Where Did My Buffer Go?,

I wrote a post recently about having utilised one of the features of Blogger to time posts to come out on a more consistent basis, partly because I have been struggling with my ADHD and partly because I have been struggling with some of the symptoms of pregnancy. One of the great parts of that is that it means when I have a "good" day with the ADHD and hyper focus on writing, I can get quite a few blog posts written and scheduled and then I have a buffer zone for the days when I either don't want to write, or can't look at a computer screen because it's going to give me a headache either from the medications I'm on to because I'm actually too tired to look at the screen and I need an all day nap.

When I came onto Blogger today, feeling the urge to write one of the posts on here after it had been bubbling and whizzing around my head for the last few days I couldn't help but think, where has my buffer gone? And the truth is, I had eaten through it from a few days, or more than a few days, of inactivity and bad symptoms etc, and the fact I have four of these queued up per week was probably a bit ambitious. I have missed writing so much, but when I'm overly ambitious I tend to burn out and then disappear for months on end so it would be nice to actually stick to writing this consistently for a bit, and I think in order to do that I probably need to drop the number being posted per week, and I think the most sensible one to drop is the weekend post, or posts, unfortunately.

To be perfectly honest, the weekend post was probably more of an ode to the past, particularly when I was a student, because I worked in the evenings, I was at university during the day and the only unscheduled time I could schedule for writing, or meeting up with writing buddies etc was at the weekend, and I loved writing about what I did or posting what I was up to or what the group was up to on Instagram, but these days my weekends are full of doing all sorts of things and pretty soon I'm going to have someone relying on me for not only his life, but his very existence, so having any form of consistent writing time is likely out of the window for at least a month or so (probably a few more than that if we're being honest with ourselves) and to me it just makes sense to have the three spaced out during the week, but I don't know. I will likely decide later on. 

I might take after my mother and not do Mondays, and no, my mother isn't a large ginger cat, but she does like lasagna. I think.

The most important thing though, she says looking at a clock that is saying it's quarter to midnight on a 'school' night, is going to be striking a balance between what I want to do and what I have the capacity to do, particularly whilst getting into the swing of things, and without being one of those people who think every little thing that their child does is revolutionary. Whether it's a smile in their earliest days or it's gas, it doesn't really matter, because no one else finds it as fascinating as the parents or immediate family of the kid and sometimes even that is asking too much, so I'm really going to try and avoid being like that, because there is life outside of being a Mum and I don't want to lose sight of that.

What makes you want to keep writing?,

After everything that happened with NaNoWriMo, the original, there have been a few of us who have been pretty vocal about the impact it has had on both our mental health and also our ability or motivation to write. Personally I have really struggled with motivation to keep writing, because it all felt a little too emotional. Some things over the last few months have made it a lot easier, but writing novels has remained at least a little challenging. I've struggled with the sharing of blog posts even when I have been able to write them, but I am trying to get past that, and there is a big reason for that.

One of the biggest fears I have now, one of the biggest fears I think most parents have, is not being there for my boy. It may be partly because of all of the stories we have from my grandparents that are only half remembered, and the fact we can't just go back and ask them now. The little details like who people in photographs they left us are, the stories behind hierlooms like the Austrian hat with all the pin badges, or even just things like what was my great grandpa actually like. I know little things, like he had a false leg because he was shot in World War One, but I can't remember if she said he was funny or he was musical. I know he could darn his own socks... or actually that might have been my grandpa because he was in the Navy during the Second World War... 

There are so many more ways now to record the stories we want to pass on to our children, and whilst I'm sure there will be things on this blog that my child or children might not be interested in, or there might be things that make them think certain things about me, as well as it not containing a lot of things like how I met their dad, how we became the couple that we became, how we found our house and everything that happened as we waited to move... there's a lot that's not in here, but there is a lot that is here and it's a side of me that I would like them to be able to see one day, even if it's solely as a reminder that I haven't always been Mum. 

Don't get me wrong, I am a big believer in that parents are whole people who need time to be more than just Mum or Dad or whatever name they go by. Parents need time to be a couple (if they are in a couple) as well as be themselves, and have their interests and their passions outside of just being parents. Being parents is important, of course, and being there for your child or children, but I think there is something problematic in losing yourself completely in your children, partly because it's what then contributes to empty nest syndrome when they have grown up and are doing their own thing, because then it becomes a thing of trying to build yourself a whole new life, with new hobbies and new friends and new passions. Reddit is full of horror stories of when parents are too wrapped up in their kids, and the sort of parents that resent when their kids becomes their own person and has their own life and later their own family. I fully intend to keep writing, maybe get back into running and parkrun, and stay in Scouting, but I'm also aware of the fact that these are things my son most likely will want to get involved in (or at least the last two) so it'll be less of a me thing and more of a we thing...

I guess the important bit for me is that my son would get the chance to read things I wrote, if he wanted to, and that's one of the things that keeps me writing, because even though we are starting a new chapter by becoming parents, it's all part of the stories that we have both been writing all of our lives, and this is the best window into mine. And I'm sure I'll find another way to make sure he has the stories about me and his dad, even if I have to hand write them in a book or something ridiculous like that... 

Jesus Freaking Christ,

...I know I need the pressure of a deadline, but this one takes the biscuit. I'm in bed the night before returning to week after a... I was going to write blissful week of annual leave but I think that's wrong... we'll say complicated week of annual leave and I'm exhausted because of the lack of sleep from the last two days and everything I've done in between the two nights with little sleep (yes, it is possible to be exhausted after two bad nights of sleep, particularly for someone with insomnia and ADHD) and my feet somehow feel like blocks of ice despite the fact the electric blanket is on and I only took my slippers off thirty seconds before getting into bed, and there are a myriad of other reasons why my focus right now should be sleep, but I'm writing this blog, and why? 

Because my cognitive functions have chosen this moment to spit out a somewhat logical framework by which I can write one of the projects I have been trying to write for the last couple of years. The characters have been there, bit's of storyline have been there, there has been joy, passion and other emotions that have ebbed and flowed, but nothing has come out right, and AS SOON AS I SHOULD BE ASLEEP ahead of what will be another busy week, something in my head shouts coo-ey, have you thought about writing it like this? So. Bloody. Useful.

I need sleep. I need it, now, immediately, but I also know in the time it took me to walk from the bathroom to my bedroom that I lost parts of what I was thinking about possibly never to be seen again. I know that writing this blog is a distraction, but I committed myself to posting more and I'm determined to do it. And I know I need to be up at half past 8 in the morning because my car needs to be serviced, and it took me a while to get an appointment at the garage that I trusts so missing it is not an option. But I really want to write!! 

