Blogging – Page 10 – A Multitude of Musings

We Ordered Some Beads

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Astrid

I’m feeling pretty uninspired to write today. I’m still feeling upset about last Friday’s meeting with the nurse practitioner. I mean, I don’t want to claim to have a dissociative disorder, even though on this blog I do sort of claim this. At least, we claim to be multiple. I’m not sure we fully are, but we’re definitely not fully singlet either.

We sent an E-mail to my assigned support worker explaining our issues with the nurse practitioner’s comments. She might forward it to my other staff and maybe the behavior specialist too. The behavior specialist replied to her E-mail from last Friday that I could ask my nurse practitioner why he thinks ACT is proper therapy for me and why he doesn’t want me to do EMDR. Some of us were pretty upset at her reply too.

Today we were upset at not being able to do much with respect to day activities. It rained all day, so we could only take one walk. Other than that, we sat in the living room or in my room. At the end of the day, our crafty part came up with some ideas. We might try making some bead jewelry. It doesn’t have to be professional-looking, but it could be cool.

So I ordered some beads at a store called Creadream. I originally intended on ordering glass beads, but ended up going with plastic ones. They were cheaper and the store had a larger variety of shapes. I got some round beads, some cubes, some rectangles and even some butterflies. Some of the purple ones were on a discounted price, so only like €0.66 for 25 grams (about 45 beads I think it said).

I also ordered some wire and elastic, including memory wire. This is a type of metallic wire that is shaped like a coil that fits around your arm. It can be used for making bracelets. I forgot to order pliers to cut and bend the wire with, but I or my day activities staff might be able to find some later. I also forgot to order a beading needle.

I think the littles will definitely enjoy working with all the different shapes and colors. Of course, we can’t see the colors, but we have some memory of what they look like. We ordered mostly purple ones, like I said, but also some pink, green and I can’t remember what else.

Now I constantly feel shame when I refer to the littles or write in first person plural or the like. I know I can’t fully be myself with mental health professionals, because they aren’t my friends, but why can’t I be myselves on here? My CPN knows the address to this blog and has occasionally read it, but yeah.

The Roles I Play

Posted on July 3, 2020August 11, 2021 by Astrid

I haven’t been able to write much this week. I’ve been feeling really off lately. I may write more about that later. For now, I’m picking a prompt from the book The Year of You by Hannah Braime. It’s the first prompt in the book. It asks us to list the roles we play, such as daughter, sister, friend, etc. We’re supposed to think of as many as possible. Here goes.

1. I am a wife. My husband is the most important person in my life (after myself sometimes). My husband and I will be married nine years in September. The measures implemented due to COVID-19 were hard on our relationship. Tomorrow I’m for the first time in for months going to sleep at home with him.

2. I am a daughter. I don’t have the best relationship with my parents. It’s civil but distant.

3. I am a sister and by extension an aunt. I think now that my sister is a mother, we share even less common ground than before, but Janneke (my niece) is a good conversation starter.

4. I am a daughter-in-law and sister-in-law. Particularly with my mother-in-law, my relationship is good. She acts as my informal representative when needed.

5. I am a cat’s staff. I originally typed that I’m a cat Mommy or cat lady, but I think Barry sees me as nothing more than the one who provides him attention and food. Now I no longer do this, of course, as I no longer live with my husband. However, my husband says I helped socialize Barry.

6. I am a blogger. I have had one blog or another ever since 2007 (or 2002 if you count my online diary that gradually morphed into a blog).

7. I am a disability, mental health and autistic advocate. I don’t do nearly as much advocacy work as I did some ten years ago, but I still identify as an advocate.

8. I am a long-term care client. Well, this is probably self-explanatory.

9. I am a friend. I don’t have any offline friends, but I cherish the online friendships I’ve made over the years.

These are mostly roles I play based on the relationships I have with people in my life. With respect to my interests, personality traits and opinions, I am still pretty unsure.

What are the roles you play in life?

Five Things I Enjoyed During Lockdown #5Things

Posted on June 23, 2020August 11, 2021 by Astrid

Today I’m joining in with the Five Things Challenge, for which the topic this week is things we enjoyed during lockdown.

Now I must say we had an “intelligent” lockddown here. Most businesses were closed, as were schools and restaurants. Many people still weren’t taking it seriously. After a week of school and business closures, on March 23, the prime minister announced stricter enforcement of the stay-at-home order. That’s when he invented the term “intelligent lockdown”. The care facility implemented a no-visitors policy after this. Still, there were no curfews or rigid restrictions on where or when you could be outside. As such, my list may be a little different from that of those who experienced a complete lockdown. Here goes.

