Pixie's Chronicle: My Face! (Kinda)

Oy vey, I think my brain is officially broken. This blog post might be a little bit weird, as I'm feeling super frazzled this week, and I've just felt downright all over the place. It doesn't help that I'm really not sleeping properly lately; that's definitely the main cause of my weirdness this week. Yup, it's apparently time for another one of my insomnia periods. It really sucks, but luckily it hasn't seemed to effect me doing my work too much...until today. But more on that later.

First, onto the title of this entry. I've often been thinking about making a cartoon version of myself for a while, maybe drawing it myself or commissioning one of my artist friends. But I never really got around to it, or just didn't have the funds to do so. But then while reading LycoRogue's blog entry from last week (which you can read by clicking here), I noticed her using a cartoon version of herself. So I asked her about it and she introduced me to Bitmoji. I think I'd heard of it before, so I decided to make my own, thinking that it would be hilarious and cool to use on my blog like LycoRogue.

I think it turned out pretty okay, and does look quite a lot like me in real life. This way I get to do a face reveal, without revealing my actual face. Plus, it's often hard work choosing an image for my blog every week, so it will definitely make my life a whole lot easier if I use Bitmojis instead. Hurray for laziness! I also think it will make things look tidier on the mobile version of my blog.

So, without further ado, allow me to introduce you to me:

The body shape looks nothing like mine since there weren't a lot of options, but I think that I managed to get my face and hair pretty accurate. I dunno. Only LycoRogue, TLOS21 and ChibiRinni know what I look like in real life, so only they will be able to tell. Thoughts, guys?

Anyway, now onto my main, usual blog stuff.

A decent night's sleep...yeah...I can't remember what that feels like...

But I've been thinking, and I have a theory as to why I have these periods of insomnia: my bed sheets are cursed. Now here me out, I know it sounds crazy, but it seems whenever I have trouble sleeping, it's when I have these particular bed sheets. Coincidence? I think not! Every time I have other bed sheets, I usually sleep fine, but these particular ones just seem jinxed. I'm definitely going to monitor it, as it's really weird.

So yeah, my week has mainly consisted of me being loopy because I'm not getting enough decent sleep. It was really bad on Wednesday, to a point where I actually briefly fell asleep on my dining room floor. My mum just kinda ended up laughing and stepping right over me. Thanks, mum. I could have been dead for all she knew. A+ parenting right there. I think it's probably just because she's desensitized to my weirdness and the oddities that happen around me. I mean, I may or may not have fallen off a door handle once upon a time, set fire to the kitchen, obsessively begged for a rubber duck for Christmas (when I was 20), and just recently got a plant for my birthday that I named Pablo. So yeah, after 22 years, I imagine she's used to my...uniqueness by now.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, lack of sleep.

I ended up getting a few bad headaches due to my exhaution, which ended up being further worsened by my sneezing fits since it's the time of year when my allergies flare up. Yay! It's so much fun being allergic to grass pollen. Y'know, that stuff that covers the entire earth? Ugh. I have sneezing fits, get itchy eyes, my throat itches and my eyes also turn red - one time they even turned purple. So I've spent most of this week looking like I was high on weed or something. Not a good look. I need to get into the habit of remembering to take my antihistamines again. I bring it on myself by constantly forgetting to take them.

Unfortunately, I didn't end up updating Madness Within on Saturday like I hoped that I would. I ended up having a huge anxiety attack, which was made even weirder and scarier by my meds. When you have an anxiety attack, you often feel like you're trapped inside your own mind, but my medication was making it feel like I was stuck deeper inside my mind if that makes sense? I could practically feel my medication and my anxiety battling each other, leaving me a confused and exhausted mess. There was just no way that I could have finished the chapter in that state, so I figured I'd just wait until today to update again so I can get fully back on schedule.

Speaking of Madness Within though, I've been having some exciting experiences with that story this week. I've had two people tell me how much they appreciate my serious tackling of mental health issues, and how my work makes them feel a lot less alone. I nearly started crying when I received those comments. Just...wow! I'm so glad that people think I'm doing an amazing job at tackling the issue, and that my work and openness about my own mental health problems is making people feel less alone. It really makes me feel like I'm contributing something good to the world, even if I'm only reaching a small number of people with it. If I can help at least one person then I'm happy.

