I’m on a few weeks of classes, to learn how to work with one of the major systems we’re using right now. I’ll be talking about that more, and I have to say, I’m really excited. The next few weeks are also ‘Freshers’ for me. I start back at Uni next week, and have several exams that I need to prep for.
But, I’ve got a few things to talk about…
Changes
One of the major things I’m noticing is that I’m still as willing to do everything I used to get up to, but I get about three into my 20 piece daily list (I used to manage it), but I’m not who I was. Part of that, I have to be honest, is probably to do with being depressed. Part of it has to do with my issues with anaemia and persistent illness. A LOT of it has to do with maintenance insomnia. (I’ll be coming back to that one later, but the short version of that is I have *finally* taught myself to go to sleep pretty much when I go up to bed. Sometimes I go up and meditate and I fall asleep. Sometimes, I just go to sleep after reading for a bit. What normally happens though, is around 1am to 2am – one and a half to two hours before I’m thinking I fell asleep, I wake again. I don’t really help myself at this point, because I’ll have a drink of iced tea. Sometimes I can roll over and go back to sleep. Most of the time, I can’t. It lasts till…sometimes…8am, before I finally get to sleep. In short, it’s hard to plan a day when you don’t know how much sleep you’re getting the night before, and unfortunately, whatever else I have going on, sleep creates problems if I don’t get enough of it). Most of this is all pretty well known, if you know me, even in passing. It means that my hours are often a bit scattered, but, I’m working on that. My partner and I have talked. While I’m not an early bird, I don’t like that I’m split shift sleeping. I don’t know if what I’ll end up doing is sleeping for a bit, getting up to work, then sleeping more. It might mean I can write in a set period of time, I don’t know.
The changes though – to make things easier for myself, and the things I want to do, while I’m doing my classes on WordPress design and Fresher’s week for the Open University, I’m going to start setting up all of my blogs, and connecting them up, collapsing or closing those of them that I can’t spend time on right now. It’s not permanent, I hope, but even if it is, moving on isn’t always bad. So I’ll be mapping that out. It’s the first step in about a million, if I’m honest. I’ve got books, I’ve got information to share out, I’ve got things I need to – and want to – do.
Struggling with Writing
One of the things I saw that was interesting this morning – in fact, it was the first thing I saw opening my phone, was this post from Neil Gaiman.
Click through to Neil’s Tumblr. https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/663460764030517248/yesterday-was-a-bad-writing-day-i-spent-a-lot-of 🙂
I think there’s a lot of this that’s important. For writers, creatives. For life. We have bad days. We do what we can, but sometimes it’s just a day that doesn’t move…anything. And then, one day, a good day. Maybe a few. Maybe a whole bundle of them, in a row, like a huge gift. And really, I do mean this could be *anything* we do in life. Sometimes, we find that it’s hard to do things. That’s ok too.
I’m between my good and bad right now. On that middle ground of being able to see both. I might slide back into bad. I’m working on the things I can reach from here. It’s all ‘low hanging fruit’ and learning for me. Uni starts next week, and I’m getting through to finish year one of three just as soon as I pick myself up and get a plan on….
Which is next. You’ve got this guys. And so have I…
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
While my blogs merge down, I’ve got some housekeeping to do. Some categories will move, some will merge, some will redirect.
Hopefully I caught it all while I was housekeeping, but I’ve made a list. Some of these don’t always make perfect sense – they straddle two lines, I guess. Eventually, some of these will be moved wholesale off my blog to new sites, or subdomains, or other places. There will be a housekeeping post about that too! And I was kidding myself when I thought I’d get this done. There will be an article that you can read these in a series to see what I’m up to, but for now, there’s just this.
Category redirects (including organisation/re-naming and nesting)
Tech renamed to Hosting and Tech – Coding and – Coding/Wordpress and Design, all moved under Hosting and Tech (some of these will move to the company blog eventually)
Pen names moved under ‘About D Kai Wilson-Viola’ (and pen names will be collected there). Sabrann Curach moved here.
About Kai/D Kai Wilson-Viola merged into ‘About D Kai Wilson-Viola‘ The ALL category is gone and should simply flatten down to the blog itself. Naming conventions – converted to a tag. Amazon Kindle – I’m revamping how I talk about my writing, so platforms aren’t going to be categories, they might end up in tags. books and writing is moving just to ‘writing’ Featured articles has been ‘combined’ with ‘featured’ though, it turns out this is mostly because I merged blogs. This will be more and more common as I merge down.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
The last few weeks have not been the best for me, but by far and away, the things that hurt the most are, if I’m honest, the way a few friends have reacted to my boundaries. And how, from there, pulling in to defend myself has been ‘abandoning’ them. And how that’s left me with issues with all sorts, from what I do from here to my religious outlook, to how I move on. I don’t think I’ll address all of it here, it’s a bit complex. The two bits I want to touch on are boundaries, and being out in the barrens.
