Dragonflies
There are some posts you just never want to write. Some things that you just don't want to say. Last week, my grandmother passed away. And while we've - not callously prepared, but
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It’s not desertion…
Recently, I talked about a few ideas I had about boundaries with a few friends, and for the most part, I’ve had great conversations about how to segment off time. But… I wanted to talk about something that had come up, and something I think it’s hard to talk about because when we do this stuff, it’s supposed to be positive and empowering.
It all started with a share…
So, I shared this a few days ago – and one friend said to me that I was far too focussed on how I was feeling right now. So we talked about that and she said that all I need to focus on now is making sure that we *all* survive in the community – that ‘community’ won’t survive unless people get their heads out of their asses.
And that literally left me…well…breathless.
I’ve been trying to articulate a lot of what I’ve been thinking about and it’s beginning to come down to a couple of concepts.
1) I’ve got some fairly cruel-to-be-kind friends – a good or bad thing, depending on what I’m doing.
and 2) If I’m suffocating/drowning/got no spoons, I’m useless to my community, and in real world communities, those that can’t contribute and have in the past are often seen far better than we behave towards those around us in the community right now. And by community, really, the main ones I’m around are the mental health advocate and the indie author community.
First, get your own mask on
Regardless of what my friend believes, the rule about oxygen masks that’s oft quoted – get your own mask on before trying to help others is important. Possibly critical. I’ve spent the last few years struggling against that, but things aren’t getting easier for me. So, my first step is my ‘oxygen mask’. For that reason, and that reason alone, I’m ressurecting ‘SMSCDT’ or Social Media Self-Care downtime.
My second action is my silo – something I’ll be talking about in another blog post.
But I wanted to be clear on this – if you need to step back – whether this is something you’ve done over and over recently, or it’s the first time – though it’s hard, you have to follow your gut, or your heart. Be aware that some people won’t be happy – and that if you’re accused of letting them down, you can either stop and think as to whether they’re right, or if you’re being guilted (I’m pretty much in both camps. When I step back, if I’m working on stuff that needs sorted, I’ve got plans for that too.
Step back, or be ashes
As this all went down on my chat server, another two friends saw what was being said and put their opinions in – part of the opinion that was shared was that not only was I right to be stepping back, but it’s not my place to burn myself up to keep other people warm (there are a lot of these metaphors, huh?) and that if I didn’t step back soon, they wouldn’t be surprised if I was just a pile of ashes at the end of it. It was at that point the friend admitted that if I stepped back, long term, I wouldn’t be around for her stuff and that she was relying on me to get stuff done. Flattering as that is, it’s not changing that I’m on downtime.
But you take downtime regularly, don’t you?
Anyone that’s around on my social media knows that I take May off for my #Kaiatus, which often leads to a lot of work pulling showing up at the end of May. But, I’ve spent the last three years doing downtime and coming back whenever summoned. That’s not happening this time. And the next essay, which I’ve called ‘The Grain Silo’ (and is a part of the reason I finally went forward to write ‘And Miles to go Before I Sleep’) to explain why. But it’s about resting, not quitting, even if people feel like I’m deserting them. I don’t like that feeling, I’ll be honest, but I’m not sure what to do other than the path I’m on. WHen the road less travelled isn’t one I’ve ever been on, ever, it’s hard to know if it’s the right choice. But I guess I’m doing the best I can, and this is what it’ll take.
What’s your thought? Downtime, yay or nay? Should you consider community before self always? Are you going to be considering some time out, especially given the year we’ve all had?
It’s a Lockdown in the U-K
While AuthorInterrupted and other blogs will be talking about writing and stuff, Kaiberie.com has always, and traditionally been about everything – writing, artwork, photography, and life. And it’s life today that I’m addressing.
Corona, Lockdown, my government
I don’t hold a positive view, really, on my current government in the UK. I’ve seen exactly one action that seems to be in advance of everything else (cause last year, exams were stressful, and not worked out until June – so, props for that), but we’ve gone from ‘you can go home for Christmas,’ to ‘no, you can’t,’ to ‘and you’re in tier 4, to ‘hey, national lockdown’. Except….that’s a misnomer.
Takeaways are still open, essential services (and those have extended, thankfully) are still open, schools are closed, ans basically, it feels like a bitty solution to something really serious. We’re locking down until February, but I’m currently seeing reports that suggest we may be in it until the new tax year, which is April 1st.