You might think I could just quickly scribble down notes and then that would prompt everything to come back to me in the morning or some time tomorrow *when I have more time* (jokes, I will not have more time tomorrow, tomorrow is going to be mental. And Tuesday is going to be even worse, presuming my car comes home from the garage fine tomorrow. (It not coming home tomorrow isn't really an option, but it is a possibility which is giving me anxiety and may be the reason I currently have a horrendous stomach ache.) Here's the problem. Memory prompts do not work well on me. I'm like the character from my beloved The Monsters of Gramercy Park: wake up in the night and scribble Ardilla on my hand, wake up in the morning and wonder why my nocturnal ponderings included Spanish squirrels. Imagine the kid from Paulie refusing to speak. 'Can you say but- ter- fly?' and all you get is a shaking head? As soon as I ask a question or start trying to recall something, it's like a little egg thief thing from Spyro grabs it, runs off and I'm having to choose between charging after it at high speed, use special flame throwing capacities (we'll say that's asking my mum... or Alexa...) or try and find another way to the same thing, because sometimes I just get frustrated because I can see what I mean, but I can't find the word and I can't draw to save my life so it's not coming out that way... The problem is, much like Spyro with me at the controls I end up banging my head into walls. Not going to lie though, liking the example where I am a dragon.

I don't want to spend some time, where I still don't sleep, writing something which turns out to be useless to me, but I also don't want to stay up all night trying to write it the way I want to write it, even just as a framework, because I already feel like I need match sticks to keep my eyes open. Sadly, the next time I have annual leave booked is also my birthday and I have plans to go and see Mr Big then (though whether that is on the day of my birthday or the day after is yet to be decided. Other than the fact the gig on my birthday is in Nottingham and that's a bit of a drive, I would be (am) really tempted to go to both since it is the final tour, and honestly, I'm not ready. I'm not sure I ever will be or would be ready for it to be their final tour, but I'm certainly not ready for it now. 

It's Not About Money,

 There has been a lot of coverage recently of the Post Office scandal and it honestly took me back to a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago when we were talking about Windrush, other scandals and what it should look like. Neither of us work in the area now, nor have we ever, but we were discussing what compensation should look like. 

Whilst the two situations are wholly different, the impact that it has had on people's lives has been similar in that people have lost their livelihoods, their savings, their freedom, their retirement and some of them have lost their lives before ever seeing justice, some at their own hands, because they couldn't take what a situation which was completely outside of themselves and their control.

We discussed what monetary compensation should look like and we both agreed that financially people should be put back into the position they were in prior to it happening, which is the generally accepted position, but we discussed how that should be 'in real terms'. When we talk about something using the phrase 'real terms' it's often talking about real terms pay cuts, where pay cuts are below the rate of inflation, so although you receive more money, you get less (for want of a better word) stuff for that money and so you didn't really get a pay rise. Even though it can be difficult to prove the position people were previously in, or it can be difficult to put a number on what that looks like, if someone was getting ready to buy a house (which is a really bad example in some ways, but not in others) then they should be returned to the position where they are able to buy a house. Now, obviously it is unlikely that they would be able to buy the same house that they had been looking at, but if for example they were looking at a three bedroom house in a 'nice' area, then we're not compensating them if after any form of payout they're having to look at buying a one bedroom flat in a tower block or something similar. In effect, we should be looking to put them back to where they were or better. 

As much as I don't like the idea of the Americanisation of the UK, and the fact that people will sue each other over anything these days, when we talk about compensation we can only talk about money, and that is rubbish because more often than not, what people have lost is not money. 

A different friend was in an accident, and the impact of that accident has undoubtedly shortened his life. It has changed his appearance, his ability to cope, even his personality to an extent, and whilst he 'got a payout' we had a discussion once where he said he would give all of the money back to have a body that works, a normal life span, and not to be exceptionally close to a panic attack every time there's a dicey moment in the car (which with the way people drive, happens a lot). The money that he was given, the money he was deemed to be owed, won't extend his life, nor does it remove all of the difficulties he has, and it hasn't allowed him to course correct and get back to the life he had planned and was working towards, but nothing really can. The money does mean he can do things like paying for cleaners so he doesn't have to struggle with it, and he can pay for taxis so he doesn't have to drive. To some degree he could choose to spend that money pampering himself, like trips to Bali every year or something, which might not be the life he planned, but it's a pretty good life.

It seems to me that what is being discussed for these former Post Masters and Mistresses is one fixed figure, as though the experiences of everyone is one fixed thing. There is some acknowledgement that that isn't true, because there's one figure for those who weren't convicted and a higher figure for those who were, but again this suggests that the experiences of each, and what each lost is either one or the other. There's something impersonal about it, and that doesn't feel right. Whilst anything more wouldn't be quick, the whole thing hasn't been quick. It's been going on for so long, and it's been such a long fight that I think it would be better if these payments were more of an interim whilst a better assessment was made so that those who were impacted even more significantly are able to receive a sum that 'makes them whole' as though anything ever can, but without having to wait for all of the sums to be done. They should be able to get their lives back on track from now. By rights, they should have been able to do this a lot of years ago. 

Doing That Thing I Hate,

Yeah, I know that could be a very, very long list of things but I really do hate writing about not writing, but sometimes that is what it comes to. 

I wanted to write this, because even though I have been writing every day it hasn't been a blog, but I have managed to publish a blog every day and that's been feeling pretty good. Even though I haven't necessarily been publicising them every day - even when I have had photos prepared to post with them since I HATE wordy Insta stories! - because there has been a lot going on. Which I'm not going to talk about. 

Today was my first day in the office this year and it was A LOT to say the least. It meant getting up a lot earlier than I am comfortable with, trying to leave the house with what I needed for the day (and failing not because of forgetting anything, but just not being able to anticipate everything I was going to want or need) spending too long driving and that not being hugely pleasant, realising in the middle of the day something was itching and I wasn't sure if it was my skin or something that just felt itchy in my mind, or in my soul or whatever, and so even though I took my laptop with me to the office (I don't mean the work one, though I obviously did take that one) with the vague intention of writing something on my lunch break, I didn't even take it out of my bag whilst I was there. I was trying to think what I could write whilst I was on the way home and honestly, it was honestly the least inspired I have felt for the whole of this year. I felt empty; devoid of all thoughts and opinions, and let's face it, that's not like me at all. 

What changed was the closer I got to home, once I had collected the pooch from my parents, the more I felt I was getting my groove back. That's not to say I walked into the house and felt like I could write a novel in five days, or crack out a poem in under twenty minutes, but I felt a bit more like my normal self. I'm still overwhelmed and I still feel like there's an army of ants crawling across my skin, but there's a bit more "Charlie Flavoured Normality", not to be confused with the regular kind, mixed in there. I've sent the pooch to bed early (and yes, I feel very guilty for that, got into bed with a thermos-type tumbler of tea (I don't have anything against mugs, I just don't like drinking cold tea and it's too cold at the moment for me to drink hot tea, because I forget about it), my pjs on and my electric blanket keeping me warm, and I'm writing from my bed. It's not the best idea in terms of sleep, but it does mean I will get this published before midnight and I think that will soothe some of my ruffled up feathers as well.

I even thought about outlining the plot of another novel (yes, I know, finish those you are currently writing before getting distracted by any more!) before I realised it was a bit like a film that I love, without the intention of being, so decided not to bother. 

Language,

No, this is not going to be one of my lengthy diatribes about how the English language fails us on a daily basis, making it more difficult than it should be to express a point of view for no obvious reasons, but something of an apology, but also not. 

