Category: 2017

Anything Better Than Nothing

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Whilst I have had a bit of a breakthrough, so far in 2017, with my writing, I am still a bit stuck with my more arty things.

I am trying to do wee things to help motivate me. Cause past doing wee doodles every now and then, I struggle. But, when I think about it,wee doodles are better than nothing.

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The image above is what happened creatively today. I stuck stickers in my sketchbook. Like a child. Honestly, it was so relaxing, just what I needed after a stressful day. So, as far as I am concerned it did it’s job.

Been doing a lot of thinking, so I can build on the wee doodles and stickers, and actually create something substantial. Maybe, I need a few goals. Like making a new banner or something. Goals sometimes help, sometimes they do de-motivate me further though.

Exercise Is Evil

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Okay. I know exercise isn’t really evil, in fact I enjoy exercise a lot, something I have into on this blog before.

The truth is, I am sore. I am very sore. This is mostly because I pushed myself at the gym yesterday, and did a lot at work today. This means that I limped home at the end of the day, feeling a bit sorry for myself. And, a bit like how a person after a night out on the town, may curse the existence of alcohol, I am cursing the existence of the gym.

So, to make myself feel better, I had some chips for tea and a nice long +90 minute bath. I am still sore, but I feel relaxed, so it easier to deal with. There is a myth that when it comes to exercise, the school of thought ‘no pain, no gain’ is the way to go. But I don’t believe it is. When I first started exercising, I did a little research first, as I was a bit nervous about hurting myself. I have problems with my joints, in general, where if I, for example, lift something heavy, it can cause my hands and arms to hurt. Nothing, that some pain killers can’t fix, but it is annoying.

Anyway, I looked into the best ways to gradually ease myself into exercise. And one of the things that is widely promoted, is that if you push your muscles too far, they can tear and get damaged. This is what can happen when you feel pain after exercise. This is why it is important that you warm up, before you do any exercise. Whilst I usually do warm up, I feel like I did too much. I walked 5km on the treadmill and cycled 10k, which is over double what I usually do. And that, is what I think caused the pain. Now, at that point, when I was sore, I should have had a bath. But I didn’t. So I went to work today, did a lot of bending and lifting, and the pain got worse.

I’ll survive. And, now I’m just having a lazy night with Youtube and my bed.

Not as dirty as it sounds.

Push it!

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It’s very easy to sit back and do nothing. Too easy sometimes. It can be hard to do anything at all. Those days where I stare at a messy room or an empty page, and I can’t will myself to do anything about it. Honestly, it can be very easy, at this point, to just cut your losses and give up.

But don’t do that.

Keep trying. You don’t have to continue stuck, staring at what you need to do. You are stuck there, try something else. I personally find going for a walk helps, but anything that takes you away from the situation.

Come back at it with a fresh mind, and hopefully you can go at again. This time you may do it. If not, try again later. The important thing is not to give up. That’s never the answer.

Blue Monday?

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It’s supposed to be the most depressing day of the year today. I don’t really understand the idea of dubbing a random day ‘the most depressing’.

I have been reading a lot about mindfulness and how most of what we feel is based on perceptions. So we assume things will be bad, because of the angle we are looking at it. I feel that is what happens when someone tells you a day is supposed to be depressing. You get into that mindset, and there is no getting away from it.

I’ll give you an example. I have been wanting a car, since I passed my driving test in November. I have now been 2 months since I passed my test, and because I haven’t been at a driving wheel since I had a melt down. Now, since I passed, I made the choice that I’d wait till I saved up money, and get the right car. But I made the mistake of reading all these negative articles about ‘Blue Monday’ as I ate my cereal this morning. Because I have so many issues with my mental health, I always think I am prone to these periods where depression runs high.

I was going to get a lift to the gym this morning, but my sister was taking her time, and a bus was due. So me being me, I left and went for the bus. All good so far. But then I started thinking about how at 18 she was offered to share a car with my dad. My brother was that age when he was gifted a car. And i couldn’t even get someone to come and look at cars with me. I started freaking out. What if I forget how to drive? What if I get in a car and freak out? What if I am never able to get a car? I got so worked up, I was sobbing at the back of the bus.

