Tag: rambling

Belated Happy New Year

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I was feeling rather low over the festive period, so I gave myself a break. 2024 was always going to be strange year, with it being where I reach a a milestone birthday. So I did my usual, overthought everything, and then feel bad.

Anyway, one should be grateful of seeing another year out, or so I am told. It is because not everyone was able to see in 2024, so it is a privilege being here. Which is a positive idea, that I try to hold on to. The problem is that I am not very good at holding on to very much these days. And it does get me down, as feeling useless has a tendency to do.

However, 2024 is a new year. I hope to document the good stuff a bit better. Focus my energy on the stuff worth the time and effort. Hopefully.

To Keep A Hobby

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

I have been having regular phone calls with a therapist, and one of the topics that has been discussed centres around hobbies. It is something. that I never used to have a problem with, in fact I had lots of hobbies. Reading, drawing, writing… just lots of wee bits that I’d do outside work. Over the last several years, I have struggled do anything regularly for any decent length of time.

So, during my appointments, we have been discussing how to start doing hobbies regularly. I always start off with good intentions, but then I miss a day, and quickly lose any momentum. I have been doing some reading on how to start doing things regularly. It is rather difficult to find anything actually useful, as most results seem to be about how to use hobbies on a CV or in a job interview. Which is not what I am looking for at all. I mean, a hobby is supposed to be something that you do for enjoyment, something to help you chill out from work or any other stresses of life.

It then frustrates me, because I end up stressing about not doing hobbies. So, it has the opposite affect that what is intended. It is super annoying, if I were to be honest. It is like when I want to do something, no matter how fun it might be, my brain seems to list it as just another task. So, whilst I may get excitement and enjoyment whilst doing the thing, I can’t get the motivation to get the activity started. It is a bizarre feeling to have, let alone try to explain.

Ouch

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I am finding myself struggling these days. It is numerous in reasons, but focuses around the fact that I am sore. My hands and my feet seem to be the big problem. And, I am honestly just so tired.

It feels like my muscles have always been easy to strain. Like, if I lift something too heavy, my hands are sore for days. I sleep on my arm, which I seem to like to do, my shoulder and neck can be sore for over a week. Or, that is what happened last week. I remember complaining about this years ago, and the Doctor telling me it was tendonitis, but surely not every tendon. It obviously isn’t every tendon, but it feels like it sometimes. And then my rheumatoid arthritis has good and bad days, which is the icing on the shit cake that is my health.

I thought I had an answer. I’d go to the gym. Sign up for a monthly pass, and go at least 1 morning a week. Hasn’t happened, yet. Mostly because when I am mentally knackered for having to constantly push myself to do things, so when nothing is planned, everything just stops. I run out of ‘oomph’ to push through the pain and do something. As I sit here typing this, both my hands are sore (typing is taking forever), both my feet are sore, my right ankle is painfully swollen, my right shoulder hurts, and there is pain in my neck every so often. And, I am sitting down, and despite being sore, this is the most comfortable I have been all day. It is one of those days where the 12 steps in my house that I take to my bedroom, feel like a marathon.

I am working to lose some weight, as this should help my foot pain. I hope. But, because I struggle to get moving sometimes, exercising is very challenging. That is without my brain deciding that leaving the house is too much for the day. I am trying to do my best. I did get out today, visited my friend, despite my walking around like an 80 year old. And when I waited for my dinner to cook, I had a wee dance to some ska and oi music. It’s the wee things, I guess.

A Week End

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

It is finally my weekend.

It is Saturday night and I am sitting watching some quiz show, that doesn’t seem to have much questions. The good thing is that it is TV that I can ignore, which is perfect after a week of training new people. There has been so much talking at work this week, that I feel like I am losing my voice, whilst also being sick of the sound of my own voice.

I was planning on taking some overtime next week, but I was too slow. It gets put on an internal app, and it’s a free for all on who actually gets the overtime. I, unfortunately, was too slow, and never managed to book anything. Which is annoying, as I am due to go on holiday to Cyprus in a few weeks. And I want to take as much money as possible. Alas, my plans don’t seem to be coming together.

So, because of this, I have a few days off work now. Which, is a good thing, since I am so so sore. It is just trying to keep myself busy, as when I go idle, I get bored and sore. So, a lot of effort has to be made, to keep going.

Yuck

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

I am currently lying in my bed, with the worst stomach pains I have had in a long time. It almost feels like I have been punched in the stomach. Maybe something was wrong with the veggie kebab I had for dinner. I feel most comfortable lying down, so that’s why I’m in bed before 10pm.

It does not help that I am also feeling sore. This means that I am dictating this post on my phone. My computer is better at this than my phone, which is strange. I figured that because they are both Apple, that they’d work the same. It’s a strange thing, where I feel like I need to learn how to speak clearer. But the strange thing is, that when I speak on apps like TikTok and put subtitles on, it picks up everything so well. So the capability is there, it’s just not

Anyway, I have one more day at work, and then it’s the weekend. I am going to try and have an early night, in the hope I feel okay for work tomorrow. Yay!

