To say this week has been a stressful whirlwind would be a massive understatement. Because of this, I've suffered very badly with memory loss this week, so this post might not be as long as my chronicles usually are. So I apologise if this post is a bit of a depressing mess.
I think I mentioned last week that this week would be a busy one. I had so many things booked and just had so much stuff to do, meetings to attend, emails to answer, appointments to attend etc. I knew I would probably get overwhelmed at some point and that the week would probably be tough for me, but apparently I had no idea. It's been a rough week with plenty emotional breakdowns.
One major problem I've been having this week is having to talk about things and actually having to communicate what exactly is going on in my head. For some reason, I'm always fine typing out and writing my experiences, but when it comes to actually speaking out loud about things, it causes me to freak out and break down. That was something that I learned this week.
Honestly, if I could go mute, I probably would. There have been times where I have actually gone mute for a while against my will, usually when a stranger or someone I was scared of tried to talk to me. It's even happened with loved ones sometimes, and usually gets triggered by arguments. It'll last for about a few hours until I can finally force myself to talk again. It's really bizarre and hard to explain, but it's like there's something stuck in my throat that's physically stopping me from talking. It's been a while since this happened, but with all this mental health stuff I've been attending, it nearly keeps happening to me again lately. I'm beginning to wonder if it's some sort of defence mechanism, I dunno. But it's frustrating when I do need to talk about something and my body won't let me. So that's something I've been really having to battle this week.
With all of these assessments that have been going on at the moment, I'm having to dredge up a lot of old stuff, and it's been really getting me down and affecting me this week. I've really been struggling emotionally, so I haven't really been able to write much this week. I've been able to plan a lot of stuff out, as I will explain later in this post, however, I haven't exactly been pumping out chapter after chapter like I've been wanting to be able to do for a while. It's annoying whenever I have these really bad weeks because I hate how it effects my writing. It can drastically lower the quality of my work, especially when I've been rendered emotionally exhausted and all I want to do is sleep.
However, I decided that it would be a fun little experiment to start actually keeping track of my emotions. I'm pretty sure that I saw something similar on Tumblr once, and I think that might have been where I got the idea from. It's something that you can do too, especially if you too suffer from mental health issues. Apparently it's a good way of keeping track of yourself and your possible triggers, and is especially good for answering those annoying therapist questionnaires at the beginning of every session. I'm sick of seeing the numbers 1, 2 and 3 at this point.
Basically, you can create a chart for yourself made up of little squares. Down the side, you write the hours of the day from about midnight all the way down to 11pm, and then across the top, you write the days of the week. You then select different colours for different emotions and then colour the hour of the day in with the colour matching the main emotion you felt during that hour. I decided to keep it simple and include the emotions normal, happy, sad, depressed, angry, anxious and stressed, since those are always the main emotions I feel during most weeks.
I've included an example of mine below.
Yeah, as you can probably tell, I've had a bit of an...emotional week. You can definitely tell that I have a very unhealthy and sick brain right there. It's almost embarrassing to look at and put this up here, but it has helped me spot a few potential patterns, like how my depression episodes always seem to be triggered by anger, stress or anxiety. They don't seem to start up on their own, however, I'll probably have to keep track of myself for a few more weeks before I can be sure.
It was also amazing to see how much my friends and watching my favourite shows like Miraculous Ladybug can really help me out. Those little green squares are from when I've had a really nice message from a friend, like on Tuesday when it helped snap me out of an anxious state, and also on Thursday when I managed to be happy thanks to seeing the new episode, Weredad, after a huge depression episode. It's amazing how much of a difference the little things can make.
I've also had a few knock-backs this week which hasn't really helped. I just feel like I keep getting bad news after bad news lately, and I've been feeling really low and fed up a a result. You know those weeks where nothing seems to go your way? So to say I'm excited for this week to be over would be an understatement.