1. Walking. Like I said, we didn’t have a curfew. Still, according to Fitbit, in the Netherlands too steps taken dropped significantly during lockdown. I, however, was able to increase my steps a lot.

2. Blogging. It’s great that the #AtoZChallenge was in April, in the midst of lockdown. I truly enjoyed blogging almost everyday during the strictest stay-at-home orders.

3. Reading. Similarly, suddenly I had time to read. Not only did I not go visit my husband or need to fulfill other obligations, but the day center was (and still is) closed. At the day center, I occasionally tried to read, but the noise was just too much. As a result, I had much more time to read. I don’t think I finished any of the books on my lockdown TBR list, but that’s probably because I’m a mood reader.

4. Saving money. Okay, that’s not something I did, but it did happen. I didn’t go out to dinner or have to buy transportation tickets to go to my husband. I didn’t get my hair done, which was really okay as I hate getting it done. In the end, I ended up saving some money. Then I bought my iPhone, of course.

5. Snacking. In the early weeks of lockdown, I was using the added stressor as an excuse to snack on candy and cookies and basically anything. Magically, I more or less maintained my weight throughout the lockdown. I’m due to get weighed in tomorrow again.

What were the positives of the lockdown for you?

Five Things I Do For Fun

Posted on June 11, 2020August 11, 2021 by Astrid

Good evening all! I’m having tons of thoughts and feelings right now, but they’re not to be shared on the blog as of yet. Instead, I am joining Mama Kat and sharing five things I do for fun. Maybe listing things I enjoy doing will distract me.

1. Reading. I used to hate reading as a child. As a teen, I developed an interest in Caja Cazemier’s young adult fiction, but none of it was suited for school beyond the eighth grade. I hated all the classics we had to read in school.

Then when I started university as a linguistics major, I was sent a book we were supposed to read before classes started. It was probably sent out to all humanities majors, as at least in our classes, it was never mentioned.

I’m not in college or school now though and can do what I want. So I read. I started with non-fiction and memoirs, but now I read fiction too.

2. Cooking. That is, simple food prep. I got a smoothie maker from one of the staff last Monday and have been loving making my own smoothies. I also love to make salads and other relatively simple lunches. I need some help with it, but the smoothie I made yesterday, I did almost entirely independently.

3. Crafting. Particularly soap and bath and body product making. I haven’t gotten down to that much lately, but I love it.

I also love trying out other crafts, though I usually need considerable help with those. I have tried many crafts in the past and still would love to try some again.

4. Researching my most recent special interests. Right now, they are smoothie recipes, so I combine this with #2 above. I can totally get a mood booster from reading up online on some topic that interests me.

5. Blogging. Yes, I still blog for fun! I sometimes get caught up in negativity if my stats are down, but most of the time, I truly blog for the fun of it.

What do you enjoy doing for fun?

#WeekendCoffeeShare (June 7, 2020)

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Astrid

It’s Sunday and I am feeling pretty lazy. I have quite a few ideas for blog posts, but I’m just going with the #WeekendCoffeeShare. I haven’t participated in that one in a while. Grab a cup of coffee, green tea or I think there’s some soda or juice in the fridge still too and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, of course I’d talk about my new iPhone. I already shared about it on Friday, but well, I’m totally in love with it! I got the iPhone SE 2020, which the info section in Settings just calls the SE. That’s pretty confusing, since I also have the old SE still. I haven’t prepared that one for reselling or donating to charity yet. Not even sure what I’m going to do with it. Probably donate it to charity for recycling, but I’m not confident enough to remove all data yet.

My husband asked me what type of case I want for my new iPhone. He’s going to buy me one for my birthday. I currently have a jelly case, but I want a bookcase.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I got over 50K steps this past week. Last week, I got nearly 65K, so this isn’t a big accomplishment, but it still feels good.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that the weather is weird. Sometimes it rains, while other times it’s just slightly cloudy or even a bit sunny. Because of the rain, I haven’t been walking as much this week as I’d want to. Then again, I guess nature and agriculture need the rain.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that on Thursday, the staff intern and I made apple pastries. I didn’t do more than cut the apples into cubes, but it was okay. They were delicious!

If we were having coffee, I would also tell you that on Thursday I went to my GP. I have a large itchy spot on my upper leg that won’t go away. The GP thinks it’s an insect bite made worse by my scratching it. I got some hydrocortisone cream for it. It’s slightly better now.

