Actually, it's not....really. Made you look ;)I wanted to get your attention - what I actually want to talk about is language, but profanities, and our use of them, apparently dictates how
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E is for “eeek, I overdid it!” #atozchallenge
So, as a few of you have noticed, I’m already behind.
I’m not sure if it’s something to do with some last minute plans that were thrown in my path, taking time out to support a friend, or that I just don’t have a great grasp of time since the UK entered lockdown (what do you mean we’ve already had Easter? no way… wasn’t it just New Years?), or if I just didn’t practice great time management, but I’m a touch behind.
So, today’s titlted EEEEEK!
And I’m going to share a few tips of how I try to manage it, when…I get it right 馃槈
Time management 101 – leave room
And I think that’s where I made the mistake. I didn’t leave room this week – at all. And while you can’t plan for emergencies properly, I always have a rule that for every piece of time I have planned, I leave 15 minutes on either side of it.
Got a therapy appointment? Keep thirty minutes spare.
Date night? Thirty minutes.
The thing is, I’m absolutely going to be pushing this to the limit, as today is the first official day of TM112, at my OU degree, for Cyber security. Which means I’m going to be planning more time, and putting in more space.
The other issue I have with this is it’s advice *I* give. I’m terrible at following it.
I was planning yesterday’s post to be ‘a day in the life’, but reading it back, I realised, I really should rewrite that post as ‘a day in dissaray’ because my ideal day in the life isn’t the one I live.
And when all else fails?
Like now? Apologise, work out how to catch up, and go for it. Seriously. Life is too short to punish yourself.
In my case, I’ll be doing my main blogs, and keeping the 26 prompt story to go back to. So bi-polarbears, here, my book blog, and, as Deirdre has injured herself, I’m probably picking up These our Fandoms too. Once I’m caught up, I’ll try and get ahead.
What do you do when life and plans collide? Got any hints?
As to WHY I got a bit behind? Normally I do my catchup on Sunday, but instead, I was in an Arboretum, taking photos, falling down hills (no, really, I’ve twisted my hip and scraped my leg. The camera is fine tho!) and spending time with my family in the spring air. The UK is coming out of lockdown, so we didn’t get to do everything we might have liked, but we did a lot.
(this is Batsford Arboretum, and these are unedited photos – my daughter, Artenapan will be posting some later on her Instagram, and has already!)
A day in the disordered #atozchallenge
(again, as this is backdated, I’m writing this with the benefit of hindsight).
I did actually have this rather neat post about ‘a day in the life’, but, the last few days led to a bit of an epiphany.
You know there’s an Instagram bubble? I think when we write ‘days in the life’ that we sometimes make ‘blog bubbles’. So, instead of talking about what my ideal day should look like, and what it does when I’ve planned it out, I’m going to write about what my day actually is. And for the first time, I’m even going to include some of the mental health stuff I deal with – so this post could be mildly triggering.
I’ll be possibly alluding to self-harm, definitely talking about psychosis and depression and anxiety and insomnia. And I have a favor to ask at the end of this post.
A day in the disordered
I fell asleep at 11:30pm – a year of training and working with an app called Headspace and other meditation apps (honourable mentions to Digipill and Let’s Mediate (I have them on Android, they may exist on iOs), alongside my partner, which is now 80% of how my sleep works out.
Unfortunately, about 1:30am, I wake up again. I wake up to a voice, that I always hear. She’s my constant companion, and she’s very hurtful. If I’m lucky, I take a sip of water, I go to sleep again, and I might get to stay there for a bit. Most nights lately though, I’ve been waking up and finally falling asleep again at 5am.
The advice is, of course, if you’re not able to sleep in bed, to get up. But if I do that and she starts causing trouble for me. At her worst, she can trap me in the smallest rooms in the house. She’s the reason that I can’t get out of the house alone. She’s the thing I’m fighting back with my favor, but we’ll get there.
If I don’t get to sleep until 5 or 6am, I’ll either stay asleep till 8am, or 11am, or sometimes, I’m asleep till 2pm. And because of that, my day is always harder to plan for. How do I plan to be up at 9am, and exercised and ready to work, if I’m not getting to sleep until 6am? The answer is I don’t.