Some of my rotten luck from this week includes: being super late for an appointment, leading to me having to sprint from one side of town to the other, getting caught out in the wind and rain multiple times, further issues with my laptop, injuring my foot, splitting my lip, accidentally becoming enemies with someone in my neighbourhood, nearly setting fire to my ideas notebook, being denied access to a counselling service because their waiting list is too long, someone forgetting that they had a meeting with me this week, leaving me sat outside an office for over an hour, and the list goes on.
Did, like, fifty black cats run across my path at some point and I just didn't notice? It's certainly been weird, and I definitely hope that I have some much better luck next week. By Thursday, I decided to just lock myself in my room and play video games and stuff to try and calm myself down. And to be honest, I wasn't having much luck in those either. But it did make me feel a little bit better. I really just needed to let my brain rest after being overwhelmed by everything. I've been feeling really tired as well thanks to my constant anxiety and depression episodes this week, which also probably wasn't helped by not getting that much sleep. So yeah, I needed some me-time again.
However, enough of me ranting. Onto the topic of news regarding my stories and other work.
I'm pleased to say that I actually have some very good news this week! Despite bad luck in other departments, I haven't been short of inspiration this week. I finally received some inspiration from the Muses, and I think I'm finally starting to fix Immortal Bond. I had to drop one of the elements of the plot, but oh well, I think the story manages just fine without it. The story needed a huge clean-up, so inevitably there would be things that I had to cut out. The story also seems to be going in a more horror focused direction now, especially the first half of the story. Hopefully the story will still be rated T, it's nothing graphic or anything, just going into more detail on all the creepy stuff. It's hard to explain properly without spoiling anything.
With the progress I'm making at the moment, I am now hoping to start writing the story again very soon. If all goes well, then hopefully the story will be published again soon. I think I've also decided that I'm going to keep the older version of the story up on fanfiction. If the website doesn't let me have two stories under the same name, then I do have some back up names for the new version. It's a shame, because I did really like the name 'Immortal Bond', and was proud of the fact that I'd come up with something like that. But oh well. You win some, you lose some.
Thank you so much to everyone has voted so far in my Madness Within sequel poll. It looks like a lot of people so far would be more than happy to see a sequel. With that in mind, I have begun to think about the story idea a lot more, so if you're not happy with the idea of me writing a sequel, you better get voting. I'm going to keep the poll open for a few more weeks before I'm going to have to close it so I can have plenty of time to plan if a sequel is something that the majority of people are interested in. Of course, if I can't make the idea work, then I'll probably have to scrap it, but I'm feeling pretty confident at the moment. I still have plenty of time to work on things should they go wrong.
Speaking of Madness Within, I did originally plan to have the latest chapter uploaded today, however, I've just been so tired and exhausted that I couldn't focus on finishing it properly. After the awful mess that was Thursday, I really needed today to recover and rest. So the chapter will hopefully be uploaded tomorrow instead. I really do apologise about this, but I'm really hoping to dedicate next week to writing. I'm going to try and do at least a bit of writing every day. This means that I'm hoping that you won't have to wait as long for the chapter after this next one.
Chat Vert will hopefully be updated at some point next week as well. Hopefully me being less busy next week and hopefully having recovered from the stress of this week, it should mean I can more heavily focus on that story as well. Plus it gives me an excuse to watch loads of Luka videos. I have such a huge crush on his character, probably because he reminds me so much of my actual boyfriend. If you want to know what my boyfriend is like, he's literally Luka, with Chat Noir's humour, love of puns and flirting added in there. Honestly, it's kinda creepy.
Also, I came up with a brand new story idea this week. I just randomly woke up with the idea, but I knew I immediately had to write it down, and I instantly fell in love with the idea. All day Wednesday, I just could not stop thinking about the idea. I'm not going to reveal too much at the moment, but all I will tell you is that it's a more MariChat based story. It's quite a simple storyline and will probably be on the shorter side, but I'm very much looking forward to planning and writing it. Though to be honest, I already do have pretty much the whole story planned out. Of course one of the things I need to do is come up with is a name. I have no clue what inspired me, the idea literally just popped into my head out of nowhere. But I'm glad that it did.