Boundaries 101
I’m actually fairly odd in the sense that I don’t ‘like’ boundaries for myself. I feel that it’s very artificial to tell someone you ‘can’t something’ that isn’t basic human decency. And that, I hate to say, was my first mistake.
The rank bitterness alongside that first mistake and trying to understand why people behave this way has been painful. Adding to the depression that was already settling on me, I’m really struggling to deal with anything right now, but, as I’ve been asked to write some mental health books if I get through this bout of crippling misery. But it’s made me evaluate a lot of things, and why my life isn’t ‘right’ and it all comes back to routine and boundary. Both of which, my brain seems to process much the same.
On the curves?
Honestly?
There’s another word for what happens when I lose everything, whereas this is kinda like where I end up when everything is gone and I’m left to clean up a mess or three. And there are many versions of this place. There’s the one I deliberately create when I need to move on from a bad place, and have to destroy it to cut ties. There’s the one that happens when I’m sick and can’t tend my stuff, and then there’s this one…
This version of it though is kinda worse. Because it’s a bit of both. In an irony, I’m honestly not sure even *I* really understand, when I’m sick and come off routine, that’s when the trouble really starts. Free spirit and all that, I still need a pretty firm framework. And currently…
I’m not sure I know what to do. I feel horrible, if I’m entirely honest. I’m not exercising or eating regularly, I’m not sleeping correctly. I’m disrupted understandably, because of the changes in the house (we’ve still got our BED to replace). And I feel a bit like a brat, if I’m honest, but we’ve changed so much in the last month and a half, and it’s been a lot of ‘I don’t really get the choice’ belonging disposal, as the garage flooded/was damaged. Again, I’m well aware I’m lucky. It’s not everything I own. It was a LOT of my books though, a lot of stuff we moved and stored (I’m now learning that storing in the garage is not for cardboard boxes. So, we’re converting what we are storing out there to plastic tubs.). It was stuff I’d protected when I left my ex. It was mine. It’s gone now. I don’t feel happy (Marie Kondo lied) – but I’m so overwhelmed, all I can really say was it was books, and some other ‘stuff’. Because at some point, to keep dealing with the garage, I had to just stop paying attention. So, I’m a little bit miserable, if I’m honest. I do really feel like of everything that went, it was old toys and lots of my things. It’s not *accurate*, but it’s been something I’ve learned over the last year – there’s a difference between what I know, what the reality is, and how I feel about it. And that I’m not – really – right or wrong. Just sad.
We then did the conservatory, the dining room (converting it to my office, in part), and we got brand new couches (I’ll share some before and after photos once we’re all settled properly). But, for someone that doesn’t *like* change, it’s been a lot for me to deal with. And it’s stirred up stuff I really don’t like.
This is where I say ‘no more’. Not no more change, just no more slipping schedules, no more ‘skip exercise, can’t be bothered’. No more accepting that I have to feel this way. We do, most of all, get to decide how we react and change things, if we can, and quite honestly, I would be remiss in not trying. I’ll be stuck within the limits of my spoons, of course, but I think some of this is…inertia. So I want to deal with that. Maybe it’ll turn out all I have is the spoons for this, maybe it’ll turn out that I’m just tired and not doing as well as I could because I’ve accepted that. I honestly can’t say on that score.
But…there’s more…
The thing is, this time, I’m going to talk about it, and whether what I’ve learned this year works, starting from about as close to ‘base’ as I get. And, quite honestly, though I’m not in a place of complete ‘clear board’, I *am* close enough that I can maybe get this to work.
I’ve still not decided exactly *how* I’ll be talking about it. Whether it’ll be a blog, or vlog, or a mix, but, as I’ve also been tagged to talk mental health for a series of books, and burnout is a real thing that often leaves people in barren areas a lot like this, so maybe this isn’t quite so self indulgent as it feels, and I should be less self-conscious. There are other elements to this, such as our complete inability to remain pregnant, which I don’t think is exactly helping my state of mind, but mostly, I’m just struggling to find my way, and I want to do something about that, even if that something isn’t what others think of when they think of the stuff I’m talking about.
To start?
To start, I’m going to do something about my wake/sleep cycle. And eating regularly. And, I’m going to see about exercising daily. That’s the framework. Everything else, like work and writing will still happen, and fit in around the other stuff… but….that’s what I’m going to focus on for a bit. Hopefully in time to start back at uni, who knows.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
Kai is a writer, author and avid reader. A mental health advocate, Ludosport athlete and coder. She’s the mother of two young adults, owned by two cats, and lives with her beloved in the Cotswolds.
That sounds like so much fun! I love games, especially RPG. Haven't played with a group in a few years.…