainable there, too? 


I'm quite lucky that I can get this out of my system. I read an article over the weekend that fish even at a very deep sea level have ingested micro beads and plastic, and they can't get it out of their systems. I know I mentioned this earlier but a whale died because it had 30 plastic bags in its stomach last year and it was assumed that it starved to death. This is madness. This is utter madness. I don't give a flying **** (I can't replace that word right now, I'm livid) about token effort right now!! 

I feel the same way about the plastic bag charge as well and straws - don't even get me started on straws...

(taking deep breathes for a second)

I know we have some level of choice in these issues, because we can use reusable cups and just make the effort, same with bags, and we use them for their lifetime and it's LESS plastic (because ultimately as lot of the alternative bags for life and reusable cups are also plastic) but there are alternatives. Companies could choose to make a real difference and inevitably I don't feel that they put in enough effort. 

I know that they're not going to read this, but I just had to get it off my chest. #rantover

Okay, I'm an A Hole

Part of me hates how every day has to be the "World Day for ____". 

Personally, I would like to think that we didn't need Time to Talk Day on Thursday to make it acceptable to talk about mental health. I would love it if we had no need of that. That's not me being all naive and idealistic and wishing that mental health problems didn't exist (time spent on that exercise would be fruitless at best) but instead I would like to see a world where we don't have to be reminded that people have their own issues, they have their own demons that they are fighting with and actually just being nice to other people can make a difference. When I say being nice, I do mean actively being nice, but it's not that hard. Most of us think that we're being nice when we don't tell Sally at the office (name chosen at random: not an actual person I work with) that the new dress that she loves so much makes her butt look humongous and not in a good way. That's not nice, that's just having a filter. Nice would be telling Sally that her hair looks great (if it does: lying does not count as being nice). 

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent. I'm not confessing to being an A-hole because I told hypothetical Sally that the dress looks AWESOME on her and she should totally wear it when she goes out with Bill from Finance (yes, I have worked in a place where there was a Bill who worked in Finance, but no, this is not him, and yes, I did find Bill working in Finance hilarious).

The reason I am confessing to being an A-hole is that I kind of forgot that it was world cancer day today and I was originally going to write something about that, and again, I forgot. 

I'm not sure if I have ever mentioned it on here before (probably have: I never pass up an opportunity to save something about it!!) but one of my biggest achievements last year was getting over my fear of needles enough to be able to go and give blood. Three times. 

On the walls of the Manchester donor center are comments from donors about why we do what we do. There is also an anonymous wall where people can add stories of those who have received life-saving blood transfusions and a lot have thanks from that person and their family since, without the people to go into that donor center and give their blood and their platelets, doctors would lose so many tools from their arsenal to fight for every single life. 

One of the other things I did was join the DKMS register and updated my details with the organ donor register. 

Now, I'm not saying this to be all bragging rights or whatever. The only reason I'm saying it now, and every time I open my mouth to say it, is because I want to emphasise that you don't need to run a marathon, you don't need to set up a direct debit to all the charities you want to support (I would be completely broke if I did that!) With these charities or causes, you just put your name on the list. Okay, so you might need to do a cheek swab or spit into a test tub thing for them to gather the DNA data that they need from you, you might need to have a needle placed gently (trust me, blood donor nurses are the most gentle vampires you have ever met) into your arm for about ten minutes, but every time I get a text to say that my blood has been dispatched to a hospital I am proud.

I don't know if it's going to the new mum having to have a crash C-section to save her and her baby, to someone with severe anemia or if it's going to a cancer patient who can't make their own red blood cells because of their disease. In a way, it doesn't matter because they need it. 

Charities like DKMS and Anthony Nolan may never need to contact you after you joined their register. They may never actually need to ask you for anything, but they also might. I know that if one of my family members needed someone from one of those charities (or the multitude of others out there) they would be ready to do everything that they could; they do it day in day out. These charities are amazing, so if I know that I would want them to do everything that they could for me and mine, I feel like I have to at least state my willingness to do the same for someone else. 

