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Trying, failing, trying again

July 5, 2021 by Kai

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

Filed Under: A day in the life 2010, About Kai, Announcements, Books and writing, content, Featured, Featured articles, Fiction, Kaiberie.com, Life, mental health, Mental wellness, Organisation, pen names, planning, Syndicated websites Tagged With: Kaiberie.com

A day in the disordered #atozchallenge

April 6, 2021 by Kai

  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

Filed Under: A day in the life, About Kai, AtoZ challenge 2021, Books, Books and writing, D Kai Wilson-Viola, Featured, Featured articles, Kaiberie.com, Life, living with bipolar, mental health, Mental wellness, News, non-fiction, Op-eds, planning, Syndicated websites, tapping the well, things you don't know about me, Writing Tagged With: Kaiberie.com

B is for Books – Walking off the earth #Finalchapterinthisbook #newbook #atozchallenge

April 2, 2021 by Kai

I’ve had many ‘this is my hardest’s to deal with – probably more than anyone my age has any right to deal with in some ways.  But this one hit the hardest about three days ago, and I thought there was going to be a bit of give, a bit of wriggle room, but no.  I finally encountered the words that just broke me in two.  And I won’t repeat them.  I’ve deleted them.  But I came to a screeching halt, and I’m not sure how things will change, but change they absolutely will.  

But first – I have a heck of a lot of grieving and coming to terms with things to do – and I need to build an actual, sensible plan to sustain my businesses.  And I have to accept that part of that is digging out my work ethic and dealing with everything that’s gone on lately and putting things right. And I’ve come to the conclusion that to do that, this book needs to end.  This story, no matter that it’s not a happily ever after needs to become something that we relegate to the ‘not touching’ drawer.  Not everything that’s happened – no, they’re elements that can be reused.  But the tale of the sad girl that lives inside her house and does nothing…that’s a bust.  That’s so much of a bust we’re not making it past the first draft.

I’m not ashamed but…

When you’re where I am, you’re not *supposed* to admit bullying gets to you.  I’m the moderator of one of the biggest indie communities on Facebook, I run a lot of things for a lot of different people and I find myself, daily, waking up and dreading the comments that appear here, and on the other blogs, I run.  In my inbox, on Twitter, by PM on Facebook. And, in with that realisation is that I’m as unkind to myself as all of these people.  My self-talk is terrible.  I’d rather sleep (or try to) than work.  And I hate admitting that, but my sleep is disturbed again, and it’s getting difficult to do *much* of anything.

I do have one ray of light though, beyond my family, who are just the best, and my friends, who equally rock, and that’s my books. I’ll be talking about them more naturally in the coming days, but for now, I just wanted to thank anyone that’s supported me as a writer. I don’t always get to write, but it is one of my few places of solace. And if I’m walking off this earth to another, I couldn’t do it without knowing that I was writing the story as I went.

Today’s other AtoZ’s on the blogs I take part on.

Books by Kai – Black Monday
Fiction by Kai – the Knight of Coins
Bi-polar bears – Being, not doing
These our Fandoms – a quick skimmer onto the things in Battle Ground by Jim Butcher.

Oh, if you want to keep track of all my posts in one place, I set up a syndicated blog again. It’ll have everything in it, eventually, though it does take a few hours to catch up with stuff!
See you tomorrow!

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

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