I stayed on the bus, despite just wanting to go home, and went to the gym as planned. I then sweated all the negativity out of my system, and I now feel better.

I feel I got so upset by reading all these articles about how people more successful than me felt low today. I mean, the whole idea of Blue Monday, is because people are waiting for the first payday after Christmas. That doesn’t apply to me, as I get paid weekly, but it didn’t stop the bad feeling. And I think by digesting all this writing about why I should be sad, I over-reacted to something completely different.

I have been reading The Universe Has Your Back by Gabrielle Bernstein, and it is a book about changing your mindset. Putting trust in the universe and stop worrying about a future that hasn’t happened yet. The book tries to explain that by thinking in ‘love’ rather than ‘fear’, we can transform our lives. It sounds really silly, but this is revolutionary to me. It got me thinking how negativity does effect my day, and my life. I am trying to do the lessons that are in the books, but it is hard. Like everything, new habits need to be formed to make a difference.

Maybe the first habit I need to break from, is sensationalist articles on social media, trying to tell me how I should feel. Focus on the feel-good. Try a bit of positive mental attitude.

Capable

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Everyone has a level of strength within them. Something that gives them a certain level of capacity in dealing what whatever life has to throw at them. Different people are able to deal with different levels of things. Like some people can deal with a large work load, but cannot deal when someone loses their temper. No one person is capable at dealing with everything, and that is why it is important that we surround ourselves with good people, so that we can help each other through things.

And there is me. A big problem with my anxious mind, running 100 miles a minute, is that it’s favourite thing to is to doubt every little thing that I do. It is frustrating. But, I don’t think that these feelings come just from my own mind, it comes from the world I have experienced. In our society, if someone is over-confident in their abilities, they get beaten down for it. As if, noone wants the person who knows they are good at something. There is very much an idea, that people who do brag about their own abilities, makes us feel insecure about our own abilities. But the way things such as the media, come down on people who are outspoken about themselves and their talent, is only making that worse. It makes people think, it is bad to advertise that you are capable of something.

Once you lose faith in your abilities, for whatever reason, it is really hard to get it back. Like, a few years back, I thought I was capable of nothing. Was a case of, why bother with anything, as I will just fail. It is not a nice feeling. But something I learned to put up with. And, whilst I have more confidence than I did, there is still that mentality in me that tells me I will fail. I was reading something the other day, can’t remember where unfortunately, and it said that rather than thinking on our abilities to fail, we should be focused on our capability to try. Everyone can try something.

via Daily Prompt: Capable

Working Weekend

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Everything always I want to do always happens at the weekend. When I say weekend, I mean a Friday or Saturday night. The nights where people want to party, and I want to go to bed after working during the day. Sometimes I find myself wishing for a normal weekend, just for a little chance to go to the football and enjoy a normal weekend.

I have always worked weekends. Whether it be working in a shop, call center, or warehouse (all they job types I’ve really had), I always have had to work a Saturday. And I am not alone, a lot of the people I know are the same. The weekend has become part of the working week. Whilst it can be highly annoying, a lot of the time it’s okay. Because you work some or all of your weekend, usually that means that your days off will just fall on other days of the week. The job I am in just now, for example, I work long days Wednesday to Saturday. Whilst that means that yes, I do miss the football and sometimes I am too tired to go out on a Saturday night (getting old, btw), it also means I am off Sunday to Tuesday. A 3 day weekend. It is good, because I get all my contracted hours done in as few days as possible, and if I want to work extra, I still get 2 days off.

There are good things about having your ‘weekend’ during the week. It is so much quieter, especially when the schools are in. I can go to Starbucks, and relax with a book, without kids throwing their rubbish at one another. Seriously, that is a pet hate of mine, going somewhere to relax and finding it filled with noisy distractions. Makes me wish that McDonald’s was still open in the town, because that is where all the kids used to go. I mean, if I wanted my days off to be filled with screaming kids, I would have had one of my own.

