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Trying, failing, trying again

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stack of books on white table After my last post, Is it Though?, I’ve been trying to… plot and plan and think through what to do next.
I did mention that I punctuate the phrase ‘if at first you don’t succeed. Try. Try again’, and I got feedback from people asking what I meant by that. So. I thought I’d explain that.
And maybe show off some new stuff at the end of the post 😉

If at first you don’t succeed. Try. Try again

One of the things that my wonderful psych team (Dr C and MW, my psych nurse) who I was discharged from at the end of last month, worked on with me, was my mindset. And this really does say everything about my mindset, in more ways than one.
It acknowledges, in part, that I’ll fall and get back up, over and over.
It acknowledges I don’t get it right first time.
But… unlike one of the comments (which turned into some serious nastiness, so was deleted) I had, it does not imply I’m setting myself up for failure. It does NOT imply that I expect to fail over and over. In fact, I’m often pleasantly surprised when I get it right faster than I expect, and I enjoy that.

It’s all about perspective

One of the essays in one of the new books announced this week, (Miles to go Before I Sleep, November 12th 2021) is called ‘it’s all about perspective.’ MtgbIs will be discussed in great depth later in the year, I guess, as an ongoing thing, but the perspective essay has a critical point in it.
“It’s really easy to say ‘I feel positive’ and be lying in some ways. Mental health isn’t binary. You can say ‘I feel positive’ and it really mean ‘but I’m still ready for it to go wrong’. It’s not a betrayal of positivity. It’s practicality. It’s just remembering that on that see saw, you’re supposed to be closer to ‘positive’ than ‘ready to deal with’.” And I think that’s what I try to explain to others. I am upbeat, positive and often, just chugging away. But I am also often prepped for things to need adaptation. I expect to fail, and have to keep trying.

And keep trying…

How about some good news now? I’ve got three books up on announcement for release right now. I’ve told my street team, and shared on my own personal profile, and we’re just getting my publisher blog sorted out, but… And miles to go, Before I sleep Kill Kit Killers – Book 1 And A House at War – Book 1, House Arrath and With Benefits You can read more about them on KushkaPress 🙂

The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai

Back to basics

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multicolored concrete house I always kinda feel like I’m talking about bootcamp when I say that, but, when things start feeling less pleasant and I my mood is less stable, I start thinking about needing to get back to my ‘basics’ plan.

A history

Waaaaay back before I had to be discharged from the mental health team locally and was granted the right to see a therapist in the county opposite, one of the things they put me on was a DBT course. It was ostensably because they kept arguing I had EUPD, and EUPD is primarily treated with behaviour modification and management, not meds. But I don’t have EUPD. I have CPSTD. It does also respond well to DBT, but only parts of it, IMO. One of the worst weeks I had in class, and when my partner and I realised that no, coming home crying after class wasn’t because I was making things better, I was getting worse was when there was a list in one of the chapters about everything you have to basically do in a day to keep yourself and your living space clean. It was under a heading of ‘mastery’. Everyone in the class started deriding the fact that this was in there, while I very quietly (at first) sat and withdrew into myself because I realised I wasn’t even doing the basics of self care (to be fair, the list included ‘moisturise yourself every day, paint your toenails if you’re a girl, trim your beard if you’re a guy’ and I got so wrapped up in it being an example, and the ensuing argument about it that I didn’t catch what I should have, which was ‘we make our own survival lists’. The hardest bit about missing that was also that I was called some really unrepeatable things by fellow class participants, who suggested ‘anyone that couldn’t do this was’ (insert name here, not pleasant, at least one of).

The basics list was born

After arguing, and realising I was arguing with people that didn’t understand, going home, crying, asking on Facebook, and privately feeding back to the tutors that I had found that horrible, and that it might be better reworded (they asked me to, I did my suggestions on paper, in private), I started thinking about what my list should look like. It became my back to basics list. And before you ask, yeah, that was the beginning of the end of me attending any group classes for therapy. I was lucky that the next team that got me understood and caught where there had been mistakes, or I might not be as philisophical, nor aware about it all. And yes, you DO encounter bullies in those groups. Sometimes it’s the people leading the group. The less said about that, for now, the better. Whenever I feel things slipping, or I start feeling as horrible as I did because I’m missing things that ‘everyone should be able to do’, I stop, I clean up whatever I’m doing, and I do my basics list. It’s not actually all that involved.

