Tag Archives: career

August 15, 2022 · 11:15

AD project update

I am conflicted with my main project AD (anthropomorphic dystopian idea); I had wanted this to be the one that goes out to agents in October and that might still happen, but I feel I am not ready for that on a personal level.  What I do feel ready to release in October potentially could be another project I am halfway through, which is my Christmas story.

Why am I so conflicted? 

Because I want my AD project to be a graphic novel and I also want to do the art for it too, but my art is not good enough for what I want it to be yet.  So, I am making it something I don’t want it to be – a series of novellas.

I want to stay true to my heart, but some friends who have had big hints about the work want this project out there now!  I feel I owe it to them; so many people are excited for this project.

But do I want to renege on my plans for it to be a graphic novel and make a series of novellas out them at the risk that someday I might re-write it in graphic novel form and get it published again in that format, or should I wait?

My heart tells me two things – hurry up and practise your art work and how to write graphic novels professionally and get the work out there ASAP, but it also says, it’s not realistic just yet, give yourself another year, you can always send out your other works which don’t need so much from you!

The problem comes with the fact that one of my friends is so excited about the idea, that it has stirred a desire in them to make something similar, based on hints I’ve given them about the plot.  They can’t plagiarise it, as it is very vague, but the vague outline I have given is enough that it could be a direct competition.  They have promised not to create their urges just yet, but they have said to me that they may not hold back after spring 2023 if I haven’t sent it anywhere – because they have to presume that I am not really interested in a career by then, if I hold back for a few more months… yet again.

I am serious about starting a writing career at the end of this year.  In October I am going to turn forty and I am determined to get something out there at least.

If an agent doesn’t want to represent whatever work I put out by January 1st, then I will personally publish an anthology of my poems through Amazon and start looking towards writing magazine articles and short stories whilst still on the lookout.

I am very interested in approaching a British gardening magazines because of my in depth knowledge about gardening organically and so on; this is something I have wanted to do for a few years now.

Paul wants to collaborate with me as well for wildlife photography magazines etc.

So all of this starts by the end of this year, I wasn’t ready for it before now, but now I am – particularly as my health is stabilising and I am getting more good days.

Another friend knows my dream is mostly to write for movies, that although I love books and being creative, my dream is for my ideas to be televised in some way.  They’ve put me into contact with someone who has put me on a free screenwriting course and so that’s on the go as well at the moment!  Henry is honing his skills with the computer to create special effects etc., so we can make snazzy YouTube art movies together, based on my ideas and a friend has suggested I start attending short film festivals.

All of the above will be documented here in this blog as it happens, so expect better content in a few months’ time!

So for now, project AD is still being written, but it is in a state of limbo – should I or shan’t I send it to an agent in October?

Who knows what I will do!

Happy reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under About my work

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 11, 2022 · 11:15

Woah what have I done?

I have been keeping very quiet about a certain little underground problem; I say it’s underground because it hasn’t actually directly been aimed at me exactly, only through hearsay.

I have the hearsay of online acquaintances that a certain vlogger has been doing her utmost to try and tarnish my reputation behind the scenes by friending anyone connected to me to get any details about me and to basically, lie about me in parts.  These online acquaintances have warned me she is doing this because of jealousy – I don’t know why, because I have never had a book published whilst she has!

I am embarrassed that this is going on behind my back, because I dislike drama llamas and I don’t engage with gossip and things like that generally, unless it gets too out of hand and it is getting out of hand because I am actually becoming concerned of the reputation of the person doing this. They don’t realise it, but they are killing their reputation with their venomous behaviour and though they are being nasty about me, I am concerned for them!

Their YouTube is slowly experiencing a death, because they prefer the quickness of Tik Tok, but they are using Tik Tok wrong.  In fact dangerously so, because they are spouting discrimination and hatefulness at every turn at a quick fire pace without realising of the consequences that this could have on their own personal lives.

Nobody wants to work with someone who is a poisonous, backstabbing, bully – to put it mildly.  I know these are strong words, but I am saying it how people would see it, if they are watching what she is doing.