And of course, chapter eight of Destiny's Dance has now been edited and cleaned up, and is available for you to read on FanFiction. It has now also be uploaded onto AO3, which you can read by clicking here. Chapter twelve of Madness Within has also been cleaned up and re-uploaded onto FanFiction, as well as being posted onto AO3, which you can read by clicking here.
So yeah, I've been a bit of an idea machine this week. Though they do say that mental illness invokes creativity. A cruel trade off, but who knew that a depression episode would finally help me start fixing Immortal Bond. So, thanks brain, I guess? But I do suppose it's always best to look on the positive side of things. If I'm stuck with this illness, I might as well take full advantage of it and try and let some good come out of it. Because I suppose that's what you have to try and do with pretty much every situation: try to make the best of it and learn from it.
Anyway, that's really all I have to report this week. Sorry if this entry was a little bit depressing, but hey, I guess it draws attention to the issue and hopefully helps any readers experiencing the same issues as me feel less alone. Here's hoping that things look a little brighter next week.
Pixie out.
I think I mentioned last week that this week would be a busy one. I had so many things booked and just had so much stuff to do, meetings to attend, emails to answer, appointments to attend etc. I knew I would probably get overwhelmed at some point and that the week would probably be tough for me, but apparently I had no idea. It's been a rough week with plenty emotional breakdowns.
One major problem I've been having this week is having to talk about things and actually having to communicate what exactly is going on in my head. For some reason, I'm always fine typing out and writing my experiences, but when it comes to actually speaking out loud about things, it causes me to freak out and break down. That was something that I learned this week.
Honestly, if I could go mute, I probably would. There have been times where I have actually gone mute for a while against my will, usually when a stranger or someone I was scared of tried to talk to me. It's even happened with loved ones sometimes, and usually gets triggered by arguments. It'll last for about a few hours until I can finally force myself to talk again. It's really bizarre and hard to explain, but it's like there's something stuck in my throat that's physically stopping me from talking. It's been a while since this happened, but with all this mental health stuff I've been attending, it nearly keeps happening to me again lately. I'm beginning to wonder if it's some sort of defence mechanism, I dunno. But it's frustrating when I do need to talk about something and my body won't let me. So that's something I've been really having to battle this week.
With all of these assessments that have been going on at the moment, I'm having to dredge up a lot of old stuff, and it's been really getting me down and affecting me this week. I've really been struggling emotionally, so I haven't really been able to write much this week. I've been able to plan a lot of stuff out, as I will explain later in this post, however, I haven't exactly been pumping out chapter after chapter like I've been wanting to be able to do for a while. It's annoying whenever I have these really bad weeks because I hate how it effects my writing. It can drastically lower the quality of my work, especially when I've been rendered emotionally exhausted and all I want to do is sleep.
However, I decided that it would be a fun little experiment to start actually keeping track of my emotions. I'm pretty sure that I saw something similar on Tumblr once, and I think that might have been where I got the idea from. It's something that you can do too, especially if you too suffer from mental health issues. Apparently it's a good way of keeping track of yourself and your possible triggers, and is especially good for answering those annoying therapist questionnaires at the beginning of every session. I'm sick of seeing the numbers 1, 2 and 3 at this point.
Basically, you can create a chart for yourself made up of little squares. Down the side, you write the hours of the day from about midnight all the way down to 11pm, and then across the top, you write the days of the week. You then select different colours for different emotions and then colour the hour of the day in with the colour matching the main emotion you felt during that hour. I decided to keep it simple and include the emotions normal, happy, sad, depressed, angry, anxious and stressed, since those are always the main emotions I feel during most weeks.