The basics list

  • Get up and make the bed.
  • Brush hair and teeth
  • Tell Alexa to ‘Start my day’ (tells me the time, the news, and loads Headspace so I can meditate for ten minutes, minimum). If still unsettled, pick a longer meditation, or watch ‘The Wake Up’ (again, Headspace app).
  • 1 walk, outside if possible. Alone is great, invite someone if not.
  • Make and eat lunch, even if it’s a tiny amount
  • Write 500 words OR design one page
  • If I’m feeling up to it, bake bread, or make something nice for others in the house.
  • Answer client emails honestly
  • Tell friends why you’re not around if asked.
  • Read
  • Laptop OFF by 9pm
  • Bath if stiff, feel like you need a clean or are restless
  • Bed with Tempus, if he’s home (10:30pm)
  • No tech at night.
There are times some of it gets skipped, like if I don’t come downstairs. If I don’t, I can read and research and write upstairs so it’s not the end of the world, but I do try to come down as often as I can. There are days though when I’m so depressed that all I do is make the bed, meditate, and stay there.

Structure…mostly

I tell people that the reason it works is because I don’t do well with chaos and unstructured things, but honestly… it’s a checklist of things that are either ‘must do’ or ‘can do’ and if I don’t do the ‘can do’ ones, it’s ok. Not at the time, but one day I’ll learn to be gentle with myself all the time.
One of the biggest things it does stop though is being online constantly. Social media is a place where I can talk to my friends, but it’s also a place where I see things that make me unhappy. It’s hard to filter the world news, and the other things I’m trying not to see cause it doesn’t help. So, mostly, getting back to basics restricts my time online, which helps me at least work on stabilising my mood.

The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai

Is it though? Thoughts on #failure

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If at first, you don’t succeed, try. Try again.

English Truism/cliché
(sidenote, I always thought the punctuation on that saying was pretty fluid. It actually reads more like a poem when I write it, cause I’ve always put the commas and full stops in there. Weird that my version actually talks about failing at least twice too. I’ll get to that later)

Failure – a loaded word

The last few weeks have been really…weird for me. I *started* making strides on becoming happier, healthier and more confident in my skin by trying to go for a walk outside and enjoying myself. I say started – last Friday, due to the completely thoughtless actions of a company that I’ll still say ‘remains nameless’ but is a social media scheduling program, who increased my bills by an eyewatering 1151% a month, this week has been a week of disruption, sadness, and annoyance.
And it didn’t help that I was fixing a stupid video problem that very few people actually see (that’ll go on my other blog, probably this weekend. What I’m hearing myself say right ow is I have a lot of blogs to work on. It’s not a happy thought, if I’m honest), but is key to a few clients who work on those platforms. And of course, I worked my ass off to fix it. But still…it’s been a rough week, and that’s meant…no walks.

I told myself that if I ‘failed’ at any point, I’d be gentle with myself – accept that it’s a ‘fact of life’ as it were when recovering that you’ll backslide, but I have to be honest. Although that language applies to me, if you stumbled on my blog out of context, you wouldn’t know what I was discussing was in fact not alcohol or drug-induced issues, but, instead, recovery from a mental health breakdown. And if I’m entirely open about that, it was a full-on ‘breakdown’. I spent a month refusing to leave our bedroom. Five years of being unable to leave the house alone. A LOT that I still don’t like to talk about.
I’ve still not gotten back to a place where the house is neat and tidy and everything has a place. I don’t think I ever will. I keep trying to put my work back together, and every little thing that knocks me off track is so significant. So hard.

When the language is all about judgement, how do you not judge?

I’m discharged from the team in question on Tuesday (hooray, I’m better…hang on), but the very last psych I worked with before I wrote this post, who I refer to as Dr C, finally said, a few Januarys ago, that he believed that everyone was a little bit on ‘the spectrum’, and in my case, I was VERY language focussed. To the point that I’ll get upset with language usage because people don’t use words precisely. It’s a form of control of course, but my psych says that he’d finally come to a conclusion that it wasn’t a power play. He thought I wasn’t/don’t do it to push people, to control them, but instead, to understand my environment. My ‘my brain won’t let this go’ is constantly stimulated. It’s language. In all it’s forms, really. What I do know though, about all of this, is that I’ve got a bias in how I perceive language. My language ‘understanding’ has an undertone of judgementalness. It’s how my brain works, and isn’t – really – about anything other than… I guess, when you grow up as badly bullied as I was, you need to find a reason for that. When you’re young, it’s most common to blame yourself. We think, unpicking everything, that my outlook is very much coloured by wanting to belong and not managing it because…children are children. I can’t blame the kids I grew up with (I can’t – many of them are in worse places than I ever ended up), and my family did their best. I just wasn’t… I’ll be blunt I guess. I grew up in an era where bullying was still viewed as character forming. Half of my teachers didn’t know what to do with me, and I must have been difficult for my family. I was sensitive, sad, often emotionally difficult, I guess. I began to prefer my own worlds to the ones outside. I didn’t interact well. If it happened now, as in, if I was a child/teen now, I suspect I’d have been put into a specialist education program, and I may – or may not – have turned out the way I am. And there I go again, judging myself. So. This week has been not optimal. Not even minimal. It’s been rough and hard and tiring.
But… I’m learning a lot of things. Always growing. So.
I own this one. I didn’t do any exercise this week. I have good reason for it, I was disrupted, and upset and had a really ‘poor’ week. But, I’ve been able to think, plan, consider, when I’ve not been too preoccupied with reclaiming money that shouldn’t have been removed from my account. It’s been a frustrating week, but I DID get those video fixes sorted, I am working through stuff with clients to get on with. The week, on the surface, looks like a failure. But really? It’s just been a week that hasn’t worked out. If, at first, you don’t succeed. Try. Try again.

