Deadlines and Disappointment

So I’ve nearly gone two months again without posting – I’m sorry for that. Between assignment deadlines and a stint of work the last month has been pretty stressful and it’s not letting me off yet either. My next deadline is tomorrow but luckily when you’re reading this I have already submitted my piece. I did spend a good deal of last week pissing about *not* working on it because I’m scared of my story. Which was really stupid of me because my last assignment deadline was an insane scramble at the last minute so I shouldn’t want to do the same thing twice in one month.

My last deadline turned into three-day period of frantic drafting and eye-bleedingly brutal editing so I could get my short story submitted only five minutes before the end of the “12hr grace period” which I have exploited far too frequently in my OU career. It wasn’t meant to go like that. I had a plan to get a first draft of the story done in mid-Feb, so I could tell myself the story without caring about the word count. Then over the next 2-3 weeks before my deadline I could work on revising the story until it was within the 2,500-2750 word limit that this assignment called for, and get it submitted early – all chill and relaxed y’know?

But that plan got shot to shit when my mother asked me if I could do some cover work for her company – for two weeks out of the three before my deadline. At that point I was dangerously close to having absolutely no money in any of my accounts so I couldn’t not say yes and that’s without my unwillingness to disappoint my mother. I thought that I could manage working full-time for two weeks and still get my writing done – I mean I wrote around 50K in the first part of 2014 while I was working full-time as a TA *and* doing two different study courses at the same time so surely I could manage a couple of thousand words over two weeks??

Turns out I couldn’t. Despite barely being busy for about half of the time I was working as Reception Cover I only got about 900 words written over those two weeks. I emailed myself the word document back and forth so I could work on it during quiet times at the office – I had periods of several hours where the phone wouldn’t ring and I had nothing else to do but I just couldn’t get myself into a good writing flow to churn out a draft of the story. Then when I got home my brain checked out and I wasted the rest of my day catching up on all the internet stuff that I couldn’t access at work.

So I ended up have only three days to somehow clobber out the rest of this short story then rein it back to within the TMA word limit as well as writing a commentary about my creative process that sounded like I had actually bothered to use the module’s textbook as anything more than an oversized paperweight. By the night before my deadline I had a complete draft of the story that I really liked – it was unfortunately 4,000 words too long.

Now obviously I was tad worried that I wouldn’t be able to get the draft edited down to the right size in time without completely rewriting it, yet I didn’t email my tutor to ask for an extension. Why? Because I hated feeling like I’d failed and that I needed to ask for more time. I should have been able to get the assignment done well ahead of my deadline so I was basically punishing myself for not meeting the goal that I’d arbitrarily set.

As I mentioned above I did manage to get my story edited and submitted in time but there has been a particularly frustrating development to this tale which I never expected when I started writing this post. I should have got my mark back in 10 working days, so by the 23^rd at the latest, yet I’d still got nothing on Monday. Until I got an email from my tutor at 11 o’clock at *night* as I was about to go to bed, that sparked such rage I didn’t get to sleep for another 2 & a half hours.

It turns out that my tutor managed to misplace my story on her own computer drive and thought she didn’t have it for over two weeks! It only occurred to her on MONDAY THE 27^th to email me to ask where it was despite not having any contact from me telling her my submission would be late (cos you know that would be standard academic practice to INFORM SOMEONE ABOUT A DELAY). Needless to say my email back to her strongly expressed my distinct displeasure with remarkably no expletives.

The most hilariously ironic part of all of this is that when I got my mark back yesterday afternoon, it has somehow transpired that this short story - which was the most difficult to complete out of all the assignments I’ve done this year – has ended up with the best mark. It is the *only* TMA that I’ve got a First on from either of my Level 3 modules. What the fuck do I even *do* with that? I mean seriously?

I’ve spent the last two weeks worried as hell that my tutor was going to hate my story and that, despite the glowing endorsements from my wonderful friends who read it while I was frantically hacking it shorter, that it was actually shit. I’m honestly not sure if this mark is validation I actually deserve.

Is it strange that I still feel like I’m a disappointment by having fluked a great mark *yet again* when the majority of my effort only came at the last possible moment and even then I feel like it wasn’t the most I could’ve put into it?

At least I only have one deadline left then if all things go like I hope, this degree I’ve been dragging myself towards for the last 8 years will finally be done. Thank gawd.

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Staying Afloat on Rough Seas

I haven't had anything worth writing about in quite a while. I still don't if I'm being honest but I've got to write *something*.

I started off 2017 with positive aspirations for myself - I was going to start taking better care of myself and being more productive especially since I had 5 uni deadlines in the first 3 months of the year. I actually got two of those assignments in EARLY with my next looking to be nearly 2 weeks early as well which considering most of my assignments previously got completed using this method of idiocy it's pretty damn impressive that I'm ahead of schedule with my deadlines.

I've also been trying to improve my sleeping & waking up habits so I'm not ignoring all my alarms and sleeping in until 10am. This has improved *somewhat*, I'm waking up around 8am when my alarms go off but I am still lying in bed for another hour scrolling twitter on my phone & obviously with the world in the state it is this usually ends up leaving me mentally exhausted before I've even extricated myself from the duvet.

God knows I'm not the only person feeling like this right now. Over the last two weeks it's been significantly harder to feel like I'm getting anything productive done and I'm not even being directly affected by the shitstorm raging on the other side of the Atlantic. Every day there's at least three new awful things happening and although the resistance is building online and around the world it still kinda feels like we're slowly being overwhelmed by a tidal wave.

I don't have a lot of helpful advice for dealing with these feelings. I know I probably should take more breaks from my twitter feed but as I'm otherwise sat at home all day on my own, shutting myself off from the internet leaves me isolated and without anyone to talk to which isn't exactly great for my mental health. At some point in the future I might write a post about loneliness when all your friends are online or too far away to visit easily.

So I'm kinda treading water right now, trying to stay afloat when it seems easier to just let all the madness overwhelm me. Believe me I'm fully aware that in the grand scheme of things my life is barely being impacted by this Nonsense but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be aware of those who are and acknowledge their struggles.

Be kind to yourself and each other. Don't be nice to nazis though - punch those fuckers.

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Fast and Furiously through Life

Not many of our readers will have met me in person (you're the fortunate ones), but anyone who has probably can think of a few words to describe me, hopefully some of them nice. But the word which I think would be screamingly obvious within a few minutes is... fast.