Blood, stem cells, bone marrow; these are all things that money cannot buy, so whilst I know that it is important to make sure that Cancer Research UK (and other charities) can keep ploughing as much money as possible into finding a cure for one of the most devastating diseases on the planet, remember that you don't need to have the money to be able to help. 

Just think about it - that is all I ask. 

God, I Want to Throw a Strop Right Now,

As most of you know, I don't really play the whole 'New Year, New Me' game, but something I did promise myself was that when I moved into the new flat certain things were going to be different. 

Now, some things are different. I've managed to cut my morning commute dramatically. What used to take an hour and a half - depending on trains, so sometimes more than that - now takes me twenty minutes. I have more space and the kitchen is my own, so it is always how I left it (not always a great thing, but such is the joy of living alone) so I cook more. I also gave having a pet a whirl, although that didn't go so well since I'm not here all the time so Dave is going to be rehomed. 

The problem is, those were not the things I promised myself would be different. 

I made a promise to myself that I would make a really big effort to keeping the place tidy; I would be lying if I said I had stuck to that. I haven't put enough effort into that. It looks a damn site better than when I first moved in since there was stuff everywhere and not much furniture for a long time, but it's still not quite there. Actually, probably not by a long stretch thinking about how I would like it to be, though I know that that is on me. 

I promised myself that this would be the weekend where I got a lot more sorted, and the truth is that that didn't really happen either, but...

Whereas most people get to February and their NY resolutions go straight out of the window as though they never really existed, I'm at the stage where I am reminding myself that Rome was not built in a day, so I shouldn't expect to cajole all of my chaos into order in the same space of time. If I'm making progress slowly, well that is still progress.

The same goes for the novel. Despite my somewhat foolish addiction to NaNoWriMo, I don't need to try and write everything I ever write at the same pace. I'd burn out within a couple of weeks for one thing, and for another, I would have even less of a social life.

I am accepting my weaknesses and limitations. I am setting it as a long-term goal to have the flat exactly as I want it. I am fine with the fact that this thing I am working on is going to take closer to a year than a month to write. Whilst I will not let go of and forget the novel I was writing for NaNo, I have accepted that now is not the time to re-write it and there is no more time at all to dwell on it. And so, onwards.

Though even when trying to accept all of that, I want to throw my toys out of the pram because one of my biggest weaknesses is impatience. 

Catch you later. 

Wonders Will Never Cease,

Today has been pretty extraordinary. Well, yesterday by now. 

Since the tragic loss of the novel, I have been really awful at convincing myself to sit down and write for a decent period of time. I have been terrible at the blogging thing for a while as well so to get a blog (two now) and some novel done within the same day is kind of incredible. I keep drinking gin though and I should really switch to coffee because I am starting to get a headache from being tired. I can also feel my eyelids dropping which is never conducive to getting words on the screen (which I genuinely called hypothetical paper in my head before I could find the word screen).

Part of me knows it's because I love the characters. They're incredible and I love them and they are really easy to write about, but I think it's also because this is the part of the year where I start waking up a bit. Winter is not my time of year. I like snow, I tolerate Christmas, but I was a Spring baby. I can do spring, summer, and autumn but as soon as winter hits I just get cold, grumpy and I feel like the only things in my wardrobe are jet black or navy. 

Anyway, I felt the need to celebrate the achievement. I will now continue to celebrate by rewarding myself with some sleep. 

Catch you later.

I Mean, This is Crazy, But Whatever,

If you have ever heard of Heath Ledger, you have most likely heard of something called 'Method Acting'. For those of you who haven't, the basic principles of it are that you get into character by living out parts of that character's personality, or their life story, to get a feel for who they are and be able to be a more authentic version of that character. 

The practice has received criticism, as everything does, because of the situations which actors who practice this method can place themselves into. Considering that people are thinking that eating washing pods is a thing to do, I now find this criticism even more questionable than I used to, but then again I realise that there are people in this world that I will never understand, and whilst that sometimes worries me because I would rather avoid churning out different versions of the same character constantly, I think that writing a novel where the main character died from eating a clothes washing tablet or something similar is not something really high on my bucket list. 

If you're wondering where I'm going with this, don't worry, I'm getting there... 