Insomnia is a difficult and hard to live with disorder – couple it with anxiety and psychosis, and though meditation helps, I’m frequently operating in arrears of sleep.
And that’s why I can’t talk about a day in my life. I have half an hour when I wake up that’s a set routine (get up, unplug and box tech coming downstairs with me, plug in anything, such as my Bluetooth headphones or spare batteries that need charged, wash face, rarely moisturise (I’ll be talking about that in S for skin routine, cause apparently, I’m annoying as all hell about that), meditate for ten minutes after making the bed, then come down. At night, I either go up before Tempus and grab a bath, then make my juice/waterbottle for my bedside, plug everything in, brush my teeth, get my Bluetooth headphones connected so that I can meditate, set up the book we’re listening to on Audible. Depending on how I feel then, I either read for 20 minutes, then meditate, or lately, I’ve just meditated, and used a sleepscape to go to sleep to. And then wake up again at 1:30am.
I can’t talk about this really here, but there is going to be an I for Insomnia over on bi-polarbears (the link won’t work until the post goes live 馃檪 )
And that brings me to a favor…
As many of you may or may not know, I’m an author. My major project this year is to talk about the fact that I live with a pretty severe (though not the worst, by a long shot) psychosis. I think I’m probably at the end of the ‘living in the community level of it,’ though, she’s quite hard to deal with. As an author too, it becomes difficult. I ‘hear’ my characters, and I don’t like that I hear and see things as well as part of my mental health.
On my birthday, I’ll be releasing a collection of mental health books. I’m not putting up the pre-orders yet, but I am asking people to subscribe to my newsletter, so I can start talking about the run-up to releasing them.
There may be a Patreon, there may not.
What I want to do though, is to remove some stigma surrounding both hearing voices and other psychosis, but I also want to acknowledge that authors do hear voices, and that *is not* as far as I’m concerned, is a psychosis. But I guess that’s between you and your healthcare team.
What I do know is that she’s stolen five years of my life. I’ll never get them back, and while I’ve done some things in there, I’ve not gotten everything that I wanted to do, done. There are other things, of course, that got in the way, it’s not just been mental health, but if I can remove from the whole concept of ‘we don’t talk about this, we’ll get into trouble’, then I will.
And I hope you’ll help me.
If you’d like to, ALL I need you to do is to sign up for my newsletter and join my mental health street team. That’s it. If you also want to share this post or the post about the project, I’d be delighted.
I’ll be talking about about this at P for Psychosis, because it’s important to me. Here, and at Bi-polarbears. I’ve avoided telling people I have issues such as psychosis for so many years, that it’s a bit uncomfortable for me, but I also know I’m in a good community, that accepts me for who I am, and knows me as I am, psychosis or otherwise. I hope to help others like me – because I think in the coming years, as we come out of lockdowns and the shadows of what we did to deal with the pandemic, that mental health is going to be a major issue – more major than even now, and I want to help people that need help. So I am.
C is for Can do #atozchallenge
(backdated, sorry I was late! It does mean I get to use pretty photos I got on Sunday though!)
Do or do not. There is no try.
Yoda, “The Empire Strikes Back”
Well, sort of.
I’m actually more of the ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” which is another truism I believe in.
But, when it comes to my mental health, I can’t make excuses. I have to keep healthy boundaries, and work hard. There is no ‘try’ at living after all.
But it’s not easy…
The thing about trying to have a ‘can do’ attitude, in the context that I use it, is that it’s almost always about protecting myself. And it’s all about protecting, I guess, the spoons that I have. (In case you’re not sure what the spoon theory is, here’s the woman that wrote the base idea, and I am republishing my spoonie’s guide soon). ANd not always having the energy to do something is not the same as ‘there is no try’, and I think that’s the mistake many people make about what I mean.
If I can’t do something, I’ll wait. Unless I have no choice.
Lately though…
One of the things I started noticing about a year and a half ago, when I started having a few of the things explained to me that made no sense in my life while asking questions and hitting issues with my therapy, that I’m very much of the mindset that (probably unfairly) that if I say no, that my friends won’t like me. I’m very much a people pleaser, to the point that I often do things I shouldn’t. And it’s gotten me into a really difficult pattern to break.
