Just Get On With It

December 8, 2015 ~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

I always try to a person who plods along, no matter what happens. If I feel a duty to get something done, I have to be dying for me not to at least attempt it. It’s how I have always been, since I was wee girl. Never excelled, but also never really gave up. I fail, but I bloody well try hard no matter what.

Well, feeling under the weather, as I have, has put that ideal to the test. I have been working 6 days a week, in the run up to Christmas, making the best of the opportunity and all that. Which is great, it will pay for a fair bit of Christmas. But it is so hard to do when you are not quite 100%. My temper is short, I am a walking snot factory, and I constantly want to be wrapped up watching Netflix. But the show must go on.

I go to work and do my best. Which isn’t terrible, I can get my work done in an above average speed and accuracy, so it’s okay. But my fuse is short. I bite at people for no reason. It just means I spend half the day nipping at folk, and the other half appologising for it. It annoys me because I am such a patient person normally.

I can’t wait till this cold/cough thing finally goes away, and I can be myself again. In the meantime, I just need to keep making sure I am doing the best I can. Keep myself right.

I hope anyone else going through the ‘winter cold bug’ gets rid of it quickly. Nobody wants to be sick at this time of year.

Picture Post.

December 7, 2015 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I missed yesterday, and feel bad for it. So, to break up the monotony of wordy posts, have some random pictures from my phone. I take a lot of photos, and I like to share. I like the colder part of the year, as everything seems to change.

Lost In It All

December 4, 2015 ~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

Just looking at the Internet today, not searching for anything in particular, just looking. Something that I don’t do very often. I am good at commenting on everything, and putting in my two cents on whatever is going on.

Sometimes, I think we get too much information thrown at us, mostly by the Internet. It gets a bit hard to process it all. It is also hard to distinguish what is important, particularly on social media. Twitter and Facebook have a habit of promoting the useless twaddle that fills up the gossip sites. If you like that kind of thing, it’s okay, nothing wrong with it. But how can you tell what’s important when the going-ones in I’m A Celebrity is given more promotion than the story about Parliment voting to bomb Syria?

It just gets a bit overwhelming at times. Like information overload. The press has always had the finger pointed at it for over-hyping one story, to mask over another one. A way of attempting to pull the wool over the public’s eyes. And that made a lot of people bored with the press, and turn to sides like Twitter and Reddit for more direct news. But when companies can pay for an allocated number of retweets, how honest is what we actually see?

That’s what I sometimes think about, and to be honest it freaks me out sometimes. There are so many different ways to get information these days, and a lot of the time, every take is slightly different. So what has been added for effect. Is that ‘first hand source’ really telling a true story. You never know.

As good as the Internet is for finding out information about the world we live in, sometimes I think it would be easier if all the web was used for was Netflix.

Coughie Time

December 3, 2015 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

For the last few months I have been suffering from a cough. It’s been varying from a constant tickle in my throat making me cough every few minutes, to have one coughing fit maybe once a week. It is something I am unfortunately having to put up. But, a bit of flu last week has thrown me back to square one, with me having to go everywhere with a bottle of water and coughing up a lung every 5 minutes. I must admit, I am a bit at my wits end.

I have been to the GP a lot. I have been put on a lot of medication, finally settling on an antibiotic, which helps, but doesn’t make the cough go away completely. I’ve been for X-rays and had cameras put both up my nose and down my throat. The results of said tests? Nothing serious, just keep taking the antibiotic and it will eventually clear up. Which is all fine and well, except I am getting fed up. I don’t want to go out, or plan anything because coughing everywhere is kind of off-putting for other people.

So I am looking for something to help ease my coughing woes. That’s why I am writing this post today, to see if there is any advice out there. The main problem about general advice online, is that you have no idea if it really works. By asking people, you are hopefully getting ideas that worked for them.

It has to be worth a shot, so if anyone has any alternatives to help me with my tickly cough, please reply below. I’ll be great full for any help.

Let It Be

December 2, 2015 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Today I got really angry about something I had no control over. If things don’t ever go the way I plan, I get really irritable. I don’t like blaming other people for why things go wrong, when I can blame myself. Which sounds silly, but that is how my brain works.

But… things need to change.

It is not good for a person to believe that, every success and failure in the world around them, is entirely their fault. But that’s what anxiety does to me. And the worst thing is, that like all mental health issues, there is no quick fix. You have to spend time ‘re-training’ yourself, to change how you think about things. And that can seem the impossible task.

Maybe, a good idea, is trying to relax a bit more. Make sure that everything I do is the best I can do. Whatever happens around me, doesn’t really matter. Not when noticing ‘that’ makes me so aggitated. I have to try and learn that what happens happens, I can only do what I can. And if what I do is the best I can achieve, then there is no need to be angry if things don’t work out.

Deep breaths and visions of a calm blue ocean are required I think.

Happy Blogmas

December 1, 2015 ~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

It is the first of December, which is giving me a reason to try a new challenge. And that is to try and blog every day in the run up to Christmas.

This is a thing which has been occurring online for the last several years, with both bloggers and vloggers (video bloggers) taking on the challenge to create new content every day in the run up to Christmas. Everyone who I’ve spoken to, seems to have enjoyed taking part in the challenge previously, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Why?

Well, when I look back at 2015, I don’t feel that I have achieved too much. It feels like just another year where I have become overpowered with lack of inspiration and motivation. It’s been a bit of a damp squib, if I were to be completely honest. So, I thought that rather than just complain about failing ‘everything’, that I would give 2015 an opportunity to go out on a high note.