The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai

Starting Monday armed…

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Well kinda. While we were home, Tempus mentioned that the lightsaber company he’d used and was really impressed with, was running a really good sale (he got his May 4th), so I sprung for one.
Believe it or not, that’s the same hilt, just one had a flash, one didn’t. Comfortable, CNC milled, mine is bronze/silver, while Tempus has a single tone silver one. They’re designed for a duelling system called Ludosport. While I may not join my partner for training, I do like the idea old designing a routine to exercise (and ness about). It is, of course, missing its blade. But only because I wanted to get this photo…
Feels appropriate from #Pridemonth.

The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai

On the road again…

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Well, I’ve kinda posted about it over on BooksbyKai, but, as most people that read this blog know me pretty well (I think), I’m pretty sure everyone knows that this month (mid-May to sometime in June) is referred to as #Kaiatus. Bad pun, I know, but I’m the person that runs Kailarks, so I’m sorry, but only a little. Anyway, #Kaiatus. I take time off over May, in part because May is a pretty busy month. We start with our anniversary (well, the 29th April really, and that’s our handfasting), then we’re usually prepping to go to Games Day (The UK Games Expo really), and celebrate my daughter’s birthday, plus May tends to be when I do my spring cleaning. Don’t know why, I just do. This year, I stayed around until a few days ago, because…well, we celebrated our handfasting, and then I had another professional milestone. 10 years ago, I self-pubished a few short stories on what we now consider to be mainstream platforms (my first self-pubbed book goes back to around 03/04, where I sold PDFs of my poetry from my blog/bi-polarbears. Yes, this blog. THIS blog is 17 in July. Bi-polarbears was 18 in March. It gets better…the Livejournal and disorganised site I kept that was basically this blog beforehand, dates back officially to 02, and earlier if you count the baby HTML sites I buit. Ahem.) Anyway, alongside that anniversary, my publishversary, I mean, one of the major projects I helped to found, and still work as an admin and the webmistress/managing editor for is also 10. I don’t think one would have happened without the other. That group is the Indie Author Group. 🙂

But now…

Well, now, I’m travelling home for a week. This will be the first time I’ve travelled, really, since last September/October, but, more importantly than that, it’s the first time I’ll have seen our family since Christmas 2019. We never got to travel when lockdown was loosened, Christmas 2020 was just a clusterf*ck for so many reasons (I had shingles, the youngest needed to self-isolate for CV19 contact, and to protect as many people as possible, the rules kept changing to the point we just couldn’t go home. Which I bitterly regret, as we lost my gran in February.) So, that’s part of why we’re going home. Another part is none of us have done anything remotely ‘holiday’ since….well, before Christmas 2019. Christmas 2019, I was kinda distracted with my son’s health and getting him to a place where we could support him. Tempus and I did go on a small trip late 2020, but it was his work and I was too sick to be left alone. Go me?

So…home?

Home, for those that haven’t been around for long, is Edinburgh. Shockingly, the gaelic speaking girlie comes from Scotland (anyone that’s seen my videoes will not be surprised. I have a recognisaibly Scottish accent). So that’s where we’re going. If I’m lucky, I might get to go get some reference photos for a book I want to write, but, if I don’t, the place I want photos of is easy to get to when were in Edinburgh, so it’ll keep. Mostly, I’ll be spending time with family, and, as I do when we travel (it’s a six+ hour drive), I’ll think, and do some planning. I’ve got a ‘Legendary’ Planner, which I’m going to be trying out. And I’ll be doing some decluttering and house re-org, planning books, and getting ready to do some study for Uni. AND reading some books that I’ve been putting off for a while. In short, I’ll be ‘off’. Buuuut…blogging more 🙂 First though, home. I’ll be sharing in real time on my Instagram, and I’ll do roundups as I can. Be good without me 😉 The featured image? Well, one is me working while I go, the other?
That would be a view of Edinburgh, with an inconvenient lamppost.