What would I do differently…?
That’s the rub. I can’t really work out what that answer really is. I’m not a politician, I don’t know everything about all of the statistics that are being used to decide, but what I will say is that once again, it feels like mental health has become not just an afterthought, and that’s not pleasant at the best of times, but quite honestly, there’s been a total disregard for mental health entirely in this conversation with most people. Newspapers literally focussed on the impact of closing betting shops and pubs (hello addictive behaviour – of all the examples they could choose…) and talking about how terrible this lockdown is. I can’t really say I’m happy or comfortable with that, and the complete non-response from the government about how they’re addressing mental health and isolation, but if the NHS only has a finite pool of resources, and mental health was already cut down to bare bones and little else, it’s not surprising that this (and cancer and other life-threatening issues) are being put on the backburner. And critically, for that, I don’t blame the NHS at all – I blame the government. I blame Boris for a lot and while I try not to go overly political, I guess this is one of those times I am kinda.
So…what I’d do differently. I’d listen to the advice of the people I was asking to be my experts, I’d be leading by example, and I guess I’d accept my tenure wasn’t popular. Can we expect that of Boris Johnstone?
No.
Not at all.
What we can expect is non-lockdown, Lockdown.
What I’m actually doing…
Back again….
🙂
I’ve spent the last few months trying to find my way, and sort out everything, and as ever, because November is Nanowrimo, I’ve discovered that it’s most important to me that I keep writing. So, I’m planning to change a lot of stuff around and work on everything so that I can get to a place where I’m doing everything I’m happy with. Uni is pretty much under control, so I’ll be planning the rest of it, as I can. I’ve also discovered a love for bullet journalling, so I’ve incorporated that too.
I’ll be blogging more once I import everything that belongs here – I’ll be converting everything and moving it back to here – Author Interrupted is staying as my author specific blog, but everything else is coming back onto here. Mostly so I’ve got specific places to post to 🙂
So…how’s everyone doing? Anyone got any big news?
The radical changes I need to make #Mondayblogs #Wedswriters
So, I was a bit quiet about it, but I went on holiday for two weeks in the middle of August. I spent the last two weeks battering around a pile of theme parks – Disney, Universal, Blizzard Beach (One of Disney’s waterparks), plus Nasa, Gatorland, the Florida Mall, Denny’s, IHOP… we did so much that I’m spending so much time just exploring my experiences and filing them away carefully. My memory being what it is, I’ve also got about a gazillion photos that we all took – me, David, his mom, his sister, the kids.
I’ll talk about that more in another post (because this blog is getting picked up again as my ‘personal’ place to talk stuff, aren’t y’all lucky), but I need to touch on something I realised while I was away. I am doing far too much. FAR too much. There’s no room for me to learn and explore my world, and there’s no room for writing, none at all.
So, you might say ‘but you knew this already Kai, this isn’t a surprise’. And you’re right. But between barely holding it together to grief, and to sleep deprivation (I sleep six hours a night, on my best night. Normal nights are closer to five hours clawed back, with melatonin and other meds), so my little brain needs to be taught the hard way.
And the hard way was basically taking me offline for most of two weeks. My phone doesn’t do roaming and I decided, early on, that I wouldn’t use the wi-fi, so I basically read, spent a lot of time hanging out with my kids (my son and I played pool a lot) and just enjoying *being*.
Now, my being is books and writing, so I spent a lot of time trying to work out what I should do with myself. I don’t read or write nearly enough, and just behind that, I’m not doing a day of learning that I promised myself. So there’s all that. Behind that, and not far behind that either, I have a business to run – hosting and apps as it happens, and a diary I designed to help with all of this stuff. I know it works because I hit the ground running when I came back.
I know it sounds like I’m happy with all of this, but I’m not. It’s one of the most important things in my world- the ability to get to the point where I am comfortable and happy and can work with what I’d like to do, and I’ve lost that.
I’ll get there, but I’m sure it’s going to be bumpy for the next few weeks. I’m happy to get with it, but there are things that are important to me, lost in the shuffle. And all it took was a two-week holiday to spot it.
My mental health is still deteriorating, but I think I know how to sort that out too – I just need a bit of space to do it. Space isn’t easy to come by though, so while I do, I need to make sure I’m holding up my end of other stuff too.
But there is a ray of hope. Writing and my books. While this is a personal blog, the pro stuff will appear here too. One thing I did learn while I was away was that while my heart is full helping others, my soul sings for words. And I have so many stories to tell. And I want to tell them.
