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The blog of D Kai Wilson
The blog of D Kai Wilson

The blog of D Kai Wilson

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A day in the life About Kai AtoZ challenge 2021 Books Books and writing D Kai Wilson-Viola Featured Featured articles Life living with bipolar Mental health Mental wellness News Non-fiction Op-eds planning tapping the well things you don't know about me Writing

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
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Mental wellness

A day in the life AtoZ challenge 2021 D Kai Wilson-Viola diet and lifestyle Hills to die on Life living with bipolar Mental health Mental wellness Personality planning tapping the well things you don't know about me

C is for Can do #atozchallenge

  1. My AtoZ blogging challenge reveal 2021 #AtoZChallenge
  2. A for ‘are we there yet?’ #atozchallenge
  3. B is for Books – Walking off the earth #Finalchapterinthisbook #newbook #atozchallenge
  4. C is for Can do #atozchallenge
  5. A day in the disordered #atozchallenge
  6. E is for “eeek, I overdid it!” #atozchallenge
  7. F is for f*&k and other profanities #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.

About Kai AtoZ challenge 2021 Books living with bipolar Mental health Mental wellness Writing

A for ‘are we there yet?’ #atozchallenge

  1. My AtoZ blogging challenge reveal 2021 #AtoZChallenge
  2. A for ‘are we there yet?’ #atozchallenge
  3. B is for Books – Walking off the earth #Finalchapterinthisbook #newbook #atozchallenge
  4. C is for Can do #atozchallenge
  5. A day in the disordered #atozchallenge
  6. E is for “eeek, I overdid it!” #atozchallenge
  7. F is for f*&k and other profanities #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 😉
(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?

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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.

A day in the life and more Announcements diet and lifestyle Featured Gaming and hobbies Geekery list bloat living with bipolar Mental health Mental wellness News Organisation Personality planning

Uh….ooops?

Time tracking 101Have 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?

A day in the life Announcements diet and lifestyle living with bipolar Mental health Mental wellness News Organisation writing habit writing well

New Year…sorta….

Yeah, I know, its six days into the New Year and I still haven’t done the promised blog here about how this coming year might look.  And that’s because I’m still not sure.  I was working out of the house between September and November (should have been December but I fell in work and gave myself the most impressive concussion I’ve ever had, therefore finished up a bit early).  I’m now back out of work, and looking for a new job because it was only temp and I was good with that.

Plans for my writing

The New year didn’t make it any easier to make plans for what I wanted to do with my writing – to be fair, all I do right now is sleep (still very depressed and tired, even though I’m six weeks post-concussion), and do some work on 750words, but I do have a plan.  It does mean I’m going to be secret-squireling for about six months, but that’s ok.  It’s not as if it’ll take me away from writing already in the works/complete.
Writing plans are, as always, contingent on what happens with my work, because making an income for my family has to come top of the pile.  Even for another year until we get out from under the pile of bills left with me after I finished freelancing and clients refused to pay.  I estimate that’ll take until the summer, then we can start saving for our wedding etc. but y’know, hope springs eternal that I’ll find a (well-paid) job that lets me write too.

Plans for other stuff

I know I’ve talked on here about grief and miscarrying, and all of the other stuff that went with that.  We’re still no further forward and after another ‘event’ over my birthday, David and I have decided, for now, to call time on the whole trying to get pregnant cycle.  It probably doesn’t help that we’re both stressed to the eyeballs over what to do about the youngest, various sick members of both families, living so far away from everyone and basically having no real time to work out or grieve properly, but I really feel like there are parts of my life that need sorted out before I look to the future.  It’s not even fixing the past –  can’t be done, so I’m just going to get myself to a point where I’m at peace with it, it’s more…having a routine and working and doing stuff that’s good for me instead of what’s good for everyone else.  I did it when I sat my degree, and I’m very proud of that, but there are other things I can do too.  I just have to find my way out from under the grey clouds first for some of it.  My brain isn’t dealing with happiness the way it should, and more than anything, that’s something I need to fix, and it’s all internal.

New books

When all’s said and done, there will be new books this year.  I promise.  I’m just not sure when.  Given the secret squirrel project is taking away half of my time, it’s a bit difficult to say ‘this is what I’m going for’.  It’d be nice to have five novels out by the end of the year, time permitting, but I’ll be satisfied if I just get three or four.  Again, it’s all down to whether I get a nice job or if I can stay home and PR to cover the bills, and write for the rest of my time.  Even shaving down our outgoings and what I pay for, I still need to work about 20 solid hours a week to make anywhere near what I’d need to cover bills, which is why anything extra goes straight to said bills
That said…there’s going to be a weekly ‘state of the writing’ on Author, Interrupted, with pretty pie charts and metrics and other fun stuff ;).

Blog schedule

And finally, the blog schedule.  It’ll appear here before the 15th, so you know where I’m writing, when and what for.

 

diet and lifestyle For Fun... Free for all Mental health Mental wellness Personality

C is for….

20130406-004802.jpg

I bet everyone can tell what this post is going to be about.
Yep.
Cats!

