Category: Mental Health

#timetotalk/Mental Health/Personal Post/Writing as Therapy

Progress and Process

Despite feeling decidedly sub-par over the last few days, a lot has been achieved. The personal branding on social media has undergone what will be an (approximately) monthly change, and we’re ready to move into the next phase of 2022 Will be Awesome (Honest). If you’ve not read last weekend’s post on what to expect, you can find it here, but that just covers my personal plans. There are some other things happening too.

February 3rd is Time to Talk Day. This year, the event’s moved out of the hands of Time to Change, who no longer exist as an entity. However, the legacy they left behind, thanks to hundreds of groups of Mental Health Champions, is very much alive and well. I’m working this year with a group in York, and my A-Z of Personal Poetry will be all over Twitter, Instagram and Facebook on Thursday. There’s a secret page here too, if you can find it before the event, where the selected poems have been recorded as audio…

There’s only eight poems featured here, but the full set of 26 will, once we’re done next week, be put together and made into a lovely pamphlet which I’ll stick up on the Amazons, after which every copy that’s sold will have a portion of profit sent straight back to YES (York Ending Stigma) I’m immensely pleased and proud to be able to help the organization this year, and hope to keep supporting them and their ideals in years to come.

I hope you’ll consider starting your own conversation next week, or perhaps take the time to make your own personalized A-Z of mental health priorities.

#InstaVerse/2021 Content/Art/Poetry Projects/Mental Health/Personal Post/Poetry/Poetry Performance

#Instaverse: Grasp

REALLY important day for me today, so much so that I wasn’t able to record the audio until Friday for this. This is a poem about understanding what a particular word finally means, and accepting what I am in a wider framework.

#Instaverse : May 6th, 2021 : Grasp

Internet of Words/Mental Health/Poetry/Writing Projects

One Better Day

Today, I’m presenting something special as part of Time to Talk Day.

Twenty pieces of audio were recorded, all of which have been linked to the image above to create an audio representation of my mental health journey. You can find all of these on a special page created especially for the day:

Click Here to access the Poetry

It’s been a fascinating experience recording this work, and has made me think I should be doing this again not just with audio, but video too. Starting next week, therefore, I’ll be picking the best of my own work that’s not gone off to a contest or a submission to use as the next stage of my Virtual Chapbook. I hope you enjoy all the pieces and would love to hear any feedback you have on the works themselves.

Don’t forget that you can still order these poems by clicking here.

Mental Health/Personal Post/Poetry

Change

It’s the UK’s @TimetoChange ‘Time to Talk’ Day in [FX: checks calendar] nine days and as this will be the last time that this event takes place under the auspice of the organization (who will cease to exist in March) it seems only right and proper to do something special. Therefore, I’ve decided to take my mental health journey, which is recorded in CURT; URBANE [click here for a link to purchase] and effectively present a virtual reading.

All 20 poems will be available here EXCLUSIVELY on Time to Talk Day, on a dedicated webpage. I’ll be sharing eight of those between 9am and 5pm on the 4th via my Twitter account too, with some extra bits and bobs along the way, and hope you’ll take a listen. In the end, all of this is about starting conversations, however small, about the things that worry or concern us. Talking about how you feel doesn’t just allow you the chance to explain what’s wrong, it can also help others understand and suggest where you can find help and support.

Time to Talk may be going away, but I fully intend to keep writing poetry about my mental health, and promoting conversations around it. I qualified as a Mental health First Aider late last year, and it’s only the start of a long-term commitment to help other people who might be struggling during the pandemic, and long after we’re back to whatever ‘normal’ ends up being. Poetry is a how I learnt to express feelings that previously I could not actually discuss, and my chapbook is an important metaphor in my continuing journey to enlightenment.

I hope you enjoy what I’ve made, and that you can take the time to listen to the poems when they appear next Thursday. Thank you for your support 😀

Art/Poetry Projects/Here is the News/Mental Health/Nerd Culture

Beautiful

As I’m typing this, my chapbooks are in the final stages of printing. I’ve ordered some special sparkly pens to do signing in. There are postage materials standing by. Basically, I’m ready to roll, and there are pre-orders standing by. That’s the most surprising thing of all. People are willing to buy this unseen, which is all I’ve ever really wanted as a writer. The goal of my work in print was achieved this year, and this is the logical progression.

I’m also calling time on trying to sort out the issues I have with WordPress and getting paywalled content properly operational. As a result, next month will be organising a lot of backlog and finally taking December off. That’s the plan I’m working towards, because the last time I went away was a weekend at the start of the year which, quite frankly, seems like several lifetimes ago. Therefore, we’ll take the end of 2020 as a ‘relax, regroup and refocus’ exercise, because I’m planning to do RED January and that’s gonna be a hard ask.

I couldn’t be happier however, as video poetry is going great guns. I’ve had nearly 100 views on YouTube, only half of which are me. This is the surprise gift that keeps on giving, and this week I’m going to start the video blogging that was promised back in March. There’s a script already written, and as the UK goes into Lockdown (again) this week, I am ready to do my work with considerably more enthusiasm and belief than was the case back in March.