I've oscillated between swearing and not swearing on this blog, and it can be tedious trying to keep up with the should I, shouldn't I argument of it. I tend to try and either switch words out for something else that makes it obvious what the intended word was, or remove letters and put in *s in their place, but sometimes, I don't want to do that. And for anyone who has met me in person, particularly lately, I am a bit of a Sweary Mary. 

Over Christmas, this has been a point of contention. One of my parents says (or yells) Stop f***ing swearing, and I say no. It's either an instruction or sometimes a question (can you stop, will you stop) and the answer is still no. It was a topic of conversation that an elderly relative doesn't like it when I swear, but they let the men in the family swear like sailors (and blames it on a lifestyle - I can't help but roll my eyes). I was told they think 'it's not lady like' to which I replied, 'have they met me?' The times where I act like a lady are few and far between and I will also add that one of my favourite memes (and occasionally sayings when people get on my nerves about it too much) is 'I do not spit profanity, I enunciate it, like a f***ing lady.' 

Firstly, I'm not actually sitting (or standing or lying or anything else) calculating what I'm going to say and then peppering it with swear words for good measure - what comes out of my mouth is the way I have thought it. I'm mostly not offended by swear words though there are some I try and use more sparingly, though lately with more limited success. I try and be a little more contained around aforementioned relative but that's less to not offend their (quite frankly ridiculous) sensibilities and more because I do not have the energy for the argument, nor do I fancy the headache from the nagging. The excuse that they don't want to hear it often gets trotted out, but I don't want to hear a lot of the things that they say either because of the nature of what it is, however arguing on that one is also always my fault. (And sadly - I'm not sad about it - I'm not very good at just saying nothing and lettig it all go.) 

But the more important thing for me is this. Language is a personal thing. There are plenty of things which make me uncomfortable about the way that people use language - particularly when it changes so fast I have no idea what the young people I work with are talking about - but that's life. As long as people aren't swearing at each other, being racist or sexist or anything else of that ilk, trying to police the way that other people express themselves really p*sses me off. I've been in a situation where people have tried to tell me that I shouldn't swear because they don't like it, and a lot of the time, I want to response by just saying, I don't care. I'm not generally a person who wants to make other people uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean I will willingly let other people police my behaviour when it's not actually harming people. 

(When I'm in charge of children, I obviously behave differently, though sometimes that means walking away, and making sure people know if I'm walking away, not to follow me, unless they want to deal with an angry me, which is likely to include me swearing. The children just know not to follow me and are looked after by someone else whilst I work whatever it is that's winding me up out of my system.) 

I'm Not Actually As Disorganised As I Look,

 It would be very easy to walk into my house, you know, if you were invited, and think, jees, you have no organisational structure to your life at all, and honestly, you would be forgiven, at least to some degree, for thinking that. I am a bit scatterbrained. I forget things a lot, I get confused a lot and inevitably I walk out of the house with the feeling that I'm going without something literally every time I go anywhere, and sometimes, it's a whole list. Most of the time, that is okay, because for most things you can replace them pretty easily where you're going. I regularly get to camps early because I know I will need to drive off and find something that I have realised I have forgotten. I'm also good at remembering things other people will have forgotten and other people do that for me and generally, we all muddle along pretty well. There will always be a time when you forget mugs, well, there was that time I forgot mugs anyway, there will always be someone who forgets a chair. There will always be multiple people who forget chairs.

Organisation is something I try to achieve but unfortunately there is no one linear way to do things, so inevitably things go missing not because they're stored illogically or in the 'wrong place' but because I can't remember what I thought the right place was when I actually stored it. You know the old joke of keeping something so safe even I don't know where it is, that's me, a hundred percent. I was recently looking for the other book by Dr Richard Shepherd 'Unnatural Causes' whilst reading 'The Seven Ages of Death' - ridiculously I started reading this because I had to wait for Christmas to get the next Bridgerton book, and this was the next "logical" choice - and I was somewhat obsessed with the idea that it was on one of the bookshelves, effectively filed with other books which were the sort that aren't best sellers, but almost like current W H Smith most recommended or something, which would have put it in the same place as 'The Hate You Give' and Hibo Wardere's 'Cut'. I kept looking in the same place, partly because when I last thought I had lost a book, that was where it turned up. Annoyingly, I could see the previous missing title - my beloved 'Before I Go To Sleep' by S J Watson, but I could not find 'Unnatural Causes'. I'm pretty impressed though because I knew I had it. Like, I KNEW. There have been multiple occasions over my life where I have ended up with two copies of the same book because I forgot I had it already, so I impressed myself knowing I had it, even though I was irritated as fluff that I didn't know where it was.

This isn't just some lengthy thing so I can go on about all of the wonderful books that are taking up the shelves of my library guest room merge storage area, but just simply trying to explain that I was looking in a very logical place for it, not just for one reason - it was one of those books that was highly recommended at the time - but also because it was a place I had previously located something which had been missing. It turned out that the damn thing was in the equally logical position of being the opposite side of the room in a stack which sits atop the books which are properly shelved - I refuse to believe I have too many books, I just don't have a proper way to store them - with the likes of Adam Kay's 'This Is Going to Hurt'. Why? Because I sorted the books on that side of the room by genre, or at least started to, and so there is a whole section on crime fiction, there is a whole bit on serial killers, there's all the war time stories like 'Bread, Jam and a Borrowed Pram', everything animal related, Jojo Moyes has her own section, there's the LGBTQIA+ fiction stack and there is the pile of medical books. There's a few different nurses' stories, there's a prison doctor's story, and there is one of the most recent books that ripped my heart out, 'When Breath Becomes Air'. 

Somehow, despite the fact that there was some emotional turmoil deciding where 'When Breath Becomes Air' should live because I was torn between putting it with 'The Fault In Our Stars' to have a little epic books that made me cry hysterically section, having it with the other medical books where it ended or putting it on one of these gorgeous house shaped shelves that are above the guest bed, because that's where some of my very favourite books are. A few NaNo novels live up there - yes, including the proof copy of mine - 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' is up there, there's a few Jodi Picoult's and the only reason Jojo Moyes didn't end up there is because she's written too many books for me to put them all up there and I can't bare to separate them. 

Okay, that did turn into a bit of a tangent. 

The point is, even when I am very deliberate and very specific with trying to be organised, it doesn't always work, particularly when it comes to issues with object permanence; if I can't see it, it doesn't exist, but it becomes an, if I can't see it, I can't find it, because who knows what system I filed it by. So many things come into this and it's also one of those 'if I put it down it is lost' situations which is why I need to figure out what I'm doing with something when I'm looking at it, or I need to do a task when I pick it up, because if I put it down, God only knows when I will find it again to sort it, and some things just don't work like that, do they? 

I Got My Wings,

 Full disclosure, it is not Friday the 5th when I'm writing this. I'm writing it at twenty to two in the morning because one of the dogs is stressed from the fireworks and it's taking a lot to try and get him to go to bed and get some sleep. I used to love fireworks, but as I have said countless times, I don't love the impact they have on my animals.

