Tag: rambling

Summertime

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

In Scotland, people often joke that out of the entire summer season, we will maybe get 2/3 days of actual sunshine. Well, today was one of those days.

img_1101

I am a person who is suited to the cold. Always have been. The temperatures in Scotland usually go from just below freezing, in the winter, to maybe 25c in the summer. People always laugh when I say that I’m melting and the temperature is only in the 20s. But I overheat, I sweat a lot (gross) and I can get dizzy really easy, even when I do drink a lot. It’s very frustrating, and I have no idea I would cope in a hotter country.

I still enjoy the summer though. My favourite thing to do on a nice day, is sit somewhere with a book and some music. A nice wee read in the sun is a perfect way to enjoy the summer, in my opinion. If it’s a bit cooler, I like to go for walks. Being outdoors should be what the summer is about.

Guilty of feeling bad

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

Right now, it feels like every time you read the paper or watch a news broadcast, something else horrible is happening in the world. Innocent people are dying every day. And it is awful.

It can be difficult to relate to. I,for example, feel unbelievably guilty. I have my fair share of physical and mental health issues, and a lot of times it is hard to even hard to get dressed, never mind do something productive. But I watch the news, see the suffering of others who are much worse off than me. It starts the internal berating of myself, where I feel inadequate that I seem to have a lot, but I can’t deal. People have it worse. Someone said that at work today, to me. I didn’t offer a reply, but in my head, it reinforced the belief I was building up about myself.

It doesn’t make for a happy life. It makes every day feel like it’s double the length. My anxiety flares because i feel so guilty and unworthy, it causes my stomach to become unsettled so that every meal I eat, ends up in the sewerage system. It stops me from sleeping, I feel that if I can’t appreciate and enjoy my life, then maybe I shouldn’t wake up in the morning.

But, when in a calmer state, I realise everything I do is completely irrelevant to whatever disaster is in the news. Now, that sounds awful. But bear with me. My anxiety comes in different flavours. Sometimes my brain makes me feel unimportant, and sometimes it makes me feel responsible for EVERYTHING. So, the days where I feel hopeless, I try to break tasks down, like if I don’t process this task, a customer won’t get their refund. It is a small thing, but makes me feel I have a purpose.

When I am a bit more calm, like I am now, I can be logical. I can think of a way round my issues. But when anxiety hits, logic is furthest from my mind. I have donated to charities for the Manchester attack, the Grenfell Tower fire, and many others. Sometimes, feeling like I tried to give something helps calm my anxiety. But if you are struggling with current affairs and are feeling guilty or just questioning your place in the world, sometimes the best thing to do is to not constantly watch the news. I watch half an hour a day, and that’s it.

Don’t allow your mental health to bully you into feeling guilty for something you have nothing to do with. Which is hard, I know. You can also try to speak (or ramble online, like I do) about what you are feeling. If you are having a hard time health-wise, nothing should be-little what you are going through. And if someone tries to, ignore them. Look after yourself and those close to you.

____________
If you need mental health help visit The Samaritans

Donate to the Grenfell Tower fire fund, this situation is still ongoing, and the death toll is expected to rise. red cross appeal

It’s A Very, Very Mad World

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

The world is a wide and varied place. It is filled with people, trying to make things better for their fellow man. However, there is also a lot of utter bastards to counter the good. Sometimes, it feels like all we see is the bad.

Sometimes it’s easy to be overwhelmed in the tragedies that unfold every day around the world. Innocent people dying in the cruelest ways. School buses blown up in Syria, a music concert in the UK, hospitals in Indonesia, lone women in India, gay people in Chechnya… The list is endless. Most of this hatred is brought on by a sense of entitlement and an intolerance of others. And it is horrible. What is a normal person to do? How are we supposed to feel when others act so horrifically?

I don’t think there is an answer. A lot of the time all we can do is watch the news reports and read articles online. You may sign a petition, or donate to a foundation just to help. To get a sense you are doing something. Anything.

You may be unable to do anything about events in any of the headlines you will read today, tomorrow or any day to come. The world feels cold and dark. But, you can try and take that darkness away. Even just for those around you. Call a friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. Introduce yourself to your next door neighbour, or invite a lonely neighbour round for tea. Go visit relatives. Use social media to send good wishes to those who you might not talk to very much. Smile at the person who serves you your morning coffee.

As clawing as negativity can be, positivity is contagious. I know not everything will be sunshine and rainbows, but a lot of people are emotionally struggling in life. It shouldn’t take tragedy to bring people together, but it also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. Terrorism is something which wants to tear people apart. To split society into fractions, fractions that disagree and fight amongst themselves.

Let’s not let that happen. Let’s share love and togetherness instead of hate and intolerance. ❤️

Standing Still

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am getting really irritated about myself. I sometimes feel like I am making progress, with my mental health, but then just go backwards. It’s frustrating.

For example, last week was really positive. I was in a really good mood, which was helped by a quiet few days at work. So I had time to relax, catch up with friends and not working. Which is nice sometimes. However, this all ended by someone saying something negative to me. I feel really stupid, knowing that someone making a throwaway comment can effect me so much. It’s the kind of thing that makes me feel ashamed for feeling bad, and that I am a liability, and no one really needs to be around someone like that.

Thinking like this, is not nice. It is suffocating. Previously, I would just dwell on this feeling, and end up in a terrible state. Now, I try to reach out to people. Well, there is only a handful of people who I feel I can reach out to. This is not to be against people I know. If I feel bad, I feel like a burden. Which is how I tend to feel most the time. It is exhausting.

