Today Is a Day Where I Don't Want to Write

Today has been a really tough day. Most of the last couple of weeks have been tough because work has been long and busy and tough and that makes for some really tough days, but today was tough because last night, I couldn't sleep. 

Usually, when I can't sleep it's because of a running commentary of anxiety in my head, but last night there was a pain in the bottom of my guts which I could only imagine was because I'd eaten something that upset my system. It's happened before, and it can happen because of stress (and there's been a lot of that going around in our office recently) but it's also down to food sometimes, so maybe I ate too much dairy, maybe having tomatoes in my sandwich every day is irritating my stomach too much - I don't know. The fact that I'm feeling much better today on that front means I don't really care so much, but I do care about the fact that I'm completely exhausted. Trying to function has been difficult because it's like a grey fog has descended over me and my brain hasn't been working at the speed that it normally does. Even trying to write this has actually been quite challenging. At least if you're trying to walk, it's just one foot in front of the other, or even running, I can normally cope with that, but anything, where I have to use my brain, takes a long while and also kind of hurts. I get a weird physical pain like hitting a wall, and it's everything I can do to stick to the goals that I have, but I'm doing it because that wall is going to be there the next time I'm running, it will be there. When I next get to take on a half marathon, it will be there and when I FINALLY get to London Marathon, that wall is probably going to be there on the Embankment and I'm going to wonder how the hell someone built that overnight because it wasn't there before and it won't be thereafter, but it'll be there for me to try and get past as it will be for many other runners, but hey if I can do it now, I will be able to do it then because I can eat all of the sugar that I want to and then it's just one foot in front of the other and get moving after the person in front of you. Follow that person, following the person in front for a few thousand people, who are following the lead car or the time car or whatever it is which is leading the runners out of East London, around Cutty Sark and Greenwich, over to Tower Bridge, back through the Isle of Dogs and every beautiful view around Canary Wharf, back along the Embankment, into Westminster and around to finish on the Mall after a quick wave to the Queen rounding the last corner near Buckingham Palace. There might be a few times when I hit that brick wall across a twenty-six point two-mile course, but hopefully, by then I will be physically and mentally ready to get myself around the course no matter how many brick walls I run into. 

Anyway, I wrote, I did my four hundred and forty-four words for 4 the words, and now I'm going to tuck myself into bed with my book and try to recover enough brain power to function through tomorrow because I have catching up to do. I'm going to drink my tea, read my book, and tuck myself into bed, then hope that tomorrow goes a little better. 

Charlieswrite

Love The Ones Your With

There's only so much I'm allowed to say about my job on here because I work for a sensitive bit of the Civil Service, but I really wanted to talk about people today and the people in my team made me want to cry this morning. They're awesome and inspirational people and I'm so proud of them it makes me want to burst. We had a lovely call where we talked about how busy we were, but how we were all there to support each other, but also how proud we were of each other and the successes that we have had. 

I have a similar group of people that I'm involved with in the Twitter Sprint Leads. They are amazing people and so committed to helping others to complete their projects and keep going through one of the strangest times we have experienced in our lives. We only communicate by email, but we're all so open and so honest with each other about what's happening in our lives, and they're met with so much support. We try and keep our Twitter page super upbeat and encouraging, so our personal troubles are kept away from that, but between us all, we deal with our personal crap and keep that going as best we can. We try and support our participants as well, whatever they are going through. 

I know, as a woman, it can be easier for me to say I love my team. Sometimes people think it's weird, sometimes it feels weird, and when it's a group of your peers, it can feel weird to say that you are proud of people, but actually, it's nice to have a gush about people every so often. It's nice to say I love the people I work with because they are all kind, inspiring and supportive women who make it easier for me to drag my butt out of bed and be committed to my job. I love what I do, but there would be plenty of occasions where it would get me down if it wasn't for the team I work with. 

If you do nothing more today than tell another person how much you appreciate them, I'd call that a really good day. 

Charlieswrite

I Am Literally Going to Explode

No, you are really not. 

This isn't the blog I was going to write today, because there have been a few posts which have got kind of snarky (not by me, for once) about being careful about language, but then today I was Twitter-ing in my lunch break (def: Twitter-ing; lurking on or reading Twitter without actually Tweeting) and came across someone who said they were "literally lynched" over something to do with the whole Rowling issue. First of all, can I say I'm so done with the debate over this woman. I am in the group who think her views are abhorrent. I admire what she did to build her writing career, I admire her success and I know she's done wonderful things for a lot of charities with her money, but the woman herself has gone down in my estimations considerably because of what I see as poisonous views about a minority community. Agree with me or disagree with me, but I'm kind of done reading about it. 