I've included an example of mine below.
 |
| My emotion chart |
It was also amazing to see how much my friends and watching my favourite shows like Miraculous Ladybug can really help me out. Those little green squares are from when I've had a really nice message from a friend, like on Tuesday when it helped snap me out of an anxious state, and also on Thursday when I managed to be happy thanks to seeing the new episode, Weredad, after a huge depression episode. It's amazing how much of a difference the little things can make.
I've also had a few knock-backs this week which hasn't really helped. I just feel like I keep getting bad news after bad news lately, and I've been feeling really low and fed up a a result. You know those weeks where nothing seems to go your way? So to say I'm excited for this week to be over would be an understatement.
Some of my rotten luck from this week includes: being super late for an appointment, leading to me having to sprint from one side of town to the other, getting caught out in the wind and rain multiple times, further issues with my laptop, injuring my foot, splitting my lip, accidentally becoming enemies with someone in my neighbourhood, nearly setting fire to my ideas notebook, being denied access to a counselling service because their waiting list is too long, someone forgetting that they had a meeting with me this week, leaving me sat outside an office for over an hour, and the list goes on.
Did, like, fifty black cats run across my path at some point and I just didn't notice? It's certainly been weird, and I definitely hope that I have some much better luck next week. By Thursday, I decided to just lock myself in my room and play video games and stuff to try and calm myself down. And to be honest, I wasn't having much luck in those either. But it did make me feel a little bit better. I really just needed to let my brain rest after being overwhelmed by everything. I've been feeling really tired as well thanks to my constant anxiety and depression episodes this week, which also probably wasn't helped by not getting that much sleep. So yeah, I needed some me-time again.
However, enough of me ranting. Onto the topic of news regarding my stories and other work.
I'm pleased to say that I actually have some very good news this week! Despite bad luck in other departments, I haven't been short of inspiration this week. I finally received some inspiration from the Muses, and I think I'm finally starting to fix Immortal Bond. I had to drop one of the elements of the plot, but oh well, I think the story manages just fine without it. The story needed a huge clean-up, so inevitably there would be things that I had to cut out. The story also seems to be going in a more horror focused direction now, especially the first half of the story. Hopefully the story will still be rated T, it's nothing graphic or anything, just going into more detail on all the creepy stuff. It's hard to explain properly without spoiling anything.
With the progress I'm making at the moment, I am now hoping to start writing the story again very soon. If all goes well, then hopefully the story will be published again soon. I think I've also decided that I'm going to keep the older version of the story up on fanfiction. If the website doesn't let me have two stories under the same name, then I do have some back up names for the new version. It's a shame, because I did really like the name 'Immortal Bond', and was proud of the fact that I'd come up with something like that. But oh well. You win some, you lose some.
Thank you so much to everyone has voted so far in my Madness Within sequel poll. It looks like a lot of people so far would be more than happy to see a sequel. With that in mind, I have begun to think about the story idea a lot more, so if you're not happy with the idea of me writing a sequel, you better get voting. I'm going to keep the poll open for a few more weeks before I'm going to have to close it so I can have plenty of time to plan if a sequel is something that the majority of people are interested in. Of course, if I can't make the idea work, then I'll probably have to scrap it, but I'm feeling pretty confident at the moment. I still have plenty of time to work on things should they go wrong.
Speaking of Madness Within, I did originally plan to have the latest chapter uploaded today, however, I've just been so tired and exhausted that I couldn't focus on finishing it properly. After the awful mess that was Thursday, I really needed today to recover and rest. So the chapter will hopefully be uploaded tomorrow instead. I really do apologise about this, but I'm really hoping to dedicate next week to writing. I'm going to try and do at least a bit of writing every day. This means that I'm hoping that you won't have to wait as long for the chapter after this next one.
Chat Vert will hopefully be updated at some point next week as well. Hopefully me being less busy next week and hopefully having recovered from the stress of this week, it should mean I can more heavily focus on that story as well. Plus it gives me an excuse to watch loads of Luka videos. I have such a huge crush on his character, probably because he reminds me so much of my actual boyfriend. If you want to know what my boyfriend is like, he's literally Luka, with Chat Noir's humour, love of puns and flirting added in there. Honestly, it's kinda creepy.