I have struggled all year with writing, drawing, everything. And that really gets me down. But, I am still here, and up for turning things around.

So, wish me luck.

Disconnection Notice

November 22, 2015 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It has recently been made abundantly clear that my, once passionate, love affair with the internet is going through a rough patch. I am becoming frequently frustrated to the point of putting my phone’s internet off, so that people can call me if they need me, but I don’t get interrupted by the constant Facebook and Twitter updates.

Yes, I am at that stage where I am avoiding the other party of the ‘relationship’. Normally in that situation, you would change how you walk to work, or try and hang out with different people. Try and create some space between yourself and the other person. However, when your relationship is with such a thing as the internet, it isn’t that easy. Actually, it becomes so overly dramatic that a relationship with a real person would have probably been easier to deal with.

I mean, everyone has been in ‘that’ relationship, where despite loving that person, everything they do winds you up the wrong way. Where you just want smack them on the head, and you can’t really tell them why. So, you try and put some space between you both. However, saying you ‘have a sore head’ doesn’t stop the internet. It is everywhere. Everything from restaurants to tampon companies have their own twitter handles. If you liked one craft page 2 years ago on Facebook, the site recommends events near you every 2-3 days. Sometimes I feel smothered.

But that’s not even the worst bit. When I was at my lowest point, the internet came to the rescue. It showed me that I was not alone in feeling so rejected all the time, that I could voice how I feel, and all seemed awesome. But, obviously, fairy tales don’t actually exist, and reality happened. When I say reality, I mean people who like to spread hatred from behind vague avatars. This was a nasty streak in the internet that I never foresaw. It wouldn’t happen to me, we are so happy together. But it did.

Now, a person’s nasty streak is easy to deal with. You can utter sarky retorts to their insults, or you just walk away. Yes, what they say hurt may leave a mark, but you can leave that one person. The internet isn’t a singularity, so dealing with any negativity from it, is a bit harder. If someone has taken to ‘troll’ something you have created, it normally isn’t just one person. And you also may find these trolls are a bit braver than what they would be in the real world, which means more cutting comments. I did what any sane person would do, I decided I needed time apart from the internet. I stopped going onto forums and writing blogs as often, as these places are where the negativity came from. Good? Kind of. When I did log on, I saw a lot of hate and the spread of intolerance. This is not the internet I had loved and used so heavily.

Who are you these days, dear internet? You are no longer the place that I go when things get to stressful. After allowing me to feel free, after so long hating who I am, you are now lampooning me for being that same person. A normal person would at least be able to explain their actions. And, as an adult, I wouldn’t need to rely on a person for EVERYTHING. My job exists because of the internet. I get my music and TV over the internet. I contact friends around the world on the internet.

Maybe I just need to change my relationship with the internet? Or maybe get in a relationship with a real life actual person?

Or not.

Let It Go!

October 28, 2015 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I have a problem.

And that problem is hoarding things. It is not having the ability to let go of stuff when I don’t use them anymore. A lot of the time things might not even get used that much, even at all. And it is terrible. It is a waste of money, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Being in my early 30s, I don’t think unnecessary purchases and hoarding them is unusual. When I speak to people my age about this, they have similar experiences as me.

There has been much said about the single, childless 30-somethings who find themselves clinging to inanimate objects like a consumerists wet dream. For me, my guilt is stationary. I always say that I am going to get myself organised and get my life to the stage where I am satisified. Not that I am dissatisfied with my life too much, more that life has never reached the high expectations that I had when I was younger. I guess that is one of the issues about growing older, but I can’t help feeling a little crestfallen.

I don’t know where my hoarding started, it is just something that seems to have happened over the years. It is trying to figure it what you do, when you realise that your purchasing habits are not the best they could be. How do you change it?

I suppose that it is like every other behaviour, to change it takes time. Due to rearranging a few things, I am attempting to downsize what I own, and it is proving quite hard. It feels like I buy stuff so that I have something to show for all the hard work I have done over the years. Which is silly, because books, DVDs, video games, they don’t matter, really. They are material things that make a person feel better for a while. But that feeling of joy that we get when we buy something is temporary, and because I have had issues with depression, I find that I cling to things that have made me feel better.

When you think like that, is it even possible to completely change a habit so significantly? It’s not even simply behaving different, it is changing how you react, how you deal with life. It almost seems so big, I don’t even know where to start on it.

Risk It For A Biscuit?

October 3, 2015 ~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday I was asked why I never ‘put myself forward’ for different roles at work. It was awkward, because I couldn’t find an answer. But it was more, that I couldn’t work out how to say stuff, rather than there being no reasons.

I have spoken on here about having anxiety and depression before. It would be easier if those two things occurred together. But they don’t. Like now, I am very content at work, and I am enjoying what I do. And because I like helping people, I have been asked a few times about stepping up to a different role for the upcoming busy period. Which there is a chance I’d do okay, but my brain doesn’t seem to understand that.

The ‘fear of the Unknown’ is the problem, which seems daft. But it is one that I can’t get passed. I have encountered my fair share of failure in life, and the way I reacted to that has made my anxiety worse. Whenever something goes wrong, I square the blame fully on myself. Which is okay, only if you use the experience to learn from. I don’t seem to do that. I hate on myself for failing something, and I make myself so miserable that I don’t want to try anything else again. That developed to the stage where I had panic attacks when I would get the oppertunity to do something new.

But things are a bit better. I still don’t put myself forward for things yet, although I do think about it. But I will try something new if it is put in front of me, and by focusing on whatever it is, I don’t panic. It is something I need to keep working on, so that one day, soon, I will be able to apply for new stuff, without the panic attacks.