Twitter Is Sinking

~ Sue ~ 1 Comment

I have been an avid internet user for many years. Going online has been an escape for when I have been struggling with my life. Social media has become the centre of that online world, where I have been able to make friends with people who have the same interests as me. It was initially music, where I would become close with people who liked the same bands as me. It was great, because I was able to find people to go to gigs with, which is something I didn’t have so much of when I was growing up.

Social media services have come and gone over the years, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Dailybooth… so many sites have disappeared. One of the services that I have used since my college days, probably as long as this blog has been in existence, is Twitter. It’s a ‘micro blogging’ site where users can post comments, follow people, and generally build communities. Back when all my interneting was about Good Charlotte, Twitter was a main way to contact friends who also loved Good Charlotte, as well as being a direct way to contact the band members. Back then, there was a dialogue between artists and their fans, and Twitter really helped that. People would live tweet along with big events, be in TV shows, or new events. It opened the world up.

That has changed.

In 2022, Tesla founder, Elon Musk purchased Twitter. He had previously made remarks about how he believed that Twitter was undermining free speech and democracy, and wanted to change that. In October 2022, when Musk’s purchase went through, he went through a process of cutting back at the company, largely by firing half of the 7,500 employees of the company. He also relaunched a service called Twitter Blue, a subscription service that allow users to access more features. One of the big things Twitter Blue did, was it provided subscribers with a ‘blue tick’ on their profile. Up till this point, blue ticks were used to illustrate that an account was ‘verified’ as a famous person, business, or a notable account. It became so that only people who paid for Twitter Blue would get the blue tick, and verified accounts who didn’t want to pay a subscription found that they lost their tick mark. The initial point of the verification system, was to stop fake accounts, and to help users distinguish the validity of what was getting posted.

Businesses lost their verified status, and started stepping away from Twitter, at the same time users who supported Musk, and what ever rant he felt like sharing, started paying for Twitter Blue. Whilst some people do use the features and simply continue sharing as they have always done, a lot of subscribers started sending abuse to standard accounts. One of the biggest areas of ‘interest’ for these subscribers was the LGBTQ+ community, especially the trans community. Something that Musk seems to almost encourage at this point. If you were to read a Twitter post by a pro-LGBTQ+ account, there will be replies, of mostly abuse, from almost exclusively Twitter Blue accounts. When these accounts are reported using the Twitter report system which has worked for years, nothing happens. Honestly, there are times Twitter is simply unusable, because it is so hateful.

Last year, my Twitter account of 12 years was put on a list for anti-LGBTQ+ users to attack. I was getting so so much abuse, for saying that Trans people are people, they deserve love and care, just like anyone else. I was getting constant messages, telling me to end my life. As a person who has suffered with her mental health so much, I felt this was awful. I ended up deleting my old twitter account, and starting again. By starting again, I wanted to simply stay in contact with the friends I still had on the site. The site has got worse, the only way you can stop people sending you abuse, is to block them. Another thing that Musk wants to take away, presumably because subscribers are complaining that they can’t exercise their free speech and abuse people. It has been a long time since I have seen any social media service decline the way that Twitter has. People are still using it for the moment, mostly because there is nothing similar to replace it.

Look To The Past

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

This blog has existed for over 14 years. This is something that I realised yesterday, when I was reading some of my older posts. Posts from when I was at college, studying graphic design, and working in a call centre. Something that seems so long ago, but then 15 years is longer than a child’s entire school education. That does not make me feel any better.

Anyway. I wanted to write about what I discovered by reading what I have previously written. Firstly, I posted a lot more regularly than I do now. For the first few years of this blog, I was posting every other day, at least. I was covering how I was feeling, but also what I was interested, be it new music or news articles. And whilst, I certainly no expert, it made things a bit more interesting for me to write, and for others to read. This is a contrast to what is going on currently, where I seem to be re-hashing the same points all the time.

I mentioned yesterday how I feel like I have lost interest in some of the hobbies that used to keep me occupied. This is something that is reflected in the actual content of my posts. It ends up leaving things feeling one dimensional, which sucks. I think I am going to try and take influence of how my blog started, where I would write about what I was actually up to, not just how I was feeling. Maybe, doing so will also help shift my focus away from my health issues, which are at the forefront of my mind most of the time. Which might end up being good for me.

Things To Do When You Are Unable To ‘Do’

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

I have written on here previously, that I have rheumatoid arthritis. Which is something that leaves me sore most days, especially days where I am not physically running around at my work. Days where I am left sitting in the house, because moving around, or even doing the most basic task is difficult. For days, like this, I find that I need to have tasks that take my mind away from the frustrations, that being in pain can bring. I also feel like if I do nothing, then I am letting myself ‘waste a day’, which is a big problem with my anxiety, and starts a whole different problem.