This is grief
I always thought grief was this huge thing that hit you when you lost something or someone important to you. It wasn’t about losing self. It wasn’t about losing what you were. But you know, I think that was a stupid thing to think. I’m waaaaaay behind in my grief management just because I didn’t understand what I was feeling was grief.
I guess most of the issue is I should have been feeling this way a long time ago. I’ve ignored a lot of what I feel because I’ve always been told that what I think is partially to do with a chemical imbalance (bipolar) and partly to do with the ways I learned to deal with that because back when they decided I was bipolar (with a questionable personality disorder to do with self-esteem – they’ve now decided something else which I don’t agree with at all), but all in all, that was the way it was. I’ve been through a half dozen meds in the last eighteen months, but the empty, sad feeling that they’re tagging as something else, I think is grief. I’ve lost so many pregnancies, and then, to add insult to injury, it really feels like I’ve lost myself in all of the messes going on right now. It might sound a bit melodramatic, but a blog post – 300 or so words – takes me all day. Longer than that, like this post, it takes me a few attempts. Some of it is Restless leg twitchy feelings, most of it is to do with just not being able to sit still and write for any length of time. I wish I was more positive but I’m giving it a try.
Anyway, yesterday I talked about some books on Author Interrupted. Today I’ll be talking about more.
Come on over and check the books out!
And then she said….follow me :)
I know, I know, I said yesterday I’d post something, but we filmed this, we filmed some other stuff, and then…well, other things got in the way, so we changed the order we did the vids in, and stuff.
I’m writing this from my bed today – I’m not having a great week already, but I’m sure it’ll get better 🙂
So, today, I’m inviting you over to Authorinterrupted, which you, Constant Reader, may or may not know, is my ‘professional’ writer’s blog, but which, for a very long time last year was just ‘my blog’. I’m going to split off the personal posts and either mirror or redirect those to here.
For those of you asking how best to keep up with this instead of remembering where I left off the day before, if you go to ByKai, you should find that all the posts mirror there, though they may appear slightly out of synced order to when I post on Facebook to say there’s a new post live. But, also as requested, Kai’s Blog Page, or Kai’s Blogging Network as I prefer to call it, has started this week too! Exciting stuff.
So, without further ado, my promised freebie, and see you later, over on Authorinterrupted.com – let me know what you think!
If it’s not behaving here, I’m launching my own Youtube Channel too, so please join me over there, or on my page at Facebook, where I’ll load it direct!
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Uh….ooops?
Have you ever wondered why people blog?
I have. I think about it every day, to find the reason that I’m blogging. A problem though, and a bit of a hiccup to it all is that if I’m not careful, I start trying to justify why I spend time.
Spend is right actually.
Blogging, and time most specifically, is a sort of currency for me. As is social media, and everything else I do. But I think what I mean by that is TIME is a currency that I struggle to decide how to spend. Blogging seems to be something I didn’t want to ‘spend’ on at all, and I don’t really know why. Or I didn’t until last week.
The thing is, I’ve been given back a lot of time lately.
When last I posted, I was ok. I wasn’t brilliant, but I was ok. My life was on a downward trend though. February 2015 was right smack bang in the middle of the first six months of what I was told was a very short treatment course with the team – anxiety, while hard, was manageable. I wanted to sleep more, but it’s taken until NOW. This week, I can actually say that five days out of seven, I’ve slept more than the goal I have on my fitbit. It’s taken Haloperidol, melatonin and changing my eating patterns to do it.
And you know, I’m talking about this as if it’s a tiny thing. It’s huge. I spent the last year and a half struggling to sleep more than four hours at a stretch, and struggling to go to sleep AT ALL some nights. I’d be up all night, and my brain wouldn’t stop. It just wouldn’t stop. It still doesn’t. But it’s easing. The grip on my head is easing, and oh, it’s so nice. I’m still needing to randomly nap in the afternoon, but I’m finding it so much… not quieter but, I don’t know. I’m sleeping. Which seems to make it easier for me.
So, I thought Id talk about this in a way I could understand myself when I look back, but more importantly, in a way that makes sense to everyone else. I need to work out how to spend my time – though I’m not sure how I’m going to measure it right now – and make sure there’s a nice balance for family, exercise, writing, work, and all of the things I want to do. If I can’t do that, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
And last week, it hit me. I stopped blogging because I lost things to say. It wasn’t so much I didn’t even have stuff to *babble* about. I just looked at each single blog I had as one blog, instead of a continuum. It’s going to take a bit of organising, but I think I’ve got an idea that will work.