She doesn’t realise that this is not a reflection of how professional she claims to be in comparison to other people who seem to be less so – it’s a reflection of her as a person and so far she is not projecting a nice persona that endears people to her – basically shooting herself in the foot in the process, when she desires the opposite effect.

She is struggling to maintain her career as far as I can see, yet, she is doing everything that is counterproductive to try and reclaim it.

This is the danger of fast paced vlogging – people can do quick-fire posts about heated discussions, defame, delete, discriminate, delete, as and when they please and they think they can do this without observers, seeing!

An example of this would be, my son, after hearing the rumors about this person decided he will go and see who she is and what she is saying.  He was horrified when she called me a C— and then deleted that comment twenty minutes later.  Why she has singled me out in particular I have no idea.

I wouldn’t have posted this if it weren’t for one major thing – the personal attack on my mixed ancestry and suggesting it’s fake and that everything about me is fake. Also ageist comments; Personal attacks like this is discrimination – it’s illegal! Don’t claim to know things via presumptions when you don’t know someone, as it will come back to bite you some day! If this continues, I will be forced to take legal action.

But because I am a person who doesn’t like to engage in drama and I like to mind my own business and wish the world luck and love – I am not going to mention their name here… why?  Because they’ve contacted enough people who know me, that the people who have been contacted by her, can already guess who the blazes I am on about.

There is only one mega bully online that is making herself famous by her vitriol of many people, not just me.

I do not like to react quickly to things like this and I have said before, that my blog posts are usually written in first draft only.  But because I don’t want to take the bait, I have edited this post six times over the course of ten days!

No doubt she will shoot herself in the foot again by posting multiple tik tok videos screeching about it whilst also having a certain grace in not naming me directly too.

Why she has decided to single me out is beyond me as we have never engaged in a conversation and we are poles apart in the genres of which we write, she is mostly a sci-fi, thriller author, whereas I am mostly a fantasy, steampunk and horror writer.

Because I am concerned for her career and her reputation, I believe it is time for me to broadcast that what she is doing is not only ruining her own future with what she is doing, but she is also engaging in illegal activity whilst doing so.  Ageism and all forms of discrimination is a crime and she can be taken to court for it, just thought she should know.

People, especially this day and age find all forms of hate grotesque and she is emulating so much venom with every post she is doing, that she is going into very dangerous territory on a personal level.

I fell into the trap of people pleasing because some things she was spreading about me was getting to me; I felt the need to try and prove everything I am doing all the time and I felt that my way of writing was wrong – but there is no right or wrong way to write.

I am not going to prove anything to anyone, because I don’t have the time and the energy to do so – whether they believe I am a writer or not, I don’t care, because I know I am one and I write profusely every day, even if I often forget to update what I am doing online to the world. 

I have a son to take care of, a house, myself, my partner, my pets, my garden, generally having a life as well as reading and writing.  Not sitting back like some young lonely sad creature who wants to bully the world because things aren’t going her way.

It is sad when some people feel that the only way to become famous is to become some kind of motor mouth of poison, of hatred, of shocks and taboo!  It’s really sad that there are people out there who have no pride in themselves that they can do this.

I bring nothing but love to people, because this world is a harsh one.  I love everybody, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I will fight for anybody who needs it; however, I am easily hurt and once I am hurt, I don’t forget, but I do tend to forgive eventually. 

I have so much love to give, it’s a shame she didn’t want to try and contact me to make friends and that she chose this route to reach out to me.

People who know me offline have always said I am a very motherly person who would adopt the world if she could; this has been something that has been said to me, even back in high school – which is why I was once nicknamed “The mother raven” I was a goth, but I loved everyone and tried my best to help the world.

The writing community is a lovely one to be a part of, when things aren’t so vicious. It’s a shame there are people out there who wants to spread evil in the world and damage communities as well as personal confidences.

That is all I am going to say now.  For me, this should end things, though I am sure in some way it may have fuelled the fire in her – but I am not responsible for how she chooses to react to the world and what I say.

However, I am responsible for my own words and actions and I take full responsibility of those words and actions and I wish to no longer engage in this vitriol – because I am not going to become one of these writers who have some stupid historical rival with anybody!

For me, I wish that anyone who engages with this person to remain silent about any more things she has to say about me.  I don’t wish to know.