I don't mean that in the Austenian/bodice ripper novel sense of a "fast woman" but in the literal "opposite of slow" sense of the word. I walk, talk, eat, drink even read at a speed that most people find disturbingly quick. I have to be yanked back when I'm walking with friends, I try to say half a dozen things at once and fudge them all, I'll have finished a meal in the time it takes anyone else to eat half of theirs and I will read an entire book before your eyes if you give me a few hours.

Despite people's admonishments and my own meagre attempts to rein myself in I can't seem to slow the pace at which I barrel through the world. I've been somewhat served right for this propensity recently when I got caught speeding and had to attend a speed awareness course yesterday. Maybe this is a necessary reminder that I should slow down in more ways than one.

It Me

I often wonder if my breakneck consumption of food, tea, books & the world is actually slowing me down in the long run? I'm so impatient to get to the next thing that I'm not savouring the experiences I'm having at any one time. It's the kind of illusory shortcut that makes people overtake you at stupid speeds only to have to slam to a stop 500 yards in front of you. You haven't gotten anywhere any quicker and all you are is frustrated.

My life is mostly blurs of mindless absorption punctuated by grinding halts of anguish when I suddenly *can't* do something quickly - like writing. Oh boy does it bother me that I can't seem to get any kind of momentum with writing at the moment, I'll make several sputtering attempts to jump-start the rust-bucket of my writer's brain, give it up as hopeless then swerve back into the fast lane for another burst of high-speed monotony.

If I slowed down, took my time and really lived each day, maybe everything would flow. A steady stream of attention for all the things I want to do, if I approach problems at a more manageable speed perhaps I can work out how to solve them before I've crashed straight into them. If I wasn't in such a desperate hurry to finish my book maybe I'd be able to get somewhere without constantly stalling.

Slow down, enjoy the view and get to your destination in one piece. Something to apply to life and the road.

P.S. Don't be a fucking idiot while driving, something that always bears repeating, even to me.

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There's something I've been meaning to mention...

So I vaguely hinted several months ago that I wanted to write a post related to Faye's post about her asexuality but then didn't actually write that post for whatever reasons (usually because I'm awful at getting my posts done ahead of when I'm meant to be posting and I didn't really want to rush this one). Yes I may be writing this at 11pm but I can't avoid doing it any longer.

Several of my friends already know this about me as it's something we've discussed at several points over this year, I've gotten more comfortable with owning this aspect of myself although it's probably not something I will be explaining to my parents any time soon because they will likely be a bit confused as to what it means for my long-term relationship. But I digress.

I'm Demisexual. Also Bi (whether sexual/romantic I'm not entirely sure).

Image source

Yeah. That. If you don't happen to frequent the internet bubbles that I usually inhabit, Demisexuality may not be a label that you've come across before. Simply put; if Asexuality is the absence of sexual attraction/desire then Demisexuals reside partway along the spectrum back towards hetero/homo/bi/pan-sexuality. For a super cool comic on Asexuality here's Alice Oseman being staggeringly talented as always.

Demisexuals like me tend to only feel sexual attraction to people we have strong emotional bonds to, e.g. people we're in romantic relationships with. For me it also means that even within a relationship I don't often feel the desire for sex (with a partner anyway but that's another thing...). Until recently this lack of desire bothered me because I thought something was wrong or defective with me that I didn't want to have sex as often as I thought "normal people" should.

I'll be honest, I was fairly late in ditching the imaginary V-card. I was not far off 20 when I "fled the nunnery" as I termed it at the time despite being two and a half years into what ended up as a three year relationship (first of only two long-term bfs, nearing four & a half years with Le Boyf). Not that we were chaste little chaps for all that time but we didn't actually do the entire deed until 2010 and after that no more than a handful of times before we split up.

Then followed 18 months of singledom. Which was fine. When I met for drinks with some school friends during this time they'd lament to me how terrible it was that they'd not had sex for two weeks, I sat there and shrugged saying "talk to me when you're over a year." In actuality I was probably getting off far more than they were and I didn't need or want a bloke for it. I had myself.

I'm sure a lot of Safe Space readers know of Grace Latter and her infamous & brilliant blog post on Female Masturbation. When I read it I was like "yas!" only I was waaaay earlier to this game. At the age of 26 I can actually say that I've been getting mine for half my damn life. All through high school I was never interested in having sex because I didn't really see the need for it when I could dole out my own pleasure as and when I wanted it. No reason to deal with messy teenage boys at all!

In some respects I wonder if this influenced my demisexuality because in the years I wasn't having sex I'd been imagining what it would be like but then when I actually did it, it never felt as mind-blowingly awesome as I'd thought it should and that feeling has persisted. It morphs into anxiety & over-awareness of what I'm feeling and that I'm not enjoying it as much as I think I ought to be which is obviously only going to make me more tense etc.

So I don't have sex very often. And that's totally cool, it doesn't mean I love Le Boyf any less or that our relationship is without physical affection, that's just how I roll as a Demisexual. You get me?

But I should talk about the other flag I fly under. It's become very apparent to me in the last year or two that I don't just find men attractive. I can't tell you how many times I've been scrolling through tumblr, seen a picture of Daisy Ridley and thought "my god, could you *be* any more glorious?" I could start a list of the actresses I find attractive but then this post will be even longer than it is.

Identifying as Bi is slightly more complicated for me as the Demisexual aspect means my attraction to men or women is less "I wanna have sex with you" and more "I am super enthralled by your face/clothes/personality/creative skills and want to mildly stalk you on the internet". Obviously being in a committed long-term relationship means that any attractions I do have will not be acted upon but that doesn't mean I can't flail about on Twitter that I want to marry Kate McKinnon (who doesn't?).

I hope this long-winded tour of my sexuality has cleared up a few things. I know I have confused folk in the past :P It's also really good to get this all out there. *and breathe*

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This Sad, Mad World

I have the highly unenviable task of needing to write a post today. This fucking day. I didn't want to write something upbeat and positive yesterday in case all our worst nightmares came true. And they did.

I have no words beyond expression of sorrow and anger on behalf of the people in the US who are going to feel the repercussions of this day for far longer than the next four years. For the People of Colour, the people of the LGBT+ community and other marginalised groups who did far more to try and prevent this awful outcome than the privileged white people who failed to comprehend the scale of the threat, I am so sorry. You didn't deserve this.