The easiest thing to do is have things that are accessible for me to do. Which, considering most of the problems I have are either with my feet or hands, can sometimes be challenging, especially when you don’t have a very good attention span. But, there are some things that I like to do.

Reading: Something that has always relaxed me is reading. I love the idea that you can become absorbed in another world from the safety of your own home. I have always read physical books as a preference, I find comfort in holding a book in my hands and seeing the visual progress as I read my way through. However, when I am sore, holding a book can be hard. So, I have a Kindle, and Kindle apps on my phone and iPad, so that I can read on whatever is easiest for me to manage. But sometimes, a digital device isn’t enough, which leads me to audiobooks. Not something I have ever grown up appreciating, but I do now. If I just need to lie and wait for pain killers to kick in, I can play a book on my phone, or amazon echo, and I can still drift away into a world that hopefully isn’t as sucky as mine. I am currently listening to Where The Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, and it is a great story.

Writing: I know I haven’t been posting very much on here, but I have still been writing notes and pages of stuff on my computer and phone. I have grown up writing in journals, progressing to keeping blogs online. But, one of the biggest barriers for me, was finding that typing and even holding a pencil could be really challenging. If my hands don’t want to co-operate, then I couldn’t write. Luckily, these days with all the technology, voice-to-text features on most modern devices, which means that I can dictate what I want to say to my computer or phone. It is something that I am only still getting used to, but I have used it to help me create this blog today. I just need to remember to proof read, because as good as it is, mistakes are still made.

TV: I am awful at watching new tv shows. It takes me months to get through anything that I haven’t seen before. I can normally, at the most, get through 2-3 episodes at a time. If it is on normal scheduled TV, it’s even worse, because I forget when the show airs, quickly fall behind, and then can’t be bothered anymore. And sometimes, I find myself getting worked up because I can’t even watch a TV show. So, I go back and watch old TV shows I have watched a million times before. The shows I am currently watching are Daria, Friends, Gossip Girl, South Park, and Gilmore Girls. I usually end the final series, and go back to the start again. I think it’s comforting to know that if my attention wanes and I stop watching, it doesn’t matter because I have seen it all before. It sounds silly, but it is like a comfort blanket. Which, when I am feeling crappy, comfort is what I need.

The biggest problem with hobbies, like drawing, is that I am struggling. I know it sounds silly, but I have lost a lot of interest in things around me. It does seem like it’s because I have been struggling with my mental health. But finding things that I can enjoy is better than focusing on things that I am struggling with. Try to boost any positive feelings I can get.

Pushing It

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

These last few months have been tiring. My mental health has been awful, and I have been really physically sore. It has meant that I have felt really drained a lot of the time. Which means I am back in hibernation mode. Where I go out for work, and don’t have the energy to do anything else.

I will maybe have energy to do things for one day, and that’s it. So, I will maybe start tidying, do a food shop, arrange to meet up with a friend. But the next day, I just stare at the wall for hours, not having the energy to get up and do anything else. In fact, getting up to do anything becomes mentally and physically stressful, and it’s like I am constantly walking into the same brick wall. It is exhausting.

I am trying to keep going. I work well with a list sometimes, my brain seems to function well seeing what I have to focus on. But, sometimes, the items on the list take longer, or I forget to look at it. And, rather quickly, that manageable list of tasks, turn into something that seems impossible. Just another set of things that I failed at. I fail at everything, so may as well add some more on to the list.

It feels horrible.

But, I am trying. I am trying to do the things I am supposed to do. The things that I promise. The things that will make life easier. Whether it be doing things for work, or trying to get uni stuff sorted out. It kind of sucks, because when I explain about doing things, people don’t even pretend to be interested anymore. Why be interested? I am stuck doing entry level work because I don’t have a degree, and nobody has faith that I can anything apart from the bare minimum. I try to work harder, to show people that I can do well, but I get so far and just get stuck.

I’m frustrated. But I am trying to do a Pride display, for next month, for my work. Hopefully it works out. I just want to do something well for once.

Ups And Downs

~ Sue ~ Leave a comment

When I speak about my health issues, especially related to my mental health, people always become judgemental. It often is something that just happens, they haven’t set out to make someone feel bad. It’s just a thing that happened.

When I am with friends, family, or doing something I enjoy, I may be smiling and joking around. Something I do because I feel comfortable in the situation I am in. And because I am laughing with people, doesn’t mean I don’t go home afterwards, and critique everything that I had said, that day. Usually noting that I am stupid, and that people only hang around me because they feel bad I am so stupid.

This doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it’s like a punch in the gut. It feels awful, and actually affects how I feel about a time I originally enjoyed.

It is hard to try and combat these feelings as is, without people saying that the anxiety that I have, that causes me to react to such things do negatively, is fake. People have said, to my face, that I am making things up for attention. Which makes thing worse.

You never know what someone else is going through, so it’s always good to be kind. And, people just want to understand their own mind, so that they can deal with things better in their day-to-day lives. That’s all.