The Daily Blog experiment – dilemma

As much as I like to crow that I have life plans and am moving towards goals, I am pretty much blown around by what my brain says is the focus of the moment.

ADHD, autism, whatever it is, when the hyperfocus calls, I answer.

Not that they’re even hyperfocii, because I do get other stuff done. I rarely disappear for hours or days down the rabbithole, and forget to eat, drink, wee, or shower. I want to say ‘I’m not that bad”, but to be honest, I suspect it has more to do with being an undiagnosed AuDHDer for many years, and just having to knock those urges on the head to get shit done.

Maybe my overruling the hyperfocii is my hyperfocus.

Anyway, while I like to call writing my calling, my reason for being alive, my career, my job, my passion, it could well be a Special Interest. I don’t want to reduce it to that. I don’t class it alongside dinosaurs, aromatherapy, and reading.

Right now, as I finish off Season of the Wolf, and start looking towards what to do with my writing coach in June, July, and August, I can feel the urge in me to sit down with tarot, with astrology, and that side of my life. Where’s my witchcraft at? My hippie wants to come out for air.

I want to say ‘Oh, not now, not when I have a vague plan for writing.’ But I know saying ‘not now’ makes no difference.

Do I say to my writing coach ‘looks like my brain is going to be elsewhere’, only to find the tarot and astrology passion lasted 2 weeks? Do I somehow try to incorporate my hippie into my writing? Beats me.

I’m so tempted to have another go at ADHD meds to see if they resolve this. But, since the experiment with them lasted 2 days and has had an ongoing depression, Ex Dys, and existential angst effect, I’m leery.

Ah, the joys of my brain. Dear brain, how can I turn all this to my advantage?

The Daily Blog experiment a photo from the vaults

Black Summer bushfire fundraiser, early 2020, before the COVID lockdowns.

Ah, the summer eastern Australia caught fire, and our then Prime Minister Scott Morrison, aka ScoMo or Scummo, lied to Parliament about work-related travel, and instead fucked off to Hawaii with his family.

“I don’t hold a hose,” he justified.

Meanwhile, photos emerged of previous PM Tony Abbott(loathed him too, but at least he pitched in) fighting the fires as part of the Country Fire Authority.

A Melbourne dancer and crafter decided to raise money to help the Firies out. She put on a fundraiser, and I said “Sure, I’ll help out.”

I decided to fulfil a long-held dream to dance to The Goodies’ theme music. I ordered a tshirt and it arrived the day before. I raced to get it cropped, and elastic sewn into the new hem.

A friend’s daughter cut me a fringed hippie waist coat a la Bill Oddie. I figured my glasses would represent Graeme Garden. And, well, my vaguely pageboy hair would do for Tim Brooke-Taylor.

At the last minute, I decided to add a beard, and my local hairdresser trimmed a faux beard and moustache to look like Bill.

I slunk onto the stage, veil covering my face, then revealed myself to a huge WTAF from the audience. About half the audience were old enough to get the references.

It was all of 2.13 minutes, and some of the best fun I’ve had as a dancer.

You can see the limitation of my left shoulder before my 2022 shoulder joint replacement.

The Daily Blog experiment – Vermontasaurus

Last night I started reading WITCHCRAFT THERAPY by Mandy Em, and I was a timely reminder (again) that I can change myself, my habits, and my circumstances. And the best sort of physical magic is effort. Ain’t no magic gonna happen if I don’t do my part.

To that end, I spent some time wondering what I could put in place instead of an automatic slide into Facebook first thing each morning, which then leads to doomscrolling, and a 9.30am start to my day. Despite a 7.15am wake up.

I discovered the short podcast Atlas Obscura, and it’s a joy to listen to an episode. This morning’s was about Vermontasaurus, a roadside structure in Vermont, USA. A guy invited people to come along with off cuts of wood and help erect a dinosaur. He evaded fines for an illegal structure by calling it art.

He was also an enthusiastic experimental hot air balloonist, until a fall from his balloon ended his life age 71.

There is not a thing about the episode that doesn’t delight me.

I’m so happy I found this podcast.

The Daily Blog experiment – mental health awareness

It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Not sure if that’s worldwide, or Australia-specific. Anyway, UnicornGirl, who is helping me out by posting my videos to TikTok, suggested that I dig up some mental health awareness poems.

I thought I’d have 200 or more, considering depression and anxiety have been decades’-long ride-alongs, and autism and ADHD are lifelong mates. 200 out of maybe 1600 poems. 1/8 surely. But no. Of the poems I’ve databased so far, there are perhaps 20 that deal directly with mental ill-health. For many, many years, how I felt I had to take as a given. I didn’t know I was depressed. I knew, after suffering post-natal depression in 1990 and 1993, that I never went back to how I was in 1988. I felt like a grey, wet, warm blanket was over me all the time, but I didn’t know I was depressed. I didn’t know suicidal ideation was not normal. I thought every woman felt this way and that no one ever spoke about it.

