On not blogging and pleasure in failing.

Despite preaching about the importance of consistency in blogging eg: blogging regularly, to those who ask my advice on blogging, I obviously do not take my own advice. Well, in fairness I do blog consistently - but very sporadically. (Any Clueless fans, great word usage huh?)

But  it's not that I don't have ideas, and it's not that I don't have time - although I have a lot less time than pre-baby45. I just struggle to actually write. And when I do write, I'm just thinking of all the mistakes I'm making. Like:

• too many adverbs (4 alone in the above paragraphs)
• terrible punctuation and grammar (let's not even go there)
• boring topics (I'm in that no man's land of not A.N.Other Mummy Blogger but not a subject specialist)See, current events, mental health, parenting, social media. I flit, like a badly written butterfly.
• lack of multimedia (it's a pain in the ass to find pictures to illustrate concepts sometimes and then also, if I do design my own jpeg, it takes forever and then I just ....oh you get the picture right?!)
• Waffling. Not the belgian edible kind. The going off on random tangents and forgetting the original point of the - Oh wait, where was i again?
• Lack of lists, snappy titles, not writing huge blocks of text. But also, I don't have a sub-editor so.....

So does any of this matter? How do I get the ideas for blogposts out of my head and onto my screen? 

Outing myself - Mental Health 101

**Warning** This is a) a really really really long post (sorry!) possibly the longest I've written, if you stick with it, thank you, but also b) it might have some triggers for people with depression/anxiety/self harm. Just wanted to flag that up now

It's hard to explain depression to people who don't have it. I don't really talk about it much, even to those closest to me. It's like something that's just locked up inside my head and it's hard to put into actual meaningful words, because doing that means thinking about it all and that's kind of painful. And also, humiliating. 

I've alluded to my depression and anxiety a fair few times on this blog and toyed with doing " a day in the life" type post. But when I'm having a bad day, the last thing I want to do it write about it. But when sad sad things like Robin Williams' suicide happen, I realise that I have a voice - and a mouth piece in this blog - and the more that people with depression are able to open up about it, the less lonely those who don't talk about it feel and the easier it is for those to understand who don't have it. (wow that was a long sentence...)

For a long time I didn't realise I had depression or the way I felt was different from everyone else. I mean yes I'd been to the GP a few times over the years but I just couldn't face talking about some of the things I thought about. The way I hated myself so much it was just built into my psyche, I couldn't imagine not feeling that way. How I didn't so much want to die or commit suicide so much as just simply not exist. Because it was just too hard. 

Nanoo Nanoo - Goodnight, travel well.....

The news about Robin Williams' passing is all over the media today. And it's just really, really sad. I thought I'd blog about it because of something that someone said at work today. They wanted to know why everyone was just so upset about  Robin Williams when there was so much other stuff going on across the world (Gaza, Syria, ISIS, Ebola....to name a few.)

And I thought about it because, fair enough, at the moment a lot of people - a lot of children especially - are going through some terrible, terrible things. But first, that doesn't take away from the grief of the Williams' family, who have just lost a much loved husband/father/brother/son/friend etc. But also for us, his fans, his audience, we have lost too.

And by fan, I don't mean autograph book wielding loon. I mean anyone really, anyone who has been touched by Williams' outstanding performances in any of his films - from Disney through to When Dreams May Come via Jumaniji, Mrs Doubtfire, Good Will Hunting and of course, Dead Poets' Society to name a few.

No, we are saddened by Williams' passing because we have lost a rare talent that provided a chink of light in the darkest of days. With poignant bittersweet humour, displayed in almost every role he had, Williams made all of us who watched him (and presumably those fortunate enough to know him in real life) feel like we were never alone and that there was always hope - and always a smile and humour.

So what makes it worse is to know that despite all this love, life was still just too painful for him. It's just so sad. But like he says in Good Will Hunting, it's not your fault Robin. Depression is a fucker, it really and truly is, I know first hand. 

I don't want this to be a post about me and my depression, but also I wanted to properly "out" myself as someone with mental health issues. So if you're interested in a little snippet of what it's like in the dark parts of my brain, it's coming up after these messages, in another post.

And Robin, to paraphrase your line in Good Morning, Vietnam. "Oh" is for "oh" you were taken too early, but I hope the sun is shining where you are. 

Thank you and good night,

Stupidgirl has left the building