So, my mission this week is to keep a diary about what I do, and how I’m spending time, and then, from there, I should be able to understand what time I actually have and whether I enjoyed what I was doing, and if there’s anything I can tweak.
My other major projects are sorting out a crowdfunding campaign for a project I’m doing, that I’m hoping will be good for others (it’s not to pay to publish something – it’s a product I need dev money for), and some other things. But I’m starting small this week – tracking.
And, hopefully, I’ll be blogging here semi-regularly again. Let’s make it a date, ok?
All the news that’s (mostly) fit to print
Things are slowly getting better, or at least, aren’t getting any worse. We’re slowly coming to terms with the idea we need a bit of help extending our family, and I’ve embarked on a new daily exercise plan with the help of an app on my Kindle (I exercise for 20 – 30 mins every day – when the weather is a bit nicer, I’m also going to start running again), and I’m trying to control my intake of cola and stuff (which I think is the main reason I’m struggling with weight loss. I guess it doesn’t help when I’m under my calorie intake/at my intake, but still getting FAR too much sugar. And please, don’t lecture me about empty calories – I know. The problem is, I’m on meds that make me constantly want to eat, and crave sugar, and it’s really difficult. I’ve done periods of not drinking Coke, but it’s difficult. And trust me, telling me I need more willpower isn’t helpful either – I’m taking it one step and one day at a time, but it’s still tough.
Seroquel and appetite
Anyone that takes atypical medication (or are on meds for their on label reasons) probably know this one, but short of taking things like Chromium and other supplements, one of the things I do know seroquel messes with is my appetite. I never used to want to eat at three in the morning, but sure enough, I’m fighting that right now. And we try to keep healthy snacks in the house, but seriously, path of least resistance, headache staving off and more generally works with cola. I need to retrain myself and I’m working on that, but to be honest, I’m sat right now with a glass of Cherry Coke. It’s maddening. I am trying right now to cut it down to two glasses a day – from tomorrow, it’ll be mornings only, with food, and small glasses. Next week, one glass. Eventually, on the weekends, if at all. I tried cold turkey, and it’s just not doable. I have a bad day and I go running back to drinking it, to get rid of one ache.
Books, writing and more
Books and writing are going slowly. I’m trying to keep up with doing at least 750 words a day, as you can see over at Stateofthewriting. It’s not the easiest thing in the world – I’ve found lately that I’ve put it off until the end of the day. I’m also trying to ‘front load’ blog writing to the beginning of the week and other writing once I’ve finished that, to see if it helps.
No books published in the last month, though I am republishing some short stories in a small anthology soon 🙂
Other stuff
I’m getting ready to launch or relaunch lots of stuff, that I’m setting up while I’m not in a full-time job. Watch this space!
The adorable, endless grind
I guess I’m going to get some funny looks for this post, but writing is an adorable, yet endless grind. I’ve been arguing with people today about it today, but we grow, and we learn. And writing is both pleasure and pain, or at least for me. And I’m still stretching my muscles and wearing them in again.
I set myself a goal of 100,000 words this year, and I’m already a fifth of the way there, just blogging, doing 750words.com and a tiny bit of fiction. I want the fiction to be much more of an element in it, but seriously, it’s easy to write 100,000 words, just by blogging and doing 750words.com. I may need a bigger goal!
In the interim though, I thought I’d introduce my new readers to a few things that they might have missed:
My main Facebook page.
My main G+ page.
My twitter
My writing Blog
My PR blog (which I share with Kriss Morton)
I’ll stop there – I’ve got pen names too, but y’know, it’d be great if you’re following the main stuff…it’ll cut down on your clutter too.
We (Kriss and I) are sorting out some other stuff to launch too – a horror blog and a couple of other things besides.
But yeah, that’s where we are right now. I’m back to looking for a job, which is really fun, and really tiring. We’ve temporarily stopped trying for a baby, while I settle into everything. We’re coming up with new and interesting ways to amuse the now not so kitten-sized kittens. Life is as it is.