Anyway, onto what I was actually going to be writing about. It turns out I might actually be full of shit. Why am I full of shit? Well, because I said I'm not really a resolution person and I said I wasn't going to try and do any of these things of do X every day of January, but instead, I'm doing something... worse? Better? I guess that depends on your perspective. I'm going to be trying to write every day. I'm part of a writing website called 4 The Words, I've written about it a lot before and it's something that I get very passionate and overexcited about and have zero awareness of when other people's eyes glaze over about it (thank you ADHD) and I have a streak which has been live for a consecutive one thousand, four hundred and sixty days, which is four whole years. Technically, I joined at the end of November 2019, but I didn't keep my streak fully after the end of NaNoWriMo, so my consistent one has been since 7th January 2020, but it's calculated by number of days not calendar years. It was a very different time.

One thing about streaks is that if you log in on the day, you can 'fix' a streak even if you don't write, because at least you thought about writing, and there is the facility to 'book time off' with planning ahead of you can 'buy back' days onto your streak, but only for a very limited period. There's a theory that I thought was called nudge theory, but I believe that's actually something different, which states that doing something small towards your goal each day is the best way to achieve it, so actually even logging onto the website and clicking a button to say I can't write today, whether it's because I'm busy or I'm ill or because I just feel like an empty vessel, it's okay. To some degree, the system allows me to take that further, but something I'm aiming to do this year is to actually log in every day and write the small amount of words (four hundred and forty four) that I need per day to pass par for the site. By the way, I'm spelling the numbers out for two reasons. Yes, long hand the words are worth more than a number written as 444, but also because I have realised recently that even though I'm good at maths I do struggle reading numbers sometimes, mainly between 3s and 8s, but the words generally behave a bit better for me.

There are going to be days where that is not physically possible, so I'm planning to email myself my words on those days so I can make sure I am writing every day, even if it's only a small amount, and even if it's only essentially me dictating my own internal monologue to myself. I don't want to lose my love of writing again because I'm trying to force myself into it, but I cannot lose this part of myself because I categorically do not know who I am without it, and part of the reason I felt as bad as I did during November was because it felt as though this part of my personality was crumbling, based on the complete and total misconception that my identity as a writer started with NaNoWriMo and couldn't function outside of it. 

Today I, well, my avatar of a slightly different name (character restrictions on usernames so it's CharlieWrite, having been charlwrite for a number of years due to even tighter character restrictions) will get a set of gold wings as soon as I hit my four hundred and forty four words, and you better believe I will be putting them on that tiny, dweeby looking facsimile of me, because I am proud of the achievement. Even if it means I was full of shit when I said no resolutions, and no joining in on do something every day things, this is something I really want to do, and I sat with it for a while to see that it was that, rather than something like parkrun that I carried on with because I wanted to want to do it, which is not the same. And if it does make me full of shit, well, a lot of people are so I guess I can make my peace with that. Hopefully in four years time I will be sat here ready to get my 8 year wings that are the coolest pair (in my less than humble opinion) and this year will be one which I look back on as a time of peace and focus, though I realise that might be asking a lot of a brain that like shiny new things and behaves erratically. We'll just have to see.

Antisocial Media,

 Truth time: I don't remember if I wrote about why I turned my Instagram private, so I'm going to do that here and if I'm repeating myself, well shit, it happens and I'm sure we can all get over it. 

As a volunteer with [I'm not actually going to put the name of the organisation because they would not thank me for swearing] I work with youngsters and the age range we as an organisation work with is vast. I haven't worked across the full span of the age range, but I'm only short by two years and that's youngsters so small I'm not sure I wouldn't trip over them. As these lovely young people grow up, they get social media accounts and they sometimes like to find stuff out about the people they interact with - it's fine, we all do it - but there are photos on my Instagram of university nights out, utter rubbish I posted years ago and never deleted because who scrolls back that far anyway (trust me, they do) and there are photos of me at Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is a photo I'm proud of, do not get me wrong, but it's not something I would share with them, it's not an outfit I would even consider wearing around them and the God's honest truth is I forgot it was there until someone said, oh, they found your Instagram and were sharing screenshots between themselves of different photos on there. And it was like alarm bells going off in my head, and the only thing I could think to do was shut it straight onto private mode. 

In some ways, getting rid of my public profile of Instagram was actually really positive, because I didn't feel the need to post on there, and I wasn't concerned about the idea of 'if you want to be a writer you're going to have to get better at promoting your own books' and I didn't have to think about content production or all of those things that I was starting to think, hey, if you actually want to do this writing thing as more than just a venting to yourself thing, or just a written version of a Sims game, effectively, you're going to have to get better (not even better, get less shit at) using social media. I know the theory of it, but I'm not good at consistency, I don't want to spend hours on it because it's not the bit I'm good at or that I like doing and honestly, although I knew it was going to affect things like readership to the blog I had already kind of fallen out with writing and started the mental health episode that I had (though it was only bubbling under the surface at that stage). 

At present, I have a Facebook page I rarely use, I use my Twitter (and hate it), glance at my Blue Sky (not yet loving it) and that's about it. I had to learn how to embed links into stories on Facebook - post it from Instagram - so that I could get the blog out to my friends lists and hope that made some impact (and it clearly worked, though I'm sure the Google Analytics for the blog are broken given that it recorded a ludicrous number of views from Singapore over a few days this year (though having looked at it, I originally thought it was 2 days, and then it turned out it was over quite a few more days than that, so who knows?) I'm not necessarily thinking I want to try and build the readership of this blog massively, because that would be insane pressure to actually consistently write something worth reading, but I know I will have to go back to having more of a public social media presence, however uncomfortable that might feel, if I'm going to think about publishing anything this year, and I would like that to be the plan, but will have to see how I get on. 

I go through fits and starts of using stories, but I think they're going to have to be a bit more of a feature of my life so that I can actually put the links to these blogs out, and then hopefully, eventually, announce a date for the Fairies sequel and a couple of other things I have been working on, but I will be honest, it's doubtful if either of them will make an appearance this year, let alone both. 

What Happens Now?

As NaNoWriMo23 comes to a close, I'm realising how weird it is that I've spent the month writing, but without recording it on the NaNo site and actually it was only when it was 'over' and I had finished the fifty thousand words that NaNo requires that I actually started writing the sequel I have been trying to write for a long time and it was probably the best thing I've tried to write for a long time. I thought it was going to be harder to let go of the whole of NaNo if that was what it came to, but what I have realised in the last few days has been that even though this has been the last fourteen years of my life, if it no longer fits it's okay to put it down and focus on the things which do. It's not like I'm resigning my typewriter to the scrap pile or trying to figure out being happy without writing (never works, or not for long anyway) or even like I'm giving up on something that puts on its boots only to kick them square up my butt to get me writing - metaphorically, of course.