So, my ‘do or do not’ is a complete sentence now. I will do, or I won’t. There’s no emotion attached to it if I can’t do the things I’ve had asked of me. I might feel guilty about saying no, but I can’t always do everything I want to (and as I’m actually writing this on my E day, I’ve already talked about planning fails, I know this). And if they don’t like it, I guess that means my friends aren’t actually my friends. And that might make me sad, but I’ve got to accept that. Luckily, it means that I’ll be ok.
B is for Books – Walking off the earth #Finalchapterinthisbook #newbook #atozchallenge
I’ve had many ‘this is my hardest’s to deal with – probably more than anyone my age has any right to deal with in some ways. But this one hit the hardest about three days ago, and I thought there was going to be a bit of give, a bit of wriggle room, but no. I finally encountered the words that just broke me in two. And I won’t repeat them. I’ve deleted them. But I came to a screeching halt, and I’m not sure how things will change, but change they absolutely will.
But first – I have a heck of a lot of grieving and coming to terms with things to do – and I need to build an actual, sensible plan to sustain my businesses. And I have to accept that part of that is digging out my work ethic and dealing with everything that’s gone on lately and putting things right. And I’ve come to the conclusion that to do that, this book needs to end. This story, no matter that it’s not a happily ever after needs to become something that we relegate to the ‘not touching’ drawer. Not everything that’s happened – no, they’re elements that can be reused. But the tale of the sad girl that lives inside her house and does nothing…that’s a bust. That’s so much of a bust we’re not making it past the first draft.
I’m not ashamed but…
When you’re where I am, you’re not *supposed* to admit bullying gets to you. I’m the moderator of one of the biggest indie communities on Facebook, I run a lot of things for a lot of different people and I find myself, daily, waking up and dreading the comments that appear here, and on the other blogs, I run. In my inbox, on Twitter, by PM on Facebook. And, in with that realisation is that I’m as unkind to myself as all of these people. My self-talk is terrible. I’d rather sleep (or try to) than work. And I hate admitting that, but my sleep is disturbed again, and it’s getting difficult to do *much* of anything.
I do have one ray of light though, beyond my family, who are just the best, and my friends, who equally rock, and that’s my books. I’ll be talking about them more naturally in the coming days, but for now, I just wanted to thank anyone that’s supported me as a writer. I don’t always get to write, but it is one of my few places of solace. And if I’m walking off this earth to another, I couldn’t do it without knowing that I was writing the story as I went.
Today’s other AtoZ’s on the blogs I take part on.
Books by Kai – Black Monday
Oh, if you want to keep track of all my posts in one place, I set up a syndicated blog again. It’ll have everything in it, eventually, though it does take a few hours to catch up with stuff!
Fiction by Kai – the Knight of Coins
Bi-polar bears – Being, not doing
These our Fandoms – a quick skimmer onto the things in Battle Ground by Jim Butcher.
See you tomorrow!
A for ‘are we there yet?’ #atozchallenge
Late start to the AtoZ I know, but I’ve had work and other stuff to deal with today.
I think the title of this might give you an insight into me, more than anything else. I’m not… exactly … a patient person. I love to know where we’re going, what we’re doing, and be there.
I do not do well with waits. Waiting is anathema to me in fact. My impatience is so bad that I’ve actually made up games just to get through hard meetings. I think part of it is because I’m anxious (which I’ll mention later), but part of it is just that I can’t stand being still. Even for a minute. And I hate that my body lets me down so that very often, even if I don’t want to be, I am.
A also really stands for a couple of other things.
I’m an animal lover – I have two cats, and would adopt more if allowed. I want a dog, though, practically, I’m not allowed them. I’m also anxious. If you want a bit of background on that, I talked a little and will talk more about it on my mental health blog, bi-polarbears. Anxiety does, however rule my life.
I’m also also, an author. That, I’ll be showing off on both fiction.bykai and booksbykai. Writing is life for me. As evidenced by the fact that I’ve linked to *all* of the AtoZ blog posts I’m doing this month by mentioning I’m also sharing an AtoZ with a friend, and my post today was American Gods. An amazing book.
With all that awesome ‘all about me’ A entry, I think I’ll close with adieu 馃槈
(because I’m not sleeping and I’m a goofball).
(later in the month I’ll just link back to each post ;))
Tell me something beginning with A about you?
