I’m back again. So sorry for the lack of posts over the last week or so. It seems my excitement over getting better, was a little bit misjudged, as I felt pretty bad last week. I can deal with being sick, but when I couldn’t keep my dinner down because of coughing? No no no no no, I have no time for that. I like my food, and hate to give it up. Think of me, like Joey from Friends. I don’t share food, and really hate giving it up. For anything. Even being sick.
I am feeling better, coughing is still there, but nowhere near as all-conquering as it has been. And because I can talk in sentances without trying to cough up a lung, yesterday I recorded a video. I was planning on editing and uploading it instead, but I fell asleep in the bath. Don’t judge me. I am still ‘healing’. I have the doctors tomorrow, so should be home early, and will get the video edited then. That’s the plan anyway.
Anyway, hope anyone reading this is doing well. And I hope that you haven’t been caught up by the bugs and viruses that seem to be everywhere.
The biggest problem about using a lot of technology, is that sometimes it can stop working. Something happens, and it feels that, no matter what you do, things just don’t go the way you plan it. That is the problem that I had today. First my phone refused to charge. It kept popping up with a message saying ‘device is not compatible’, despite me using an official Apple charger. It’s not something that surprises me, because despite the cost and how good the actual devices are, iPod/ iPhone charger cables are absolute terrible. They always seem to break, a small lose connection renders the thing useless. I got the cable working again, mostly by unplugging it from the mains for a bit. I don’t know how but it seemed to work.
And that was okay. After visiting the Doctors, I decided that I would use the afternoon to make a video, get my YouTube channel working again. So I thought I’d record a video explaining why my previous videos had disappeared, and the name change, which has all happened for the same reasons as this blog has changed. There was no point in having the ‘graphics’ title in anything if I wasn’t uploading anything to do with art. Makes sense. I made all my existing vlogs private, as if to get a clear slate to work off. So far, so good. I then decided to record a quick vlog, explaining the changes. I tried using my Canon camera, it didn’t work because something corrupted in the memory card and I had to format it. So attempt one was a bust. I then tried to use my webcam, but my movie editor wouldn’t pick up the sound, at all. So I resorted to my iphone. Shot a video in 2 parts, went to import it into my computer, and it didn’t transfer just deleted the videos off my phone.
At this point, I was close to just leaving it. But, after some delving, I realised the current iOS YouTube app allows you to upload direct from the app. Which is good, because for a while there, you had to upload using a different app. Which was a pain. This time, fortunately, the video recorded and uploaded no problems. It did mean that the video wasn’t edited, but at the stage I was at, it didn’t really seem important. But I got it up, which is a good thing, considering that YouTube is where my creativity tends to go to die. It is easier to watch people’s stuff, than make your own. But because vlogging helps me just as much as blogging does, I thought I’d make the effort. See the results below.
The video is so simple, but I don’t think that people realise how much effort goes into making a simple video appear online. I mean, it has taken me hours just to get that video available for others to watch. Of course, technology was a major problem today, but usually I would edit a video, and that takes time. And I think people need to remember how long things take, before they post hate on someone’s videos.
I haven’t been quiet about my health recently. I find that all I am doing at the moment is complain of how I am sick. Now this cough has been here for 3 weeks. And just when I think it is getting better, it gets worse again. The main cause for the coughing has been my tickly throat. I try to drink plenty of fluids to try and soothe it, which does help sometimes. But other times, at least once a day, my breath catches and I start coughing. When it gets like that there is nothing that I can do to stop coughing. I take syrups, cough sweets, water, none of it works. I just have to try and calm my breathing down enough, usually achieved by breathing through my nose, which is hard as that seems to be blocked too.
This seems minor, but it has it’s bad moments. Sometimes, the cough is so constant, I cant drink any water to soothe it, and it just continues, to the point where I can’t catch my breathe. These are the times, with tears running down my face, that I end up in the bathroom vomiting down the toilet. And I HATE vomiting, it makes me revert to being like a little child. It takes all my energy not to cry my eyes out and call for my Mum. It’s all a bit sad and pathetic for a 31 year old to be unable to deal with being sick. And it is tiring to deal with, when this happens at least once a day.
I have refrained from visiting my GP, as with all coughs I have had before, the syrups and cough drops have worked fine. I don’t think that I have a choice anymore. I have missed more than one day at work already, and I hate missing work. I feel guilty of letting someone down. But it gets to the point, where my health has to take priority over attending work. I am sure that working in a dusty, heavily air-conditioned environment is helping me get rid of this cough. So, I am taking tomorrow off from work, and going to try my hardest to get an emergency appointment. If I can’t then I have to wait at least 2 weeks for an appointment. I am no doctor, and maybe it’s because it is effecting me, but surely being unable to keep food down and struggling to breathe is at least a little bit urgent. It’s not even just that, I am in constant discomfort because I have pulled muscles in my stomach, side and back because of the coughing. I am taking Ibuprofen constantly, or else I can’t even sleep. Which is a struggle as it is, with the coughing all the time.
I am sorry for having such a rant on here, but I don’t feel I have anyone to vent like this too. Plus, everyone is sick of my cough, because it has been going on for so long. But if the people around me are annoyed, it is nothing to how I feel. I just want it to go away
Everyone encounters someone who tries to beat them down. It is something that nobody should ever have to experience. That feeling that you are not worthy of any kind of affection because you have no self-confidence left. The feeling when you don’t want to go to work, school or even home, because you are so scared of what could happen. The worst part is, that most people that you speak to, have had a problem with a bully at some point.