20130406-004734.jpg

20130406-004811.jpg

20130406-004825.jpg

20130406-004834.jpg
I love my cats. We recently lost my adorable girl, so after we got everything cleaned (she had a permanent URI) and grieved, we adopted the girls.
The grey girl in the photos is Haley, the little mountaineer, Eiryss.
Both are nine months old – Haley’s fairly placid, Eiryss quite skittish, but they’re settling in really well.

Books D Kai Wilson-Viola Fiction Language living with bipolar Mental health Mental wellness Nanowrimo Nanowrimo 09 Nanowrimo 11 National Novel Writing Month Novels Organisation Personality planning The Art of.... Writing

How things play out – aka, why it’s taken nearly 11 years to publish Glass Block

I’m inches from publishing my first full-length novel under my own name, and I was going to kinda let it pass without comment, and then I thought ‘I think I wanna talk about this’.
The following is a bit maudlin, a bit ‘ow, crossed legs’ for writers, a bit dumb luck and a bit scary really.  So if you wanna skip it, I understand.
But this is the story of Glass Block.

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and more Mental wellness Op-eds

Is there an ‘up’ side to bipolar disorder?

I know who you are – you’ve just been diagnosed, and you’re thinking that your life is about to end, either metaphorically, or (please don’t do it), literally.

I know who you are, because I’ve been there.  Been there several times.
So, the first thing I want you to do is go grab a soothing cup of *whatever* you love.  You can even have a tiny shot of liqueur in it if it helps, but only a tiny bit.  Don’t drive after, you’ve had bad news anyway, so you shouldn’t be driving.  You’re in shock, and we’re going to fix that.
I’ll wait right here.

You good?  Huggin’ the mug?  I know I was.  For me it was hot, sweet, as strong as I could get it, tea.
Firstly.  Your diagnosis isn’t a death sentence.  It’s not even a commuted death sentence.  Take my word for it when I say that there are some incredibly successful bipolars out there in the world.  Dare I say ‘HI!!!’ now and wave enthusiastically.
Your meds are possibly going to feel like a death sentence for a while – but there is no medical treatment out there that exists that we take that won’t make you feel a bit lousy, at least some of the time.  Unfortunately, the majority of treatments for mental health contain something that makes us dopey.  It might be a receptor inhibitor, it might be a flat-out sedative – whatever it is, go with it for a while.  Be that zombie.  Don’t embrace it because you’ll need to start proactively fighting it soon enough, but it’s perfectly ok to regroup.
Please, remember to drink your comforting drink.  Shock’s a nasty thing.
See, still not dead.
I wanted to tell you something though.  It’s a secret so lean in close.

There is an up side to bipolar disorder – and it’s not the manic phase.  it’s not the fact that we’re treatable and we’re slowly being accepted into society. It’s the fact that….you ready for this….?
This is who YOU are.  Bipolar disorder may not seem like it to many, but it’s possibly part of your personality, and it’s definitively part of the way you see the world – good and bad.  There’s a reason for feeling the way you do, and it’s not that you’re a dick, a douche, or don’t belong. 
More tea ALWAYS makes it better by the way.
Look at it this way – you’ve discovered that you are this *person* living a kind of  lie, trying to remain as ‘normal’ as you can, in a world that doesn’t slow down one iota for people who don’t adjust well.  You could have felt like your world is out of control.  Your world could BE out of control, but it’s not all your fault.  I’m not saying some of it isn’t, but you know, sometimes common sense isn’t what we have when we’re going off the rails.

So – no pity parties – not for long anyway – they have a habit of turning into a national day/week/month of mourning if you’re not careful – and don’t mark today as a negative.  Be kind to yourself, grab another soothing drink – have that cry if you need it, and then – start learning about the ‘new’ you and how to be kind to yourself.
You’ll thank me – and yourself – for it later.

Mental wellness Op-eds Sheen

Mental health and self sabotage

One of the things I’ve noticed about working with people in the mental health community is that most of us are instantly tolerant of the mistakes of others ‘like us’.  There’s a lot of outpouring of support, for example, for Charlie Sheen.  One of the critical problems with this though is that now, anything we talk about to do with bipolar disorder or anything else – for now at least – will also get lumped into feeds for people watching Mr Sheen’s very public mental breakdown.

Let’s be clear about this – I have personally been saying that I didn’t want to ‘bandwagon’ onto the Charlie Sheen ‘stuff’ because it’s cynical at best to grab traffic from someone else’s misery.  It’s also not a cricism of anyone else that has talked about CS on thier blogs, because, lets be honest, smarter minds than me are watching him and have more profound things to say.

What I did want to touch on wasn’t his mental health status (because until he’s diagnosed, he could be detoxing or coming off of some altered mental health state) but how people self sabotage.  I’ve seen a lot of it recently – it might be the pressures of the world right now, or it might be that it’s just more evident right now because the ‘hornet’s nest’ has been kicked over with all of the true and false information kicking around, about manic depression and other mental health issues, but what I’m seeing right now is a LOT of reactionary conversations and information that’s entirely contrary to what’s actually evidence led, especially in terms of treatment.