My AtoZ blogging challenge reveal 2021 #AtoZChallenge
I take part in the Blogging from AtoZ Challenge every year. I have several of them that I’m taking part in this year, but the main one, the A to Z of me will introduce a lot of the things that are important to me.
Unlike other times I’ve done this challenge, I’m thinking about whether to do short (letter is for) posts as seperate, small entries, or having an overall post and breaking out into it in more detail in the next few weeks and months.
Any days that I can’t find something to talk about, I’ll either do a poem, a flash fiction piece, or something else.
I’m not revealing all of my posts right now, but just to give you guys a taster, and whether you’d like to give me some thoughts.
A is for Alt-worlds.
B is for Books
C is for Cats /CPTSD
…
M is for Mindfulness/Meditation/Morrigan
N
O
P is for psychosis
…
ZZZ is for sleep disorders
If I were doing a post on any of the ones that have more than one category, would you prefer, do you think, a different post for each concept, or all in one?
Headsup – we merged
Many of you may be coming over from various sites, so I thought I’d mention that we’ve merged a couple of blogs. The reason for it is pretty simple – there’s no reason to keep my stuff apart when it all links up, so I’ve made it easier on myself and just ‘flattened’ everything.
If you’re hitting a blog address that used to be a blog and you’re seeing this notice, the posts will be in the archive, but going forward, it’ll be the part of this blog.
The why….
There’s a bit of a different why to this too – I’ve been blogging on and off since 2002, when I started on Livejournal. I was one of the first adopters of WordPress from B2evolution (though I did resist it, I’ll be honest). We have though, had to stop archive.org from keeping my site archived, due to something that happened when I founded my horror pen name and was in Uni. It was the right choice at the time, but it did wipe out my archives. But if the blog have been imported and you’re seeing this notice, then please enjoy the archives for everything that we’re all working though.
What isn’t here…
Obviously, if you’re landing here from an old blog, and the archives are condensed down, I do want to highlight the places that are remaining and what they’re for.
To see what’s staying, and what’s merged, please check out the Kai’s world page.
Rebuilding my world
So. I’ve talked about the unexpected stuff that happened while taking time off, but I’d already planned to take a few steps back this spring and sort out a few things.
In April, I’ll be back in Uni, completing a course on Python for the first year of my Cyber Security Year, but I’ll also be doing other stuff. Like Blogging from A-Z. We’re already discussing the These Our Fandoms work, but I’ll also be running here at a minimum. I’ll be joining up, and announcing around the 8th of March for those projects, when this year’s theme is revealed.
Books though….
One of the major elements of my ‘big rebuild’ is that I’ll be working on putting my books back. As everything is offline, I’ll be editing the books before they go back up, and straightening everything up.
While I’m looking at all of this, I’m thinking about what I want to do with new stories, and working on everything. My books are important, and working on them is something I’d like to do regularly – books are a part of my life. Writing is a part of my life. So, when rebuilding my stuff, that’s one of the things I’m really focussed on.
Gaming…
I’ve not really talked about it much here lately, but I’ve completed a few games, I’m starting a few others, and I’ve watched my partner play through other games – we were lucky enough to get a PS5 recently, so we’ve been enjoying a lot of games, and it’s been good just having that to escape to. Though Assassin’s Creed: Vallhalla has resulted in A LOT of heckling in the house.
Family
I’ve been talking about various things that’s gone on in our family – we’ve been through multiple losses, and that’s not the happiest thing to actually confront, but we’re having to. Extending our family isn’t easy. And I guess that’s what’s leading me to a lot of the non-fiction books I’ll be writing this year. The pandemic has definitely impacted us, as a family – not just keeping us apart, and losing people during that time – but as we’ve changed things. I’m also – currently – the only one of my family that’s been vaccinated, which is a bit…weird. My children – both asthmatics – are my worry, so when I ended up being invited, I was rather surprised, but I’ve had my first dose (felt like I was kicked in the arm by a horse for a few days), and we’ll go through and that’ll be awesome. I am really looking forward to things becoming less restricted, and going home, and seeing everyone, but I’m also looking forward to re-finding our rhythm as a family.