Thank you for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under About my work

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 8, 2022 · 11:15

My life in work

What work experience have I had?

I have been mostly unemployed in my adult life due to ill health, but I have worked in numerous organisations and I have a variety of skills that are not pertaining to creative pursuits.

I also want to clarify one essential thing here – I am not a drop out, because a drop out is someone who chooses to drop out of their own accord – I was pulled out and labelled a drop out by my family to other people.  But you must understand that my family were aggressive manipulators and I had to obey their wishes, because I was so sheltered I honestly thought, until I was twenty seven that a mother can’t be arrested for mental abuse, blackmail, brain washing and manipulation! 

My first ever unpaid job was a classroom assistant at an infant school in North London, I was there only for six weeks before the law changed that you had to have a minimal qualification in GNVQ level 1 or be a parent in order to continue working with children.  The head teacher was sorry to see me go, because she had also been my very first teacher when I was small.  She had intended to employ me after this work experience trial but due to law changes had to decline. 

I was in and out of school most of my childhood because my mother was inconsistent in maintaining my attendance score for scores of reasons!  The best score I ever had was 38% I had attended no less than fourteen individual schools between the age of five and fifteen and for as little as three days to eighteen months in attendance to them.  Most averaging three months, with long bouts of home education.

It really pained her to tell me I couldn’t stay in employment with her and was sure I’d go to university and become the primary school teacher I wanted to become.  My mother had different ideas.

You will find throughout my life until I broke off with my mother in 2012 that there were lots of different occupations I had trained for or endeavoured to have, but because she never approved of it, I never had a longstanding career in anything and lost many a job due to her behaviour.  But this is a post about my work life, not my obstacles pertaining to it!

My second ever occupation was working as an assistant at a hairdressing salon, for a family friend; because there was big issues and input in what I would and wouldn’t do according to my mum and my big brother, the idea of eventually becoming trained to work with this friend was ludicrous, because according to my brother only people who don’t have brains become hairdressers and I certainly have a brain he said and he intended that I use it!  Ouch, what a horrible comment to the beauty industry!  I know a lot of very clever and even academic ladies who are beauticians and hairdressers, it’s such a horrible stereotype what he said!

I only worked in the hairdressing salon for two months, because my brother hit the roof about it.

My third job was labelling glue bottles for my dad’s boss; it was a temporary job to get me over a summer break in college, where I was made to learn IT for two whole years, only for me to be pulled out in the last two months with no qualification! 

It wasn’t until I was twenty years old that I realised that my parents didn’t teach me that between jobs I could be getting money from the job centre and other disability benefits and I didn’t have a national insurance card until then either, because I wasn’t in education at the time either.  I had no idea that what my mother got me into was actually illegal, working without declaration and I was going to get into trouble for it!  When my mother let the cat out of the bag and explained what happened and how I genuinely was ignorant to what happened, things smoothed over – but mum had to fork the bill!

I have no idea to this day what the blazes happened in that office, other than I knew that if mum didn’t do whatever she did that day, we’d both have ended up in jail for fraud and I had no idea why and still don’t! 

My fourth job was working for my brother in his business as a receptionist for a few weeks before that fell flat due to his own customer service skills and lack of general dedication to the work!

My fifth job was working for MENCAP as a front desk receptionist and creative therapy assistant, my longest reigning job that lasted nearly two years, part time, three times a week for two hours in the morning; I absolutely loved that job but mum demanded more money from me and made me pull out of that for something that would financially improve her life!

My fifth job was working at The Camden Society, after being a client of the charity for eighteen months, because of severe PTSD affecting me finding work elsewhere, something horrible happened to me between these jobs.  This charity employed me themselves as a front desk receptionist for four months, before giving me a job as a key support worker for the charities café which is run by people with special needs.  I worked here for nine months in this role before being asked to leave due to financial cuts.

My sixth job was a two week wonder as a TESCO home shopper. 

My seventh job was for Christmas only at Marks and Spencer’s cashier.

My eighth job lasted two days due to interference from my mother – I became a fully trained health and safety officer and I couldn’t keep the job because my mother followed me to venues of observation and caused scenes.

