Author: Sue

I have been writing in various forms since I was a child. I write about what is going on in my life, what I enjoy, and the struggles of dealing with chronic illness and mental health issues. I love live music, football (Scotland and Dunfermline Athletic), reading, Formula 1, Stock Cars, and eating lots of vegan crap.

Procastination Central

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Believe it or not, I have a list of topics that I have planned to write about. I have had this list for quite a while, and it is getting longer rather than shorter. This is what happens when you have lots of ideas, but no momentum to put any of those ideas into action. It is one trait of mine that I hate, because I do it with everything.

It sometimes worries me how much effort I put into not doing something. It would probably be easier to do the task I am avoiding, to be fair. I didn’t always have this problem, I think it came along when I was at school, when I realised that I could get out of doing something by simply doing something else. And it made no change to life or anything, so it became habit. Now, if there are things that I am struggling with, I do something else. When I say ‘struggle’, that also includes me not wanting to do something because I am a lazy person.

But, I do find, that if I get up and moving, things become a lot easier. I become a lot less likely to put things off. Like today, I did some tidying up that had been needing done for way too long. As a result, I feel like I have achieved something, which gives me motivation to achieve more. I am guessing that it must be something like the adreneline that you get when you exercise. The feel good factor that spurns us on, keeps us going. It’s all nature. That to get the blood pumping round our system for any motivation, we need to start moving first. Which can be hard when you struggle to get out of your bed sometimes.

Anyways, a blog is better than no blog, as I do like to update this page. It just isn’t as heavily organised as I’d like it to be. But that’s okay. I just need to get the blood pumping to get that motivation going to create quality content. Because this, is just nonsense.

Daily Routine?

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Do you have a daily routine?

I don’t. And it works me up sometimes, because everything just ends up a mess and I panic. I get very anxious if I feel out of control, yet at the same time, I am constantly struggling to get organised. Everything is always such a muddle, as it has always been. And it sometimes gets to the stage when I have panic attacks because of the stress.

I try to write lists. As these can sometimes calm me down. It helps me gain a little bit of control, stops my brain working at 90 miles an hour. It also helps to sometimes document the way I’m feeling. That way I can feel like I am ‘talking through’ what nonsense is in my head, without feeling I am imposing on anyone. As silly as it sounds, it does help me.

A piece of advice I get a lot, to help lower anxiety levels, is to start a daily routine. Same things every day, just so that I have a solid foundation to work off. So that if things do go a bit wrong, I can deal. At the moment there is no standard routine, so everything is all over the place in general, and when something goes wrong, it gets worse. So, I am going to spend the next few days trying to figure out a routine that I can do EVERY DAY. A routine that isn’t me getting out of bed 10 minutes before I need to leave the house.

Pushing Forward

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I am feeling awful inspired today. That may have to do with the fact that I have a ton of housework to do before I go back to work tomorrow. Doing things I need to do has never been my strong point. Rather than doing what actually needs to be done, I think up new things that excites me more, and do them instead. Hooray!

One of  the things I have motivated to do is argue with GIMP (free image editing software) enough to make a new banner for all of my social networks and things. I have been diving back into the internet a lot more recently, particularly YouTube. The YouTube community I have loved for the last 5-6 years has been rocked by lot of bad stuff over the last week or so. This is stopping a lot of creators from making content, as they become wary about their audience and who they befriend through it. It’s desperately sad, because the majority of people on YouTube, are perfectly normal people. And in a bid, to get back into trying to contribute to a community that I love, I decided to give my channel a reboot. My first video is below, please check it out. 🙂

I am planning on doing VEDA, Vlog Every Day in April, this year. Yes, I am being hopeful and going to vlog once a day. *cough* Seriously. At least I am hopeful. Ask me again how I feel after the first week of April. 🙂

*I am writing an entry on Consent which is to do with the Youtube/wrock situation. In the meantime, if you find yourself caught in any situation where manipulation of any kind is involved, please speak to someone. It is not okay for someone to control you AT ALL.

Poll: How do you find music?

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I have created a poll, in a way to discover how people find music to listen to. It is something that I am interested in, particularly with the wide choices available today. Music no longer relies on the radio to sell it, people take to the internet to discover new bands. And I am interested to whether this actually has an effect on how music is consumed.

Sold To

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I spend a lot of my money on nonsense. Mostly stationary. It’s never anything that I really need. Just stuff I seem to make up a need for. When I discuss this ‘impulsive purchasing’ with my friends, and it seems I am not alone. It has made me think, if this is more than simple habit. Surely if people walk around with money burning a hole in their pocket, it becomes very easy to spend.

Supermarkets have been widely known for placing products in their stores in strategic places, aiming at unaware shoppers. Sweets and popular brands at the end of isles or at shelving at eye level. Suggestions have been made that brands pay to be displayed at prime locations to influence buyers. Things catch the eye, things a person has no intentions to buy.

