I’m sinking

I’ve written about it before and I will likely write about it again. I feel like I need to write about it now…my mental health. It seems to crash in and out like waves, sometimes its calm so much as to appear there is no battle with my mental health. Other times the waves are battering around in my head and I can’t stop it. I think the times when all is calm in my head, I take it for granted and I stop all the techniques I put in place. All the things that help me stay balanced then cease to keep me steady. I don’t know when I stopped them, it must have been gradual. I’ve stopped running, I’ve stopped meditating, I’ve stopped blogging, I’ve stopped colouring in and it’s taking it’s toll on me now. I wonder if I had continued with it all would I be feeling this way right now?

Do you ever feel like it’s too much? Like everything is stacked against you? Like nothing you do is ever good enough? Everything you do is criticised? Like it’s all pushing down on you? Like your head is so full it is fit to burst with thoughts spilling out? Like your head is constantly pulsing with the fullness of it? Like you don’t know why anyone likes you? I could go on but I’m guessing either you know or you don’t. I’m at that point where I am feeling so low all the time that I don’t know whether these thoughts are mine or they belong to the depression. This is why I came off the medication last time to have some clarity. I don’t want to go back there, I don’t want all the side effects of the medication, I don’t want it on my medical records. Do you know that because I was once suicidal and self-harmed…that will always be on my record and I am obliged to report it for any health or life insurance. It’s frustrating that I have to relive that every time I need to apply for those.

I need to make that conscious effort to get back on track. I need to stop taking it for granted and get back to the techniques that I know work for me. I began meditating and managed it for a week but I have missed the last 3 days now. I still haven’t got back to my colouring in books even though I bought myself some new pens. I managed a run this week and 2 runs last week so I’m getting there slowly in that regards. I am writing in a mindfulness journey….sometimes but not always. The same old story, I’m not consistent. Life gets in the way, I make excuses and it get harder and harder to jump back into the routine.

Well I’m ready to jump back in now! I’m making the effort again and I am taking time for myself. I’ve stopped social media which I never think helps and stopped contact with certain people which dont make me feel good about myself. I need to help myself and I feel like some people are always pushing me back down. Those arent the type of people that are good for my mental health. I need people who are there for me in private…not just when somebody can see on social media. I need people who are genuine and honest, I have surrounded myself now with wholesome people who are a joy to be around. People who give as much as they receive. I don’t think they realise how much they mean to me despite the fact that I tell them how grateful I am they showed up in my life.

Be thankful for your friends! They are the ones who choose to be by your side! I am thankful for mine. 💛

Hidden Identity

After only a week of blogging my secret identity has been blown already. A fellow student follows both my profiles on twitter and as we got to talking he seems to have figured out who I am. What to do? Originally I had the idea that I wanted to keep my identity hidden because baring your soul to a world of strangers is a scary thing to do. I am quite a private person and I am breaking my own rules here by disclosing personal things about myself. I always kept my facebook friends list under 100 because I am a private person, I just don’t want everyone knowing my business. So this is a completely new and novel idea to me and I guess I am trying it out to see if it fits with who I am. Can I still be the person I am even by changing a huge part of me?

You see I have never wanted to be the centre of attention, both of my weddings were small. The first one was 12 people and even that I thought was too many people. So my second one only had me and my hubby and two witnesses. The second wedding is more the type of attention I can handle but even that is more than I want. I have always been a shy person and it is only as I have gotten older that I feel more comfortable voicing my own opinion. I worry less about what people think and hope that people will either like me or at least leave me alone and agree to differ – At least thats what I keep telling myself. Like a mantra, I hope it will eventually be true!

I am happy to answer up in classes and gamble on whether I will get the answer right or not. I know what I want most of the time and I know what I don’t like. The point is that I choose what I want to share with people but here on this blog it is different. I am not getting to choose who reads my blog and whether its ok that they know deeply personal things about my personal life. I am taking a chance and hoping that people will like what I write, its such a scary place to be. I feel like I am leaving myself wide open to criticism. Actually I was talking about this to the person who found out my secret identity today. How I really don’t accept compliments very well, I find it hard to feel anything but awkward. It is so much easier to take a criticism and work on whatever is in question…well thats on the understanding it is constructive criticism though.