This time, I am ready.

Mental Health/Mental health Champion

Give a Little Bit

This afternoon, I’ll be working on a project that is my contribution to a far larger whole: part of a set of interviews for a World Mental Health Day extravaganza being put together for the 10th of October. I already have one interview done, and that’s in the process of being edited. Once the rest of the preparation is complete I look forward to seeing the final, finished product play out. This is part of my push to be more interactive as a Mental health Champion, and to find a use for my unique skill set within the organization.

I also have a poem that I’d like to read, with a very particular video accompaniment. There is a bit of spare time left over with everything else being organised in order to record this, and the plan going forward is to present all of this to be used in the day as the organizers see fit. As the entirety of the event will be playing out virtually, producing all this feels really rather satisfying.

During the day I’ll share my videos with you, and the processes that went into making them. I’ll also have some poetry to share, and maybe some other stuff too. It will entirely depend on the timeline for other things. I’ve left enough space between now and the start of October to get everything edited to my satisfaction, with (hopefully) a level of professionalism. It’s a big step forward to me, and I hope everyone enjoys what it is I’ve produced.

More news as we get closer to the day.

Art/Poetry Projects/Mental Health/Mental health Champion

Umbrella

As if there was not enough to be doing in June, I’ve taken an extra fortnightly task onto the list: Time to Change’s Story Camp. Running this week until the end of August, I’ll get a new prompt every other Monday. It encourages us to ‘tell our story’ about mental health and, in this case, I’ve decided that response will come via poetry. I’d not expected to have an automatic, almost visceral response to the initial prompt either, but it happened. This was written late Monday night and posted on Wednesday, and might be one of the best things I’ve produced for some time.

In the chaos of this week, to use my voice when so many others are being silenced seems… wrong. It really does. I appreciate that these events are arranged in advance, with no idea of the potential chaos that may unfold around us. That response needed to be the point of the poem: my own experiences at this point should absolutely not be taking centre stage. In two weeks, the world could well be in a completely different place, but for now personal history needs to mark this moment with significance.

Having someone else provide the prompts however is, undoubtedly, a bonus. Not having to think of directions or ideas, having an opportunity just to create has been what this week has been all about, and writing here after a week of doing just that? It is incredibly satisfying. Therefore, when all these are done, we’ll collate them together as a testament to how the Summer played out from my distinct and unique mental health standpoint.

You’ll see that poetic graphic a few times therefore in the next ten days: I’ll post it, optimising exposure times, just to prove I have learnt a few things about how Twitter has worked over the years. Now that’s done, it’s time to go sort out the Drabbles for next week, swiftly followed by the inaugural YouTube video … now, about that…

Mental Health/Mental health Champion/Writing Projects

Warm Sound

I should have written this on Friday, but in reality it’s Sunday. The last three days, I’ll be honest, have been a bit of a blur: we’ve had a vomiting bug go around the family, which is a salutary reminder that maybe personal hygiene needs a bit of work. As the day draws to an end everything is almost back to the way it was: except, as the dust settles, I’m aware of a key difference between the person that started the weekend and the one who now finishes it here.

There’s been a lot of anger to deal with because of COVID. I try not to talk about it too much in any of my spaces except personal Twitter, where people know and understand me enough to grasp that however much you try and be kind, there are days when everything just goes Pete Tong. I also get hauled up a fair bit when I refer to people as ‘stupid’ in how they react: mostly people who should really know better. I can’t be mean like that. It’s not fair.

Today, the relevance of those comments has come home to roost.

dinkleberg

Everybody has a Nemesis. It’s how 007 got reinvented, the basis of a billion badly-planned Fanfics and kept Dr Who’s current season absolutely stonking. In my case, that evil is ignorance.  Read the instructions: do the work, put in the hours, make the effort. It’s easy to just do, but thinking is hard, painful and ultimately redemptive. For an awfully long time I never took my own advice either, but fortunately I got over myself eventually.

Calling people stupid as an insult however is going to have to change. A memory surfaced this weekend, as I was on my hands and knees clearing up after a particularly effulgent round of sickness. Trauma flashbacks, each time they take place, are easier to cope with but this one wasn’t. This one still sits in my brain, right now, making me upset as I type this. You used to be called stupid as an insult.

You had no way of replying coherently when it happened.

makeitstop

Next week, therefore, there will need to be some mental rearrangement. The government can become incompetent. People breaking lockdown and thinking only about themselves can be selfish. I’m not going back to delete those posts because honestly, a lot of white people are genuinely not covering themselves in glory right now, and my opinion on them isn’t going to alter that one iota.

However, the training is beginning to kick in. My counselling has taken a year to really take, but now the changes are indisputable. I need to be more kind: to myself, mostly, and then to everybody else without thinking. However, the latter won’t ever be a given until the former is properly taken care of. That meant writing this before anything else happened. It’s a public acknowledgement of progress.

Illsithee

Nobody’s perfect, me more than most. However, it’s improving.

Every step forward is progress.

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