Also, I really couldn't believe my eyes with this one, but someone has made some Madness Within fan art! Like...what?! Someone has made art of my work?! What did I do to deserve this amazingness?! I couldn't have been more touched and excited when I saw it on Tumblr. The artist was kind enough to tag me in it, allowing me to see it, and my jaw dropped. So thank you so much to lanelin for creating this amazing piece!

Despite my allergies and my tiredness, I did actually manage to upload the next chapter of Chat Vert on time this week. I'm definitely happier with that chapter than I was with the previous one. I'm trying to get around to posting chapters of that story onto AO3, but I keep forgetting or getting distracted. I just need to go through and edit the chapters again, cleaning up any typos and errors that I missed during my initial editing. So, if you haven't read the lastest chapter of Chat Vert, you can do so by clicking right here. That story seems to be gaining a lot more views, reviews, favourites and alerts now, which is awesome to see!

I ended up getting so ill while at work on Tuesday. I was practically falling asleep standing up, I had a bit of stomach ache, and I was just feeling rough. I was also anxious about needing to go to the bank, because me and adult activities don't mix. I had planned on transfering money that had been left for me in my savings account into my normal account, and then close that savings account so that I'd stop getting pointless letters off them (I talk about the most exciting stuff sometimes, don't I?). I was determined to get this task done. I told myself that I was going to be normal and not act weird, and that I would make sure to remember my account booklet and my ID.

When I left work to go and do this, I came to the annoying and facepalming realisation that I had forgotten my purse. I wanted to smack myself so badly. I am literally such a moron. Luckily, I could still get that cash out of the savings account and close it, but I just couldn't put the money into my usual bank account. So yeah, that was a disaster. Then, as I was on my way home, I realised I had left my water bottle at work, so I had to go back and get that as I didn't want to lose it because it was brand new. Then I had to walk home in the pouring rain and got drenched and chilled to the bone.

I've already pretty much explained what happened on Wednesday. Despite being exhausted that day, I did manage to finally finish my review of Oni-Chan, which you can ready by clicking here. My time management has just been awful this week thanks to my tiredness, so my hopes of easily slipping back into my usual schedule were in vain.

On Thursday I managed to do a little bit of daydreaming and planning for future fanfics. While I had slept a tiny bit better that night, I was still really exhausted. I had hoped to get some work done on my one-shot for ChibiRinni, but once again everything just keeps getting in the way. I feel like I need to just seel myself in a cave or something so that I can focus on that one-shot. I had hoped that some ideas to fix the mess I had made of the storyline would come to me, but alas, no. I don't think it helped that I was also sapped of energy by the intense humidity. The air was so unpleasant, my hair exploded, I felt like I couldn't breathe and was beginning to feel like a steamed lobster. I do not cope well in heat - especially if it's humid.

Needless to say, I was in dire need of a bath. It doesn't help that the heating is always on at work because one of my supervisors is always cold, no matter how hot the weather is. So the rest of us employees are constantly being baked while we try and get our work done. It's even worse for me because my medication often raises my body temperature and can sometimes make me have hot flushes. Though that side effect has got a little bit better over these last few weeks, it still bothers me sometimes. I felt disgusting when I got home. So I had myself a nice bubble bath.

I slept a little bit better again last night, but not enough to help me recover and feel well rested. I had a really busy day ahead of me when all I wanted to do was just pull the covers over my head and sleep for twenty years. I had a bunch of shopping to do this morning, then in the afternoon, I had to finally put that money in the bank, and I also had my first CBT appointment. That ended up draining what little energy I had left, and since my mum was in town too, she treated me to a hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. It was delicious!

However, it didn't really replenish my energy. When I got home, I was on the verge of collapse. So unfortunately I've had to make the tough decision to take things easy for the rest of the day, which means that the next chapter of Madness Within still hasn't been finished. I'm so sorry, it's just that the next chapter is so important that I want to make sure I'm feeling really alert when I finish it. Tonight, I'm going to make sure that I go to bed early and finally catch up on my sleep (I hope). There's a ninety nine point nine percent chance that Madness Within will be updated tomorrow, and I'll make sure to keep you guys posted on Twitter.

I'm just hoping that I can FINALLY get back on schedule next week.