I'll be standing with you in the months to come.

Some wise people on my twitter feed have been posting & retweeting a lot of very insightful things today. I want their words to be heard instead of mine.

Heidi Heilig
Justina Ireland
S. Jae Jones
Kaye M. (@GildedSpine)
Maureen Johnson
Victoria Schwab

and many others that I'm sure you've seen. Keep sharing the tweets and posts that inspire you and raise up the voices of those who should be heard.

If you need to step away to process this whole shitstorm then I recommend you check out this thread by L.D. Lapinski which has some excellent suggestions for getting yourself and your mental health through this period. I know a *lot* of people have taken solace from it today.

That's all I've got today. I'm fervently wishing for a return of Hope, I'm betting I'm not the only one.

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Now that I'm 26

Last Friday it was my birthday, technically I was born 5 days early so today *should* have been my birthday if I'd not been so terribly eager twenty-six years ago. I have to say I'm not sure how I feel about being 26, I'm now past the quarter century and I'm kinda worried that I still don't feel like I have all my shit together. Heck, I *know* I'm a mess but I'd rather like for it not to be so obvious to everyone else.

This cake kinda represents my life rn

Some of my fav Youtube humans have done wonderful videos on their birthdays called "X things I have learned in X years" depending on whether they're turning 24, 25 or 26 etc. Rosianna Halse Rojas did this one last year, Lex Croucher did hers earlier this year and Charlie McDonnell did his last week when he turned 26 (it's odd to think he's only 6 days older than me).

I'm not doing a similar list today, mostly because my memory is sufficiently terrible that I don't think I can string together 26 things that the last quarter century and a smidge have taught me.

Instead I'm going to list 26 Hopes I have for the next year.

Now I'm 26 I hope...
1. That the world doesn't end in November (I know I'm not the only one)
2. That I am able to complete my degree by next July.
3. That I can get a 2:1 in that degree
4. That I can get a job I enjoy & which isn't a chore to get up for
5. That I can figure out what is going on with my health
6. That I can then start to feel better
7. That I can have lots of fun adventures with my friends
8. That I can also have lots of adventures with my OH
9. That we can properly celebrate 5 years together next June
10. That my loved ones are safe and happy
11. That I have the ability to finish a worthy draft of my book
12. That I have the courage to share that book with others
13. That I can find the magic to write another book
14. That I can meet & befriend more like-minded people
15. That I can be a good friend to those in my life already
16. That I can become a better person than I am today.
17. That I can feel happy with the choices I make
18. That I can feel happy in my body & my head
19. That I can learn to be kinder to myself
20. That I can find the passion to pursue my dreams
21. That I can weather the knock-backs during that pursuit
22. That I read books that inspire me
23. That I can meet some more of my favourite authors
24. That I remember to be grateful for everything I have
25. That I always tell those who matter to me how much I appreciate them.
26. I hope that my 27th birthday will be spent with those I love.

So that's a rather eclectic mix of things that I hope will come to pass during the next year of my life. I know some of those are dependent on chance & opportunity but many of them will only be possible if I make them happen myself. I have be more active in creating my own happiness. No one is going to just give me the spell to magic my life into its best possible configuration. I'm going to have to work for it. So next time you see me bitching about "why isn't x, y or z happening?" ask me if I've actually *done* anything to make it a reality.

Now I'm 26... maybe I need to start acting like it. (at least in some respects, there's no need to go full-blown grown-up y'know?)

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The Empty Well of Creativity

Now this is a strange thing, posting two weeks running. It's a one-off don't worry, next Wednesday will be someone new! I don't have the brain juice to come up with post ideas every week.

Speaking of brain juice... today I want to talk about one of the more troublesome problems that my depression has thrown up in my lap these past few months. The FUBAR state of my creativity. More specifically my ability to write.

But Rachel you're writing right now! Yes I'm writing a non-fictional piece about the inner workings of this dented brain-box of mine and believe me it's a damn struggle. But it's *not even close* to the levels of nope that I'm faced with when it comes to creative writing like working on that novel I took two & a half years to produce a mostly-complete draft of. That just ain't happening. Nuh-uh. No-how, no way.

From my guesses of what caused this period of depression the start coincided with the end of my last OU module and with my finishing of the draft of my book in May. I went from having a job & also having a really productive writing month in April (link goes to the last post I did on my writing blog twelvety-million years ago) to being at home all day and procrastinating my way through my final Children's Literature assignment.

120K words of frustration

I got the essay finished (by the skin of my teeth if I recall- yup on the deadline day) and I wrote the last chapters in my draft. I went to the effort & expense to get my manuscript printed & bound (look at the beast!) but then the problems started...

It took me THREE WEEKS to read the draft through once. Any other book of this size would take me about 6 hours to read but trying to get through my own writing felt like a constant assault on my eyes & brain. I loathed every second of wading through the pages I'd spent over two years creating and I "joked" to many people that I was tempted to set fire to the damn book just to put it and me out of our misery.

Now I know that I am possibly the worst person to objectively judge my writing. Especially while sliding into depression. So in a moment of sense I held off from grabbing the matches and instead put the manuscript and the plethora of notebooks associated with the project into a drawer and began to pretend it didn't exist.

I'm still ignoring that drawer. Other people would have come up with a bunch of new story ideas and be happily working on a different book while waiting for the previous one to be done being a recalcitrant piece of shit. But I can't do that. I have had a couple of ideas over the last few months but any enthusiasm for them died within a day or two. Any attempts to sit down and just write something were rather like trying to force a boulder through a sieve with cooked noodles for fingers - ludicrously impossible.

There's just nothing in the Creative Well to pull up and pour onto a page.

One of my favourite author-humans Susan Dennard writes a fantastic newsletter in which she shares news about her books (most recently Truthwitch & the upcoming Windwitch) as well as writing advice. Her website is a goldmine of resources for the aspiring writer and it's bookmarked on my browser for whenever I want it. Back in July her newsletter was talking all about how working on Windwitch for two years had left her so burnt out that her creative well had run dry.

This was something I related to enormously, but with the unpleasant exception being that I had been trying to refill my Creative Well for weeks by that point. I'd devoured more books than I'm comfortable admitting and all it served to do was make me run out of space in my reading journal. All the worlds I'd escaped into and raced through had left no impression on me once the final page had been turned. Every book I threw into the Well just clattered onto the bottom rather than filling it back up.

