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I remember some… horrible dream about… stretching

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I stayed up way too late last night.

Not because I was out living some glamorous life but because Alien Earth dropped and apparently I have zero impulse control when it comes to streaming sci-fi. I was going to try and nap in the early evening, but I’m just really bad at napping. Which, when you consider I’m over 40, is just unfair.

But now it’s the next day, and I’m on the floor doing hip and ankle stretches, questioning every life choice that led me here. My body feels like it’s made entirely of knots and bad decisions. My brain is still somewhere in deep space. My coffee is just out of reach.

Stretching like this always makes me feel a bit ridiculous. The movements are slow, awkward, and very much not cool person material. But here’s the thing: I need it. My ankles have the mobility of a stubborn Victorian door hinge, and my hips did not enjoy pregnancy fifteen years ago and just won’t stop reminding me. If I don’t keep moving them, they will absolutely stage a rebellion.

So I keep going. Leaning, twisting, holding. Leaning, rotating, stumbling. Leaning, stretching, swearing.

It’s not glamorous, it’s not fast, and it’s definitely not going on an 80s workout montage. And when I finally stand up, I feel a little better, a little more human, not smug enough to justify last night’s sci-fi binge. But at least I did it.

Will I go to bed earlier next time? Absolutely not. We might just have to resign ourselves to the fact that I’ll be awake at one in the morning every Wednesday for the next 7 weeks.

But I’ll stretch again tomorrow. Consider it my way of negotiating peace between my passions and my joints.

All this has happened before.

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A blister pack of pills rests in a wooden pen stand, next to a black skull desk tidy on a black desk

Let me clarify, I didn’t mean to stop, it was just one of those weeks where everything was a little too busy, and I never got to the Doctors appointment, and then I never got around to re booking it (because I was embarrassed about missing the 1st one) , and so one week became two, and then three and the next thing you know I’m crying for some silly pointless reason (again.)

Me – this blog – 2013.

I moved a lot of blog posts in to archives before thinking about posting anything again. The above quote is from one of those now archived posts, it ends with another trip to the doctors, and a return to SSRIs. The whole post just reeks of shame. It wasn’t first time I’d forgotten or the last.

It happened so often it’s probably recorded in the Book of Pythia.

Since 2013 I’ve done a bunch of counseling. It helped spot some of these patterns, it’s just frustrating that they were out in the open. But there’s that shame again.

The problem wasn’t remembering the pills. The problem is fearing I’ll need them forever, and the exhaustion in seeing that part of me planned out for eternity. It’s soul destroying, and to me, more crushing than the actual help they might offer. Add in that sting of guilt and shame when I forget meds or skip supplements. It’s draining.

The shame is that it shouldn’t be this hard to take care of myself. The shame is that I’m 44 years old and I still use what is essentially a reward chart to remember to brush my teeth, and it’s inevitable that I’m going to fail.

All this will happen again.

If I keep failing to take my meds and supplements, then that means I keep returning to taking supplements and meds.

Had you forgotten that I’ve had counselling? It’s been more valuable than the meds. Understanding how my brain works*, and hearing that it’s not just a me thing has been a revelation. It’s not so shameful when you realise it’s not just you. It’s hard to feel shame when someone challenges WHY you’re ashamed.

I spent all of 2024 and most of this 2025 trying to stay away from taking anything. But I’ve had such a run of poor sleep I’ve started taking some pills again. It’s been a week of taking something twice a day.

Before starting I found something that could be taken with water, so I didn’t panic when I’d forgotten to eat** and give up. The packet sits on my desk where I can see them, not in a cupboard or draw where they’re forgotten***. Using the patterns of the past to help me make better choices for the future.

Before I started I accepted that I’m going to forget to take them, and that’s ok. Managing my health isn’t about perfection, it’s about progress, kindness, and doing what I can when I can. Not with shame that I’ll forget, but with hope I’ll always come back to doing what’s best for me.

So Say We All.

*cPTSD with some possible ADHD.
**Yes, low introspective awareness is an ADHD thing thanks for pointing that out
***Again I’m aware object constancy is an ADHD thing, cheers.




Here’s the deal.

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It has been a while since I’ve had the bandwidth to do this. So let’s not waste energy on the whys of stopping, and save the dramatic back stories for RPG sessions. I’m not here to explain, I’m here to make things.

I’m going to get back into using this space for whatever I want. Right now that’s gym trips, carving lino and knitting. But there could be a whole bunch of side quests, or nothing.

No niche, no rules, no schedule.

The deal is, if you’re into it, you’re welcome. If you’re not, you can leave. I’m not the boss of you.

No one wants to hear my voice.

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I said this out loud this week.

“No one wants to hear my voice.”

I didn’t realise at the time, but it pissed me off.

It pissed me off so much I wrote it down in one of my many notebooks. It pissed me off so much I took the note book to my therapy session. So I could be pissed off about it some more.

I realised, through the medium of shouting at a person with a PhD, that at some point in the past few years I have begun censoring myself. Keeping quiet, because I’m tired of explaining myself.

I used to speak on live radio, I had popular shows, people did want to hear my voice. I used to be passionate about making content, and it was always content I wanted to consume. It didn’t have to be full and finished, and who cared how many folks listened to it, or watched, or read it.

Who cared if no one consumed your content? You just screamed at the sky and then danced in the moonlight.

But at some point I stopped. I decided that no one wanted to hear my voice. And that included me.

All my photos are shit.

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Low res photo of a train window.

I bought a 35mm camera. It’s not a fancy one. You can’t change the fstop, or the ISO or other photography things I don’t know, or understand. You point it and click. It’s a Toy Camera, apparently.

It has a flash. I forget to use it. Forgot to use it. And on the roll of 36 photos, I used flash 7 times.

It took over a week to get the images. I don’t know, nor want to know, how to develop my own film. I sent it away. Queuing in the post office to ask a person to print a lable for me, and sending the film, with the shit photos hidden inside, away.

I had to wait. How did I have the patience to do this as a child? Taking analogue pictures in fast food shops, and theme parks, and waiting for all the exposures to be used, and then waiting to have enough money to have them deveoloped, and then waiting for them to be developed and printed and then waiting to see my friends and family to show them my shit photos. How did I have the patience?

Fuck. I missed it. Not the waiting, but yes the waiting. The waiting was almost the best part of the whole experience. Almost.

Getting the digital scans of the shots, the let down of seeing everything nearly black, the halarious resignation of thinking “oh, I fucked these up” when scrolling through, and the immediate wonder if I’m currently fucking up with the half used roll of film I currently have in the camera right now. Perfect.

All my photos are shit. And I love them.