Category Archives: Musings

Musings, Writing

There’s still time to write, #NaNoWriMo or not

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At the end of the month it’s easy to feel dejected, feel like you aren’t going to reach the goal of 50k, or whatever goal you set for yourself. So I’m here to remind you of something:

No matter how much you write in the next 8 days, if you write any words it’s more than no words.

You can keep writing even if you’re not going to reach the goals you set out for yourself. And that’s still a good thing all-in-all.

Last year a lot of people around me used the hashtag #NotSoWriMo, as a way to indicate that they were writing and joining in, but in a different way than the set goals of #NaNoWriMo.

I set up my own goal this month, which was to write every day if I could. And I’ve not been writing every day, but I’ve had the chance to learn what a good weekly writing schedule would look like for me. I also got the chance to figure out what works for me right now.

In 2010 I wrote a full 50k draft. No editing just writing writing writing. But since then I’ve not even touched that draft, even if it plays at the back of my mind occasionally. Mostly because it’s such a big draft that I didn’t try to write well. I was just trying to write it all.

I don’t necessarily think this was a bad thing for me, but I have started to learn that just trying to write a set amount of words in a set amount of time means I will spiral on meta writing or loop a lot. Instead of like when I’m writing by hand in the journal, contemplating what I’m writing and trying to craft good sentence, after good sentence. I guess it’s similar to the brick laying (Will Smith). I’ve found that for me, a well placed brick now means less work later. Imagine having to tear it all down to adjust it later. Phew.

Sorry, this went a bit off track. What I’m saying here is, there’s no one way of doing this writing thing. And I hope that you can find the encouragement and energy up keep writing.

Give yourself these last 8 days this writing month, and continue writing. Each day you write another sentence is more than you had before.

I believe in you.

Health, Musings, Writing

To Follow your own advice

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I know, it sucks. Like a lot. Coaches don’t play, you may want to yell at me, and that’s a very fair point. Yet, recognizing when you give advice you should follow yourself, it could actually help you do it. Let me explain.

Yesterday, a friend was sharing some of their struggles with their workload with their studies, and having to pretty much just put their head down and keep studying as much as possible to get through it. Which reminded me of when I had my worst crunch periods, but I was also very sick, so I had to balance everything I was doing on a knife’s edge to not completely crash. So I gave him advice based on how I took care of myself during such periods.

When I needed to crunch studies, the most important thing to me was to eat regularly and take a walk every day. At least one walk. This would depend on the level of my health, and at one point I had to just opt for much shorter walks, but more frequently both for mental and physical health reasons. I’ve gotten through the worst times, health wise, of my life while studying full time, and it’s been strange, but you pick up some interesting coping mechanisms, and one was take good care of yourself while studying.

So there I was, yesterday, unable to really go out the house and unable to take very well care of myself, and handle my physical and mental anxiety enough to get writing done as I wanted, and get resting done as I wanted. And it hit me, I wasn’t following my own advice. I knew in theory that I would be better off, if I wanted to write, if I took a walk every day. When I took a walk every day for like 14 days, I wrote two good articles in that time.

I have the proof that putting in this effort makes a difference. I got the experience, to give me the knowledge what I can do to create a better better environment for myself. And since my goal for the coming 2 years is to write, if not daily at least a majority of the week’s days, establishing a pattern and habit of treating my self as well as I’d treat my friends would be a stable foundation to start on.

So here I am, again, sharing my advice, but advice that I want to follow myself. I want to write more, and in order to be able to write, I need to take a walk at least every other day. And to not feel icky, I need to shower, and I need to remember to feed myself because my brain is doing a lot of work. I need to remember to take breaks and go up and just do something else. I need to allow myself restful sleep, even on days I haven’t written anything.