 Depression has kicked a fucking great big hole in my Creative Well and I have no idea how to fix it. Which is super inconvenient when my final OU module is literally Creative Writing and I will have to be producing pieces for deadlines - the first being in a MONTH from yesterday. Shit.

So I'm in a bit of quandry. Can I write my way out of this or will I need help in the form of medication in order to get my brain back on an even keel long enough for me to properly patch up the Well. I honestly don't know right now, any advice would be greatly welcomed.

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The Deep Breath before the Diagnosis

This is going to be a post of two parts. Half of this I'm writing Before, the other half will be written After.

After what?

After I see a Doctor seeking a diagnosis for whatever has been fucking up my mental health for the past 3+ months. The likely bet is depression, possibly with a dollop of anxiety to make things even more fun. I probably should have made an appointment for this *weeks* ago but that miserable little voice which I've talked about before has been a real bitch for talking me out of making that phonecall because it says things like "why do I need to see a doctor? There are loads of people way more unwell than I am, it's probably nothing. I'm just being lazy etc."

Over this summer I've become aware of my mental state in a way I don't think I have been previously and there is no getting away from the fact that I am not all right. I can literally tick almost every box of Depression symptoms without fudging my memories to fit (Anyone who follows on me twitter knows about my inability to wake up at a reasonable time & to feed myself proper meals). It is not good for me to continue avoiding getting a proper diagnosis, I don't think that sheer willpower alone is going to drag my head back out of the black pit that it's been living in for last stretch of time.

I just need to actually be brave enough to ask for that help - one of the hardest steps has been taken. I've made the appointment to see a Doctor. That's an accomplishment I should hold onto. The next step is going into that room and telling a stranger that my brain has been dousing itself in misery and is drowning in it to the point that I need someone to throw me a line to pull myself clear.

Obviously I am nervous to HECK about having to explain everything. There's this nagging fear that the Doctor won't actually believe that I'm actually depressed and send me home with only the sickening thought that I just need to pull myself together and stop wasting their time. That's the worst case scenario for me. I *need* to know that I'm not imagining all of these awful feelings.

So I'm taking a deep breath. And hoping that I don't get the wind knocked out of me when I hit the water.

After
Well I went to the Doctor's, admittedly I only got out of bed 12 minutes before I needed to be there and I was teetering on the verge of falling back to sleep for at least an hour before I moved. But I went.

And whaddya know I *do* have depression! The Doctor used basically the same damn diagnosis quiz thing I used myself last night on the NHS website and I came out with a 14 on what I could very flippantly call the Depress-o-meter (My sense of humour tends towards the morbidly dark when dealing with the unpleasant issues). That apparently means I'm at the upper end of "moderately depressed".

Now what?

The Doctor I saw wasn't particularly gifted with sensitivity settings so it was suggested to me that I ought to be making changes in my life to deal with the root causes of my depression, (the fact that I'm unemployed is definitely not helping) I need a reason to actually get out of bed in the morning and currently my own willpower is not motivation enough. The phrase "need to stop moping about" may have been used. *sigh*

It was also suggested that getting a part-time job to fill some time & tide me over financially while I figure out what the fuck I'm doing long-term would be "easy" like jobs are just falling from trees around here. Just because there is an enormous Tesco a stone's throw from my house doesn't necessarily mean that they are in need of staff.

I am fully cognisant of the fact that I need a job both for financial reasons and mental health reasons. I am not one of those people who can manage and divide up their time to use it productively without it being required of me. If I had a boss who was expecting me to get up at 7am in order to get to work on time then I could do it, but when it's just me thinking "oh you should do x,y & z today"there's no real incentive to follow through because there's no consequences if I don't do those things.

Of course there is the shame & self-loathing of knowing I failed to do what many people can do with nothing more than willpower as their motivation. But currently my inability to get out of bed and get things done is somewhat out of my control - if my brain has foxed itself on how to produce the chemicals which make me want to wake up in a morning and not feel like someone has simply dug me up with little care that I'm soft and squishy - then is it entirely my fault that waking up before 9am has become such a foreign concept?

When I initially had my diagnosis (it's now a week later because this post didn't get finished last Wednesday like it was supposed to *quelle surprise*) I didn't get a prescription for anti-depressants because I thought that maybe I'd be able to sort myself out by just booking some counselling & getting a job or whatever. But after mulling it over for a week now I've started to realise that in order for me to make the lifestyle changes which will allow me to stabilise myself I do really need to be able to function for a good portion of every day.

At the moment I can't - I'm waking up late every day, not really getting out of bed before noon & then milling about aimlessly for several hours before Le Boyf gets home from work and then we're both sat around doing nothing for the rest of the evening because it's very likely that he's also depressed and can't be fucked with anything.

So I'm going to look into getting meds, because if they help me to function well enough to get up properly, do the things I need to do & sort out fixing the root causes of my depression then it can't be a bad thing to try them. Just got to make another appointment at the doctor's and *not* with the original guy because I don't need my worst perceptions of myself reinforced again ta very much.

This has been a bit of a rollercoaster post and has taken me far longer than I would have liked to finish. That's another thing which depression has fucked up for me - writing. It's been like trying to transfigure shit into diamonds with a toothpick. Agonising and damn-near impossible. I'm hoping like hell that meds will help whatever it is that has kicked the bottom out of my creativity or the next 9 months are going to be hellishly difficult.

So deep breath, let's try to deal with this. One day at a time.

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Buried in Books

You could say that it's the last day of summer considering how tomorrow is SEPTEMBER (*takes a moment to hyperventilate*) so I feel like today would be a good day to reflect on how I spent this summer.

Simply put - I spent about 75% of the last three months cramming stories into my eyeballs. I read like a book shortage was imminent. I devoured hundreds of pages of words at a pace that would give other people cramps. I poured dozens of chapters of adventures into my brain and it never felt like it was enough to fill the empty well of apathy I've been sat at the bottom of this whole time.

Between the 1st of June and today I've read 86 unique books. That isn't even including the few books that I re-read in that period which I'd already read & counted towards this year's reading total, and the fact that I read the entire Shatter Me series three times through in one weekend in July. In July alone I read 52 books and did very little else.