So, there’s very little directly addressing my mental health. Only in recent years have I written much at all about depression, and then, what’s there to say? It’s a warm, heavy, grey, wet blanket that makes everything in the world grey.

However, I have dug some poems out of the vaults, and am about to give them a good going over before recording them for my TikTok ‘helenreadsherpoems’. I’ve printed six, and will choose 3-4 of them.

Alas, my TikTok popularity is waning. I hit my peaks with ‘Autism Awareness Month’ and ‘A Love Poem’, and my nadir with ‘The Busy Soil’ which is about, funnily enough, gardens, dirt, and the earth. I guess people, at least the people on TikTok, want angst, and love, and trauma, not a content little witch watching her garden grow.

The Daily Blog experiment – what do you want to see?

Now, I’m happily chugging along, writing about whatever occurs to me on the day. But, you, dear audience – what do you want? What brings you here?

Do you want more on mental health?

Photos from the vaults and the stories attached?

The Daily Blog experiment – a photo from the vaults

In early 2008, I had The Big Breakdown fueled by being dumped by XP, and the death of my mother. After MasteryGirl got me out of Box Hill hospital and fed me wholefoods for some weeks, and my new meds had started to settle in, she asked if I wanted to go to a free workshop with her.

Sure, I said. I was in the early stages of my Year of Yes. I was starting to say yes to outings, opportunities, and experiences. So yes, I’d go to this workshop.

I can’t remember who ran the workshop, but I remember it was two hours along and it was partially about manifestation, and focussing on what we wanted.

He asked us to choose an area of our lives. MasteryGirl chose business. I chose the lack of a primary relationship. I no longer wanted XP back, not really, but I also wasn’t ready to date quite yet.

The facilitator asked us to list 20 things we didn’t want in our area of interest. Because knowing what you don’t want is much easier than articulating what you do want. We had five minutes. It was easy. With my ex-husband, ex-bastard, and XP(ex-partner) in mind, I could easily list 20 things I didn’t want.

We then had to partner up with someone, and take 10 minutes each to turn each negative into a positive. Ah, a little harder, and it required thought to say what the opposites of ‘unemployed’ and ‘obsessively workaholic’ might be.

I got my new list of 20. I took the list home, and transcribed it into my journal. However, I decided to go one further. I got poster paper, and textas/markers and made a poster. It went up on my bedroom wardrobe door. It was a constant reminder to me of what I wanted, and not to settle for less.

It became quite the tourist attraction. I was hanging out with a group of ‘sad singles’. Some of us had met through DragonMan’s bad movie nights. And others were extended friendships from those people. The women in the group liked to look at my poster and discuss what might be on their List of 20. The men in the group liked to check the poster out, too. Responses ranged from: “You want a lot” to “I don’t measure up”.

I taught this manifestation technique to some friends, one of whom specified big hands in a new partner, and I believe she now still married to her second husband, who has big hands.

I still use the technique for getting clear on particular topics, but I have never again gone as far as making a poster and putting it up in the toilet or in the kitchen or on a wardrobe door. I know myself – being repartnered was the absolute highest value I had, and nothing has matched that since. Mind you, with partnership being handled(currently married, and ongoing marriage counselling helping, we guess), it’s likely time I turned this technique loose on my writing life, and one project at a time.

The Daily Blog exeriment – NaPoWriMo 2024

My great intentions with National/Global Poetry Writing Month and the Writers’ Digest Poem A Day poetry challenge 2024 were hijacked by my visit to Queensland to see my grandkids. I fell behind on both, and did very little while I was up there. I didn’t anticipate 2/3 kids home every day with viruses that didn’t quite give up. I didn’t anticipate that bloody television being on from early morning until 8pm at night, and 18 episodes of the Simpsons rolling out most days. I nearly went out of my fricking tree with the noise.

Then I came home, and it took me a few days to calm my nervous system down, and to find some quiet.

I’ve been playing catch up with the PAD challenge, but on the whole, the prompts have been dull and uninspiring. Back when I last did this challenge, Robert Lee Brewer was putting in more effort. Now it’s simply ‘write a happy poem’, or ‘write an anniversary poem’. Luckily, in my 60 years, I’ve lead quite a varied life, and still seem to have plenty to say. Will I ever leave the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty alone? Not while I still see that at age 30 I woke up, and discovered I had two very needy babies who were sucking the life out of me.