I can work on figuring out what habits work better for me. But still keep treating myself with compassion, and care. Even on high anxiety days, I can help myself through because I know that 30min walk is very likely to make me feel better, and even if it doesn’t, that would’ve been 30minutes where I didn’t have to sit and just tense up, it was 30minutes I moved my body, and 30minutes I got to breathe fresh air, and 30minutes I got to listen to a book as I took my walk. It was 30minutes that I was able to meet cute dogs, or just see the colours of the leaves change in the park. It was 30minutes that I took a little bit better care of myself instead of just wallowing in my anxiety.

And even if it doesn’t work, I can always take a nap after my walk, and try again tomorrow.

If you enjoyed this piece of writing, and would like me to be able to write them more, feel free to head over to my Ko-fi or my Liberapay and throw me a little coin.
Alternatively, check out my support page for more info.

health update, Musings

Keep trying to get my life back together

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I have been struggling, and I’ve gone from struggling to doing great and it’s been a mess.

@kinkymal

##ADHD meds update. Day 3 on a higher dose.

♬ original sound – maloki

I’ve over the past few months been doing a lot of my updates on TikTok instead of in written form, and about a month ago I got diagnosed with ADHD finally, and put on medication. Unfortunately when going up in dose after 2 weeks on it, I encountered a lot of issues, and I had to deal with that for past week and a half. Today I finally got back on the right level again and will hopefully start feeling better and be able to do things again.

It’s unfortunate because I’d just started to edit video, and giving myself permission to edit and enjoyed it, then the meds happened and my focus went elsewhere. So the RimWorld series isn’t live yet, but I can start again this coming week.

I don’t know when I’ll have another appointment with the ADHD services, so I can get my meds regularly prescribed, but I probably need to call them next week.

I keep finding myself here, where I think I’m getting my life back, and myself back together, and then something happens and it’s a lot harder to deal with it again. And it’s a bit of a pain. It’s hurting me on the inside, because I want to have a life, I want to reclaim the life I’ve lost over the past 15 years, and I want to start living better. Better as in, being able to do things, not as in “I must.be.good.healthy.and.pure”.

I have some grief I need to process, of the life I lost. Of my childhood and everything around that. And I need to allow myself to take that time to process it. It’s gonna be a pain, but I think we can do it.

I want to put things into written word as well as the video shorts. We’ll see if I can balance it, I’m hoping to start using my project Bullet Journal notebook now, which will be specifically focusing on any projects I work on, and allowing myself a better over view of things I want to get done.

This post is a mess, but I’m a mess.

Also, you can head by my other blog to see the posts I’ve been sharing about my first experience with Minecraft.

If you enjoyed this piece of writing, and would like me to be able to write them more, feel free to head over to my Ko-fi or my Liberapay and throw me a little coin.
Alternatively, check out my support page for more info.

Musings

Took a break

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It wasn’t an extensive break and most people probably didn’t notice, considering how the past year has been overall. Nonetheless I took a break in April. Mostly from planning, and especially from the bullet journal.

There are parts of it that doesn’t jell well with me, but most of it is fine. This means I get a chance to refine my own experience.

You may have read my previous post about starting to use bullet journaling. So today I wanted to talk about another reason why it’s so good for me:

I could take this break, and it wouldn’t matter, I wouldn’t waste pages. I wouldn’t lose a whole month in pages, because I didn’t use it. And I can just pick back up where I left off.

Considering that I needed a break, to just breathe and take care of myself for a month, I’m so happy I had started this journey. And I could let myself do it without worrying, and I knew that come May I was going to start again, and it wasn’t a chore to. I just started immediately on May 1.

That’s really it. If for nothing else, you can use a bullet journal to be allowed to take breaks when needed. And it will still be there, ready for you when you need it.

I also felt like I had internalized a lot of the process, so I did still get a lot of stuff done that I wanted to get done in April. Which is just bonus points tbh.

Musings

Bullet Journal Without

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I started using a Bullet Journal in early January. It was my first time, and it really clicked for me. Finally a tool that works with ADHD.

Considering how many years I didn’t even know that I had ADHD, me not realizing that Bullet Journaling could work for me comes as no surprised, but it also feels a bit unfortunate. I partially wish I would’ve been able to organize myself and my thoughts this way much sooner. Then again, I wish I would’ve understood that “yes, I have ADHD” a lot earlier too.

