By Stephie, on Monday 2nd August, 2010 at 20:17 pm
 
Yes I may sometimes get suicidal, but lithium in my water supply? No thanks! It’s a ‘Dangerous Idea’ over at Big Think. It’s been shown in a study that people in Texas who have natural low levels of lithium in their water supply are at a lesser risk of suicide than the general population who do not. The proposal is to put lithium in the water supply, much the same way as fluoride is, to help reduce the risk of suicide in the overall population. By the way, it seems it also reduces crime and drug addiction… What do you think? Should people like me be drugged via the water supply to reduce the risk of us committing suicide? Or to cut crime and drug addiction come to that? It’s a very scary proposal if you ask me… I left my comments on Big Think, feel free to leave yours here, or there 
Image from George Orwell.
By Stephie, on Friday 28th May, 2010 at 17:54 pm
I’ve been bobbing along for a few days now, in a kind of dazed and confused sort of way, feeling flat as a pancake. I had a review at the funny farm earlier this week, where I talked about my fears of seeing that black hole again. Well, I can see it, my fear is falling into it. We talked about recognising those feelings and what might be triggering them, if anything. We also talked about ways of dealing with them. Thing is, you learn a lot about dealing with them,
 If only running 13 miles was as easy as putting on a pink jacket! putting it in to practice is something else. Things like being compassionate to yourself, giving yourself a bit of slack from the infernal self-criticism; self-soothing and acceptance. Anger was also suggested!!! (I’m really crap at that!) So for now I’m trying to self-sooth my way out of these ominous feelings, or at least to hold back them back.
We all know that exercise is meant to be good for low mood, so whilst my mood is low, rather than deep, I’m going to try and motivate myself to do some regular exercise. I love anything that’s really physical, makes you sweat and more importantly makes you completely exhausted. I don’t know why but I love that feeling; after the initial exhaustion I generally get a feeling of satisfaction, and on a good day, of complete exhilaration. The difficulty I always have, when my mood starts dropping, is keeping exercise regular. So this time I have a cunning plan…
Well, I don’t know about cunning, maybe insane would be a better word! I thought to myself ‘what I need is a goal, something to work towards and focus on’. So after a particularly exhilarating 3 mile run on Wednesday I impulsively signed up for a half marathon in October, organised by the Eden Project in Cornwall. I know! As I pressed send, I thought omg, what have I done, 13 bloody miles of hills, you must be sodding mad! I’ve completed ‘extreme’ challenges before – the Three Peaks Challenge and trekking the Inca Trail (with Tony Hadley no less!!!), both for the charity Action Medical Research. This challenge is different though as I’m running it independently, without the support of a charity. Still, I thought, I’m not running all that way without trying to raise something for charity – and of course once I’ve got some sponsorship there’s no ducking out is there! (Great for my selfish reason of keeping back the black hole of doom!). So what charity should I support? Well, there couldn’t be any doubt really could there… It’s MIND, the charity for mental health in the UK  I’ve even set up a fundraising page and to my utter astonishment have already had sponsorship!
I’ve informed Mind that I’m fundraising for them and hope to raise £250 – but really I’d love to raise a lot more. So I guess that means I’m going to be badgering anyone and everyone to sponsor me in this, one of my many madnesses! And the next inevitable sentence is…
Please sponsor me to raise money for Mind by making a donation on my fundraising page at Virgin Money Giving. Go on, you know you want to – and more importantly you know I won’t shut up until you do, ha, ha!
Love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Friday 30th April, 2010 at 22:39 pm
I think it’s official: I’m anxious. It’s not the diagnosis of IBS that makes it official though. No, it’s the sewing of Christmas presents. Yes that’s right, Christmas presents. The urge to finish some things I began in December is overwhelming. And just in case you were thinking that maybe I finally have the urge to finish the star quilt for Kim (that I intended to finish in December 09), I should clarify that it’s the Christmas presents I intend to give this year that I feel compelled to complete. When I start to do things like this I realise I’m going into panic mode. Everything seems out of control and I need to get a handle on it somehow. Bizarrely, it seems to me that making things way ahead of time will help me gain control. I have this feeling that if I don’t do it now it’ll be too late. My CPN has called it a coping mechanism. Whatever.