Anyway, there was a thread that seemed more positive about Jacqueline Wilson. I loved her books growing up. I used to watch Tracey Beaker on the TV when I got home from school and I thought it was fabulous. Girls In Love was amazing because of the issues it dealt with. The fact that during part of the series it talked about young women being pressured into sex was probably the first time in my young life I had ever heard of that as an issue and it made me more aware and, in some ways, I think that kept me safer. Then there was this tweet from someone who said they were "literally lynched" and I'm wondering how a ghost is operating Twitter. Maybe I'm being a bit oversensitive to the use of the phrase because this morning I read the account of a black man who was attacked in America and the white supremacists who attacked him tried to lynch him, and the detail with which he described it shook me, but I would hope that on any day I would tell that person to stop being an idiot. Literally is not an adjective to say something is more extreme. Literally means this is the purely factual account of something which happened. The word means using the original meaning of a word. Lynching does not mean having your ass handed to you on Twitter, but it is the hanging of a person. It's a mob rule punishment, and very often, the only crime is being seen as less than another person or being black. Sometimes, lynching is because a person is presumed to have committed a crime, but that's not what is happening today. 

I have read that black men are being found hanging in trees in America and it's being deemed as a suicide far too quickly, with little investigation as to whether this was lynch mob activity. The account I read this morning stated that the police had attended, spoken to the white supremacist attacker first and then told the black man who was attacked and obviously injured by the attacks on him that they would not be arresting the men, despite many witnesses being present and filming the moments when the white supremacists shouted to one another for a noose, threatened to kill him, said they would break his arms and called him multiple racial slurs on the basis on his skin colour. 

Whilst the author of that tweet may not have read that account, it's completely ignorant to say you were "literally lynched" from the comfort of your computer. There are certain words we must be more careful about using. Literally is a big one. Lynched is another. I've spoken before about stepping away from using the word commit when we talk about suicide and tweeted about stepping away from Aspergus when we talk about Autism. 

This is not about a prohibition of language. There is space for their use within society, but that use must be careful and it must be considered. When people say things like, please be mindful, they're just asking you to try and think about what you are saying. If someone prompts you to remind you, it's not meant to be malicious and they're not saying it believing you are being malicious, most of the time anyway. It's really hard to remember that certain language is really hurtful. Six months on from becoming an ASIST Life Saving Caregiver (Suicide First Aider) I still slip into saying "committed suicide" because, for twenty-six years of my life, that's how these things were said, but correct yourself and, kindly, prompt others. No one is asking anyone to be perfect, but I will ask you to try. I want to ask everyone to do better and the step that you take towards that is to try. Your efforts might not feel important, but they really are. 

And yes, I was fuming when I wrote this. 

Charlieswrite

Go The **** to Sleep

Every time I hear the above phrase, it's in Samuel L Jackson's voice. It's a thing, but I kind of love it. 

A couple of days ago I said about priorities; honestly, sleep is a priority to me, but sometimes it seems that that doesn't communicate into every one of the corners of my mind. Yesterday was a day where I just felt tired All. Damn. Day. I think that was, at least in part, because I didn't get to sleep until four in the morning, but that's just life with anxiety as well. I get a running commentary of all of the things I need to get done in my life, so occasionally have to go tearing out of bed and across the landing to scribble something across my notebook to remember to do the following day. 

There are some amazing techniques out there and apps which help guide you through them as well as tools like eye masks with bubbles for your eyes so that it doesn't crush your lashes against your face and weighted blankets which promote relaxation and can stop physical symptoms like restless leg and also can help panic subside which is really good for trying to stop all of the nightmares. Most of the time that's enough to help, but not completely alleviate my sleep issues, and what is worse is that sometimes it does less than nothing to combat the issues that I have. 

When you haven't slept, your brain doesn't function the same. Occasionally, I write when I'm too tired to have any business writing, but if I then read back over what I wrote, I can see the parts where my brain went to sleep so many times because I miss out words or just get the word completely wrong. It's normally close or connected, but it's not the right word. 

So why am I telling you this, dear readers? Well, there's a really simple reason, actually. Some of us can crack through twenty thousand words in a day and it's not so painful. Some of us would have to stay up for twenty-four hours to do that. Some of us aim at twenty-four hours of writing to see if we can finish the whole of a NaNoWriMo challenge in a day or two, but there are some who are not built for that kind of sleep deprivation and sometimes, I am one of them. At the moment, I am definitely one of them. 