These tactics can be taken and used in any store. Book shops displaying cute notebooks, to attract someone into believing it has purpose. Phone shops display expensive headphones near the popular iPhones, convincing people that if you have an expensive device, you need expensive accessories.

The purchases we make, when we think about them, are ideas given to us by the companies that sell them. I wouldn’t have bought a new notebook today, if I didn’t see the new display showing them off. It made me think that I needed a new journal, although i had no intention of buying it when I set into Town. Perhaps it’s worth considering that people, like myself, are not impulsive as such, more easy influenced.

Social Media Bore?

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In world where there appears to be a need to constantly stream our lives over social networks, it is a struggle to find meaning in ones life. Taking photos of coffees, dinners and things the world, outside our own heads, don’t really care about. We then publish these photos as if they are important snippets of who we are as people.

Our social media selves are a very different person to our real selves. For example, I don’t drink half as much coffee as my Instagram would have you believe. I am also not as confrontational or witty as I am on twitter. I work, I sleep, I eat too much, I watch Netflix. That is me in a nutshell. But even that is a lie. Yes I do all of those things, but it is not who I am. Or is it?

There are various schools of thought which suggests that a person is more honest to themselves when they can speak freely. Which is a basic idea of social media. Or should I say, ‘ideal’? There is a bullying presence across social media, as people grab on to numerous aliases to anonymously berate people they disagree with. This produces a fear of being honest and true, because when someone turns against you, it can be harsh.

So people can hold back. I know I do. I post things that will start no conflict, purely so that I can feel like I can share, without sharing. So the ‘Starbucks Instagram’ happens rather than posting art work or writings that are personal. Because if someone berates my coffee pic, who cares, it’s just coffee. But if someone berates something I have worked on to create, I take it personal. Particularly when those who are critical try so hard to be personally offensive.

So, I guess, people post boring because they may get their need to update ‘the world’, without exposing themselves too much. But again, that may be only my take.

Quickly! Quickly!

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I am a person who always seems to be running late, or struggling to get things done. This means that things can end up not as well done as I would like. It is super stressful.

The silly thing is that other than my job, I don’t fill my time with anything notable. I tend to have small brainwaves of projects that I could do at work, or in bed, when I can’t really do anything about it. So, when it comes to actually doing something I either squeeze it in to whatever time I have left when I remember it, or I just completely forget. It is very annoying, because I suffer from creative blocks, and so when I get inspired you’d think I’d do my best to grasp it with both hands.

What I need to do is to create a plan. If I think of an idea, write it on my phone or whatever. And when I get home, I can look at the ideas and hopefully create something new. Because one of the things that has stopped me blogging is that I feel I am constant repeating myself, caused by me not being so forward thinking.

That’s sometimes all that someone can do, look to make changes to be better.

Unsocial Media

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I am going through a strange time with my relationship with the internet. For years, since I started blogging, I have found myself thinking more about what goes on when one posts things online. It has always been something, that has felt like a huge sense of relief for me, but recently, that hasn’t been the case.

When I post something, it has been done because it is personal to me. There has been some thought in my head, which has made me want to communicate how I feel about a certain something. It has always proved as being a very therapeutic way of organising my thoughts, and has previously helped relieve a lot of stress, so I can focus on other things. But, recently, I have found that what I post has been getting negative comments. As if I post personal things because I want attention. As silly as it sounds, attention is the last thing that I have on my mind. I have found before, that by sharing my own experiences, other people can sometimes feel not quite so alone. Because when you are experiencing difficulties in your life, it is easy to feel completely alienated from those around you. So, when you read about someone feeling as bad as you are, it can be quite comforting. In fact, when I was struggling with depression, it was reading blogs and online forums that helped encourage me to get help. So to me, social media is fantastic, because it can help people get the support that they may not have the courage to get from those around us.

Recently, I decided to do a major life change, and try to change my eating habits, I joined weight watchers. Something I have never done before, but felt encouraged to do so, by checking out fitness forums and things. On these sites, there are a lot of help points, to try and help you get motivated.  One of the points was keeping a foodlog. By posting photos of food on instagram and Tumblr, it reaches the online community, which can support you in your efforts. Seeing how sharing online has helped me before, I thought that this would be an excellent way to keep note on what I am eating. As if I feel too embarrassed to post about something I want to eat, then it is a sign that I shouldn’t be eating it. To me, this makes sense. I have a habit of eating without thinking about it very much, most of the time, I am not even hungry.

This sounds a very postive change, right?