Reading is my coping mechanism for when I'm feeling truly shit and I've felt shit for most of this Summer. I had great ambitions that I would make amazing progress with my book and really get stuck into rewriting the draft I finished at the end of May. I opted to avoid throwing myself into getting a new job after I left my last one because I thought "hey let's give this whole writing business a fair crack while I don't have uni work to do". But as you might have seen from my constant twitter griping, that plan was brutally shot in the face before June was even out.

I hated that draft I'd spent over two years writing and three WEEKS reading with such violence that I contemplated on many occasions just setting fire to the damn manuscript and forgetting I'd ever subjected the world such a heap of shit (thank fuck the people of the world *haven't* read it, but I'm sure Nature despises me). It's been consigned to a drawer until I decide whether I care enough to take it out ever again.

So as any well-adjusted human-creature would do I decided to bury myself in books, in the metaphorical sense although I do own enough to build myself an actual coffin out of books. I started to read and read and read. Losing days to other worlds and times and stories of people who seemed far more interesting than me. Let's just say that clothing & food were not utilised in the correct manner for large swathes of time.

I suppose I was hoping that one of these books would give me some inspiration of any kind. The jolt of energy to step back into *my* reality and face the problems that I was desperately avoiding dealing with. But none have been the lightning strike I've needed - with perhaps the exception of Alice Oseman's Solitaire & Radio Silence which had me crying in the small hours about how much of myself I saw in those words (a future post will be looking into the thoughts that Radio Silence provoked at 1am last week).

But now as we stand on the cusp of September I know that I need to act my goddamn age and do something about the situation I'm in. I have what should be my last OU module starting in October so I need to get my head around not fucking that up (since it's another Creative Writing module I'm already anxious enough that I won't have any ideas worth writing let alone submitting for marking).

I know I need to get a job because my bank account is gasping and I can't spend another three months in this house alone & getting nothing done. It turns out that having little free time is when I'm actually most productive so I gotta work on getting myself employed ASAP. Who the fuck knows what job but it's gotta happen.

I also need to read less and probably see a doctor or something...y'know to deal with that whole depression issue that I've been carefully avoiding for weeks...

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Express Yourself, Don't Wreck Yourself

It's a fact that people might not be aware of if you haven't met me in person - I'm not all that great at expressing myself verbally. I come across more eloquently in text (At least I hope I do). I know I certainly try to appear that way. Face-to-face my true nature is uncomfortably noticeable.

I have a habit of saying stuff then later wondering why the hell I said it, I often share information that I'm pretty sure the person I'm speaking to doesn't really care to hear. I'm overly honest even when that's probably a stupid thing to do. To top it off- I stutter and it worsens when I'm flustered or nervous so while I can get the words out I end up saying them three or four times before I'm sure I've said them right.

Sometimes the words end up car crashing entirely in my mouth and I have to take a breath and have another run at them. Everything always tries to come barreling out at top speed like I'll forget what I wanted to say if I take the time to get each word out correctly. Which inevitably makes things worse.

There are situations where I don't make quite so much of a mess when I'm speaking - usually when I'm talking to family and close friends I can express myself without mangling everything into an incoherent jangle of syllables. But around new people I'm usually far quieter or I won't really speak at all just so I don't embarrass myself by stuttering something stupid.

I'll admit I mentally rehearse things to say, I'll daydream whole conversations for situations that may never happen just in case I may one day have a need to say those words. It doesn't always help. I mentioned in my post before last about how I saw two writerly people I know from twitter while I was out but couldn't muster up the courage to say hello. Part of why I didn't is because I was worried they would think I was intruding but another was that I wasn't confident that I could introduce myself without stuttering and stumbling my way into utter mortification.

One of the more unfortunate types of situations that I notice myself struggling to speak like a sane human is when I meet authors at signings. I seem to be unable to make sensible comments while getting books signed and have on several occasions blathered random shit that I've later regretted so much that I've mentally banned myself from saying anything should I meet that author again.

I don't tend to ask authors about their books while getting them signed, mostly because my memory is usually a shambles so I don't want to look like an idiot by remembering something wrongly and asking a ridiculous question. This leaves me with either standing there in awkward silence or gushing incoherently about how much I enjoyed the book/admire the author which I never want to do even if I am internally fangirling like hell. Which is how I always seem to end up rambling about something wholly unconnected with anything relevant to the situation at hand.

Here on the internet I can hide my difficulties behind careful constructions of words and sentences, spend hours typing, deleting and retyping my thoughts until they properly represent what my brain is trying to say. It's often far easier to "say" things on paper than it is to shape the sounds and throw them out into the air. My throat holds onto the words that it's scared to give voice to, no matter how much I may *need* to say them, once they're spoken they can't be crammed back into my mouth like they never existed. In writing it doesn't quite feel like the thoughts are real which makes them less scary to type I guess.

I'm sure I'm not entirely alone in these feelings and anxiety about expressing myself. Other people might find speaking aloud a breeze and instead quiver at the thought of writing about themselves. For some music or art are the only ways they can accurately express what they are feeling as words both spoken and scribbled are simply inadequate. It's just a matter of discovering what best suits you.

I'm still trying to figure that out for myself, but writing is what feels most comfortable for now. Even though I don't always feel like I'm all that good at this whole business of stringing sentences together into a cohesive narrative. I suppose I need more practice.

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That Miserable Little Voice

Image source

This is not the post I was going to write. I had made the decision a week or so ago that I was going to write a completely different kind of post after reading Faye's brilliant post, there were several things that I wanted to reflect on and talk about.

But I'm not doing that today. Not because I no longer have anything to say in relation to that post but because since deciding to write that post this nagging little voice in the dark corner of my brain has piped up questioning "Why? What have you to say that anyone cares to read? What can you possibly contribute to the discussion after Faye wrote such a fantastic post? The only people who would care what you have to say already know so why bother?"

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has those kinds of thoughts but I've noticed more and more how often I have them. How frequently that voice talks me out of an idea, a tweet, a post, expressing a thought. Talks me out of it by snidely whispering things like; "No one gives a shit what you think", "They'll just think you're weird", "Why does your opinion need to be shared? "You have no valuable experience to impart", "You're such an attention seeker". And on and on ad. nauseum.

So many fucking times that voice silences me.

But I can't stop listening to it and obeying.

I now don't feel confident in sharing that other post even though I could probably write 1000+ words on the topic, that voice has convinced me that no one wants to read them, no one outside my close friends even cares so why bother sharing my thoughts with the internet? Just keep it to yourself.

