The blog of D Kai Wilson-Viola

Author, advocate, designer, mental health advocate and parent. 

C is for #Covid #atoz2022 #mondayblogs #ukpolitics

C is for #Covid #atoz2022 #mondayblogs #ukpolitics

This entry is part 5 of 10 in the series Blogging From AtoZ 2022

Like many millions of people, I’ve now had at least* one confirmed CV19 infection. Irony, as the UK released all restrictions and we learn to ‘live with Covid’, two of us caught it.
And while it was mild, I’m still tired, I’m still recovering, and I once again remember why my doctors are cautious of me, and I can’t even think or wonder how others might be coping with this, or not. And I’m just thankful for vaccines.

I’m actually thankful for a lot of stuff, which I want to talk about before I go after the government. Which I will be.
I am thankful for the support I’ve had, the care given for vaccines, the fact that my GP has been kind, caring and working with me as best they can. I’ve never had an issue with our local surgery, and because they know us, they know when I ask for something, there’s a good reason for it. I’m also thankful though, that we’ve been able to follow all of the guidance to ensure that we actually didn’t get sick until year 2. Given everything that happened with Titanboi and his extra kidney (which ended, as in, the stent came out, the morning we went into a sixteen week lockdown in March of 2022), we’ve been lucky, and safe for the whole time. A lot of the time, that has been down to the choices we’ve tried to make, following guidelines, but, we’ve had so much that we can do that others might not have had the luxury of, and that’s important to be clear on. A lot of why we’ve been ‘ok’ is because we’ve had the opportunities that let us protect ourselves and our community.

We did also lock down, entirely, for the week and a half @artenapan and I were testing positive for. She had a terrible cough, and was tired (and still both are), and headaches, while I had all that, and a temperature of 39.8(C) for more than a couple of days. That temperature was the worst for me, and I had a BAD chest infection, so was given steroids and antibiotics. Artenapan spent the first ten minutes of us suspecting that she needed serious help because she had a ten minute coughing fit. Those ten minutes, I have to be honest, were the most scary ten minutes with her, ever. But we got her to stop coughing, we tested, and our LFTs were out in record time. In her case, 2 minutes. And, we then did what we could to protect everyone around us. We cancelled my son’s visit for Mother’s day (which we had this weekend in the end), and for the week we were both sick, it was kinda miserable in the house. We are, however, recovering. We are lucky.

This may not be the popular opinion but…

I don’t go political very often, though I am an outspoken about a lot on my own profile, and I’ll go on the record and say that the NHS rock. They’re doing a job they are not funded for, and that’s the government’s fault. And at every turn, the government – especially the current Tory cabinet, who I’ve lost track of through various reshuffles where they play musical chairs – are just insanely inept, and at every turn, demonstrate why politicians SHOULD come from the communities they serve.

My partner and I both feel that if an MP wants to judge someone’s life, they should experience it. Let’s see them live on the average wage, especially with our current energy price hikes. Let’s see them live on what people are earning at their poorest. Let’s see them deal with children that need special needs and work through their SEN meetings, and social service support. Let’s see them get the mental health support they need after ten plus years of cuts (and again, the NHS are heroes for giving us the support we get. I am NOT going after them, despite some of the issues I’ve had with them. I’ve had issues, yes but, Dr C and M, my last psych nurse, were actually my friends by the end of it. I still write to them twice a year. They gave me … not the life I had, but the best life I can have now back. I’ll talk more about that when I get to P for Psychosis, but… one of the things we’ve talked about is that if the government stopped defunding critical services, and expecting us to be ok with that.
It’s not ok.

Full circle in one sentence

No thanks to the government, thank you to the NHS, who got me through a bout of Covid. Yes, we’ve managed to be the lucky family – so far – who lives with covid – but through no thanks of our local MP. He doesn’t speak for us, elected for us though he is. And the whole government? With the deaths and other issues that have happened since Brexit, and Covid (though some of it was unavoidable), they should be ashamed. They aren’t. But they should be.

I did also want to add…

I’ve mentioned the fuel crisis in the UK. Our energy price caps jumped by 50% now and it’s predicted it’ll happen again in October. We, as a family are still lucky, and safe, but I know many people that are not. Our government has done less than nothing to prevent the week of stress all of us have been through. And to be clear, we’ve been stressed and we know we’ll manage. It’ll be more money we pay out for our utilities, but we can do that. But we know families that are living in fuel poverty, and the insipid response, alongside the absolute clusterf*ck that was trying to get our meter readings in before the prices jumped, was absolutely insane. In my case, I was awake every two hours, and kept trying. Started at 11am on the 31st. Finally got my meter readings submitted at 4am the next day. I can only imagine what people living on the poverty line already are feeling, and the last thing we need, after two years of isolation, is to hit next winter, and be dealing with illnesses based on poor heating, and other problems related to poverty, let alone the mutations we are probably going to hit from Covid, the overstretched NHS, and the exhausted staff…many of whom may be just as affected by fuel poverty (no, I’m not kidding). So…this was C for covid, but it’s also C for ‘Can we vote them out and press charges?’.

*I say at least once because we don’t know if we’ve had it before now.

Catching up

Catching up

This entry is part 2 of 10 in the series Blogging From AtoZ 2022

A- D for the Blogging AtoZ challenge will be up in the next 24 hours or so, and I’ll be hopping around all of the blogs and hopefully meeting some new, neat people. We’ve got family visiting this weekend though, so, I’m prioritising the visit and a belated Mother’s Day celebration 🙂

Afternoon cream tea yumminess!

Previews…

  • A is for Alive, in a sense…
  • B is for Books
  • C is for Covid
  • D is for Dancing in the rain
  • E is for Elden Ring
  • F is for Fantasy
  • G is for Gaming
  • H is for home/hope
  • I is for Indie Authors
  • J is for July
  • K is for Kai and all my other names/Kairos
  • L is for Ludosport
  • M is for Magic/Mental health
  • N is for Never/Night
  • O is for open
  • P is for Psychosis
  • Q is for Quiet
  • R is for Run girl, Run
  • S is for Se.cu.ri and why I found a way to explain my perspective in sports
  • T is for Time
  • U is for unsustainable
  • V is for Victories, even the small ones
  • W is for White
  • X is for Xray
  • Y is for Years
  • Z is for Zzzzz

I may deviate, slightly, from this, and there may be more than one topic a day, but year’s the general plan. Plus the daily poem, and posts on other blogs 😉

F is for f*&k and other profanities #atozchallenge

F is for f*&k and other profanities #atozchallenge

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 linguistically intelligent we are.

Not quite yet…

I don’t quite buy into the studies that suggest that if we swear, we’re more intelligent. What I do agree with is if you can express yourself in varied and interesting ways, you are probably more intelligent, so it’s possibly a false indicator, as it was suggested in a 2016 study there was no correlation between profanity and the use of cussing and intelligence, but instead, it’s to do with the wish to extend vocabulary.

I’m really interested in linguistics, so I thought that this was a phenomenon I wanted to start talking about it more. So, my quick post today is about swearing, and asking you guys what you think.

Do you think it’s a sign of intelligence on it’s own, or do you think it’s more to do with whether you’re working on extending your vocabulary and finding different ways to express things?

(also, I’ll be re-releasing ‘The Secret Language of Fiction’ edition 2 soon, watch this space! – well, actually, watch my book announcements page!)

C is for Can do #atozchallenge

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.

It’s a Lockdown in the U-K

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…