Whilst saying goodbye to NaNoWriMo is not a certainty at the moment - it's going to depend on a few things - I definitely don't feel as distraught as I would have expected to and whilst that's strange, it is a very welcome thing. Although I did manage to let go of some things with NaNoWriMo what I will say is that this blog was typed during the mad dash before midnight which happens to have been my favourite part of NaNo each year and has been the sort of thing that was either the mad sprint to finish or the period where I tried to write enough to mirror what I had done on the first day (nailed it, just saying) and I have previously had a bottle of Prosecco in the house so that I could pop the cork and have a glass at midnight to celebrate it's over. I'm tempted to do that now, but at the same time I think I should leave it until the finish of the draft of the sequel. (Though I have a few bottles so there's nothing to stop me from having a glass tonight and then a glass from another bottle when the draft is finished. It would have to be different bottles because it's not going to be done in the next few days!)

Anyway, yes, NaNoWriMo is over and I am glad that the pressure is off of the whole thing, but at the same time, I can't wait for a conclusion to the whole thing to happen. The whole thing really does feel like a sword of Damacles over the head of the organisation, the community, and the whole damn thing. I hate it because it doesn't feel real and it doesn't feel like something that ever should have happened (obviously) and, in the strange way that NaNoWriMo counts things, we've not even quite reached 25 years for the organisation. If all we ever get to be is an organisation who had an amazing idea and wanted to bring together writers young and old, I hope the legacy looks like what we wanted it to, but if it doesn't, I hope that those of us who remember the best parts of it are able to look back and remember the best of it fondly. I know there are a lot of things that I will remember fondly, particularly getting to meet Chris Baty and discussing everything from the start of NaNoWriMo to his trip to Brighton and London, the trip to San Francisco and getting to meet some of the other Over Achievers in person and so many Municipal Liaisons, and most especially the train trip. And only in part because of getting to cuddle a puppy husky who was only about six weeks old and the most gorgeous little thing I had ever seen (to date, because I hadn't met Chai then.) And of course there will always be the write ins at KRO in Manchester before I left, my first year at university when the Manchester group called me and shouted 'We love you, Charlie' down the phone when my heart was breaking from missing home so much and I couldn't get the train back to Manchester to spend all of my time with them or to attend all of the events that the region were throwing. There were all of those All Night Lock Ins - the good, the bad and the online - train trips to Oxford, Cambridge and Brighton and then also the NaNoRillas where we explored more of London that some of us ever did alone. These memories might end up being all that is left, but if they are, then I guess it is a pretty great legacy. 

I guess the question is then, if I wrote this the night of the 30th November into 1st December, why has it taken me until now to post, because clearly I'm not doing what I was doing at the end of October where I was writing a few blogs in one day and scheduling them to go up one per day? Well, the answer is because a few things have still been hitting the fan with NaNoWriMo that are making me question whether what I have already done to step back are enough or whether I need to follow suit from what a few people (many of whom are former MLs or other long time supporters of the organisation) have already made the decision to do and make the decision to delete my account entirely. One of the things that makes me really reluctant to do that is that I don't want to lose the data and I have a really bad history with losing data, particularly when it is emotionally valuable to me. I also can't imagine getting to November next year and NOT going through all of my NaNoWriMo rituals and spending at least the first few days of the month seeing what taking things to the extremes can do (trying to write 50K in the least time possible is definitely taking things to the extremes) and taking it as an opportunity - if I need it - to recommit myself to writing when I've fallen off of the wagon a bit. Even if that's not done sitting under the NaNo banner, which this year wasn't really, it's always going to be connected to NaNo because that's where it comes from and the history is important to me. 

Decisions haven't been made yet by the board, or at least not announced yet, and I guess that I am still hoping that the right decisions are made that mean that the ship doesn't sink and we can keep NaNoWriMo or at least have a new and improved version as close to the original as humanly possible. I don't want to lose the good parts of what we have in NaNoWriMo, and I'm holding out hope that it can be saved, but maybe that is being unrealistically optimistic, and I just need to accept that it's time to walk away from any association with it. At the moment, I'm still sitting on the fence getting a splintery ass rather than making a decision one way or the other.

Since I wrote all of the above there has been a little bit more from the board, but it's not really been decisions other than bringing in a consultant... A few people have made the really big decision to leave, and honestly, I can't blame them, and I think it's going to continue to feel like a sinking ship until there is a good, solid outcome - like a change of personnel or really solid consequences for the things that happened and a lot of changes in certain areas that have been highlighted a number of times, or the majority of the community leaves, whether we have a new home or not. 

There Are Literally Files,

 On my computer called sh1t and nonsense. One called one, one called the other. And the reason? Because it's NaNoWriMo and my energy is meant to be focused on writing and not on naming files, but I am still, more than six months later, getting used to using this laptop and I'm still, six months later, having to check shortcuts for things like screen shots, and I'm still struggling to toggle between things, so I have a couple of dump files (files where I literally copy and paste everything into) on my computer that were always opened and never saved (risky, I know) and they were occupying Pages, so I was writing everything that wasn't on 4thewords (where there are also dump files but at least they are named) in Notes. Notes doesn't have a word counter, so adding my word count was annoying because it was copy and paste into 4TW to fight the monsters and then also have to copy any paste EVERYTHING, because I wouldn't be me if I wasn't working on a couple of projects at once during NaNo, to count the words so I have an official total. 

And then I got irritated so saved one file as sh1t and one as nonsense and then I could have a brand new dump file for NaNo, which is still not the easiest thing, because I still have to copy and paste everything into it unless I start working directly from it, but I have a sum total word count without having to try and get to the tab that has the word counter on it. 

Also, it's NaNo, formatting has gone out of the window. So has sleep. 

In terms of word count, well, it's going. I'm planning on actually writing a proper blog at the moment, but this should give you an indication of how well I'm able to string a sentence together about what is going on. 

Just Do It,

A few years ago my ex partner - can't remember if he was the ex at the time or not, and I'm not sure that it really matters - showed me a video that Shia LaBeouf made that was the phrase, Just Do It, and a couple of other little gems like, if you want to stop starting over, stop giving up. Periodically, it pops into my head clear as day, because I get sick of the doubts in my head that stand in the way of the things I want to do or the things I intend to do. Today is one of those days. 

When I bought the new laptop, I managed to pull myself out of a pretty major writing funk that had made me feel as though I had lost a significant part of myself. I've been writing since I was a small person, or a smaller person, and I've been a part of NaNoWriMo since I was sixteen, so thinking that it was a part of my life I was going to walk away from and that I thought I was closing the door on completely and I didn't realise how awful that felt. I have it written everywhere that what I am is a writer, a dreamer and a fairies believer, so walking away from that completely should have felt disgusting, but at the time I just wasn't feeling the decision and it's only when I've walked it back that I've realised how much of an impact that it had on me. 

Saying that though, the whole, I walked that decision back, I recommitted to writing and I knew what I was doing with it more than I had for a while - don't take that as I have any idea of a direction or destination for what I want in terms of writing, because I definitely don't - I knew what I wanted to do, I knew more what I wanted to write about and I knew that I actually wanted to write which was something pretty new - well, old, missing for a while and then new - but the problem has come in the space in between writing something - whether it be blogs, short stories or sometimes emails - and putting it into a space where someone else can read it. 