In September 2020 I decided to journal every day, and I did for about 3 months. Now I still journal a few times a week. I soon got eager and excited about buying a new journal, and maybe trying out a dotted journal. I would let myself buy it if I kept writing my journal until the end of the year. And I more or less did.

Kicking off 2021, I was ready to start using my BuJo, but I didn’t do it immediately, because it felt like an insurmountable task to even start. So I began with a table of content spread, and wrote myself an introduction. This is something I’ve done with some journals in the past. And I figured that maybe it would make it easier for me. And now, I don’t even remember what I wrote in that introduction.

The important part for me was to get started, and writing an introduction and setting expectations helped with that.

I didn’t really plan on writing anything about my bullet journaling, I didn’t expect that I’d become one of those people who dedicate their “content” to the magic of the bullet journal (no shade). And I don’t think that’s what this is. Rather this is me exploring something peculiar.

In my habit tracker, I accidentally set my writing (w) to every day for the next 7 days, when it was supposed to be walking (o = outdoor/walking). And because I don’t have whiteout, it will just sit there and wait for me to be done or failed, and I figured I may as well write something about it.

So here we are, at the end of this blog post, talking about how Bullet Journal Without Whiteout is rough. And I can now add this point to my writing tracker of a written and published post.

Musings, Rant

Why did this fictional story line fuck with me so badly?

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This blog post will contain spoilers from Grey’s Anatomy up until season 16. If you haven’t watched it yet but intend to, I’d recommend you not continue reading here. That said, if you’d want to know what to prepare yourself for, there may be reason to continue reading.

Content Warnings

character: deaths, breakups, divorce, children, cancer.

non-character (real): possible death, covid-19, lockdown

I’ve been watching Grey’s Anatomy pretty much since it started, but the past few years (quite a few years) I’ve not been watching it regularly, but I will catch up once in a while. Recently however YouTube began recommending me clips from the show, and I knew if I began watching them it would start recommending me clips from episodes I haven’t seen yet. Even knowing this I watched a few, which I knew I’d seen, and then down the rabbit hole I went.

Eventually I began seeing clips from more recent episodes. I knew that the series had come up to season 16 (and now 17), and that a lot have happened. I knew that Derek had died but I hadn’t seen how. Which means I haven’t seen season 11 in full. I had however seen Christina Yang leave, at the end of season 10, but I don’t know if I actually had registered it as her leaving permanently.

I was enjoying watching clips, reminding me of the powerful episodes that really stuck with me, that would always make me cry, and that would make me cry more than I think I’ve ever cried to any shows. I used to use the show as my wind-down on Friday’s while I was still on sickleave, but training to leave the house regularly. It helped me cry and let out any stress that built up over the week. And me watching these clips this week was helping me do just that (it’s surprisingly stressful to move during a pandemic, and the 3rd lockdown in England).

I got to see two of my favorite broken characters not only get together (which I had seen on the show), but also get married, as the clips showed me. And here is where it took a really bad turn for me. So many times Alex Karev had said to Jo (Wilson) that he wouldn’t leave her. When I saw the clip of them finally getting married, my heart sang. They were growing together, and becoming stronger and better people together.

Alex’s development had partially started in earlier seasons with the help of Izzie Stevens. But she had left him in the most heartbreaking of ways, without saying goodbye, she had just left him a letter and gone away. He had later told her, that he didn’t deserve someone who’d leave him like that. And he was right, he deserved better.

So that brings us up to the dreaded 16×16 episode. We find out that Alex has left, for real. He was “missing” kind of, not where he was supposed to be. And his friends and wife get a letter each, explaining what happened and why he was gone. And it just hurt so deeply.

While I understand why they kind of had to go with it creatively, with Justin Chambers leaving the show abruptly, emotionally I’m reeling. It just pierced me with the reality that even when you think a relationship is good, and strong, and even fortified against any kind of disruption. Even when you know you would communicate about your issues to try and fix it, you could get hit by something completely unexpected.