I feel powerless in many areas of life at the moment. Finances is one. A big one that I won’t bore you with. Weight is another. Yep, I’ve heard it all before: you look great; you don’t look any different; you can’t weight that much… But the fact is, that over the last few months that I’ve been on a new medication I’ve gained weight. And for me this is not good. I can barely ever put anything in my mouth without doing a quick add up of how many calories I’ve eaten that day. It just wears you down. It’s like having contradictory voices in your head all the time: being on this medication has improved your mood swings, a bit of extra weight is an ok price to pay for that/you’re totally crap, you can’t even control your own weight and if you hadn’t lost the plot in the first place you wouldn’t need to be on the stupid medication (this voice wins hands down). And so it goes on.
I also have this major anxiety that I’m wasting time and wasting my life doing unimportant things, like making Christmas presents in April for a start. Yet I can’t focus. Recently I seem to keep thinking about The Future. How the hell am I going to make a living and support Kim and me? What can I do – work in an office all day? No way, that helped send me over the edge last time. Make ‘stuff’, make art to sell? Well who the hell can afford to buy it, and who the hell would want to anyway. My only option is self-employment, and it will have to be arts and crafts (I can’t do anything else!): I have irregular sleep patterns; my moods change like the wind (cowboy!); it’s the only way I can see to be creative – being self-employed would accommodate these things. But I have no money to invest in materials, let alone machinery, marketing and everything else that goes with it. And honestly, do I sound clear headed enough to start anything anyway?
Oh and then there’s Kim. We’re having meal time and bed time battles. When he’s not wearing me down, he’s winning.
…
Since I began writing this post, at about 2am this morning, my anxiety levels have gone up and off the scale. My car has failed its MOT  and it will cost more to repair than I have and more than I can access. I know that running a car is the reason I’m in debt in the first place, should I make that worse by trying to keep it going, or should I beg, steal and borrow to get it sorted, sell it and pay off what I owe? If I do that we’ll be fairly isolated. The nearest ‘mini supermarket’ is three miles away; the nearest Tesco is 6 miles away. Most of our friends live in villages 7+ miles away off the regular bus routes. I have to travel to health appointments that are 12 miles away and 7 miles away. It seems virtually impossible to live without a car and impossible to live with one. How do people get by in these situations? I really don’t know, I feel at a complete loss. All I know is that I feel trapped in near poverty with no prospects, all due to stupid mental ill health.
If I thought things were bad yesterday because I was making Christmas presents, today must be really rough: I’ve got the dead robins out of the freezer and have been drawing and painting.
By Stephie, on Thursday 22nd April, 2010 at 23:36 pm
Want to see some drawings? After all the cushion pushing (ooh er missis!), I thought you might like a bit of a change before the winners are announced tomorrow. (Oh yes, we have 2 winners, but I’m not telling just yet!) I’ve done a few more ink sketches I thought I could show you. I even like some of them
 Here's a cow. It's a dairy cow.  I live on a dairy farm, so here's another cow!  And for a change, here's another self-portrait!  Self portrait number 2, well for the day  and here's the 3rd one for the day. I like this one. Don't know why, just do. I’m planning to put these and a few others into the #draw365 Flickr group over the next day or two. There are some great images there, it’s like a big drawing gallery, have a look and tell me what you think.
I’m also going to plug the group I administer Women’s Self Portraits. We’ve got 11 members now and new work is being added regularly. There’s quite a wide range of media from drawing and painting to photography and installation works. I was interested to see how we define self-portraits today; it’s not all drawings of the face, which make them much more interesting to me. This was kind of the area I was planning to research for a PhD thesis, but so much for that. Bloody stupid system made it impossible. But I won’t bore you with that. Maybe I should rephrase that: I won’t rant at you about that! Trust me, I can rant on that one for hours.