Even writing *this* the voice is telling me that I'm crying out for attention and that my problems are so minor that they verge on whiny so shut the fuck up already. But someone needs to know because I'm not telling anyone that I'm feeling like this and that isn't good.

I don't know if that voice is depression or anxiety or some awful conglomeration of both. But it's shouting pretty loud these days and holding me back from doing a lot of things.

Most recently being saying hello to two writerly people I know from Twitter when I saw them in a bookshop because that voice told me not to bother them, they don't need you & your awkward lemon self mucking up their day. So I kept my mouth shut. (That is a thing that I have mentioned to no one since it happened on Saturday and I'm inwardly cringing even typing it).

I should probably say that this post is likely to be surprising to more than just strangers who don't really know me, because there are at least three very important ladies who will be wondering why I haven't mentioned any of this to them. And that's because I didn't want to burden you with my silly little problems when you all have far more serious worries of your own to deal with. And I'm sorry.

That miserable little voice is making a lot of things suck right now and I don't know how to shut it up. So this is me calling it out. For all the good it might do. I don't even know.

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Do I run or let it be? On Sport & Stagnation

This post has been inspired by some of my favourite female creators on Youtube (also Hamilton because I couldn't *not* wangle a lyric into the title). Although I have yet to read it the book Eat, Sweat, Play by Anna Kessel is the central focus of the videos I'm linking below and is what has sparked this whole discussion on Women and sport and the fractious relationship between them.

A couple of months ago Leena Norms posted this fantastically worded video about Eat, Sweat, Play and how it had made her evaluate when the impetus to play sports was superseded by the pressure to present the unruffled, pristine image of a young woman. In the last couple of days Rosianna Halse Rojas posted her own video with her usual brilliant eloquence that covers a far wider range of topics than I'm going to address below, and yesterday Hannah Witton posted her thoughts about the book and her experience with sports. I whole-heartedly recommend you go watch all three of these videos and if you aren't subscribed to their channels then I suggest you fix that.

When I watched these videos I started to think back to my own experience with sports and what has changed since I was at school. It takes no time at all to notice that currently I do absolutely *no* sports activities beyond the odd bit of walking I do going from my house to my usual coffee shop, a few months ago I even posted on here about how I'd put on weight over the last 18 months and what effect that was having on my self-confidence.

Oddly enough I mention in that post about how when I was younger that I didn't do much exercise to maintain my weight but the truth is I *was* far more active than I gave myself credit for. Over the course of my childhood and teens I did swimming, trampolining and cricket outside of school, and I have a folder full of certificates to attest to that. On top of that I used to play often on my estate with my then neighbour/friend after school and at weekends. We'd play tennis in our end of the cul-de-sac, I was constantly smashing the ball over nearby fences in my over-enthusiasm, we would ride our bikes, scooters or roller-blade around the estate and generally spend quite a lot of time outside.

That doesn't even begin to include my participation in PE over the course of primary and secondary education. My memory isn't that great about whether I was on any teams but I do know that during PE classes I was usually throwing myself into whatever sport we were doing with almost gleeful abandon. I wasn't *The* Sporty Girl (I can still tell you the names of the girls in my Primary & High school who were the "Sporty" ones) but I certainly took PE far more seriously than some of my classmates.

The enjoyment of PE, for me lasted all the way until the end of Year 11. I didn't get on with some of the girls in my class and this may have manifested in my competitiveness in team sports, but I was still weirdly cheerful about whatever sport we were doing in any given term. From what Leena & Rosianna talk about in their videos I know that my experience isn't necessarily the norm.

Yes this is me in 2011, ironically that is my old high school behind me. 

But the participation in sports dropped off sharply after I dropped out of Uni in 2010, I had been playing for Aberystwyth's ladies' cricket team and another ladies' team closer to home but after leaving my enthusiasm for playing slowly dwindled. When I moved in with my other half it became impossible to continue playing for my team when they were based on the Shropshire border and I essentially now lived two whole counties away. That was in 2012 and my cricket kit hasn't moved from my parent's garage since then.

Nowadays I am more likely to groan at heaving myself off the sofa to make another cup of tea, wince as my hips and knees make awful clicky-clunky noises when I crouch or stretch and get worryingly shaky after going up and down stairs several times in quick succession. The thought of going outside to deliberately exercise is laughable and all my sports clothes get used as lounge wear. I do often wonder if the fact that I'm not doing some kind of physical activity is actually making my knees *worse*.

How do I go about digging myself out of this stagnation then? For starters I'm going to get my grubby mitts on a copy of Eat, Sweat, Play and read the heck out of it. Then my next move should be to get my lazy arse up the road to the leisure centre that is almost literal spitting distance from my house and do SOMETHING whether that be swimming or some other sport they offer. I could start running in the park that is right behind my house, or do some damn yoga in my lounge if I didn't want to get that crazy.

I can't keep sitting still forever, so do I run or do I let it be? Get back on my feet and make the best of me? We'll have to see. #Move4Ham

(p.s. If you're not on the Hamilton fan-train I'm #sorrynotsorry for all the Ham references in this post, I'm literally listening to Non-Stop right now. Gotta write like I'm running out of time.)

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Coping Methods for Deadlines - My week in gifs

This week I'm afraid I'm rather lacking in nuggets of wisdom - stop laughing - my brain is locked into a battle with my final essay deadline (Thursday HOLY SHIT) so as I'm writing this I'm actively procrastinating it further which does wonderful things for my stress levels. Due to the mushy state of my noggin I thought I'd talk you through some of my less-than recommended methods for dealing with deadline stress - in gif form! I'd like to say that I haven't done all of these things but I'm an awful specimen of humanity with self-control issues.

Ways to deal with Deadline Stress
1. Sleep far, far, more than is healthy

Deadlines can't bother you if you're unconscious! Sleeping in until 10am for five days straight however will start to have a detrimental effect on your sanity. Setting four alarms does absolutely nothing, you can switch them off on autopilot and fall straight back to sleep. But still it beats working on your essay.


2. Develop incredibly poor eating habits.

When left to my own devices I will swing wildly between forgetting to eat anything for 12hrs and going to great lengths to acquire enough food to feed four...then eat it all myself. In the past week I have munched through a shameful quantity of tortilla chips & salsa in lieu of real meals. Also avocado toast becomes the pinnacle of my existence.