In the story line there are somethings which makes it kind of make sense. There are children involved, children that Karev didn’t know about when he married Jo. Children made with frozen fertilized embryos he and Stevens had saved when she was going through radical cancer treatment. Embryos he had released to Izzie some seasons earlier. Karev brings this up in his letters.

A part of his letter that really bothers me is this part: “It was like no time had passed when we started talking again” (paraphrased). Because the last time they saw each other wasn’t necessarily a good time, it wasn’t a time where they were happy and in a good relationship. I understand what they were trying to go for where, when trying to salvage the actor leaving so abruptly. I also went to do some digging, what was his actual last scene, and yeah. It was tame, it was him reading out letters in court.

I guess in a way, this was not just Alex Karev leaving his wife, but also Justin Chambers leaving Grey’s Anatomy. “There’s no good way to say goodbye.” When that goodbye is happening on short notice because your priorities changed, and you want to go elsewhere, you may end up in this kind of a situation. Chambers has been on the show for 15 years. And it’s understandable that he wanted to go out and spread his wings and get a chance to get new opportunities.

I am pondering if it stung me harder because of the stress in my own life right now. Big life changes, me and my partner are moving into our first house together. Our own house. And the stress of moving, combined with the current pandemic, and feeling like a lot of things are out of my control, and I just have to keep swimming in order to stay alive. The thought that I can do everything right and everything can change by the drop of a hat is incredibly painful.

This isn’t revealing any hidden emotions or thoughts about a possible ending of my current relationship. But rather just reminding me that anything can happen, especially right now. Either of us could die, either from Covid-19 or something else.

I did not think I would write a whole blog post about this, but it kept stirring in my head, and I kept crying to various clips and montages relating to this particular episode, and some other heart-wrenching episodes. I just needed to put it into words.

Tell me about something in a story that struck you a lot harder and deeper than you had expected it to?

If you enjoyed this piece of writing, and would like me to be able to write them more, feel free to head over to my Ko-fi or my Liberapay and throw me a little coin.
Alternatively, check out my support page for more info.

Musings

I weigh (movement)

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I weigh my heart, and care for other people around me.
I weigh putting into words what others need to hear.
I weigh connecting people.
I weigh community.
I weigh my curiosity, always looking to learn more about the world, and people and cultures.
I weigh my imperfections, and also that I am looking for ways to improve where I can, without pushing too hard.
I weigh my physical and mental health journey, which is a never ending winding road.
I weigh that I care.

I weigh podcast, clips, with Jameela Jamil

What do you weigh?

Musings

2020 is over.

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If you’re reading this, it means you survived 2020. Congratulations!

I think it’s important that we recognized what a victory merely surviving this year was. Especially if you’re disabled, an immigrant, BIPOC, or part of any other minority groups.

Now that it’s over, the year feels both short and mega long. It was the year with a million billion months, in July. It was the year with forest fires we forgot. It was a year of plague and fascism. It was a year with revolution and riots.

It’s easy to think everything is done and over once we turn the leaf to a new year. We can close a chapter, but we still need to remember the content and lessons of that chapter.

We still need to continue fighting. We still need to take care of the most vulnerable people in our society.

However, today you can say that you survived 2020. And you should be proud of that, and you should celebrate that.

Cherish your chosen family. Remind them you love them.

Musings

I Watched “Simple Ways to Relax” on YouTube

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I watched this YouTube video, and wrote this giant comment at the same time. Figured I’d share it with you. Enjoy, and maybe tell me your own thoughts with each point as you watch the video. You can do it here, on fedi, or Twitter. Or find my comment on the video and respond there.

Breathing, I tend to hold my breath for extended periods of time when I’m stressed and tense.
But now breathing makes me feel lightheaded. Am I breathing too fast, too much oxygen…

Inconsequential contests, we watched Dragula earlier today. It is such an over the top fun show.
But I also tortured myself with watching something painful, because fighting pain with pain is good right?