Anyway, as I said the shops are quieter during a normal weekday, and the gym is quieter. Seeing as going to the gym regular, has been a major boost to my mental health, I really like going on my days off. It helps me sweat out any of those anxieties that have built up over the week. But, again, if it is too busy, and I cant do my normal rotation of exercises, I get unnecessarily peeved off. Especially when I want on a treadmill, and 4 girls are standing on the remaining ones talking crap about someone. And if high school kids are in the gym, they have have the worst habit of not washing down the equipment after use. I mean noone wants to touch someone else’s sweat. That is just gross.

I think, that for all the cons there are for working the weekend, there are a lot of positives. But in this current climate, I sometimes need to remind myself how lucky I am to have a full time job at all. A lot of people have to work 2 or 3 part-time jobs for the hours I get with one. So maybe the days that you have off, actually don’t matter, that you get days off at all. Nobody can work 24/7.

Retreading Old Roads

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I always feel that people get annoyed with my posts popping up on their feeds. Especially, as I have committed myself to posting every day. Something that I am enjoying, even though I have struggled sometimes, posting an entry or two close to midnight. It is a challenge that I am having fun with, although it may not seem like it.

A lot of the things I talk about, relate to my mental health, especially anxiety. This is something that I am actively working on, to try and deal with things better. And, when I write something, sometimes similar thoughts run round my head, so that is what gets written about. There are times, when every point I think about my anxiety, I can think of different ideas as new ways to make it easier to deal with. Which, if I am honest, is something that I feel is essential to self-improvement. Always looking for a solution.

So, whilst I figure out what I am doing, I will go over things a few times. I might have a different angle for whatever happened, but that is what happens sometimes. Once things settle down a little bit, I am going to try and plan things better. I have a notebook, which already has some ideas written down. So, I would like to post a bit more varying content. Maybe write entries as drafts, and then post them in an order which mixes things up a bit. Writing every day is something that is still quite new to me, so it will take time for things to get in a better rhythm.

But for the moment, I am happy on here. This blog is celebrating it’s 8th birthday this year, and has become a place which is documented a large section of my life. And because of that, I find strangely attached to it. I like reading my old posts from years ago, to read about problems, which seem so insignificant now. My hope is, that one day, the anxiety I am writing about so frequently right now, will be as insignificant as my college are now, 8 years later.

Can always hope.

Busy Bee

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Everyone has those times, where you get so busy and hectic, that you get completely overwhelmed. It is something that happens to me regularly, and I find that it can really trigger my anxiety. I start losing my temper, start panicking, I overheat and I get upset. The worst feeling is, that I get the idea in my head that I am only overwhelmed because I am useless. A good person, who could actually do things properly, would never have got so worked up about it. And, thinking like that, can start a cycle of demeaning myself, and feeling worse and worse.

These days, I know that if I power through, things will calm down, and with that, my anxiety will subside. And then, I can just focus on my job again. Which is such a relief. Whilst it is good to know that I can get through being overwhelmed, it is frustrating that it still happens so regularly. Anxiety, for me, feels like I lose control of my emotions, something that adds to the feeling of intensity. It is exhausting.

Although people who see me get worked up might disagree, I am slowly getting better at dealing with this. I try to simply focus on what task is directly in front of me. Usually panic attacks come on, because I see all the work I have to do, and I feel bad that the pile is ever-growing. And that pile of work, is just a badge of dishonour, letting the world know that I can’t cope. In a calm mind, I know that a work list getting bigger, is not necessarily an indication on my abilities, more the situation which is outwith my control.

Usually, at home, listening to music or a walk in the fresh air, work as tactics to get away from any panic I feel rising. So I can go off on my own, collect my thoughts, and come back and attack tasks with a fresher mind. But, in situations not at home, none of these solutions are possible. If I can stay focused on my task, sometimes I can just focus on what I am doing, and blank out everything else. But that isn’t always possible either. I have tried to hum or sing to myself when I get into situations that can trigger my anxiety. That can help. But, I get nervous of someone judging me for singing a silly Disney song. I am trying to get over that.