Many of you will know, especially  by looking at the archives, that I’m very careful not to advise for or against meds, but instead to advise that you do your own research.  I advocate that very strongly actually.  Having done both sides of the fence in the last year, it’s important to let people know that both are valid, and depends more on your situation than the opinions of others.  While medical opinion shouldn’t be entirely discounted, I’m sure that we’ve all met a professional whose opinion we questioned, doctor or otherwise (for example I don’t buy into much of what Dr Phil said or used to say – simply because tough love isn’t always the answer) so advocating that we make sure that we know exactly what the doctor or other health practiconer is recommending is sensible.

There’s two types of self sabotage – and Mr Sheen seems to be involved in the very public version of one of them – alienation of our support structures and surroundings.  It’s of critical importance to understand that these issues are very serious for anyone with mental health issues of any kind – if you lose or alienate anyone that’s around to help you, that’s one less person to turn to when you need support, right?

There’s another kind of self sabotage – where you believe everything you read, or get angry with people for providing an overwhelming amount of information, then weigh all of that, internally, equally.  It’s true, as I’ve said earlier in this post that there are some really smart minds out there, who say some deeply profound things, but it’s also true that there are people, like me, with no formal qualifications that write what we know.  Some of those people don’t even read first, they just let thier fingers run ;)

Not everyone in the mental health community is going to agree with information (and there are a couple of doozies that I’ve got to rebut on here in the next week, because it seems every ‘mental health expert’ with an opinion has come out of the woodwork!) so it’s important to try and limit any of the behaviours that might land us in trouble.  Remember – keep reading and researching!

Mental wellness Op-eds

Bipolar disorder doesn’t just ‘go away’

Editor’s note – this post got quite a lot of attention recently, so I brought it forward to today….

A recent study conducted under clinical criteria highlighted something terrifying for those of us who live with, love someone with, or care for people in our community with bipolar disorder.

(extract)
Relapse and impairment in bipolar disorder

MJ Gitlin, J Swendsen, TL Heller and C Hammen
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles 90024- 6968, USA.

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the outcome of bipolar disorder in the context of maintenance pharmacotherapy.
METHOD: Eighty-two bipolar outpatients were followed prospectively for a mean of 4.3 years (minimum of 2 years); symptom rating and psychosocial outcome scales were used, and pharmacotherapy was rated on a 5-point scale.
RESULTS: Despite continual maintenance treatment, survival analysis indicated a 5-year risk of relapse into mania or depression of 73%. Of those who relapsed, two-thirds had multiple relapses. Relapse could not be attributed to inadequate medication. Even for those who did not relapse, considerable affective morbidity was observed. A measure of cumulative affective morbidity appeared to be a more sensitive correlate of psychosocial functioning than was the number of relapses. Poor psychosocial outcome paralleled poor syndromal course. Poor psychosocial functioning, especially occupational disruption, predicted a shorter time to relapse. Depressions were most strongly related to social and family dysfunction.
CONCLUSIONS: Even aggressive pharmacological maintenance treatment does not prevent relatively poor outcome in a significant number of bipolar patients.

(taken from – http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/152/11/1635)

These conclusions are not new – your own Doctor or GP will tell you these things, citing it as the primary reason that you should be placed and stay on medication. Its important however, to note that ‘even aggressive pharmacological mantinence’ doesn’t change this outcome – meds don’t always help. The highest rates of ‘success’ with bipolar disorder come from the patients that understand their mood swings, their reasoning, their reactions – the underlying chemistry that changes their moods, and their investigation into tailoring their own understanding and treatment of their disorder.

Bipolar disorder is debilitating for some people – it can destroy lives, families and support structures that otherwise would survive anything – and its important to ensure that if you, or a loved one, has a mental health issue of any kind, including bipolar disorder, that you are fully informed and can face the consequences, gifts and obstacles of that diagnosis with dignity, pride and preparation.

D Kai Wilson

D Kai Wilson is a writer, artist, and bipolar one businesswoman with an avid interest in bipolar disorder.
Her first book, ‘Pictures in the Dark – a bipolar’s guide to good mental health’ is available today from http://nonfiction.booksbykai.com

Mental wellness

So, what’s new with you?

I thought I’d do a quick summary ‘update’ or sorts and let everyone know where we are and what we’re up to right now.

Books

‘Pictures’ and the ‘Unnamed’ project are doing really quite well – but for reasons I’ll explain in a sec, I’ve been busy with other stuff so they kinda took a back burner.

Communities

I’m now a co-mod over on Facebook for Bipolar Awareness – Stop the Stigma – I’d love it if you could stop by – it’s a constant stream of interesting articles about bipolar disorder and mental health too.

Life stuff

I’m back at Uni to complete my 3rd year, which is, to be honest, seriously exciting.  I didn’t feel it last year, because I was so snowed with buying a house and moving in, and the other stuff that went on, but this year I really am excited.
I’m also delighted that we’re in said house now – it took a while, but it’s sure been worth it.

Finally, I was put on meds about six months ago.  I think I’ve finally got perspective to talk about it, so I’m planning on doing some ‘talking’ about meds versus no meds in the next few weeks/months.

And with that – what’s new with you?

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