Afterwards, it is easy to say that any feelings of anxiety are irrational. But that doesn’t help that feeling of utter useless you get, when you are only barely treading water. It sometimes feels I am moving forward, only to come back to square one. But, when I do feel a bit better, I can think with slightly more optimism.

I may return to square 1 time after time, but maybe that square is moving further up the board as I go on. I mean I do know I am better than I even was last year. It is just unbelievably slow.

Tired

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am sleepy. But, as life should never be as simple as I would like, I can’t sleep. Well, I do eventually go to sleep, but I may only sleep for a few hours a night. Which is not good when you work 10 hour days.

I think the blame, like with most people, is technology. I have a phone, that sits near my bed. That’s without the TV, games consoles, Kindle or iPad. All within reach from bed. It means I can easily get distracted till the early hours of the morning by nonsense.

It is too easy to whittle away hours on nothing, since the internet came into force. Watching videos of classic WWF fights, or cats falling over, it is very easy to lose hours of time before you realise it. There is nothing wrong with finding something that engrossing, but there can be when it stops your sleep.

I am going to try something going forward. Which involves being in bed by 11pm, without any Internet connected devices. And just sleeping. See how that works. Sounds silly trying to set a routine, like you would a child, but routine really is good for people. Especially if it is to help things such as sleep. Well. I guess I’ll start tomorrow.

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.

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.

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.

To Share Or Not To Share

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I really haven’t had much to say, which I haven’t posted in almost a month. Well there are things that are in my head, but no anything I particularly want to voice on the internet in a public way. In fact I just haven’t mentioned things at all. This sounds a little bit strange, especially coming from someone who uses blogging and the internet to work out their frustrations, but it is true. What it has done, is make sections of the internet, completely separate from what has been going on offline.

And I think that it is important, knowing where to draw the line with posting personal things online. Like, I have always used the internet to vent, to let out those annoying wee things that grate on me. But, I will not go into discussing a bad situation where someone else is involved. It could be to do with family or friends, but it is for me to share something, that whilst personal to me, is also personal to them. I mean, if other people are like me, my parent’s have me on facebook. The last thing I would need is someone talking about a personal situation that had me tagged, and that my parents could read, especially as it may be something that I didn’t want to share with them.

But, that is one of the best things about the internet. You can decide what you share. You might might be obnoxious and funny, but through Facebook you are simply funny, due to not sharing absolutely everything about yourself. It can be dangerous too, as you may never truly know someone you are friends with online. You can only virtually know whatever side of their personality, a person is willing to share.

When I write things on my social media accounts, sometimes I feel bad for the people who follow me. Because I can get so wound up and angsty, and they may never know why. I’ll just post those annoyingly vague updates about ‘some people are dicks’, and leave it like that. I know it is annoying, but sometimes, my anxiety gets me worked up over nothing and I need to vent. That is why there are sometimes no specifics about a situation, just that I am feeling crap, going to buy a cat and live in solitary confinement for the rest of my life.

I have been training myself to kind of push past any feelings of anxiety. Like, to allow myself to cry my eyes out over what ever non-event I am panicking irrationally over, but then when calm afterwards, pick up a book or listen to music. I do things that make me feel better. And then I can try and get things done (sometimes successful, sometimes not). These actions maybe don’t sound like something that require training, but it did. For years I would have a panic attack, and dwell on the cause for days. Causing more panic attacks, and a general feeling of complete loss. I have spent 2016 teaching myself how to power through the tears and the struggling to breathe. And whilst I still have A LOT of anxiety problems, it is a lot rarer these days, that I will lose a complete weekend to endless panicking over everything.

If I post every little panic attack I have, I think I would have no friends left. Even less, if they knew what I had panicked over. So sometimes, it is good not to share everything. But because I have had a bad few weeks, I decided it was best to just not share anything. Because as much as my new coping methods help me, I was going round in circles, and couldn’t even think straight to write properly. But, hey, I am posting. Progress is progress.

Trust

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

As far as relationships with those around us is concerned, trust can be one of the difficult and fragile things to try and manage. When I was young, trust was something that came easy. You’d share everything with that girl in your class, that gave you a sweetie at playtime or lent you her sharpener during class. It was very easy to feel a connection with someone. At that age, it felt like everyone was the same, just wanting to have fun and play with their friends. 

As you got older, you were told to watch people you didn’t know. Which was strange, as I know that I never thought that anyone had any bad intentions when I was a kid. When all you experience is school, friends and cartoons, it is hard to see the bad side of anything that young. I understand that I probably left a slightly closed off life, where I really would have trusted anyone. No matter what my parents and teachers said about strangers. 

That niavety doesn’t last very long. As I got older, I became more aware that the world wasn’t as friendly as I had believed. Learning more about the world around me, through lessons in school and general interest, made me aware that there were a lot of issues in the world. And then, I went through a phase of a few years where I was bullied, which ruined my positive outlook. I gradually picked up the thinking that rather than be my friend, everyone was out to get me. It became very hard to trust anyone, and that came with me into adulthood. 

I am at a stage right now, where I am nice to everyone, it is only manners, right? But I only tell what is really happening in my life to people i genuinely trust. That is people who I know won’t gossip. I have a handful of people who I trust, who I can talk to, they will just listen and offer advice. And, I offer the same to them. It is something that is essential, everyone needs someone who they need to help weather the storm of life.  

—–

‘Trust’ is a prompt posted on here.