My ninth job if I can call it that, was when I was trained to train security dogs and then get employed after the training, but after the training my mother made me give it up, because she didn’t want me bringing my work home with me!  Two German shepherd dogs twice a year, once trained I would lose them!   

My tenth job was a language support worker for Chinese children in a school in North London, I had this job only for two weeks, because I was uncomfortable with the boss and then my mother said something to him!

My eleventh job was a telephone tarot card reader, at home – the job lasted three days before I lost it due to complaints from the company I worked for that my mother could be heard at the other end of the phone berating my readings.

The last job I ever had was self-employed as an eBay seller, this stopped because my mother wouldn’t let me sell my things!

I gave up the last two years I lived with my mum and I let her control my life even more, because I just wanted to get on with my life and keep a job, so I left myself entirely in her hands!  I never had a job the whole time and I attended six different courses only completing two to certification and then I decided I had enough and left her.

I then became pregnant which held off employment because I wanted my son to be able to talk to me about what carers might have done to him before I got a job, by then, I had got too sick to work and lost further hearing in my left ear which makes telephone conversations impossible!  Along with this I also have splenomegaly and several auto-immune diseases, such as rheumatic arthritis, IBS, IBD, lupus, inner ear auto-immune disease and recently, doctors have me on a waiting list to confirm MS.

So there you have it, my life in work!

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under About Me

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

July 21, 2022 · 11:15

Explaining the codes

I tried my best to stick to one writing project for nearly three weeks now and I have learned that the concept of “The One Thing” cannot be applied to my life as a writer; I tried to focus myself on just the one project – the Anthropomorphic Dystopian project, but I can’t just focus on one thing at a time.

The aim of forcing me to do one thing at a time was to make me more productive, but for my brain, my ADD brain, it made it less productive.  I was writing overall three thousand words a day less than usual just to stick true to the “one” project.

As soon as I decided to give up the “one thing” concept I decided to start immediately and by the end of the day my words had increased by three thousand again.

Five hundred words to the current project and a further 2800 or so words towards a vampire project; this was not including words I wrote in journals, handwritten, poetic form or blog posts – just words towards novels or stories.

Because I have had some DMs suggesting I am a liar about my word count, particularly as I have nothing published yet, I am going back to what I used to do – that is sharing my daily word counts.  I am going to do this primarily on twitter @CreativeTardy and the words are going to be code worded to whatever project I wrote towards that day!

Here are the meanings behind my code words for twitter.

AD – my anthropomorphic dystopian project (the one I want to send out in October)

B1 – blog posts scheduled

CS – my Christmas special novel

D1 – my number 1 dragon novel

DW – Dystopian warrior story

FN – my number 1 fantasy novel

Ho – my number 1 horror project

J – Journal entries and non-fiction work

MP – morning pages (rarely done these days though)

P1 – The play I am writing

P2 – plans and notes towards new work

PS – Poems and songs written

SP – my number 1 steam punk novel

V1 – my number 1 vampire novel

V2 – my number 2 vampire novel

So, I am doing this to show how much I do actually write as a hobbyist – the word count will improve in September because I consider myself taking this on as an actual job by then; so instead of working whenever I feel like it, I will be writing seriously every day an absolute minimum word count.  Because I am deadly serious that my life is going to begin at forty!

If there is one thing that people who know me personally can say about me is that I am stubborn when I have something in mind.

I work better and more frequently when there are a handful of projects on the go at once; I am a rigorous planner and I have been mulling over these ideas for years now, which means that in my mind, they really are ready for release into the wild, as it were.

From September the 1st 2022, I will be making sure I write a minimum of 3k words a day towards any currently writing novel but I will work for around four hours a day so it could be a higher word count upon reflection, as well as the other stuff on top.  For me, that’s an easy goal, because I do write anywhere between 500 and 3500 on writing days as a hobbyist and I never write for more than two hours in a day.  But in September I won’t be a hobbyist anymore!

I am dedicating 3k to a day, so that I know when I am having a tough day (medically speaking) I can stop and take a breather, but I would have the intention on good days to work for the full four hours, which in my experience, could total up to around 7k!