Not so long ago, if I was busy and got overwhelmed, I would just leave the situation completely. That sometimes meant leaving work early or cancelling on friends. I don’t do that anymore. I do push through it. I just need to deal better with what happens when I have to work through stuff. But, that takes time.

The Journey to White Deer Park

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am a bit of a bookworm. But in periods where I become a bit ‘stuck’, it can include finding it difficult to do hobbies, as well as create things. That means, i find it hard to relax to music and I just can’t focus on a book to read. Now, these can be issues, as both music and books are ways I like to relax. So sometimes, i feel like I just can’t unwind, and it is so frustrating.

So I made a choice to try and read 50
books this year. Its a big number, as I really struggled last year reading that same target, in fact I think I ready 11 books. 11 books in 12 months is really bad, as I used to read ALL THE TIME. So, in keeping of 2017’s plan I thought I’d try and red a book from my childhood to get me started.

The Animals of Farthing Wood.

It was a good idea. Because although the story was a lot mor simplified than I remember, was still super entertaining. And it made me think. If I want to do things, and am finding it hard, then maybe do baby steps. Working a really small bit towards your goal is better than working towards nothing at all.

When I was young Farthing Wood was a favourite. I read it so much, and became convinced I was going to get a pet fox. As a fox was one of the main characters. I loved animals, and the idea of different animals banding together to travel to a safer place, after the pond in their home of Farthing Wood is filled in by humans. People were building on their homes, and the animals leave whilst they still have the chance. But where do they go? To an animal reserve called White Dear Park, where they could all be safe. So the animals, a badger, fox, snake, weasel, mole, owl, rabbits, mice, voles and more, make a pact to live together in unity, until they reached their new home.

I read the book when the cartoon, based on the book, was aired on Children’s BBC, when I was about 10 or 11. The book disappoint, in fact, when I re-read it last week, it still kept me entertained. Okay, the way the animals all talked to each other was just like they were people, did annoy me. But it was still a book I could get right into.

So maybe, if you are struggling, try to do something you loved as a kid. It might help you re-discover why you love what you do, and give you the push to carry on.

Struggling

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

This week, so far, has been very difficult, productivity wise. Like, I set out these plans, and some of them aren’t working. Forming new habits are really hard, and I think it is easy to forget that, when you set yourself tasks.

I have posted every day, so far. And, whilst I was ahead of myself last week, this week, I am ‘putting it off’. It’s not that I don’t want to do anything, I do, it’s just I can’t stay focused long enough to do anything substantial. So this wee gap, between spending time with family and going to bed, has been used to write. It’s not so much a writer’s block, more of just pure procrastination.

I. Hate. That. Word.

Procrastination.

It’s the idea that people have this programme in their minds, that simply ‘puts things off’. As an adult, I have had enough experience to know that putting stuff off never works. The number of sleepless nights I had because I didn’t do work for school or college, and it was deadline time. It was not good. But still, all these years later, I leave everything to the last minute. It is one thing that annoys me about myself.

But, when I think about it, or chat to friends about it, they procrastinate too. No matter what it is, people can feel like they can’t be bothered. It made me think, that maybe procrastination is natural. That, if people had the choice, they would love to just watch funny videos on YouTube all day. But they can’t. People have to function, and sometimes trying to function knowing those funny videos are out there is hard. You have to show discipline. You have to make effort. And sometimes, no one wants to make effort.

Maybe we need to be easier on ourselves. Understand that everyone gets to where they can’t be bothered. And we need to either push through it, or decide it is not important enough. I think that is what I want to come of trying to commit more. That if there is something, that isn’t worth ‘pushing through’ the distractions, then I shouldn’t do it. Quite hard to know when to let something go though.

Sometimes it would be nice if life had a guidebook like the Computer Games do.