As an aside, actually completely unrelated, I’m sure my lovely child has given me NITS. I’m sitting here scratching the back of my head. It’s intense. And I’ve noticed Kim’s been scratching too. He hasn’t had nits since he was about 7. Why the bloody hell has he got them now?! And which lovely person passed them on to him? Come on, stand up and admit it, dammit it was you wasn’t it, you horrid little boy! Lets face it, it has to be a boy, he doesn’t fraternise with the girls. Well, apart from Georgina on the school bus… I wonder if they were transferred by whoever sat in the bus seat before Kim. How inconsiderate. Don’t they know that Kim and I have hugs and that the little monster was bound to pass them on to me? I can cope with Kim scratching, but I can’t cope with me scratching at all. It’s damn irritating. Especially when you’re trying to write something as riveting as this blog post surely is
Until tomorrow then, adieu.
love Stephie x
By Stephie, on Thursday 11th March, 2010 at 01:20 am
On Sunday I sprained my right ankle. I wasn’t running at the time either. It was Kim’s birthday and we were in town and I just happened to trip up a kerb. I’m always doing things like that, I’m used to it. But I had a bad landing, bruised my foot (black and blue) and pulled the tendons on my ankle and up the side of my leg. I could barely speak with the pain and insisted I sit in the car while Kim and his dad carried on with their wander. I probably shouldn’t have gone for a run on Monday then. And I definitely should have given it a miss on Tuesday. But I didn’t.
Monday was a cold and frosty morning, bright and clear and perfect for running. I put a support on my ankle and decided I’d take it steady. Trouble is I was enjoying myself so much I just kept going and probably went much farther than I should have. I followed a familiar road but then decided to veer off the usual route and crossed the fields to Chacewater, where I then ended up having to run up a very steep hill. By the time I got back home I’d covered about 5 miles. Ooops.
 It was so chilly even the horses had their coats on!  Peeking through the hedge. I spied strangers in the camp, and they'd run an American flag up their mobile flag pole. That's a dangerous thing to do in these parts. Unless you're flying the flag of St Piran you're inviting some vigilante action. And woe betide anyone that hoists an English flag, that's likely to incite a burning You probably don't believe me, but trust me Cornwall is a very proud, wannabe independent place. It has a culture very distinct from the rest of the UK. I love it.  Cross country running - not for girls! Not content with one leg in quite serious pain after the run I probably shouldn't have done, the other leg decided to get in on the action too. Still, no excuses accepted: Tuesday was a running day too. I kept Tuesday’s run to a minimum, just over 2 miles. The return leg home, up a steep bridlepath, was agony on the poorly ankle. I had to walk more than I usually would, which felt like a failure. I decided to take today (Wed) off completely; maybe I’m trying to do too much before my ankle’s healed properly. So with my spare time I took a look at a site I heard about over on Monica’s blog. The website’s called map my run and it’s brilliant! You can literally map your runs, which gives you the distances of routes that you’ve devised; you can create a training journal where you can add routes, and personal details that tell you how many calories you’ve burned. You can keep a record of your heart rate, your weight, how many times you train, what the weather was like; you can even search runs other people have added to the site. It has a lovely feeling of community, which is great when you’re largely running on your own and need some motivation! I even downloaded a half-marathon training programme and I’m dangerously close to signing up for one in October *shudders at the thought, but decided to feel the fear and do it anyway*! It’s odd, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I’m the only person alive that hasn’t heard of this site. Hey ho!
Anyway, now I have a dilemma. I have a training schedule, but should I continue to rest my painful ankle or just run through the pain barrier? I was planning on a short run tomorrow, but now I’m not so sure. What would you do? Run or not I do have a walk along the north cliffs planned for tomorrow, so some exercise is guaranteed! Right oh my darlings, I’m going now (going to see if I can get an ‘early’ night!); if you have any suggestions for tomorrow, don’t be shy and let me know
By Stephie, on Sunday 7th March, 2010 at 00:05 am
Yesterday was meant to be an easy run, but once I got started I couldn’t stop. I’m going to have to get one of those measuring things that go on your chest (or wherever!) because I don’t actually know exactly how far I go! I know one particular road stretch is 1.5 miles because I’ve checked on my car’s mileometer; I know one of the cliff paths I take is 1.5 miles, ‘cos there’s a sign that says so at the beginning, but anywhere else I go is a bit of a guess, a bit of a comparison to the other routes I mentioned. Not very scientific, but hey I’ve never claimed to be a scientist! Hm, just thought I’d have a look at one of those map sites and this one’s pretty good, according to this yesterday’s run was roughly 4.5 – 5 miles; not bad! I ran solidly for about 3 miles and then jogged/walked the rest. I’ll call that ‘interval training’. You can call it what you like!
 This bridle-path was on my last stretch home  When I finally got back I kicked off my trainers and fell asleep!
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I'm running a 28 mile marathon in memory of Josie this February. Come and find out why.
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