If we were having coffee, I’d share with you how happy I am that WordPress isn’t planning on retiring the classic editor anytime soon. I don’t hate the block editor as much as some other bloggers do, but I find it somewhat annoying at the same time. I never liked the WordPress.com editor, so am actually pretty happy it’s gone.

If we were having coffee, lastly I would tell you that I’ve done a lot of reading lately. I’m truly in the mood again. I bought the YA novel Full Disclosure by Camryn Garrett on Thursday and actually finished it in only three days. That’s pretty awesome for me.

How have you been lately?

#IWSG: Keep on Writing (Everyday)?

Posted on June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 by Astrid

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and that means the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (#IWSG) meets again.

I’m not sure what to write about today. In May, I wrote only one less post than in April. It still feels as though I’m a lot less inspired and motivated to write. The writing prompts that helped me write posts, including fiction and poetry, didn’t really speak to me at all in May. Even if they did speak to me in a way, I couldn’t find the words to actually write.

I did resolve a few weeks ago to write everyday. I wasn’t requiring myself to write a blog post everyday, though subconsciously that’s what it felt like. As such, I felt weird when I had no idea what to write about at 9PM and was going to go to bed in half an hour. I skipped blogging only two days in May though. That’s something to be proud of!

Now on to the optional prompt for this month. This month, we’re encouraged to share some secrets people don’t know through our writing. I am going with one that is in a way pretty contradictory: people may not know from my blog that I can be really private.

I mean, I share so much on my blog that it’s almost too much information. I of course intended my blog for this very purpose, but still. I guess most people who read my blog, assume from it that I share a lot about my life in real life too. I don’t. My husband has gotten upset at times at my having posted something on my blog that I didn’t tell him.

Another, related, secret is that my self-esteem is pretty low. My husband at least used to think I had a lot of self-confidence, being that I think others find my life interesting enough that I want to blog about it. It’s not true though. I’m pretty shy and self-conscious in real life. And even where it comes to my writing, I often feel held back by my inner critic.

I Saw…: Coping with Vision Loss in the Age of Social Media

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Astrid

Today’s optional prompt at Life This Week is I Saw…. We are supposed to share photos of what we saw lately. This got me thinking. I saw… nothing really, as I am blind.

I have been totally blind with some light perception since the age of eighteen or so. At age eight, my parents decided to give up on my eyesight, so all reports say I went blind at that age. I didn’t. Legally, yes, but I’ve always been legally blind. Functionally, maybe. I started learning to read Braille at the age of seven. Then again, as a person who lost his vision gradually later in life told me, going from 20/1000 vision to none is worse in some ways than going from 20/40 to 20/1000.

I have more or less accepted my blindness now. Even so, with just a tiny bit of light perception left, I still use it. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.

One of the most annoying aspects of blindness for me, as a blogger, is being unable to take pictures. I know some blind people have learned to take pictures, but my parents always instilled in me that photos are for the sighted and I shouldn’t want to pursue a visual activity like this. For this reason, I don’t feel comfortable trying to learn to take pictures. I mean, I feel pretty arrogant for believing I could even ever learn to take pictures.

I did mention to my staff that I may want a tripod or selfie stick or whatever for my birthday. Then again, I fear I’ll knock it over and ruin my phone if I’m not careful.

Maybe I need to ask other totally blind people how they take pictures and how they make sure they are blog-worthy or whether they don’t care.

I remember one day, when I was at the blindness rehabilitation center, the staff asked each of the clients in my group what would be the most important thing we’d do if we regained our sight. Many said they’d be able to travel more independently. I said I’d go into nature and enjoy the sights. Right now, I’d say I’d take lots of photos for my blog.

I Want to Feel Better #SoCS

Posted on May 16, 2020August 13, 2022 by Astrid

I want to feel better. Or maybe I need to feel better. No, that’s not correct. Feeling normal mentally may be a want, but I cannot need to feel it everyday.

I’ve been really in a depressed funk over the past week. Maybe, like I said on Thursday, it’s just that I was feeling so well over the past six weeks or so. Now that it’s passed, at least for now, I feel frustrated and depressed. I feel tired too. I’ve been lying in bed most of the morning and part of the afternoon today.

So what am I going to do about it? I’m writing now at least. That’s better than lying in bed. I still at least have some writing mojo left. In this sense, it helps that this writing exercise is stream of consciousness so that I don’t need to worry about structure.

What else can I do? I could be forcing myself to stay out of bed, but this is hard especially on weekends. So I’m not doing that.