I've taken a few knocks recently, and honestly there have been points where I have felt like it was everything that was going wrong, and when it comes to my writing it's something that is often so personal that the idea of being kicked from another direction when I was already feeling more than bruised was just completely overwhelming and completely paralysing. I'm starting to feel like things are turning a corner, or at least I'm hoping that they are, because I'm trying to refuse to feel worse than I have over the last few weeks, and if that is the case one of the things which needs to happen is I need to be okay with sharing things I have written with the world again. I need to actually click 'Publish' on the blog posts I have written, 'Send' on the emails I have left in Drafts and I need to kick my ass into finishing a couple of drafts of things that I want to think about what I want to do with, but I have been putting it off. 

Anyway, this is the first thing I have pressed 'Publish' on. Long may it continue.

Reasons I Don't Want To Write During Lockdown

 There have been a few reasons why I haven't wanted to write during the current UK lockdown and surprisingly one of them has actually been a lack of time. Juggling life (or dealing with the lack of one), work and assistance of other people as well as socialising with the family I live with and a few other things, it's somehow felt busy despite not actually knowing what I have been doing for the past year, but it's not even that which is currently making me not want to write. Currently, it's my completely scrambled vocabulary. 

I occasionally, in the non-COVID affected normality, make some great gaffs where I use a word and then either think it was the wrong one or completely forget the meaning of the word I just used. I thought it was mainly when I was speaking, but no, it happens regularly when I'm typing as well. Previously they were an odd but amusing occurrence and they were, probably at most, weekly. These days, it is not even weekly, but hourly that I completely lose the word I am trying to get to and can't recall it, or my mind is reaching to recall a word and it kind of does a Groot from the second movie; if it's in the vague vicinity, we'll give it a shot. No prizes for guessing what the last word in that sentence turned into, though I think that was just a bog standard typo.

An example of what I mean was the quiz I was a part of this evening. The answer was wrong anyway (it was actually Pulp Fiction) but I was trying to think of the name of the film Reservoir Dogs, but what my brain spat at me was Riverside Dogs. It's close. It is body of water-related, has similar letters and is a similar length, but no, the film is not called Riverside Dogs (especially not because we were talking about Pulp Fiction, but even if it was Reservoir Dogs...) 

With this happening a lot, I'm assuming it's because my brain is under stress. There's a global pandemic going on; stress feels like an appropriate response. I have a few 'life goal' things happening, and still, stress feels like the appropriate response. Writing, though often cathartic, is likely to lead to me putting more stress on my poor, fragile, broken little mind and I am worried about what that kind of stress is doing to my body, and to my mind. It's certainly not helping my anxiety levels, but I know stress contributes to other things as well, so when I feel like writing, I write and when I don't, I don't get too up my own butt about it, because there's a lot going on that I need to be stressed over, or I can't help but be stressed over, and I don't need to give myself anything extra. 

I have set myself a goal for this month of around 10,000 words and quite frankly, I'm not too worried if I don't make it. Whilst it would be nice to add to my NaNoWriMo lifetime total, I'm most concerned about keeping myself happy and healthy for the moment and everything else needs to come secondary to that. If it doesn't fit with the goal of being happy and healthy, it has to be less important, or it might have to go.

You Are Not Serious...

 Dear Camp NaNoWriMo, 

You sneaky little thing, where did you come from? How did you get in here? We're still in January, aren't we? 

No, no, we are not and with the world waking up to April the first, and the errors in comedy of April Fools day, writers the world over will be waking up from their hibernation since the end of November - because it takes that long to recover - and starting work on Project [INSERT NAME HERE]. In usual NaNoWriMo style, I have no idea what I am doing but did muse another blog everyday challenge before realising I have attempted these for the last few camps and I have failed to an epic degree because consistency is not one of my strong points. I know this, I appreciate it, it's a part of me and I accept it, even if it is a giant pain in my ass. 

Something that is great though is *it's not NaNoWriMo*. Well, it is, but it's not, but it is, whilst it's also sat there being, well, not. 

Camp NaNoWriMo evolved from a couple of events really and so it's possible to write a novel, but it's equally possible for it to be a short stories month or for it to be like the old Script Frenzy and be the perfect time to write - get this - a script, but it's also a space to edit, finish writing, redraft or whatever you want to do and the goal is set by the participant, which makes it a damn site easier as well. Fifty thousand words is an incredible goal and it is a phenomenal task, but there are pros and cons to that, so the flexibility of goal in Camp can often appeal to those who find the prospect of a full NaNoWriMo a bit daunting. 

Personally, I put myself under a lot of pressure in November and I do stupid things to make sure I have as much time to write as I possibly can, even though I have fallen over myself in recent years to try and finish more and more quickly. Part of me would love to do a dry run now for November of yet another silly challenge for myself, but I'm still residing with my parents due to Coronavirus, and I have work projects that kind of need my attention over the Bank Holiday weekend. (But mainly the parents because my sleeping pattern would be way out of wack, which then interrupts my eating pattern and there are enough issues around mealtimes etc in this house without me starting something for a writing challenge.) 

Camp never feels like the same level of pressure, or at least not to me. I don't know if it's because there are two of them or because they're not the OG competition, but they just don't and that makes life sooo much easier in terms of fitting writing around life. 

Anyway, if you need me, I will be in my bubble. (No, not a social distancing bubble. My writing bubble. AND ONLY I AM ALLOWED IN IT!) 

Why does mindfulness colouring work?

Okay, I'm not putting this up for debate. What I'm saying right now is that mindfulness colouring does work to reduce stress levels and make you feel calmer. Now, it's not going to appeal to everyone and it's not going to be something which is enough to reduce some people's stress enough to make you feel "better" but it is a stress-busting method. That's not to say that there are no problems with it, but it does work.

One of the reasons it works is because it's self-soothing. One of the great things about something self-soothing is that it doesn't matter where you are or who you are with, it's possible to reduce your stress levels. That's really important at the moment, given that COVID has made people more isolated than they have been previously. It won't stop you from feeling isolated, but it will be a soothing exercise which will be able to reduce your stress levels. 

One of my favourite things about it though is that it's pretty cheap. It upsets me that because it became such a trend and some of these colouring books were becoming really expensive. Considering the stress that finances cause us, I find that really difficult to accept, but if money is a problem then it is possible to get a children's colouring book pretty cheaply and either crayons, coloured pencils or felt tips from places like the pound shop or Wilko which make it more accessible. I appreciate that it still might be outside of some people's budgets though. 

One of the main reasons that mindfulness colouring works is because it gives us something else to focus upon than all of the stressors in our lives. If all you have to think about for a few minutes is what colour you want to make a certain part of the picture, that's good, because that's not something that should cause us stress. 

When you get to the end of the picture, there's a sense of achievement that should make you feel good. I say should, because there are some issues with this. The sense of achievement at having finished it can be marked with other things. The achievement is good, and you might be really impressed that you don't feel very creative or artistic, but this is a thing that you've created and this is something artistic. If you've planned it, you might have got something that you want to be artwork on your wall, or for your children or for a gift for someone else. Maybe that influenced your colour choices when you were making them! It's great to have that, but it's also not completely necessary. I know of people who have coloured in their pictures and then they either rip them up, as another little stress buster or they put them in the recycling. If you know that you have used none toxic colours, you can shred the paper and use it for things like hedgehog or rabbit bedding. It might be possible to donate long paper shreddings (not out of a cross-cutting machine) to your local wildlife sanctuary for them to make use of. 