And finally, business
I’ve been off for several years, and not working outside of a few basic assignments, but I’m thinking that there’s a couple of things that I want to focus on. Mostly hosting and formatting for now, though we’re also looking at apps and other stuff while we work through stuff. I think one of the important things at this point is because I’ve been off, I’m taking it slowly. I know that this is probably critical to building things back again, but, I think a lot of what I have to address is what direction we want the company to run in. I’d rather have a small set of complimentary projects, than be as spread out as I used to be.
I’m not sure when things are going to be back to normal for me, and how tired I’ve been. I’m not really finding, after the transfusion, that I’m as energetic as I expected. I’ve improved a little, but I am still bone weary, which I guess I should be discussing with my GP. Again, there’s a book involved in that, so… lots of stuff that I’m trying to balance through. My life is in desperate need of a proper schedule, but, while I’m grieving, it’s hard to do that.
If anyone has tips, I’d really appreciate it.
When you’re just not ready to say goodbye
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 due to the circumstances – been sorta worried this would happen, given the current health climate in the world right now, let alone the fact that we’ve got to accept this – as much as we want to keep people with us forever, it’s just not possible. As hard and as much as we wish it could be, there’s a reality that we can’t escape. And that’s something I’m personally struggling with. There’s the logical side of me that says ‘nope, there has to be ways to fix this, while the emotional is just going ‘nope’. My psych nurse says it’s completely normal, but I’ll be entirely honest, while I’ve got a little self-care routine that involves meditation every morning (something gran taught me, a little at least), and a few times a week in the evening, I’m kinda disconcerted to find that I’m managing *about* five minutes before breaking down and crying. Which is normal, but as I’ll come back to, I guess, because I have mental health challenges, I wasn’t sure it was till my psych nurse told me. And it feels awful to put it this way – I’m focusing on me when the loss affects all of us, but I’m trying to balance being a mum, a daughter, a mourning granddaughter, a partner. And I’m aware we don’t really ‘grieve properly’ for about six months (though, everyone has their own path). All of this is leaving me feeling a bit out of sorts and feeling like engaging with the world just isn’t something I want to do right now. But I’m a writer. I should know how to talk about this.
Spoiler alert – I don’t.
What are the right words?
This has been one of the toughest weeks I’ve ever gone through. As a family, we’re not geographically close, but though we live all over the country, we do all talk. My gran and I used to see one another at least once a week before we moved to the Cotwolds (and she moved further north for a while), because we lived in the same district in Edinburgh. I am very lucky – our family, no matter what, are always there for one another. My children have been abroad with her when they were younger (and my mum too) – we’d see each other at least one day when we were home, and we talked on the phone regularly.
So, to be told that she’s gone, and how sudden it really was, despite the fact she’s been unwell and the stuff going on with the pandemic etc., we thought that we’d get to see her again when the lockdown lifted. So, to say that I’m a bit stunned and numb is an understatement.
A good woman, my gran
I’ve said in various posts talking about this in private that grief is one of those things that takes our words away. We are silenced by the shock, by the pain, by many things. In my case, it’s unusual to be without words, but my gran was an integral part of a lot of my writing. She and I talked about stories – she’s a part of one of my pen names (and, my real name) – but we just talked books an awful lot. My family have all had a lot to do with my writing life. And it’s just…hard to say the right things. So I’ll say simply this. My gran was a good woman. She was a spiritualist healer, she was a kind woman. She was funny, and fun and our good memories will be what we focus on.
We will miss her, a lot. Words aren’t sufficient to express that.
Dragonflies
One of the many things though, that gran told me that sticks with me, not just the poem in the image above, is that butterflies and dragonflies are our family that are gone, checking in with us. She and I talked a lot about that, because of my love of dragonflies and hers. So, this year, when and if we go to the little lake we know that there are dragonflies, I’ll be looking out for the one that comes to me, and maybe I’ll get to say hey.
I’ll be working through this and everything else as we move through the next few weeks – her funeral is next week, and when we can go home, as long as the UK lockdown roadmap remains static and as planned, we’ll see our family in the summer. But… for now, I’m a bit lost, and a lot numb, and just taking time out.
If you could think happy thoughts for us, that would be great. If you’re going through similar, I’m really sorry. 2020 was a horrible year, and 2021 was supposed to be better, and in reality, we can’t ask for that, but….it’s hard to deal with knowing where we go from here.
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…