I’ve worked out the best time for me to write based on school holidays and when Henry has sick days off from school – for me, I will write two hours twice a day.  My best times to write where I am less likely to be disturbed when Henry is home are 1pm to 3pm and 1am to 3am every day.  That’s doable for me because most days I don’t sleep until 4am anyway!

This will mean that from September my social media presence will probably start around 3:30pm GMT till maybe 5pm depends on life circumstances and I may also go on half an hour after I write in early hours too.

Just a heads up that I am about to do some serious writing!

Thanks for reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under About my work

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 29, 2022 · 18:50

Sickness and feng shui

Covid hit my Henry in the first week of April, then it hit me a few days later, because of this I have been functioning at zombie level, because not only did I have Covid at the time but I was recovering from a non-Covid chest infection and gastric flu – which coincidentally, happened again just a couple of days ago.  More gastric flu hit the house on Wednesday and apparently gastric flu is spiralling in and out of everybody’s lives a lot in the last few weeks or around here in any case.

Because of all of this, I haven’t written a word towards a novel since the 2nd February 2022, ironic considering this was going to be my hardest working year in writing and I wanted to start as I meant to go on for the year.

I am exhausted but recovering slowly, my asthma seems much worse these days and my bronchial tubes seem to be permanently filmy and half opened, along with this it is also a bad hay fever allergy year for me.

Just existing is difficult these days, but I am trying to push through and though I have never been a huge coffee drinker, Covid has made me become one of the worlds many addicts as it seems to be one of the main things which is helping me through it all!

I don’t know if it is my neurological problem or Covid which has made this happen, but recently I am struggling to walk in a stable manner and I am finding it hard to sit up from a laying down position.  My legs feel like they have weights on them, however the weird thing about it is, it is as though I am walking on air at the same time, or that the ground has become marshmallowy.

My appetite has decreased further, where a simple dish of a small salmon fillet and half of a small a jacket potato with nothing else, is a feast to me!  This has meant, finding highly nutritious and varied foods on a small scale has become hard to manage.  I literally need micro-meals, I don’t mean microwave meals either, I mean small meals, miniscule for an adult, perfect for a 5yr old and I need to eat at stupid times.  I now regularly have to have a small meal at 10:30 pm just to get enough calories and nutrition in the day, which doesn’t help the insomnia.

A positive thing though, is I have discovered I am not actually lactose intolerant at all – I have found I have issues with gluten and lactose purely because those foods contained soy, since eliminating soy completely from my diet, I am now able to eat gluten and lactose again and let me tell you, its pure joy!  Though being a Chinese food addict means I can’t indulge in that anymore unless it is homemade and without soy!

I found out because twice I accidentally consumed things containing milk and then expected a bad night of gastric like proportions, but no, nothing happened.  Then I had another food which had milk and soy and I reacted, Paul thought that maybe it’s because I ran out of enzymes, but then we noticed that my lactase pills were not working for certain food items.  So I began a soy elimination diet, as suggested by a friend.

So I had been spending £18 a month needlessly on lactase pills, because it wasn’t a lactose problem at all, it was a soy one!

Despite being ill a lot this year, there is a noticeable improvement in other areas of my health, since going back onto lactose and gluten.  My skin and hair have improved a lot and a couple of other personal issues.

Henry is currently sick with very bad gastric flu and his fever broke earlier today, he had a temperature for so long that the doctor had said that on Saturday, if there was no improvement, he would have had to of been admitted, so there is a lot of relief there that the fever has now broken!

Because of all these health issues and so on, I decided that I should reconsider the house in a feng shui style, I knew certain aspects about feng shui, but not a lot, and I realised that things were better in certain years when furniture was in different places and worse when it was moved in other places.  Considering this, I read some books about what I did right back then, but was doing wrong now.  I found that there is a lot of blockages in areas that was good, particularly the health – which explains why we’re sick potentially.  The health centre of our house was established around the time I started to get sick eight years ago as a laundry pile area – not good feng shui, also we have small mirrors which we glued around each other so our reflections are always fragmented and cut up into bits, again not good feng shui!