I had some issues when I was at school. Petty name calling and being made fun of. Being short and on the tubby side, I was an easy target. Most of the people who tried to pick on me weren’t people I wanted to be friends with, so I just ignored them. It seemed so much easier to do back when I was younger. As I became a teenager in High School, the words became more hurtful. I never figured out if it was really the words that changed, or just that they were chipping away at me, without me really knowing.
Many stories you hear of bullying, give you the impresson that things get better once you leave school. It didn’t for me. By the end of High School I had lost a lot of my self-confidence and I became a lot quieter. I started hating myself because I was fat and couldn’t seem to do anything to lose it. Not that I had the energy to try. Besides, when people saw me out running or walking, some would shout names. Names that hurt me. Names that made me want to sit at home and gorge on food. And it made me hate myself more.
I wish that I could say that a lot has changed over the years. Most of the people that made me hate myself have been cut out of my life now. I say most because some people I can’t cut out. Some people are a part of my life, whether I want them to be or not. Where I get demeaned for the smallest thing, but am still expected to act as if I owe them something. And that is hard. How can you move past something when you don’t get the time and distance to heal? So I continue to suck it up. Unable to move past the belief that I have recovered all this abuse because I am a bad person.
And that’s what bullying does. It skews everything that you thought you knew. And despite never doing anything wrong, you blame yourself because of the actions of others. And the funniest thing is that the bullies never see the damage they cause. They will never see the self-hatred that was started by their ‘petty taunts’. But that’s why those of us that have been bullied need to speak up. People need to support one another.
I have always been vocal about how writing has helped me get through my life. It has been useful to write about my feelings rather than pile it on another person. Blogging has helped me make sense of a lot. I have always known that it isn’t just me who turned to writing a blog to get through things, it’s become a kind of therapy for so many people.
Tonight I watched The C Word on BBC One. It’s about Lisa Lynch, who starts writing a blog to help her deal with what happens after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Lisa wrote a book based on her experiences. I won’t say what happens in case any readers wish to read the book or watch the TV show, but it’s clear that writing really helped Lisa. She found other cancer sufferers through her blog, and they helped each other through.
I think it’s great that such a simple thing, like writing what’s in your head, can help so much. To me, writing is the best kind of therapy. It helps me so much, whether I write about what I am actually writing what I feel at that moment or not. Not enough respect is given to people who write what they feel online. Posting on a blog is releasing something to the world, so that anyone can read it. That is pretty crazy. I love reading through people’s blogs as well. Through reading someone’s writing you can learn so much about that person, just by seeing how they express themselves. And different people experience things differently, so it is always good to read how others deal with things.
The C Word was shown on BBC One on Sunday 3rd May, and is now available on BBCiplayer.
I attempted to blog every day in April, and I didn’t. Including this post, I blogged 21 out of 30 days. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is a lot better than what I thought I would do. Every other time I have tried any daily creative challenge, I have usually only work on it for a few days. I don’t even bother trying to struggle to do things, they become a challenge and I give up.
As I have mentioned previously, I have not been of the best health recently, and I have been going to work, eating and sleeping. I found that if you are not well, and continue working, you have no energy at all. It makes everything so much more difficult. I am not looking for sympathy, I just find that I forget how exhausting things can be sometimes. The good things is, that whilst I am still a bit bleugh, I am getting better. I am not trying to cough up a lung several times an hour and I am getting more sleep. This is making everything a wee bit easier to deal with. So I thought I’d pop on here, and just touch base.
The BEDA thing was fun when I did it. I love the process of creating content on a daily basis, and like the challenge of posting something. Some days were easier than others. Some days had hundreds of words, some just had a photograph. It made me realise what this blog means to me. It is one of the very few places online where everything posted is original content by me. Which as someone who likes being creative, I think it is important to have somewhere like that. Anyway, because I enjoyed blogging every day, I am going to try and continue posting daily now I am feeling better again. If I don’t post a day, it’s no big deal, I’ll just post the next day. The important thing is that I try, it gives me some kind of focus.
This is a challenge for me to write today. Not for any other reason than, for a change, I am happy. Which I know sounds weird, but it’s true. And when I use blogging as a way to ‘let go’ of the negativity in my life, I always get a bit lost when I don’t feel so negative. I just don’t know what to write.
I guess I’ll maybe start with why I am so happy. I have been ill the last few weeks, with a cough and some eye/allergy thing. The cough is still here, but it is on the way out, and my eye isn’t bothering me nearly so much. Which is such a relief, but I found that I barely did anything last week. Because I was getting no sleep, I had no energy. It was horrible. But now I’m feeling a bit better, i have so much energy. The last 2 days I have went for long walks (4-5 miles) to try and get into shape. Because I have been sick a lot recently, and I am thinking that it could be because I am in RUBBISH shape.
So, in the last few days I jumped back on Weight Watchers and have been trying to walk as much as I can. Why walk? Well, it’s free, is really good for you and can save me money on bus fare. I think it has been so easy to jump into walking more, because it has been a really nice few days. And the sun being out always helps my mood.
What has surprised me most, is that, despite that I haven’t done many long walks recently, I wasn’t tired at the end. It was the opposite. I was buzzing and was a big ball of energy. I came home, and couldn’t sit down, so had a busy afternoon. It makes me think, I am normally a slow riser in the morning, maybe if I had a walk first thing, I’d have more energy for the rest of the day. I am going to try it for the next few days before work, and see what happens.
I am awful at giving advice. And yet, people always approach me for help. I can sympathise with someone and their issues. I can understand that someone is having a hard time. I just don’t know how I can tell someone what to do. I don’t have the most exciting life, what can I pull any advice from?
Advice isn’t something I like asking for, on a personal level, anyway. I have never liked imposing myself on other people, which is why I keep things to myself. Or I try to, anyway. I also feel that because I am crap at giving advice, it’s a bit rude to expect others to give some to me
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