I'm back to being able to sleep for about ten hours and still be tired. I have people telling me that I should just set an alarm and sleep for eight, but trust me, I can't get up, and even if I did, no amount of coffee would stop me falling asleep at my desk. It's not worth it unless there is something really important for me to do early in the morning and even then it takes medication for the sleep and a high dose of caffeine for waking up and I will still cling to my bed until the last minute. So even if you don't want to, you need to remember to sleep as long as makes sense for you. You have to try to function the way that you function and not the way that the insomniacs do, or those people who can be all alive and hyper on three hours of sleep. Think of it in terms of your spoons (an excellent metaphor for how much energy we exert doing daily things) and remember the number of spoons you have and the number of spoons they have are different, so you'll approach this challenge differently, and that's okay. Admire it, appreciate it, be a little bit envious if you feel it, but let everyone do this their own way and congratulate them for their achievements and commiserate with them over what they see as their failings. Everything about this competition is personal. 

Charlieswrite; Sporadically Yours. 

Why are you writing romance novels in a dating draught?

Some people called the UK lockdown the sex ban, and others looked for ways to date without being in the same room as the other person. I'm a big fan of the arrange a phone call before an in-person date because I have been on BAD DATES before partly due to not having done this. When a guy can't carry his end of the conversation, it's going to go badly. (I'm definitely not referring to the guy whose only activity outside of work was apparently sitting in the pub with his friends talking about what other people do with their lives and then had the cheek to say there was no spark. Seriously, apparently wasn't even into traveling or anything generic, just work, same friends, same pub, same drink, home, then back to work...) When lockdown started, I headed back to my parents' place to have some company through the worst of it and also try and recover my mental health a bit from a battering due to work, medication and a very crappy ex-partner, but it has made even the idea of Skype dates kind of awkward. I love the idea of either getting a takeaway or cooking something and then having a Skype dinner, but I'm not doing that with my parents in the background and there is a rule in this house of no food upstairs, so I can't even escape to the office for some privacy. Maybe if I said, Mum, going on a date there might be a relaxation in the rules, but then we'd also have to discuss that my shirt was too low cut and my lipstick too red, and everything about the guy afterward and honestly, I don't have the energy, so I kind of put even the idea of dating onto a hiatus, however...

...I'm writing romance novels... 

Seriously. I have previously written novels with another storyline and the romance just trots along the side because I like writing about the characters meeting and falling in love and having happily ever afters, or not, but recently I seem to be addicted to writing books which the main storyline is boy meets girl, or girl meets boy, or whatever. And I'm going to be honest, it's starting to grate a little. 

Maybe it's just frustration with life in general. Maybe it's frustration with everything that has changed because of the virus. Maybe it's because most of my friends are engaged, announcing pregnancies, having babies or whatever and I'm still sat here feeling like the singlest of single Pringles, but writing romance is starting to great.  It doesn't help that the last couple of these blogs I have been writing, after some sentences, my anxiety adds the words 'I don't know diary' onto the end and makes me feel like an angsty teenager... Maybe I actually sound like an angsty teenager. The last time I lived at home I was seventeen and a very angsty teenager and it's really easy to slip back into those old roles and patterns, so it's possible. 

Anyway, my hands are really sore thanks to an allergic reaction to something somewhere between last night and this morning, so I think I'll sign off now and just have a read for a bit, whilst I hope that the antihistamines and the E45 do their work and stop my hands from feeling like they are on fire. 

Charlieswrite, Sporadically Yours. 

The Things We Idolise as Children

Something I really enjoy is when kids tell their parents that they don't want to eat animals. People say it's straight from the mouth of babes, others say that it's orchestrated. Whatever, I love it, but there are so many things I've had to look back on over the years and realise are problematic. Mrs. Doubtfire was a big one, but I still love it, and just try and appreciate it is something that was a product of its time. Some of Meg Cabot's books are very similar. Hell, there are things in Fairies that I read and think holy crap, I wish I could re-write this whole thing and take out the parts that make me wince. I'm writing a sequel and I'm hoping that will address some of the issues, but Dios Mio there are a lot of them out there in the world.

Anyway, I'm sure you'll be really glad to know I'm not going to go through an itemised list of all the things I enjoyed as a kid that are now problematic (jeez, that would be boring for everyone involved!) so instead I'm just going to talk about the one that came to me most recently and everyone can think I'm a sad sap. I've been watching Pitch Perfect 2 today and doing a lot of singing, and this was marginally better than singing Beca's lines from Before He Cheats repeatedly, though that also happened so feel sorry for my mum who had to hear it. 