3. Have stupidly long showers

Or baths if you happen to have one. When my brain doesn't want to engage with anything, going and spending half an hour in the shower is a wonderful way to dissociate entirely from reality. More recently I've been using the time to sneak in more time singing along to Hamilton so I hope that my neighbour hasn't overheard me too often.

4. Binge Youtube Videos

Whatever your niche there's gonna be some channel that you suddenly find a reason to start mainlining like it's going out of style. I went for trying to catch up with Casey Niestat's channel since everyone & their mother has been raving about his daily vlogs. They're right you know, they're incredible.

5. Read all the books

I don't know if other people do this but when I am meant to be focusing on writing a literature essay discussing set books, suddenly the only thing I want to do is read ANY OTHER BOOK. This month I have tore through an embarrassing quantity of books when I should have been prepping & planning this essay. Why even after I've finished this post I plan to read another book, FIGHT ME!


6. Write a novel

Not a whole one obviously. But I have definitely spent more time than is seemly in the last week thinking about my novel WIP and in the last two days I've scribbled about 1500 words for a chapter in the mornings when I *really* should have been working on my essay. After Thursday I will be free to work on it as much as I want *sighs wistfully*

7. Cry

While I haven't reached this stage of deadline stress quite yet I'm not ruling it out. Check back with me around 9pm and I might be a sodden mess. I might have started to scrawl on the walls with wax crayons. God knows what state I'll be in.

I really wish that this post was a joke, but you should know that it is painfully true. Don't follow my example. For heaven's sake.

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What are you even doing with your life?

A question I got asked by most people who saw me on my last day at work was "So what are you doing next?", "What are your plans?" I cannot begin to tell you how much those questions fill me with dread and anxiety. Every day I wonder if my mother is going to ring me and ask if I've thought about applying for jobs with that tone of "Why haven't you already got a career sorted out?"

I'm going to be 26 in just under five months and in the 9 years that I have been an employable human I have had four jobs which I did for over a year, and only one of those was for over two years (my first job as a part-time cashier at Somerfield/Co-op). Compare that to my other half who got a job with a company when he was 18/19, switched departments a couple of years later and is still working there as he is about to turn 30 at the end of this month.

He has got his career pretty much figured out. I don't have a fucking clue.

Here is where I feel I ought to mention the career that I'd *like* to have - it's one that 7yr old Rachel wanted to have and it's the one that has kind of being ticking away in some quiet corner of my brain ever since. It's the one that I will never admit to people outside of my friendship group, not even to my family although they will themselves occasionally reference it as the thing I wanted to do when I was younger.

I want to be an author. There, I said it.

I want to be able to walk into a bookshop one day and see a book on a shelf with *my* name on it. I want that so much I do often think about it before I go to sleep, imagining weird little scenarios that would make you side-eye me in the street. I don't necessarily want to be some international best-seller (although seriously who'd bitch at that?) but just to know that someone other than my close friends had read my book and felt something would be so incredible.

But there's a large part of me that believes that it won't ever happen. For a number of reasons; my writing is not good enough and never will be, I don't have enough ideas, I'm scared that no one would ever want to read my stories, I'm scared no agent will ever want to represent me, and on and on ad. nauseum.

I had this ambitious hope to spend the summer after my current OU module ended working wholly on my book (which I talked about recently here on my writing blog & I waffle about it all the time on my Twitter) trying to get it a good deal closer to a point at which I wouldn't feel utterly appalled at the idea of querying an agent with it. Between the start of June and the start of October when I'd need to start my next module I'd have over 150 days to just *write* without worrying that I'm neglecting my studies.

However the closer I get to June the more I feel the pressure to get a job instead (even though I have no ideas what kind of job I'd want to get) and not be a sponge on my other half's goodwill and income. To be very clear that statement is not directed at *anyone* other than me, there are multitudes of reasons why someone might not be working and that doesn't make them a burden or a sponge IN THE SLIGHTEST. 

Of course my brain doesn't make that exception for me. Even though Le Boyf has said explicitly on multiple occasions that he supports my writing and will not mind if I spend the summer working on the book, my mind is still throwing bricks of guilt at me for having the audacity to want to be so selfish with my time. How dare I dream to do such a thing?

I don't know yet if my plans will go how I'd like them to go. I don't know if my mother will amplify my own guilt and fear of being a burden by asking "Have you looked at any jobs?" until I finally relent to just to stop the feelings of self-loathing for a while. I just don't know.

I'd really like to figure out what I'm doing with my life before I go totally fucking bananas.

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Sweating like a P.I.G

So newsflash; women sweat. I’m not talking the ladylike, flowery-scented, dewy perspiration that some arbitrary voice of societal authority deemed was acceptable for women, I’m talking the “shit-my-deodorant-has-totally-given-up-on-me-and-it-smells-like-something-died” kind of sweating that isn’t caused by a gym session that would make Daisy Ridley proud. Yet I can’t honestly recall a time I had a conversation with girlfriends about sweating and body odour during high school but it was something that I spent a good deal of time panicking about and trying to deal with on a daily basis. It’s something I still have to deal with and spend more time than I’d like thinking about it every day.

It’s a fact of my body that if I don’t shower in the morning or forget to apply deodorant that within about an hour or so, even if I’m doing nothing more strenuous than sitting at my desk I will be sweating and starting to smell. Sometimes I have showered *and* applied deodorant and still found myself dabbing my underarms with tissues before blitzing the body spray to hide the odour that I’m positive everyone else can smell. To make things even weirder my right armpit is sweatier than the left, so that side could be bone dry while the right pit is literally dripping. What the hell biology?

Sweating is a constant inconvenience when you start questioning what colour/material/style of tops you can wear without ending up with enormous dark, sweaty rings under your arms after a few hours of just existing. I’ve had to throw away several t-shirts and vest tops because the under-arms were stained and still had a lingering smell of BO even though they’ve been through the wash several times. I surreptitiously check for stains with alarming frequency if I’m wearing light-coloured tops and it’s not beyond belief that I’ve swapped tops during the day because I’ve effectively sweated myself out of my clothing. That can happen even in winter since my body is stupid and can often sweat more when I’m freezing cold than when it’s roasting.

 It’s not just underarm sweating that causes problems, women with larger than average breasts often have to deal with under-boob sweating which can end up causing soreness when combined with their bras chafing. It’s another sucky card that big-boobed ladies get dealt along with all the things that Jess discussed in her post on Growing up with Big Boobs a few weeks ago. Like thanks Mother Nature. Y’bish.