The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai

F is for f*&k and other profanities #atozchallenge

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collage photo of woman
  1. My AtoZ blogging challenge reveal 2021 #AtoZChallenge
  2. A for ‘are we there yet?’ #atozchallenge
  3. B is for Books – Walking off the earth #Finalchapterinthisbook #newbook #atozchallenge
  4. C is for Can do #atozchallenge
  5. A day in the disordered #atozchallenge
  6. E is for “eeek, I overdid it!” #atozchallenge
  7. F is for f*&k and other profanities #atozchallenge
Actually, it’s not….really. Made you look 😉
I wanted to get your attention – what I actually want to talk about is language, but profanities, and our use of them, apparently dictates how linguistically intelligent we are.

Not quite yet…

I don’t quite buy into the studies that suggest that if we swear, we’re more intelligent. What I do agree with is if you can express yourself in varied and interesting ways, you are probably more intelligent, so it’s possibly a false indicator, as it was suggested in a 2016 study there was no correlation between profanity and the use of cussing and intelligence, but instead, it’s to do with the wish to extend vocabulary. I’m really interested in linguistics, so I thought that this was a phenomenon I wanted to start talking about it more. So, my quick post today is about swearing, and asking you guys what you think. Do you think it’s a sign of intelligence on it’s own, or do you think it’s more to do with whether you’re working on extending your vocabulary and finding different ways to express things? (also, I’ll be re-releasing ‘The Secret Language of Fiction’ edition 2 soon, watch this space! – well, actually, watch my book announcements page!)

The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai

A day in the disordered #atozchallenge

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  1. My AtoZ blogging challenge reveal 2021 #AtoZChallenge
  2. A for ‘are we there yet?’ #atozchallenge
  3. B is for Books – Walking off the earth #Finalchapterinthisbook #newbook #atozchallenge
  4. C is for Can do #atozchallenge
  5. A day in the disordered #atozchallenge
  6. E is for “eeek, I overdid it!” #atozchallenge

(again, as this is backdated, I’m writing this with the benefit of hindsight).

I did actually have this rather neat post about ‘a day in the life’, but, the last few days led to a bit of an epiphany.

You know there’s an Instagram bubble? I think when we write ‘days in the life’ that we sometimes make ‘blog bubbles’. So, instead of talking about what my ideal day should look like, and what it does when I’ve planned it out, I’m going to write about what my day actually is. And for the first time, I’m even going to include some of the mental health stuff I deal with – so this post could be mildly triggering.
I’ll be possibly alluding to self-harm, definitely talking about psychosis and depression and anxiety and insomnia. And I have a favor to ask at the end of this post.

A day in the disordered

I fell asleep at 11:30pm – a year of training and working with an app called Headspace and other meditation apps (honourable mentions to Digipill and Let’s Mediate (I have them on Android, they may exist on iOs), alongside my partner, which is now 80% of how my sleep works out.

Unfortunately, about 1:30am, I wake up again. I wake up to a voice, that I always hear. She’s my constant companion, and she’s very hurtful. If I’m lucky, I take a sip of water, I go to sleep again, and I might get to stay there for a bit. Most nights lately though, I’ve been waking up and finally falling asleep again at 5am.
The advice is, of course, if you’re not able to sleep in bed, to get up. But if I do that and she starts causing trouble for me. At her worst, she can trap me in the smallest rooms in the house. She’s the reason that I can’t get out of the house alone. She’s the thing I’m fighting back with my favor, but we’ll get there.

If I don’t get to sleep until 5 or 6am, I’ll either stay asleep till 8am, or 11am, or sometimes, I’m asleep till 2pm. And because of that, my day is always harder to plan for. How do I plan to be up at 9am, and exercised and ready to work, if I’m not getting to sleep until 6am? The answer is I don’t.
Insomnia is a difficult and hard to live with disorder – couple it with anxiety and psychosis, and though meditation helps, I’m frequently operating in arrears of sleep.

And that’s why I can’t talk about a day in my life. I have half an hour when I wake up that’s a set routine (get up, unplug and box tech coming downstairs with me, plug in anything, such as my Bluetooth headphones or spare batteries that need charged, wash face, rarely moisturise (I’ll be talking about that in S for skin routine, cause apparently, I’m annoying as all hell about that), meditate for ten minutes after making the bed, then come down. At night, I either go up before Tempus and grab a bath, then make my juice/waterbottle for my bedside, plug everything in, brush my teeth, get my Bluetooth headphones connected so that I can meditate, set up the book we’re listening to on Audible. Depending on how I feel then, I either read for 20 minutes, then meditate, or lately, I’ve just meditated, and used a sleepscape to go to sleep to. And then wake up again at 1:30am.