Will I ever resolve my mother’s death, my relationship with XP, what happened with Boney J, or my troubled relationship with my daughter? Possibly not. But in the mean time, my mind says ‘guess what we’re writing about?’.

This weekend could have seen me several poems closer to the end of the challenge, and the resulting 30 poems, but instead I chose to get a whole bunch of chores done. Poeming can start again tomorrow.

The Daily Blog experiment – the aftertaste of depression

The depression I’ve copped from two days of Strattera for ADHD continues. Through sheer determination, and keeping busy and productive, I am keeping from going further down the gurgler.

I do have an appointment to see my doctor. I don’t want to increase my anti-depressant because it doesn’t make me feel any better. It just muffles things further and leaves me lethargic and sort of mooping along a soggy road. I’m going to ask for a referral to return to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Therapy. TMS. It did wonders for me last time, and I’ve been mostly depression-free for two years. I’d still be depression-free if those bloody pills hadn’t rained pale grey all over my brain. It’s like having an aftertaste that won’t leave.

I have no qualms about returning to TMS. It’s a known quantity, and while it does take up a considerable amount of time while I’m having it, it will be worth it. Especially if I repeat the art magic I did before I started treatment last time. I went in with determination and intent that this would work amazingly well for me. And it did. I was such an early responder that my results were called placebo. Yay for magic and witchcraft.

Anyway, my appointment is early next week, so I’m looking forward to ‘actioning’ this. To use wanker words.

The Daily Blog experiment – a photo from the vaults

December 2009, the Summer Solstice ritual at the Esoteric Bookshop. I may be the Fairy of Fat, or the Fairy of Aloha, possibly the latter, if the ‘grass skirt’ is anything to go by.

Ah yes, now I see that I am the Fairy of Aloha and am representing the Water quarter, shown by the blue booklet I have in my hand. The man standing next to me, is, I think, an Official Nuisance in my life.

It’s 2009, and I am actively dating in Melbourne, as well as carrying on long distance affairs with PizzaBoy, Boney J, and ActorMan. I found Official Nuisance on Plenty of Fish(aka Plenty of Fuckwits). We had chatted back and forth, and gone on one very boring date, but he’d decided I was It and A Bit. He started turning up to events I hadn’t invited him to. I think he had taken a photo of my calendar the one time he’d been in my house(for all of ten minutes, before we went on our date).

In the second picture, I am determinedly ignoring him. In the first photo, I am invoking the element of Water as I pace the circle widdershins. It’s a warm but not hot day. I am following a script laid out by Julie, the stalwart ritual maker at Esoteric B.

It’s coming towards the end of 2009, and I have in mind that I’ll be stopping all this multiple dating by the end of 2010. It’s exhausting, confusing, and expensive. I can’t keep flitting off to the USA or Canada to visit PB, BJ, or AM, and maintain a decent working and family life, too. Besides, the odds of me creating an ongoing relationship with any of those men look pretty flimsy at this time, so I’m setting my intention in this circle that all three will get kicked to the curb at the end of 2010, and I’ll concentrate on finding myself a good and worthy Australian/Melburnian man.

Never let it be said that magical intentions don’t work. I did indeed stop dating at the end of 2010. I married PizzaBoy. And he moved to Australia, and is now a good and worthy Melburnian, having finally attained his citizenship last year.

The Daily Blog experiment – a photo from the vaults

Perhaps this outfit was for Samhain. Certainly the dark colours and bat wings suggests so. The bright sunshine? Well, anything’s possible in Melbourne.

This is at the Esoteric Bookshop in 2008, at their Murrumbeena premises. A lovely shop, with a small courtyard out the back that was always gloriously decorated for the eight Sabbats.

Anyway, I’m rocking that goth look, except for the wide smile, and brilliantly blondish red hair. I understand there are redhead goths in the world, but they tend to go for dark red or blood red, rather than this shining orangey mop.

I’ve gone back and looked at the file. Summer Solstice. What on earth am I doing being all dark? The longest day, the shortest night. Maybe I’m encouraging everyone to embrace the coming dark. Or maybe I was the Earth quarter and celebrating caves, bats, and deep, dark earth.

Anyway, for someone who, ten months before, had suffered a major nervous breakdown, I’m looking damned good, and am bloody pleased with myself.

Oh, why did I stop costuming for Sabbats?

Samhain is coming up very soon. The veneration of the ancestors. The thinning of the veil between the worlds. That bat costume would have been perfect, would that I could still fit into it.

You know, I think it might be time to break out the sewing machine and learn to costume. It’s been on my bucket list forever. How hard could a stretchy black dress be?