Purplegreen’s Weblog

Just to say hi really.  i seem to have had a bit of a melt-down the last week or so,  with really bad insomnia and still struggling with the hyperventilation thing; frequently feeling upset/panicky/wanting to cry, tired and not thinking straight; some days more than others.  On the plus side, i have also gotten some crochet done over the Easter break and wanted to share some photos, but the Bluetooth connection with my computer is playing up.  Hopefully later in the week!  Today is the last day of the Easter break for me and i have spent most of it studying.  :/  Gosh but i’m good at feeling sorry for myself! lol  Hope everyone else has had a good Easter break (if you get one)   Did you eat too much chocolate?  Good for you!

Just to say that my SO’s dad passed away last night.  R.I.P. Ron.  Have a safe journey.

There. You have been warned about the content of this post and may proceed at your own risk.

The rollercoaster of life feels like it has been on a high-speed descent the last few days; i’m hoping that soon it will start to climb back up the hill again.  The first thing – my SO’s father went into hospital last week and, it transpires, won’t be coming out again.  He has a particularly complex and nasty form of Parkinson’s that has included things like dementia, and now his body is slowly shutting down.  i’m not quite sure how much time he has left – maybe a few days, maybe a couple of weeks – so at the moment every time the phone rings i am anticipating “that” phonecall.  We went to see him on Saturday and it was shocking and very very sad. my step-daughter cried.  On Monday morning an alarm went off on my phone to remind me that it was his birthday.  Monday was not a good day.

Saturday was also the first class for this degree that i’m doing, the MLIS (Masters in Library and Information Studies.)  It was a double class, so that took up half the day.  i drifted off completely during the second half of the class; we had a lot of reading to do for it and i hadn’t had time to do it all, so woke up at 5am to finish it all.  Result – most of it has gone straight in one ear and out the other.  i’m having a real attitude problem with this degree; i already have one Masters degree and really don’t want another one, and i really really don’t want to go back to writing essays and being graded on my contributions in class; i’m doing it solely because without this degree i can’t go any further with my career.  Somehow i have to get past the resentment that i’m feeling about losing most of my free time for the next four years; otherwise its going to be a spectacular disaster.

On top of all this we are trying to launch a new service at work and it is running behind schedule.  At 9am i was sitting at my desk practically in tears.  i don’t like stress, and don’t cope well with it.  In the past couple of years i have developed a specific reaction to stress, which is to hyperventilate.  Not big, gasping, head-in-a-paper-bag breaths, but just a minor change to my breathing that is too small for me or anyone else to notice.  Thing is, after a couple of days of that i start to feel incredibly tired, get really upset very easily, feel like i can’t cope with anything, and if i’m really lucky i might even have a panic attack.  So this morning i realised what’s been going on with me, and if i can keep an eye on my breathing i should feel a whole lot better in a day or two, and this overwhelming feeling of complete inadequacy will pass.  i will once again feel like someone who is capable of writing an essay on the digital divide.

i had a grand, motivating plan for this year – i will be 40 in November, and that was going to be the thing that would keep me going to the gym regularly, make me start to eat healthily, and eventually lose a whole lot of weight (preferably about 30kg/60 pounds.)  Then i injured my achilles tendon, the whole thing of studying part-time and working fulltime started to bite…and i’ve been to the gym maybe once in the past two weeks.  i’ve been drinking too much wine, eating lots of sugar, and probably gaining weight.  So far i’m not feeling any motivation to change things back to the way they were meant to be going.

ok, that’s probably enough self-pity.  To cheer me up (and you), here’s a photo of little Freddy Bear who I made quite some time ago and rejected as a failure.  Then one day i happened to see him and suddenly he spoke to me on some level, and now i think he is the cutest thing ever.  Is it ok to think that a piece of your own work is just completely awesome?!