I will be going for daily walks unless the staff have no time to take me on a walk all day (which is rare). Then, I will dance in my room for at least 15 minutes and/or go on the elliptical.

I will continue to write everyday. If it isn’t “blog-worthy”, so be it, but I’ll at least try.

I will meditate. It doesn’t need to be a long guided meditation or anything. A few minutes is enough. But I’ll make sure to incorporate mindfulness into my day.

Hopefully, committing to these will help me keep depression at bay. And if it doesn’t, then at least I’ll know that I’ve tried.

This post was written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, for which the prompt today is “want”.

#AtoZChallenge 2020 Reflections

Posted on May 10, 2020 by Astrid

Oh boy, it’s already May 10. Can you believe May is already one-third over? I think time flies. Today, I am rather late joining in with the #AtoZChallenge reflections. April seems so far behind me, but it’s good to look back on the challenge.

The good part is I actually completed the challenge this year. As you may know, I signed up each year since 2015, first on my old blog and last year here. In 2015 and 2016, I completed the challenge. I had the topic of autism awareness/acceptance as my theme for 2015 and the alphabet of mental health in 2016. In 2017, I made it myself rather hard by picking autism again even though I was in the midst of being re-assessed for it. I only published one post. I can’t remember how I did in 2018, but last year, I was fooled by the letter X. I had had a word in mind that I thought meant something different than it turned out to mean (xenial) and couldn’t think of any other word once I found out I couldn’t use that word.

Then this year, I had the letter X already figured out before I even wrote a post. I know, I cheated a little, but well. I ended up unconsciously choosing the theme of self-care. I actually stuck to this theme rather well to be honest. I know I also cheated by using The More or Less Definitive Guide to Self-Care for inspiration. However, I mostly wrote down my own thoughts and gave credit to Anna Borges, the author, where needed.

The more challenging part was reading an dcommenting on other bloggers’ posts. I still must say I find the Google spreadsheet a harder to use format than the linky the challenge used until 2017. However, I was able to work it somehow. Then, still, it took quite a bit of time to visit a satisfactory (to me) number of other bloggers. I had only a few bloggers I followed in my feed reader, so most I visited only occasionally. I liked the new connections though.

The absolute best part of the challenge though was that it kept me motivated to write. Or maybe my motivation to write helped me complete the challenge. I’m not sure. In any case, I loved being active on my blog and look forward to staying in this zone for a long time to come.

Real Neat Blog Award

Posted on May 9, 2020 by Astrid

This Thursday, I was tagged for the Real Neat Blog Award by Emilia of My Inner MishMash. Thanks so much!

Here are the questions Emilia asked her nominees.

1. What’s your eye colour? Do you like it or would you change it if you could?
My eye color is a kind of weird blue-green-grey mix. I guess I like it, though I’ve never had enough vision to actually see it. I had a cataract on my left eye for many years before getting it removed in 2013. The eye surgeon told my husband that, even if it didn’t have any positive effect on my vision, it was good for my appearance that it was gone.

2. Have you had a good relationship with your parents?
Well, uhm, it’s complicated. As a child, I thought my life was pretty normal, but as I grew up, I realized my relationship with my parents really wasn’t as it should have been.

3. If you had to rename yourself, what would your name be?
Uhm, I guess it depends on who’s fronting. Like, each of us alters would like our own name.

4. Do you like to daydream? If so, does your dream world look in any specific way that you are able to describe?
We love to daydream. We don’t have an extensive inner world though, or it changes depending on our needs. Like, Milou created an inside beach and we often like to retreat there.

5. If you feel very hungry, what is your go-to meal?
Anything. I really can eat anything I normally like when very hungry. That being said, when I’m hungry, I do get more irritated than usual if the food delivery company has served me a meal I normally don’t like.

6. What is your favourite instrument or one that you would like to learn to play?
Guitar. I took a few guitar lessons when on a summer camp in Russia in 2000, but the instructor spoke only Russian and English and I spoke only Dutch and a tiny bit of English. It wasn’t a success.

7. What types of blogs/blog posts do you most enjoy reading?
Really anything authentic. In other words, I don’t care much for sponsored posts or the like, but anything that’s written from the heart, I’ll read.

8. Do you like to sing?
No.

9. What is the best way for you to recharge after an exhausting day, whether physically or mentally?
That would have to be retreat into my bed with calming music on and a scent I love in my essential oil diffuser.

10. If you were a founder of a charity, whom/what would it work for?
It would be an organization advocating for people with complex care needs or multiple disabilities.

Here are my nominees.