The ‘brand reboot’ – aka taking my life back (personal perspective)
(this blog post goes with another on Author Interrupted called ‘the Brand Reboot – I am what I am’. You might wanna read this one before reading that one though ;))
I’ve been pretty much at a dead stop since…well, before Kushie died, but since the beginning of the year. And I know why – finally facing the fact that we’re probably dealing with secondary infertility, when previously, getting pregnant and having kids was one of the few things I had on my ‘I’m good at this list’ was really tough. I’ve had to process a lot of anger – anger at him for making us wait this long. Anger at myself for being angry at him, for letting him down, for not getting my life together in a way that would have let us have a baby earlier. About how unfair it all is, in general.
And let’s face it – life hasn’t been exactly fair or nice for the last year few years or so.
The difference between wallowing and productivity
See, the thing is, i haven’t been at a complete stop. I’m still outlining novels, and I’m still working full-time , most recently, out of the house. I’m just not writing, and that’s not fair in many ways. It’s difficult to say WHEN things changed, because I know I wasn’t writing before all of this happened – well…again that’s not true. I know what stopped me writing – it was mostly copywriting full-time that did it. And then, being burned out just a little bit, ring that tiny bit more tired than I cared to admit… and then? It just got easier to stay still and ignore my books. And easier. And easier. And I know it’s stupid because some books are finished – all it takes is a bit of a push and they’re on their way, in the world. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to release books till I have my foundations right again.
The personal brand and rebrand is going to take, at a guess a year. And it’s not a lot of changes really – it’s just going to be a bit long and drawn out. I’ve got another project to worry about too – two really. One is a sekret-squirell experiment, and the other is PR. As I’ve seen, more and more, I’m spending time on The Finishing Fairies, and working with companies to see if I can’t help them with their PR and SEO needs.
But I’m still going to write. It might not be as much as I thought my world would contain, but I get to choose. I get to rebrand. I’m free to do so.
He had a name…
It was 2001. November 2001, just after they’d decided that I’d damaged my pancreas with a few missed gallstones. I’d spent a month in and out of hospital, unable to eat, unable to deal with most of the pain that had consumed me. I dropped from a svelte mother of two who had been merrily breastfeeding and healthily curvy (12 stones or so) to 8 stones and skeletal. I went from breastfeeding to not and still producing milk, even though I wasn’t feeding. The doctors and nurses looking after me watched me sleep most of the day away, full of morphine and on drips, barely eating. At one point, they spoke of putting in a central line.
I got home and got pregnant again. It was stupid, but still a miracle. It was 2001 – my baby daughter was six months old, my son was just over two years old. By my birthday, after arguing and discussing and going through all of the options, we decided we could manage with a third child, as long as my body would let me. That was a question in and of itself – one that we finally got to the bottom of. I’d be ok, as long as I was careful.
And then, the worst happened. My blood tests showed that actually, I might not be ok. That my liver and my pancreas were struggling – and my relationship was breaking down and things just weren’t working. I’d been making plans by that point to go it alone with the three of my children, as their father was…not whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Our relationship had gone south long before I’d gotten pregnant again, but I thought I could cope.
I was then faced with the worst decision I could ever make. I could die carrying this child. And it’s something I don’t talk about much – there’s the more immediate ‘trying for this family’ always to deal with, but this was different. I really was on my own in many ways.
So, we went to talk about my options, and discovered the little boy I was carrying was dead.
By then, though, he had a name.
His name was Connor. He’d have been born around August 2002, and would be 11 now.
I have a godson, not much younger than my Connor would have been, and I left the father of my children a year after. We’d grown apart by then. And my life moved on. It always does. I don’t think the things that came after would have happened with three children as young as they were, and I know that losing him was the fork in the path that led me, perhaps, to where I am now. And logic suggests that we’ll never know – you can’t go back and change it. You can’t remove a scar – not easily. And there are some we just don’t want to remove.
But around now, every year, I miss the little boy I didn’t really get to know. We talk about stillbirth and miscarriages in hushed tones, and though I know it’s not the same as losing him at 30 weeks, or earlier or later, he still had a name, and I had hopes for him. He has no grave, but he has a tree in the place I spent some of my teen years. There is no marker, nor other people to remember him, aside from the people that lived it with me, thousands of miles away. And those that got to know me after, while I was still dealing with all of it. But I was the only one that knew him really. I wish, more than anything else, that everything I’d hoped, and all thing things I couldn’t have predicted for him came true, and there was a smiling boy on this post instead of an empty space where his happy face should be.