The biggest social network is Facebook. Where people seem to take offence if you post something personal to you. Particularly, as with depression, it can come in cycles, people start complaining that it is done for attention. So when it is something personal, these off-hand remarks from supposed friends, hurt. The same thing happens when I started posting about photographing food. I am called names because to these people, food isn’t something that is deserving of their Facebook feed. Because, if you didn’t know, Facebook is exclusively for stolen memes, game requests, pictures of children and drunken nights out. People are very intolerant of Facebook. I believe this may be because some of the people ‘friends’ with you on there, aren’t really your friends, they just want to spy on those that they shared a college class with once. On every other website, if someone doesn’t like what you post, they unfollow. For some reason, that doesn’t happen on Facebook, people just post vague complaints about the content posted by folk they follow. It’s laughable, really.

With the bad experience with Facebook, I stepped back. Because speaking about any of my feelings is still so hard, to have it treated so harshly is horrible. So, I took it time to think about it. These comments that people post, are about that person’s hang-ups, and they reflect more on that person than they do me. I also have to try and toughen up, and that I have conviction to write something, then I should stand by it 100%.

Panic Stations

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I am a stress head.

When something happens, good or bad, I stress over it. When things get quiet, my brain goes into overload, and it panics over what has been done during the day. I pick over every detail, and worry about what I could have done differently.

When I was at school, I would fall out with friends sometimes. Have petty arguments that lasted one day, like most kids do. I would stay up all night, worrying that I had upset someone by doing something stupid. I was forever apologising for things that didn’t seem to bother the person I was actually apologising to.

My previous job was in a call center, for a customer services department. I took it because I love speaking to people, and wanted to help folk out. But telling loyal customers that there was nothing I could do when they were experiencing times with financial hardship. No discounts, no reconnections, no nothing. And me, being in a bad financial state myself, I sympathised with them. And because I know that I couldn’t help, I lost my confidence. I would go home at night, worrying about these customers that I wasn’t able to help. I would cry in bed, cry on my way to work. I became so stressed that I was of no use to anyone, because I couldn’t even help them when I needed it.  It wore me down, and I fell into self-harming. Something that I hadn’t done in years. It was hard.

I am trying to stop over-analysing everything going on, and that not everything that happens is a direct result of my actions. It is difficult, I still panic if I think I say something wrong to someone. It is hard to change a habit of a lifetime, but it is something that is long over due.

 

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It’s hard to believe that’s another year behind us. I feel like the last few years have gone too fast, and I barely have had the chance to catch my breath. Saying that, I am glad 2013 is over with, because it was a bad year. Well, not awful, but I really struggled through the year, and actually experienced some of my lowest periods than I have for a long time.

But, I got through it, and managed through the year, as hard as it appeared sometimes. And the cliched thing to do at this time of the year is to close that chapter of one’s life, and plan for the year ahead. I am not normally the type of person to do that, but it feels very theraputic for me not to focus on what happened in 2013. Because, if I’m honest, I know that I will focus on the bad stuff that happened. So, looking ahead to all the changes I could make, and how it can positively change my life. So, I have made a few aims, to change things for my life.

1) Eat healthier. I am not talking about diets, and quick fixes. I want to change my attitude on food, not just lose weight. I need to cut down on the sugary drinks and fatty snacks. I have read for years that bad fats and too much sugar can make you lethargic. In my job, I need as much energy as possible, because I am on my feet all day, and I simply can’t eat when I feel like it. So, I need to make sure I am eating the right foods, so that I am not bloated either. My plan initially is to cut down on the sugary drinks, and see what happens. One step at a time.

2)Be a better friend. I feel that I have been stuck in my own head for most of last year. And as a result, I haven’t been very good at returning messages or meeting up with friends. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for my friends, so I feel like I owe them a lot. As such, I feel super guilty that I haven’t been there for people as much as I should have been. I have always had this guilt that was created because I felt guilty about ‘forcing’ myself on people, particularly because folk have their own issues. I want to push my own conclusions out of my head. All I can do is check in with folk and try to meet up with people. If people don’t get back, or decline an invitation, it’s their choice, it has not indication on what kind of person I am.

3)Get out and enjoy more live music. 2013 was a rather uninspiring year for gigs. I have been to see bands locally, but that’s about it. I have made the excuse of having no money, and never ventured out of the house. Live music is one of the great passions of my life, and I am guilty of not seeing as much as I want. This year, I am going to go out and see bands, weekly hopefully. Even if it means I am drinking water, so that I can pay a few quid for entry to see a few bands play in Edinburgh. The joy of seeing live music is worth it. If I plan gigs and events to go to, it makes it easier to deal with the bad days, because I’ll have something to look forward to.

So that is it. They are just three wee things, made up of regrets from the last year. I think that if you want to change, you should focus on the things that you are most disappointed with yourself about. Mostly, because negativity can be used to drive you so far. Regardless how it ends up, I aim to make the best out of what ever happens this year. And I hope that all my readers have a fantastic 2014.