Crosswords will probably not work when I’m too stressed. I lose so many words, but then again maybe it would actually help.
Your brain processes things differently when you step away which is nice. I should ask my mom to send me a Swedish crossword book from home.

I’ve been reading so much since July, but the past few days my brain just stopped. I need to pick something lighthearted to distract me maybe.
I recently read Colour of Magic finished it in October. So good. Ohh, I should reread Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! Yes! Thank you.

(I’m writing this giant comment to keep myself distracted but also focused enough to watch the whole thing and not go look for more election stuff)

Exercise, I… The fucking pandemic is just making me afraid to go out, and I hate it. I know I love getting out when I do. I should start again. Hopefully after I get some sleep. Or exercises at home.

I have been cooking the past few days, it’s been so nice. Fried meatballs and cooked pasta in the middle of the night tonight. Baked banana bread earlier in the evening. I guess I knew I needed something to comfort eat tonight. Cook foods you enjoy eating. Remind yourself what you like to eat.

Cleaning, my housemates were a way for a few days, so I got a chance to take care of the house, as a preparation for when I get my own house. I got a chance to try out things that I’ve been mulling over, but never really get the chance to do because my house mates does some of the things out of habit before I can get to it (it’s their house).

Body scan meditation helps be relax. I think we can it something else as well. But just going through each group of muscles, tensing to relax. It’s so good. I think I have a recording of this somewhere, I should try to find it.

Yoga often makes me feel like I’m walking on clouds afterwards. I miss it.

How do we seek unrelated news. Phew. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I rarely seek out news as it is. I did decide today that I wasn’t going to look at the results during the evening, and try to not think about it. I can’t change the results by watching them. They will be what they will be. We’ve done what we can. I’m prepared for the worst. I wasn’t 4 years ago.

Video games, yes! I’ve played graveyard keeper, it really got me stuck. Similar to Stardew Valley but a bit darker, and goofy.

I’ve been taking hot showers, sometimes sitting down and just relaxing. If you don’t have a bath bring a small towel over your shoulders to keep some of the warmth in.

I’ve been journaling every day since the beginning of September, it’s helped me a lot. In processing. Seeing patterns. Seeing myself. Seeing my thresholds. I also managed to start some creative writing again.

Researching stuff for home, I’m dreaming about the house we’re trying to buy. But the process is so slow because of the pandemic and social distancing. So right now I dream and plan.

Thank you. It relaxed me more than I expected.

Musings

Neurodivergent Writing for Neurodivergent Readers

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Seeing a conversation about traditional publishing, and the issues with it and how books that seems like a treat don’t make it through because traditional publishers just don’t know how to market it my mind went on a tangent.

What if we allow ourselves to write for a non-traditional audience? If you’re neurodivergent, like me, you may know that you have trouble to sit down and write some of the thoughts and stories you’d like to write because you have this idea of what traditional writing should be like.

For a while, after having a long period of severe aphasia, and memory loss, and my mind just wasn’t putting words together, I was able to write smaller sentences again, and kind of string them together into something someone could read. I could tell it wasn’t an article, it wasn’t a poem, nor musings. But in a way it could be all of those things. I was letting myself write to the little capacity I could, and it brought my joy and I could tell others saw themselves in some of it.

We tend to get hung up on what we think writing should be. Because we’ve been taught all the rules. It’s common to say that knowing the rules are needed in order to break them. And it may be true in some cases. But what if we just let go?

What if we just let ourselves write that sprawling messy story, where we don’t go from point A to B in a straight line, but we jump to D and C, maybe X and J, on our journey to tell whatever we’re telling.

Let yourself write in the way you think. And let that be it. You can always come back to it, and create something else out of it.

Don’t restrict yourself with writing the perfect lines. Just write for the joy of it.

Sometimes, when I give myself time and space to think, connect the dots and so forth, I also am able to write something down in a coherent matter, like this post i wrote just now while having breakfast, because a conversation between friends hit the right notes.

Happy writing. 😻