I can’t talk about this really here, but there is going to be an I for Insomnia over on bi-polarbears (the link won’t work until the post goes live 🙂 )

And that brings me to a favor…

As many of you may or may not know, I’m an author. My major project this year is to talk about the fact that I live with a pretty severe (though not the worst, by a long shot) psychosis. I think I’m probably at the end of the ‘living in the community level of it,’ though, she’s quite hard to deal with. As an author too, it becomes difficult. I ‘hear’ my characters, and I don’t like that I hear and see things as well as part of my mental health.

On my birthday, I’ll be releasing a collection of mental health books. I’m not putting up the pre-orders yet, but I am asking people to subscribe to my newsletter, so I can start talking about the run-up to releasing them.
There may be a Patreon, there may not.

What I want to do though, is to remove some stigma surrounding both hearing voices and other psychosis, but I also want to acknowledge that authors do hear voices, and that *is not* as far as I’m concerned, is a psychosis. But I guess that’s between you and your healthcare team.

What I do know is that she’s stolen five years of my life. I’ll never get them back, and while I’ve done some things in there, I’ve not gotten everything that I wanted to do, done. There are other things, of course, that got in the way, it’s not just been mental health, but if I can remove from the whole concept of ‘we don’t talk about this, we’ll get into trouble’, then I will.
And I hope you’ll help me.

If you’d like to, ALL I need you to do is to sign up for my newsletter and join my mental health street team. That’s it. If you also want to share this post or the post about the project, I’d be delighted.

I’ll be talking about about this at P for Psychosis, because it’s important to me. Here, and at Bi-polarbears. I’ve avoided telling people I have issues such as psychosis for so many years, that it’s a bit uncomfortable for me, but I also know I’m in a good community, that accepts me for who I am, and knows me as I am, psychosis or otherwise. I hope to help others like me – because I think in the coming years, as we come out of lockdowns and the shadows of what we did to deal with the pandemic, that mental health is going to be a major issue – more major than even now, and I want to help people that need help. So I am.


The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai

E is for “eeek, I overdid it!” #atozchallenge

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So, as a few of you have noticed, I’m already behind.
I’m not sure if it’s something to do with some last minute plans that were thrown in my path, taking time out to support a friend, or that I just don’t have a great grasp of time since the UK entered lockdown (what do you mean we’ve already had Easter? no way… wasn’t it just New Years?), or if I just didn’t practice great time management, but I’m a touch behind.

So, today’s titlted EEEEEK!

And I’m going to share a few tips of how I try to manage it, when…I get it right 😉

Time management 101 – leave room

And I think that’s where I made the mistake. I didn’t leave room this week – at all. And while you can’t plan for emergencies properly, I always have a rule that for every piece of time I have planned, I leave 15 minutes on either side of it.
Got a therapy appointment? Keep thirty minutes spare.
Date night? Thirty minutes.
The thing is, I’m absolutely going to be pushing this to the limit, as today is the first official day of TM112, at my OU degree, for Cyber security. Which means I’m going to be planning more time, and putting in more space.

The other issue I have with this is it’s advice *I* give. I’m terrible at following it.
I was planning yesterday’s post to be ‘a day in the life’, but reading it back, I realised, I really should rewrite that post as ‘a day in dissaray’ because my ideal day in the life isn’t the one I live.

And when all else fails?

Like now? Apologise, work out how to catch up, and go for it. Seriously. Life is too short to punish yourself.
In my case, I’ll be doing my main blogs, and keeping the 26 prompt story to go back to. So bi-polarbears, here, my book blog, and, as Deirdre has injured herself, I’m probably picking up These our Fandoms too. Once I’m caught up, I’ll try and get ahead.

What do you do when life and plans collide? Got any hints?

As to WHY I got a bit behind? Normally I do my catchup on Sunday, but instead, I was in an Arboretum, taking photos, falling down hills (no, really, I’ve twisted my hip and scraped my leg. The camera is fine tho!) and spending time with my family in the spring air. The UK is coming out of lockdown, so we didn’t get to do everything we might have liked, but we did a lot.
(this is Batsford Arboretum, and these are unedited photos – my daughter, Artenapan will be posting some later on her Instagram, and has already!)

The blog of D Kai Wilson - The blog of D Kai Wilson - text by Kai