Also I noticed that I moved dragon ornaments away from the places that they would like to be according to feng shui, we did better financially when a dragon and a tortoise was in the south west corner of the living room, but things have changed since I put them both in the south area of our bedroom!  Effectively moving them from the transformation area to the career area – career wise things may have improved as we are developing good contacts, though have not dedicated ourselves fully into creating a career just yet – so we will not move them back to the transformation area, but instead, move a spare dragon from another area to the transformation area and then move the tortoise out of the bathroom, which is a bad area to keep it according to the practise, especially as the bathroom is half in the health area!  Because our health centre is split into two rooms, which is unusual and complicated in Feng shui terms!

I love Chinese culture a lot, I believe a lot in the Chinese astrology and I do not like western astrology, I believe Chinese astrology to be more accurate in my life.  So, the idea of throwing me into Feng shui as well, I think, is a good idea!

My grandmother always said there was Chinese in my family, but I found out that she was slightly wrong about the nationality; they were actually Vietnamese and Singaporean ancestors, which kind of explain my so-called throwback eyes as some people call them (I actually think it’s kind of rude, but there you go).

 I would love nothing better than to move the furniture around again, but at the moment the family is sick and the areas I want to move would cause bad things to happen moreso this year, because those areas are all the areas of this year’s sha chi, which means if you move those areas outside of good construction days (according to chinese astrology) you will activate the bad energy there and make things much worse.  So we can’t make improvements until the 9th of May or the 23rd and 24th of May, as per the household’s astrology signs.

I am a water dog, Henry is a metal tiger and Paul is a fire monkey!

Anyway, thank you for reading and maybe in the future there will be more about the feng shui as I learn more.

Leave a comment

Filed under About Me

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 22, 2022 · 17:33

Neurological problems

Why have I started to schedule myself so rigorously?

Because I would like to be more productive in writing my stories and actually sending them off for the first time to an agent for representation and to start a career as a writer, instead of having the lifestyle of an unpublished writer!

I am also doing this because I am getting scary neurological symptoms, which look likely that my ability to write, may not last long.  I know that may mean that agents will be very reluctant to take me on, because potentially my writing career could be short, but I hope that I get enough books out there, that I would have felt that I have at least done that.

What neurological symptoms have I been getting? 

The inability to realise I have said wrong words in a sentence and even wrote wrong words in a sentence.

I have also struggled to pronounce easy things and jumbled words up, for example, I have never had problems with literacy, ever, and it has always been my strong point.  But I may, in my speech say something like this…

“I waked to the ships today” instead of “I walked to the shops today”.

I am also making huge nonsensical writing errors, such as….

“They needed to zit down and drink about things” instead of “They needed to sit down and think about things”.

This is not too regular, but it is increasing in its regularity as months go on.  This started around 10yrs ago, but it was fun back then, because I thought it was just the odd spoonerism, but the odd spoonerism, which would happen around twice a week is now a three or more times a day thing on average.

I am also finding it hard to focus on conversations and answer questions quickly.  My son is causing issues with this, because he is impatient and bad tempered and he wants quick fire answers to his quick fire questions all the time!  I get muddled and I come across as offensive because I am confused.

For example he rambled off ten questions in the space of two minutes and then, my brain hadn’t caught up.  He told me he is upset with this life and he is becoming a bad negative person over it and he hates himself, then wattle on for a couple of more sentences then he said to me…

“Oh by the way, dad just said my test is negative, are you happy I am negative”?  I said that I wasn’t happy he was negative because he needs to find something to be happy about.

But before I could finish the sentence, Henry screamed and ran away and slammed the door, I was confused by this.  Paul explained that I didn’t understand what he tried to say to me, that Henry now thinks that I am not happy that he is Covid free and my god that felt awful!

But it is things like this, which seems to be making me feel like I am going around the twist!  It is one major factor as to why I am not writing as much as I used to for the blog.

I have noticed a lot of huge errors in past posts!

Thing is, my brain is changing so much that I don’t even recognise the errors even when I read after I wrote.  It can take one of my good days, when I am not so ill, to realise what I have done.

I am scared, but there is nothing I can do about it, because hospital appointments during Covid are almost non-existent now, even if the doctor has put me down for emergency scans and so forth.

I am scared because MS, motor neurone disease and early dementia are rife in my family on both sides.

Happy reading everyone!