Some of us though, and I say us because I'm definitely in this group!, are hypercritical of everything we do and that extended to our self-soothing exercises. There's a little voice in your head like a mental woodpecker and rather than making a tapping noise as it's drilling into a tree, it sits there saying things like, you're not flexible enough for yoga, you're terrible at this, you're making a tit of yourself. When you're in talking cure therapy, it might be saying something like 'the therapist has heard all this before' 'you're just moaning' 'there are people with real problems in the world'. When you've done your mindfulness colouring, it might be saying that you've coloured over the lines in places, chosen the wrong colour in others and that you've wasted a whole lot of time colouring when you could have been dealing with the things that are making you stressed. It might also make you question whether to give someone the piece that you were thinking of giving them, because 'why would they want that?' 'you're not a child; they're not going to put your artwork on the fridge now you're x years old.' We are quite vicious with ourselves sometimes. 

When you speak to yourself like that, try and catch yourself.  Try and remind yourself that if you said that to anyone else, you'd think you were mean, so don't speak to yourself like that! You are not your own punching bag. It takes practice and it sometimes takes energy that we don't think we have, but it's worth saying, I'm not an artist, but I'm proud of what I have done. I was struggling so, at the time when I was colouring, I needed to do something self-soothing, because, after that, I went off and did... whatever is on your to-do list. You can't operate in a constant state of panic for very long. You don't function well in that environment, so giving yourself the time and space to calm down, even just a little, means you can recalibrate and then do things effectively afterwards. 

It's also worth remembering when you colour outside of the lines, you're not using mindfulness colouring to try and get a piece of artwork into the Tate or any other gallery; it's a tool to help you to have a minute and calm yourself. Gifts don't need to be the best pieces of artwork either - you just want them to be thoughtful and you want them to know you've spent your time on something for them. Nothing is more valuable than your time. 

There's something else you can try as well though when you're colouring. It's not supposed to be a high level, highly focused activity, but when you are colouring, try to control your breathing. Try to meditate at the same time, but not the way that we normally see people meditating of sat cross-legged and eyes closed. Think about your breathing, and focus on a good breath in through the nose and then a longer breath out through the mouth. It might seem a little odd, because how can you breathe out more than you breathe in, but it's more, holding your breath and controlling the release of it. You want to try and get away from the ideas of ragged breathing or hyperventilating that you can get into when you're anxious or your scared or you are pushing yourself into that panicked breathing. It doesn't have to be the whole time that you are colouring, but a couple of minutes, or even a minute - an actual, full minute, sixty seconds of commitment - is enough. And it, like a lot of things, will become easier with practice. If your brain tells you that you look or sound like 'a tit' remember that it doesn't matter what you look like in this moment, or what your sound like. You need a minute and you can have a minute. You can do it with your children or with others, and the quiet companionship of it is actually another great assistance. 

It's possible to look at other options as well, like apps for mindfulness colouring. It's something whether you can be looking at your phone - though I would remind you that doing this just before bed won't help you sleep as well as the paper version because of the blue light on screens  - or an iPad or other device which you can get the apps on. I would suggest putting on a 'Do Not Disturb' function or similar, so Facebook, Twitter or whatever else is trying to suck your attention away from it. The great thing about it is it colours in the lines for you and some of them even tell you what colour goes where. You can still pair it with mindfulness breathing exercises and it will still have an effect, though I believe there have been studies which show that the effect of putting pen (or pencil, or crayon) to paper has a different effect to when we're using our phones or typing on a laptop. 

You might be wondering why on Earth I'm talking, or er, writing, about this at the moment, but the reason is that COVID has eaten into the resilience that a lot of people have, and it has stolen some of our coping mechanisms. It has stripped people of friendship networks and human connections that we need and forced on us a solitude which has made many people severely uncomfortable. Sat here in my office in Manchester, I'm trying to tell myself not to worry about what looks like the second wave sweeping over Europe and reports of third waves in other places. I'm doing what I can to look after myself with all the hand washing and mask-wearing, and I'm making masks for the people around me to try and make the people I love safe, but I also know that if a second wave hits, my medication is sorted, mostly, and I'm in a good, well goodish, place mentally. I'm with my parents and my dog, so not lost and lonely in my little flat in London, and I have a few good coping mechanisms that are making me feel better, but I worry about the people around me, and also people that I don't know. Self-control and self-care are good ways to increase your resilience and make you better able to cope with the stress and trauma that we're trying to deal with in our lives at the moment. I talk about mental health a lot, so it seems like a logical extension of that. :) 

It's Been 10 Years, But I Just

Over the last few weeks, I have been itching to have another crack at writing the sequel to Fairies, because it's been ten years (almost) since I wrote it, I'm back in the place I wrote it (mostly) and I feel like it's about time. As in, it's about time I wrote it, the novel isn't about time. That would add a whole other level of complicated I can't deal with right now. 

4thewords is continuing to be a helpful beastie, because it makes me write at least 444 words a day, and sometimes the hurdle is just starting and putting pen to paper... well, fingers to keys. Once I get going, I'm not anywhere near NaNoWriMo personal bests of 20k days or writing 100k in a month, but I can crack through between 1.5-5k words a day without it interrupting my day too much, so where is the problem? 

Part of the problem is the characters. **If you haven't read Fairies, this is going to contain spoilers, so please consider this your alert.**

Fairies finished with Nate, Adamson, Louie, and, I want to say Felix, but who knows at this point!, returning to the fairy world because an eternal life as a fairy was better than a limited human life. They could make an impact on the lives of humans and they were important there. Seemingly simple? 

It's really not simple. 

Following on from their return to the fairy world, things change around quite a bit, so there's some of the sequel which is about them, some which is about Frank as my favourite person who was left behind in the human world (and someone who crops up into another novel I've been writing for just next to forever but needs a bit of character development in between the two!) and two new characters. One of the new characters is 'evil' and in league with the imps and the other is the one causing me the most problems, as she's Felix's (he's definitely called Felix - I checked) daughter. Originally I intended the story to be just about her, but every time I start writing about her, she seems to find some sort of tangent to go on and finding the way to make the actual storyline (and the reason I'm writing the book in the first place) to happen seems to be beyond me at the moment. 

Ah well - I've had a moan about it, and now I can get back to writing it, even though it's been at least five years since I read Fairies over again (only cringing most of the way through it) so the details are a little hazy and I have no idea where either the .pdf file or the proof copies are, but that's just a bit tough, isn't it?

Just Let Me Take a Nap First,

Last time I wrote a blog I admitted that I had been struggling. Admitted it. I should probably change the language around that, but it's what it feels like. I finally confessed to not feeling well as though not feeling well is something I need to feel bad about. It's really not. 