Taking things even further south, I’m gonna take a moment to put it out there that I’m not the only woman who spends a week out of every month *convinced* that everyone around me can smell the blood that is oozing out of my nether regions. Because surely if I can smell it while I’m fully dressed, SO CAN EVERYONE ELSE?? But since I don’t get people saying “what’s that smell?” while they’re sat next to me (although let’s be real, us Brits would never say that, we’d just tweet about it) I’m guessing that the odour is only really obvious to me because I’m used to my own smells. Right?

This frustration and paranoia also applies to general sweating around your groin and upper thighs. What the hell are you meant to do if you get so clammy and yuck that your knickers are soaked and not in the way we'd prefer them to be. It's not as easy to mop up sweat from your groin while you're sat at your desk as it is to discretely stuff some tissues under your arms, and you'll get some *very* odd looks if someone finds you crotch-first under the hand-dryer in the toilets frantically trying to dry out your vaginal region.

I never really thought about particular methods to combat body odours beyond having showers and applying deodorant but Jess linked me to this video earlier which gives lots of different tips and tricks for dealing with body odour and sweating. If you swap out the use of a hairdryer in a public toilet for the infinitely more likely hand-dryer then you get one of my more frequently used methods for de-soggying my top after I’ve fervently dabbed my pits with tissues. Can’t say I’m really into the idea of chucking vinegar or vodka onto my clothes but some of the hacks she recommends are things I have done myself.

I know that there are some medical conditions which cause excessive sweating so some of the things mentioned in the video might not be of any use. I'd recommend consulting a medical professional on the best methods for managing these conditions. Same goes for if you have sensitive skin or allergies, don't chuck anything at your skin that you know is only going to cause you pain or discomfort.

I'd best be off, I have deadlines looming and I'm cold-sweating like the weirdo I am. Seriously my hands & feet are ice cubes but I'm sweating. What even is my life?

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Make-up as I go along

Last Friday looking fine

Something you might not know if you don’t see my face in real life (Instagram pics are not exactly true representations of my appearance) is that I hardly ever wear make-up. In a month I might only put on make-up once or twice and that will inevitably be for some kind of occasion like last Friday when Jess and I went to a book launch in Nottingham. I was actually wearing foundation, eyeshadow and mascara that day which for me is quite a lot, I only bought the foundation a month or so ago on a whim because it seemed like it might look less weird on my skin than foundations I’ve tried previously (fair warning, the last time I owned foundation was probably around 2004 when that Dream Matte mousse stuff was all the rage so I’ve got rather limited experience).

I have fairly dry skin (probably need to drink more water that hasn’t had a teabag in it), so when I tried foundation when I was younger it looked super flaky and awful so I just stopped wearing it. I wasn’t all that taken with the idea of coating my face in a layer of foundation and powder when I was in high school and if it meant I had to get up 30mins to an hour earlier in order to apply it all I was like “nah”. If you don’t know – I am *big* fan of sleep and my bed, it would take a much bigger incentive than having a superficially flawless complexion to get me waking up at 6am or some shit like that.

First time wielding the liquid liner

Inherent laziness is a massive contributing factor to my bare-faced ways but there’s also the simple truth that I don’t really know what I’m doing. I never had someone showing me how to apply make-up, I literally only tried liquid eyeliner just before last Christmas and considering how naff the eyeliner I had was I thought I did quite well. My mother hasn’t worn daily make-up for more years than I can even remember so I never had the whole “stealing Mum’s lipstick and smearing it on my face” experience. The only thing I figured out to do was plonk eyeshadow on my eyelid and run a mascara wand through my lashes. I was also rather fond of taking a black kohl pencil to the lower waterline and I’ll be honest it worked for me so why do more?

While I was in high school I did wear eyeshadow & mascara most days but after I moved up into Sixth form I drifted away from wearing make-up and I’ve never really got back into it. I still prefer that extra time asleep and rely on some moisturiser to save my face from looking truly awful when I go to work. I don’t have great skin, my cheeks have a fair bit of redness to them all the time and my jaw and chin are a goddamn mess and are not showing signs of clearing up any time soon. I’m aware I could mask all that with foundation and concealer if I really wanted to but I just don’t like the feeling of a full face of make-up.

My god that eyeshadow O_O

The only time I’ve had someone else apply make-up for me (other than that time I was in a theatre production which we’re not talking about) was for my Year 11 Prom and boy, did I hate it. I was deeply uncomfortable that entire night, not just because my face felt like it was caked in make-up. My hair, which had been curled at the hairdresser’s had dropped by the time I got home, I was wearing a stick-on bra thing because the dress was backless and these ridiculous tummy-tuck knickers that stopped on an awkward part of my hips and were so fucking visible under my satiny dress. I wanted to strip it all off and hide.

I’m now in a weird kind of limbo where I’d *like* to wear make-up to even out my crappy complexion but at the same time I don’t care enough to spend time and money applying it every day. For years the idea of buying products to essentially throw it away one day at a time just didn’t make economic sense to me and now I’m so ingrained in this mentality that it’s hard to cast it aside for the sake of feeling better about my appearance. It’s not even that I have outside pressure to look more aesthetically pleasing, no one in my life is telling me “oh you’d look so much prettier if you wore more make-up” but they will compliment me when I do wear it.

From following a lot of very cool women on social media I see some of the most bitchin’ make-up styles which frankly makes me super envious. I’m not brave enough to try attempting massive eyeliner wings, pastel lips or filled-in eyebrows without some kind of friend nearby to help me fix it when it invariably goes to shit. I also am in serious need of someone to properly assess my skin and say definitively what kind of products I ought to be using and what sort of make-up styles are just gonna be a no-no on my face.

That’s where Jess is gonna come in. Yes *that* Jess – Safe Space creator extraordinaire and my bestest friend nugget in this whole world (if you didn’t know, well now you know). We’ve talked about her helping me experiment with make-up and work out what suits me over the next few months. I have even given permission for her to do my make-up at some point, so look out for some hella awesome insta-pics in the future.

It’s a weird journey I’m on with make-up that keeps changing and evolving so maybe in a year or so I’ll feel more comfortable applying and wearing make-up or maybe I won’t. Who knows? We’ll have to see. I'll probably be back with another post about it if I have a break-through.

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