Leave a comment

Filed under About my work

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

October 3, 2021 · 11:00

It’s my birthday and I hope for better things!

It is my birthday today I am thirty nine and I hope that the saying “life begins at forty” is a true one!  I hope so much that with these emergency appointments I have at the hospital etc. is going to fix something and that I can have a normal life again!

There are so many things I want to do with my life, but when it is a tiring task to just get dressed and maybe vacuum a room in a day at most, it is hard to see past that.

Things I would love to do if only the health was there… obvious one would be study and work outside of the house.  I miss people interaction and I love jobs where I am in the service of others, not just my creative pursuits, of course I love my creativity and it would be lovely to have a job where creativity is a must, but generally I love jobs where I feel I am needed and relied upon for things – particularly hospitality.  I am a lovely meet and greeter, always happy to help, with a bubbly personality, professional manner and experience as head of admin and customer services. 

I often wonder if Sue Holderness remembers me, during my short time as Christmas staff at Marks & Spencer’s she would always gravitate towards my till because she said I was pleasant and she often added points to my services as Marks and Spencer’s have a point system in play for their staff to see who is performing well.  I was only there for a few days over one particular Christmas; I doubt she’d remember me!

I used to love work and if I had been allowed to keep my jobs in the past I would have.  It sounds funny to say that, because it is not a normal thing to say – but it is true, in the past many times I had a lovely job I loved dearly, but I was forced to give it up as it didn’t sit well with my mother.  For those who are new to my blog, I was micro-managed within an inch of my life by my mother who tried to isolate me for years and I only managed to get her out of my life fully in 2013, when I was twenty nine, just shortly after Henry’s 3rd birthday in fact.

Thinking differently these days, I may not go into hospitality if I had the health back though, I have other ideas.  I am not sure if starting university for a science degree and to have a science career would be something someone my age should really consider.  But it is interesting; I have an unnatural curiosity and obsession with microbiomes; but maybe that is more of a hobby thing… like gardening?

I had thought, what I would do if I found out my health problems are actually curable even if it is by 50% – I had thought what would I do with my life now?

Obviously still write and do art, but what else? 

I had thought about the concept that my lungs may allow me to once again do music and singing again and if it did, I have to say musical theatre pulls me;  Particularly writing operas or comedy musicals for the stage.  One of the things I have neglected about myself a lot since becoming ill is my love for music to the extent of practising my instruments and composing becoming non-existent.

I miss musical composition more than I miss the idea of sitting down to write a full length novel, to be honest… well a full length non-vampire or dragon novel that is.

I do know I miss sport a lot too, I was very active before getting sick – walking an average of nine miles per day, just for the fun of it and also because I am a cheapskate and walked everywhere for the sheer economy of it.  I love bowling, basketball, jogging, and cricket and wanted to take up rock climbing, to name but a few.  But one thing I did really want to get back into and that is dog agility training and judo.  I am also a true water baby and twice I nearly got into the commonwealth games in my life, once for swimming and once for judo, but shit happens.

The commonwealth audition was cancelled due to emergency life-saving mastoid surgery, which consequently ended my judo career before it even had a chance!

The swimming for the junior games was cancelled because my mother wouldn’t let me go and stay the night away from home without her and made me decline.

I know I have to think about practical things, but I do like working for charities, at least half of my previous jobs were helping disabled people, particularly those with mental learning difficulties or brain injuries.  I have a passion for helping people and fighting for their rights to lead a dignified life!

I have been in a situation myself where I have been in special needs schools for a few months in between home schooling, I also have a long history of mental health where for four years I had to go to a day care centre at Napsbury hospital for treatment as a child and schooling as well as being in a very physically vulnerable state with sensory deprivation for nearly two whole years!  I have seen two sides of people who are supposed to be “carers, in caring jobs” and it is not all good.

I went through a time as a child where I was absolutely terrified of all men, except male relatives who were close to me, I wouldn’t speak to anyone if they were a stranger for at least ten or more visits and I went into strange bouts of bulimia, anorexia and compulsive eating throughout most of my life – this cooled off a lot when I met Paul.  I was spiralling into food obsession for three years before I met him.