The song that came to my head was from one of the Swan Lake cartoon movies. I want to say it's from Secret of the Castle, but I also don't because it makes me sound like I know those movies backward (I don't, but I did watch them a lot as a kid). Anyway, Prince and Princess have a fight and then he starts this solo, when she's gone off-screen (or off-page, I guess) with the lyrics, 'Why must I always get down on my knees and apologise?' so he basically sounds like an immature ass at this point... and then goes into 'Because I love her and need her like the...' whatever. It trails off into pretty poetry about how much he loves her and how no man has ever loved a woman the way he loves her. Yeah, sure, fine, but looking back on it now I realise something... he never actually admits he's wrong. There is this implication that he is apologising because of the whole idea of a happy wife, happy life, or she's a woman, she has these fits and I should just apologise. Let me tell you something, it's really grating! 

My ex was one for throwing a tantrum, and inevitably, even when I was right, I would apologise, because of that fear of losing him. Maybe that's the flip of the genders, but it's still a problem. 

Yes, there are going to be things in relationships where no one was right and no one was wrong. Yes, there will be times when the other person was wrong, and yet the way you reacted was also wrong, but it's why apologising and doing it right is so important. If I was going to apologise about Fairies, I would say I'm sorry that the character of Harry plays into so many gay stereotypes and uses words like camp that I wouldn't now want to associate myself with the use of. I'm sorry I wasn't more sensitive in the way it addressed the issue of suicide and I'm sorry that some of the characters were childish brats. I'm not sorry that I wrote it, I'm not sorry I self-published it and I'm definitely not sorry that I revised the ending, but I'm sorry that there were things that I did wrong with it and if I offended anyone with it, then I really couldn't be more sorry for that, but I have learned a lot from my experience over the ten years since I wrote it and I've read a lot, about writing and other things, I studied a degree in Philosophy, Religion, and Ethics, and I'm actively trying to make sure that when the sequel makes its way into the world, it's a lot more accepting and inclusive and it's a better novel. I hope it's everything I've learnt in the last ten years and that I don't look at it ten years in the future and my cheeks flush because there are more things that I should have done better in. That's my hope, that's my wish, but we'll see how that pans out, won't we? 

So, what does that mean for other writers? 

One big piece of advice I would give anyone is don't be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes aren't a bad thing as long as you learn from them, but the flip side of that is something else I truly believe in, and that is, Own Your Mistakes. Be strong enough to say, I said or did something that was wrong, I learned from my errors, such a person told me I was wrong, and now I am doing this to make up for it. It's a cliche to say that no one is perfect, but it's true. No one walks through their life and makes zero mistakes. I hope that one day, people like J K Rowling can stand up and say the things I said were hurtful to other women. Whilst their experience isn't the same as mine, their experience does not invalidate mine and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to accept and admit that. In the future, I won't use my massive platform to spread offensive views about trans people and will fight for the rights of others, not against them, even when I don't share their experience. There are plenty of us who make mistakes and they fall under the radar, there are plenty of people who make mistakes and it's all over the media and there is noise against and there is noise to support, but what's important is, when you know it was a mistake, say it, own it, and do what you can to make up for it, because there is nothing worse than trying to pretend like you never made it in the first place. At least if you apologise, that's something people can trust. 

Charlieswrite, Sporadically Yours.

Everyone Says 'Happy Friday' Like It's a Given

I'm going to have to edit the message that prompted this blog title, but surprisingly it is not the rambling upset of a person who works shifts. I am a civil servant doing the usual Monday to Friday, but more like ten til six, because screw being up and functional at nine am, or so says my brain. 

"My Friday sucks. I wanted to finish early to get working on a website for a project but I can't because my job is too busy :') also I'm making loads of masks this weekend, so I think I'm going to be snowed under, unfortunately. This whilst trying to fit in Camp NaNo writing challenge and Twitter Sprint Leading because I've not even taken a shift yet and whatever else comes up. I don't know if I want to scream, cry, be sick or go for a really long run, but it's raining so probably not the last one."

I know I was the one that said you have to work off of priorities, but gods and angels it is busy up here in my life right now. I'm also working on a whole other bunch of stuff which doesn't get mentioned, so yeah... 

It gets to Friday and everyone from work is all, woo, it's Friday. Clearly, your weekends aren't busier than the actual week at work, so Friday can only be a positive thing, right? Yeah, so wrong. Unfortunately, this is my circus, so the monkeys on my back are going to stay there until I finish all of the things I need to do, and I'll just have to keep juggling everything until there are fewer balls or pins or whatever it is that people juggle, though knowing what I'm like, I'll probably just pick up a couple more and the whole cycle will start again, but I want to do that because I want what people call a big life. I want to forge ahead doing all of the big things and the scary things and getting through it, even if it takes some tears, some tantrums, and a few tablets of Valium to get there. 

Anyone who follows me on Twitter will have seen this coming, but this is it. 

Charlieswrite, Sporadically Yours.