There have been times where I have wanted to sit and write, but have felt like there is such a disconnect between the character I'm writing about and myself that I'm almost certain that the character is just wrong. Everything about them. Suddenly, I cannot but an apostrophe right (I was going to say comma there, but I litter commas everywhere and I'm never quite sure that they are right,). 

I can't successfully write about someone being adventurous and strong when I haven't even bothered to change out of my PJs, but in a way, it goes deeper than that. Clothing and make up or whatever might seem like a superficial way to get "into character" so to speak, but I honestly find it helpful sometimes. I have sat around in my heels before now (which is strange because I rarely wear shoes in the house) because it suits the character I'm writing about. Before you think it (or, in case you were thinking it) no, I do not have a full costume change between different characters in order to make sure that I'm really "in character" for each person that's speaking. 

Anyway, yes, that's a strange little look into the way my head works when I'm writing. I think I possibly was using writing this as a way not to work on the novel though. Great. 

Catch you later.

See You in Paris,

Today is one of those days where I'm staring at the blank screen where a blog should be and I had no idea what to write. Part of me wasn't sure I really wanted to write anything, but if I keep giving into that feeling of not wanting to do anything, if I keep allowing that to be the winning feeling, I spend all my weekend, every weekend, doing absolute diddly squat, and anyone who knows me knows that feeds into this horrible vicious cycle. 

At the moment, I am trying really hard to get myself to the point where I want to be. I'm "happy" with the journey of it, and I am somewhat content with my life, but there are a few things I want to do that I think will make me more easily content. The problem is that one of my main flaws is I am impatient; I want everything to happen immediately and it doesn't. 

I booked myself a trip to Paris for my birthday. It's been a long time since my last holiday, a very long time since I last left the country and I was still sucking my thumb the last time I visited Paris, so I don't remember it for the life of me. There are things I want to do there, and things that I want to see, and so I decided to just do it. 

Unfortunately, there are other things that it is more complicated to just do. 

Part of me really wants to buy a place in London. Mostly that's because I know it would make me feel more secure, and partly it is so that people (not even mostly family surprisingly enough) can stop asking me that really annoying question of 'when are you moving back up north?'. Seriously, it's more irritating to me than the 'when are you going to get married/have babies' questions, though that might be more because they have slowed down the longer I have been single. Thankfully the 'when are you going to find someone nice' has also slowed down, though I think it's more because people think being single is a sensitive topic of conversation. 

The big problem with buying a place in London is, of course, who the hell can afford that? Especially going back to the single thing. Never mind sham marriages to get a visa, I'm surprised we're not seeing them to get a mortgage! God forbid you should be happy living alone. 

The other thing is wanting to re-write a novel - not the one I lost. It's harder to focus on than I anticipated, and despite knocking out a 20k day during NaNo, I'm managing about 1k a day with this. 

I know that I just need to buck up, get stuck in and accept that things are happening, however slowly, but sometimes that's just a little tricky to do. 

Time Worth Wasting,

I would love to say that in the time since I last posted a blog, or the time since I wrote about losing the novel even, I have been a perfect version of myself and I have spent the time needed to re-write the novel. I have sat there and stared at the screen and mechanically typed - whilst this is not a verbatim copy of what was previously there, it is enough. It is better. The crap has been sheered away and it is better. I would love to say that, but it's just not true...

This festive season I have spent quite a bit of time knitting. I have been knitting as opposed to typing, which is productive - I have produced quite a lot of blanket patches - but no pieces of a novel. There is a reason, but I'm not sure that I am even being honest with myself about it. 

Part of me wants to tell myself that I needed to give myself some time off and some time to heal. I would love to believe that one, but I also know that it is more likely to be I'm scared to try and write it again. Part of me is scared that I will write it again, not back it up and I will lose all of my words again, but part of me is scared because even though I have plot points, even though I can walk my way through the plot points and I will have a lot of it back, it's always a fear that I will struggle to write it. It's scary to stare at the blank screen and not be sure as to whether or not I can fill it with words again. 

The festive season is over now, so I want to move forward with getting back to writing, though I'm not certain I will start off with that novel. Here we go. 

Bring it on 2018.