Since last writing here, I went for an assessment because my moods seemed to be cycling pretty dramatically, and it causes other worries than anxiety. It's when you start talking about personality disorders and bi-polar, and quite frankly, I was really scared. It's a strange thing to be scared of, because knowing what it is doesn't change your experience of the thing, but what it does change is the stigma. I know there is a big difference between saying I have an anxiety disorder and having bipolar. I was relieved when the doctor told me she doesn't believe it's personality disorder of bipolar, because as much as it didn't change my diagnosis and it didn't change the fact that previous therapies hadn't necessarily worked, things weren't as bad as they could have been, and she was able to offer me different options than what my GP had offered, so that's progress! 

Unfortunately, though everything in mental health treatment takes a lot of time. Between the time when I spoke to my doctors about having an assessment and the time the assessment appointment came was probably about three weeks. Three weeks doesn't sound like so long, but it was enough time for me to start feeling like I was approaching a more even keel again. At other times in my life, I would have simply said, oh, I don't actually need this right now. I'll cancel it. The good thing was I was uncertain about that recovery; I didn't trust it. I wasn't fully back to normal, I didn't truly feel like myself and like I was actually okay, so I knew that looking at treatment options was still the best thing for me, but the fear of that appointment was something else which made me start to cycle downwards (along with a few other things that were going on at the time). I had a couple of days, maybe less, of relief when they told me that they didn't think it was anything worse than my current diagnosis, but then I found that downwards slope again without even actively looking for it. I should point out, I never actively look for it...

The problem was when I tried to get an appointment with my GP, two things happened. The report wasn't with them and I didn't know if it had even been written yet, and the next thing was that the receptionist I spoke to wasn't the one I have spoken to before. I say Mental Health issues with sleep disturbance to the other one and she unblocks an emergency appointment for me that I would normally have to call at 8am for because she knows I won't be able to call at 8am and she knows I'm really not well. This receptionist was adamant I had to call at 8am. I get that people are different, she might be new, she might be more junior, but it was another barrier to me trying to feel better. 


The upshot of it all was I started taking Citalopram earlier this week. I have been warned before that it's evil, that it makes you feel worse, that it steals your soul and feeds it to Satan's pet donkey... I've heard a lot of bad about it, but I've also heard a lot of good, and quite frankly, I needed to try something. Whilst I wait for therapy, whilst I wait for therapy to work, whilst I try and get back to the things which I know help me to feel better, I needed something to act as a crutch so I can get to do all of those things. I was exhausted, I felt lost and scared and in some ways beaten. Granted, taking the Citalopram I am more exhausted, but I know that that is temporary, and actually some rest is good for me. Granted, I am trying really hard to get back to a sleeping pattern that normal people recognise and not that is attributed to small winged creatures who hang out with Dracula, but I'll take what I can get at the moment. 

In all of this though, I know this is not my lowest, and part of the reason I know that is because I'm still using 4thewords and I've just hit a 60 day streak. And that means a whole lot to me. 

Prepping for Pantsing,

Every year, during NaNoWriMo, I proudly pronounce myself Team Pantser, and that's still the case. I am so proud to wear my knickers like Superman and fly by the seat of my pants through NaNo (metaphorically, of course), but that is only with respect to planning the novel. When it comes to Preptober - trust me, I am a prepper. 

When I finished NaNoWriMo as a winner for the first time, it was my second attempt. I wrote at college, I wrote on the bus, I wrote at home and for the first three days I had no idea what I was writing. Some of it was utter garbage, it was a stream of consciousness, but I was writing, and I was doing it at speed. The novel that was born in that competition was eventually dedicated to my toaster, my kettle, and my mum. I've proved since then that I don't need to be living with my mum (and relying on her for cooking dinners and making brews) to finish as a winner, but right at that point, I needed her as much as I needed to win. 

Over the next few years, I have gotten faster and faster with writing and I've also gotten better and better at preparing myself. October 31st tends to be a day where I nap after work and I get myself a pizza and from midnight, I eat pizza and write a couple of thousand words, but I know it's not just that. I have an idea of the number of events I will be going to, I have an idea of what I'm going to be writing with - typewriter, pen, and paper, something electrical... - and I have a plan for keeping myself healthy for at least the first week. I shop cook and freeze what I can and make sure I have bananas. There's plenty that I think about and make decisions on practical planning for NaNoWriMo. 

As such, the @londonnano Instagram page is running a #preptober series of practical things to think about ahead of 31st October. Feel free to follow us, like, comment or message. I'll be writing some blogs on the subjects that are posted up there, too! 

In This Dark Place,

I was watching a video that an old friend made, and she said she preferred making videos to writing, because to her it's a more natural form of communication. I thought I would give it a crack, what with the fact that writing hasn't been coming naturally recently, but then I don't know anywhere near enough about editing to be able to put subtitles on the whole of it, in case people are hard of hearing/deaf or edit out the bits where I say erm a lot and other stupid things, so the upshot was that I decided not to post it, and all of the things I wanted to communicate are still floating around like fluffy little clouds in my brain. Yay.

It's always been possible for writing to take me to dark places, but more often than not, it's the shovel with which I dig myself out of them, which is one of the big reasons I'm going to try and get back into it as best I can. 

One of the things that is adding to my current dark place is the fact I can hardly flipping run. 

Whilst in San Francisco last year, I fell over. I don't just mean tripped over my own feet, got a few bruises and went on with my life - I really did a number on myself. I tripped, went down a few stairs and landed really badly on my ankle; then had to wear stiletto heels for the evening so I didn't ruin my beautiful floor length dress. I knew that the half marathon was coming up and I wanted to be able to still do it, so I took a couple of weeks off to rest it and then started training again, but the problem ended up not being the super sprained ankle. I mean, that was pain, but the real problem was something entirely worse. 

I over-compensated for how bad the ankle was and damaged the soft tissue below my other knee and over stretched the tendon above it. Or over stressed. I wasn't very clear from what my physio said. The first physio I saw told me I would still be able to do the half marathon, and London Landmarks doesn't defer places, so I was doing it, come hell, high water or horrid injury. The second physio I saw had to remind herself that calling patients stupid is neither professional nor nice, but her face gave it away and I knew I was stupid for doing it, but I also knew it was the right thing to do, because it was the best I have felt since probably a bit before this time last year... 

The problem was that my knee wasn't happy from mile 2. For those who don't work in miles, a half marathon is 13.1. Mile 2 I had to stop running, mile 6 I started hobbling, approaching mile 7 I was in the medical bay whilst they bandaged me up and the rest of the way was done with painkillers, determination and that very Mancunian brand of Northern Grit. John Green wrote in TFIOS that pain demands to be felt, well that certainly did. I can manage a bit of running on it, but not even enough to do parkrun (3.1 miles/5km) let alone in a respectable time, so I've been volunteering most weeks and sitting around wishing I could go swimming - I've been getting home too late and I spent two weeks at my mum's - or running or something, other than the physio exercises and just resting it. Thankfully, I have been able to do a bit of stair running, but my God, that hurts. That's not even my knee - my lungs feel like they've evacuated the building when I'm done! 

I was never an athletically inclined person and it's something that I now regret. My parkrun times are longer than most TV shows these days, but I actually love it. Not always the actual doing of it, but the feeling of accomplishment and peace at the end are second to none. 

I'm probably going to try and write up about the run now and post it later, because otherwise, I might forget. 

Catch you 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!