It is totally weird how, now I am away from the stresses which dictated my eating habits, that I have developed a sickness where I can’t eat a bunch of specific foods without pain and vomiting and some people who remember my past, have asked me on the quiet, “it’s not your old thing again is it”?  I still maintain some friendships distantly via facebook and pen palling with some of my day care compatriots, who remembers a the time where I ate half an orange and a quarter of a cheese sandwich without rushing to the bathroom and they celebrated it for me, whilst I just sat there frowning and grimacing at the fuss and the taste.

I will say though, that I am becoming more and more of a picky eater despite the dietary restrictions I am under because of my intolerances.  This does worry Paul, because with our current budget, he is struggling to provide for me.

I must maintain a gluten free and lactose free diet, I cannot eat flax seeds, I can’t have too much sugar in a day, I minimise citrus fruits, I can’t have soy, I can’t have vinegar unless I want pain (who does?), I may have a mustard intolerance as recently I am reacting against mayo and a couple of other sauces which have mustard in, I can’t have pineapple and I can’t have anything too fatty and if it is fatty it has to be because of olive oil, I must be careful with eggs, no more than 3 times a week!  I can’t have too much coconut produce either; I can only eat small amounts of beef and no more than twice a week!  I shouldn’t have tomatoes everyday either, but that one is a hard one to surrender as I like tomatoes almost with everything!  But ideally I should never have them according to doctors.  I can only have two Brazil nuts in one sitting before strange things happen to my mouth! I can only have a beverage with tannin no more than once per day and preferably not at night. So, yes, I am not fussy about all of these, this is just the foods I can’t have because my body will hurt me a lot if I do!  Because of all of this, I have according to the doctor a very low salt diet, because I don’t add salt to my cooking and he told me I need to start, because my levels are too low at times and could account for the cramps I get!

So, as perplexed as you all are, I know you are, because I have seen the faces of offline friends when I mention this to them – what the fuck do you actually eat then Tina?  Food, to put it bluntly, proper, wholesome, mostly unprocessed food, weird isn’t it?

It’s the reason I love sauerkraut so much, the salt my body needs, the cabbage is really good for you too and you get added microbes for your gut!  Ironically, my health is slightly improved for the gherkins (dill pickles) and sauerkraut I eat these days, without that being in my diet three times a week, I would actually be a lot sicker!  I know, I tested it out for a whole month and it thwacked me hard!

I think the unhealthiest thing I eat these days is the local chippy once a fortnight, because I don’t eat their battered fish, I prefer their kebabs without the bread that is!  They have their own oily sauerkraut with gherkins and pickled jalapenos and its sheer heaven with their homemade chilli sauce!  Their meat is also homemade, so they guarantee it has no gluten and lactose and they don’t spice it as much as the places in town, so it’s just like fatty lamb pates really.

My most usual food to eat for dinner is gluten free pasta with homemade chicken arribiata, pan fried salmon stir fry or sausage and bean casserole with mashed potatoes.

My most usual food for lunch is, fried tomatoes and mushrooms with gluten free toast, a smoothie, vegetable frittata, or Ham & lacto free cheddar cheese ploughman’s sandwich with gluten free bread, I know the sweet pickle has a bad product for me, but it is so little my body hardly notices too much.   I don’t have celiac disease apparently, it is an unidentified IBD.

My most usual breakfast is, air, or very rarely cinnamon gluten free porridge or just homemade fruit salad.

My snacks are nuts, celery, carrot sticks, lactose free Nutella with gluten free digestive biscuits or rice cakes, pancakes with said Nutella or lemons or honey or maple syrup or fruit compotes, fruit, or smoothies, rarely jellied pick n mix and crisps purely for the low salt days. 

When finances improve, I am excited to ditch a lot of the above for things I really love!  Such as honey nuts, dark chocolate with fruit in, fruit leathers, chicken legs, kimchi, , king prawns and the expensive fruits and veg like avocadoes, coconuts, pomegranates, figs, chickpeas, mange tout, things someone on my budget consider birthday or Christmas treats!

Well it’s a life I hope that will happen anyhow, I am trying my best to fight through it all and get that life, even if my body does seem held bent on killing me!

Happy reading!

Leave a comment

Filed under About Me

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,