Also, I came up with a brand new story idea this week. I just randomly woke up with the idea, but I knew I immediately had to write it down, and I instantly fell in love with the idea. All day Wednesday, I just could not stop thinking about the idea. I'm not going to reveal too much at the moment, but all I will tell you is that it's a more MariChat based story. It's quite a simple storyline and will probably be on the shorter side, but I'm very much looking forward to planning and writing it. Though to be honest, I already do have pretty much the whole story planned out. Of course one of the things I need to do is come up with is a name. I have no clue what inspired me, the idea literally just popped into my head out of nowhere. But I'm glad that it did.
And of course, chapter eight of Destiny's Dance has now been edited and cleaned up, and is available for you to read on FanFiction. It has now also be uploaded onto AO3, which you can read by clicking here. Chapter twelve of Madness Within has also been cleaned up and re-uploaded onto FanFiction, as well as being posted onto AO3, which you can read by clicking here.
So yeah, I've been a bit of an idea machine this week. Though they do say that mental illness invokes creativity. A cruel trade off, but who knew that a depression episode would finally help me start fixing Immortal Bond. So, thanks brain, I guess? But I do suppose it's always best to look on the positive side of things. If I'm stuck with this illness, I might as well take full advantage of it and try and let some good come out of it. Because I suppose that's what you have to try and do with pretty much every situation: try to make the best of it and learn from it.
Anyway, that's really all I have to report this week. Sorry if this entry was a little bit depressing, but hey, I guess it draws attention to the issue and hopefully helps any readers experiencing the same issues as me feel less alone. Here's hoping that things look a little brighter next week.
Pixie out.
Don't apologize. Taking care of yourself is important, without doing so what do we have? You sound strong and you strive.
ReplyDeleteThank you! That means a lot to me.
DeleteKurczak, I 1000% agree. :D
DeletePoor Pixie. *Sends digital hugs* I'm sorry you had such a crappy week. I truly hope all of that stress is done and over with so you could recoup this week. I love the mood/emotion chart idea, but it hurts my heart to see so few green blocks. May you have many many more this week.
ReplyDeleteAnd, as Kurczak said above, you don't need to apologize for taking care of yourself. You are allowed to prioritize yourself. Oh, and you are hereby forbidden to be around flames. Tell your Phoenix Spirit Guide to knock it off. ;)
As for your boyfriend basically being the best of Luka and Chat? What a jackpot! You go, girl! ^_^
I'm glad you did have a trade-off, and that there was some positive coming out of your week. I can't wait to see this new story idea. May the Muses come to you without the depressive spells, though...
I'll have to try to find time to squee with you later about Weredad and whatever new episode dropped on Friday (I have a LOT of blocked spoiler tagged posts on Tumblr, so I'm guessing there were two new episodes this week).
*hugs back* Thank you, it sucks, but I guess we all have those kind of weeks. I am starting to feel better and recover though, so that's good. Bahahaha! My phoenix spirit guide does need to knock it off. I don't know what it is with me and fire. It would have been bad if it had set on fire, because all of my fanfiction notes are in that notebook *gulp*
DeleteHahaha, yeah I have hit the jackpot. It was creepy when we started watching Miraculous Ladybug together and he was just sat there smiling smugly at me as Chat Noir made loads of puns. Meanwhile I was busy facepalming like Ladybug.
Yeah, it would be nice to have inspiration without the added depression and anxiety. It really is weird how mental illness can make people more creative though. Scientists need to get onto that.
Yes! I can't wait to see your opinions on my reviews, and my Weredad one should be released tomorrow. Chris Master is the one that aired the other day, and we're getting a brand new episode today, though I'm not sure which one it is as I'm staying away from the episode listings and descriptions like the plague. I think we're getting an episode every two days or something for a bit. I'm super excited!