So now here is my dilemma, after only a week of blogging I have been discovered. It is a fellow social work student who follows both my personal and my blog profiles. Do I come out for all to know or do I keep trying to keep it a secret. I don’t think anyone else has discovered my true identity and really its probably not the end of the world if it is. However I really wanted to keep things separate so that I can give my blog a proper go before depending on friends and family followers. I wanted to find out whether my blog is something that interests other people. Thats not to say that friends and family can’t be interested in what I am writing but I will always wonder whether they are just biased, you know?

I wonder whether I might leave it a little longer? Maybe I can let it happen naturally, so if people message me to ask is this your blog then answer honestly but if not then leave it be? Something I need to keep thinking about anyway. I have asked the person who discovered what made them notice so I have a plan already to reduce the likelihood but who knows it may be too late already. Also I wonder whether the fact that we spent a lot of the last 24 hours chatting that helped him figure it out. Whereas I don’t spend a lot of time chatting to all my followers on Twitter. So perhaps it was a fluke after all. Let me know what you think, are there any other secret identity bloggers out there? What is your reasons for it and how have you managed to keep it hidden? I would love to hear from my readers so please drop me a comment, I will ALWAYS reply.

Thanks for reading as always.

Organised student

I am sure I am not alone here in my love of stationary. I used to have a Staples close by to where I live but since moving house it has closed down. Now my love of stationary is far from sated but I just haven’t found another shop that I loved as much. For any of you in the UK that share my love of stationary please drop me a comment and let me know your favourite shops. I am always on the lookout for new places to visit and spend my pennies.

So being January and the beginning of a new year I bought myself a new organiser. The one from last year was bursting at the seams and I was in desperate need of a new one. So I went through everything last night and took official documents and a few insurance bits and the mortgage stuff from the 2019 folder and added it to the 2020 folder, shown below. I love this one, it is so colourful and expands as you put more paperwork in it but stays small while there isn’t much in there.

I never used to be this organised, at one point in my youth I had a lot of financial problems because I left home at 16 and I didn’t have anyone that showed me how to budget and look after my finances. I have learned a lot just through experience and I think the fact that I have struggled with debt really stops me from going back to that scary place again. My first hubby was the opposite of me and kept every little bit of paper and he is the one that introduced me to this too. Its not till he passed away that I really felt the full benefit of this and now I have continued it on. When we were together he took care of all the finances and organised all the paperwork so I never had to. Now that he has gone I feel like little parts of him still live on in things like this. He had OCD and whenever my oldest monkey gets stressed about things being a certain way, it always makes me think of how he is living on through her too.

“Start as you mean to go on” as the saying goes. It feels good to have all my paperwork from last year filed away in the loft now and the new folder for 2020 all ready to go. Usually it goes downhill from here though and in my kitchen there is a what we call “corner of doom”. Its where all the mail goes after its been opened, its where broken things go to get fixed, its where all junk goes before I find a place for it and so on….you get the picture right?

So you see not all of my life is organised but I guess I have my moments. I love it when people tell me how organised I am. I then proceed to laugh at them and tell them to hold that thought until they see my house. I am not the tidiest of people, again I have my moments where I have a huge blitz and all the clutter gets binned but generally yeah I am quite a messy person. My mum loves to tell me its just “lived in” and she loves it despite her house being so tidy all the time. She tells me all the time she knows its because she doesn’t have kids messing up her house or filling her time so she gets it, which I love. Not everyone does though. I always say that people dont choose to be friends with you based on how tidy or messy your house is. At least it’s not dirty its just a mess.

The other stationary items I bought were the a4 display folders. When I go on placement I want to have everything to hand in an accessible folder. So I have printed out my placement handbook (100 pages) and also my team profile and put it in the folder. I have a bunch of forms that will need printing out and adding to the folder. I feel good about being organised in this way because part of my assessment on placement is readiness for practice. I want to be able to show my practice educators and social workers that I am keen to do my best on placement and be the best I can be. I feel like it really gets me in the right frame of mind ready to take on my new opportunity with enthusiasm. I am not organised in many areas of my life but certain things do make a difference if I can find the time to get organised.

It really gets me energised doing these types of things and I need to continue doing it. I am going to town this weekend to get some big plastic boxes for the loft. I was up there putting the Christmas decorations away and it occurred to me that if we ever had a leak everything up there would be destroyed. I have a lot of things up there belonging to eldest monkeys daddy which I think will be important to her as she grows up. So my next project is to get everything into plastic boxes instead of cardboard boxes. I guess I am beginning my spring cleaning a little early this year.

Has anyone else started doing their spring clean yet? How are you all getting organised? Drop me a comment and let me know what you are doing to make life easier by being organised.

Thanks for reading