Just realised something

Why do I start thinking people don't like me when I'm depressed?

Because I'm generally no fun - I:

Don't go out because it feels like too much effort
Don't talk much in group situations
Give the impression of constant boredom or inattention
Stop making small talk, asking people questions and generally interacting in a social way
Don't often smile, joke, tease, or flirt
Break promises
Forget I've agreed to do something or meet someone
Let other people fill the gaps in conversation (thus making talking to me hard work).

So I end up looking cold and serious and unapproachable and let's be honest, boring. Really can't blame people for not treating me in the same way they used to, because right now I'm not even the same person.

Just to let you know

I'm still here.I haven't blogged in forever because really I don't think I have anything interesting to say.

Having depression again, you see.

Yes I'm on medication, and yes it's helping, but no I don't feel my usual self yet. I'm just supremely unimpressed by everything a lot of the time, and my sleep pattern's completely fucked despite regular attempts to de-fuck it (hence me still awake and posting at 4am).

I'm not trying to elicit sympathy, don't get me wrong. And I'm not even that bad really, mostly just like the shine's been taken off everything and nothing is fun and I can't be bothered with it all. I'm not cutting myself, or crying all the time (have only cried once actually), or in a black cloud of despair, or thinking that no-one really likes me and that they'd be happier if I wasn't around - which is a step up from my last "episode" - I'm just not really here.

We have a choir Christmas concert on Thursday, and I'm singing a solo quartet bit in one of the pieces (Britten's Hymn to the Virgin) which is a really nice piece. I really wanted to get the solo and I did. I'd expect to be happy about it, but somehow my brain thinks it's not even worth mentioning. I just want to go to sleep.

Good news

My grandma went in to hospital last night, and had her operation today. It went well, and she's fine.

Thank goodness for that.

The scans and tests showed that the cancer hasn't spread. If they'd found it somewhere else, they wouldn't have operated on her at all, just given her chemo.

But yeah, it's as good as it could be, and she could be home at the weekend.

Thanks Royal Hallamshire Hospital.

Just a quick one

My uncle died last Saturday, of cancer. I don't know much about it but he definitely had a tumour on his spine and cancer in other places too. I hadn't seen him for years but I remember him as a nice man, older than my dad - the type who'd do anything for you, too kind for his own good sometimes.

My grandma found out last week that she has womb cancer. And the tests she had today confirmed that she has an aggressive tumour which may spread. It may have already spread. And she's 70 and has heart disease so it might be too risky to operate - we'll find out more when she has an ECG next Tuesday. She's already said that if it's spread she doesn't want the operation.

I'm not letting myself get upset, not unless the next lot of tests/scans say that it's inoperable, or that the op would be too risky. That sounds very cold-hearted - obviously I am upset, but I can't make things any better by crying and letting it get to me so I'm choosing to deal with the potential situation as and when. Can't say I'm massively optimistic though. I don't know what to think.

And my grandad's not long since had an op to remove his prostate cancer.

Understandably I'm now somewhat concerned that a new mole has appeared on my hand.

Can it stop please?

Sorry

I am feeling better than the last time I posted - I got a dawn simulator alarm clock which gradually turns a bright light on in the morning, and that helps.

I'm now in a pretty sensible rhythm of sleeping at 12pm and getting up between 8 and 9am. But of course now I feel better I seem to spend my time doing stuff because I can, and it just doesn't occur to me to blog.

And even though I'm busy, I don't feel I have much to blog about because it isn't very interesting. (Although saying that, we're working on the garden right now and the progress might make some good posts).

Hopefully i be inspired soon because I do like blogging and I love connecting with other bloggers.

Got a concert on Wednesday. I'm doing a small solo. Wish me luck.

Lazy

Yeah, I really am.

I don't know where all the time goes though. I haven't done any clay/jewellery stuff for weeks, I have loads of actual work to do but I can't motivate myself to even start it. I've done a little knitting, but other than that... no idea where all that time went, or what I did with it.

I hate being in a rut like this, it's just so hard to get out of it and once I do I slip back so quickly.

Being in "nocturnal mode" as usual isn't helping.

I'm sick of it. And I'm also sick of the fact that every so often I post on here saying I'm sick of it and need to change, which serves no actual purpose because a few weeks later I'm in the same situation.

I'm really seriously thinking that I'm just never going to be able to live a "normal" life and have a proper job. I'm just not up to it, which is worrying.

At last...

How has it been two months since I last blogged?

Guess I'm out of the habit now, which is poor.Oh well, I'll try to get back into it by posting "The Last Two Months in Brief", not necessarily in order).

• Carol singing was fun.
• Christmas was nice, parents spent too much on me as usual and I got some great polymer clay books. I made jewellery for my mum, grandma, and Michael's mum, and they seemed to like it.
  
• Spent entirely too much time playing a series of great games on my DS.
• Had family round for Boxing Day, then got ill afterwards (cold or 'flu or something). Ill enough to just sit around not doing much for two weeks, but not ill enough to stay in bed.
• My grandad had an operation to remove his prostate cancer, and he's doing fine. Although my whole family neglected to tell me about it and the first I heard was my grandma phoning a week afterwards asking why I didn't send him a get-well card.
• After neglecting my work for weeks, I had to work like a bastard to complete the software manual I was recording. My throat didn't like that much. Talking for 4 hours straight = pain. I need to develop vocal stamina.
  
• My lovely Summerdog developed pyometra (womb infection) and had an emergency spay on Tuesday. She's doing incredibly well, and is already almost back to her usual self. Poor doggy must have felt awful with a huge swollen womb full of pus. I'm trying not to feel guilty that I didn't get her spayed when she was younger, although I was never keen on an "unnecessary" operation, especially as it's much more invasive for a bitch. But a pyo spay is a much bigger operation with higher risks. She can have lead exercise starting tomorrow, but can't free run for a couple of weeks.
• Since the vet tells me that Summer is 10 kilos overweight, I'm putting her on a diet. This involves me actually cooking stuff for her - if I cook I know exactly the proportions of protein, carbs and fat she's eating - and mixing it with a little of her normal dried food. Tonight she had chicken, broccoli, carrots, courgette, egg, and brown pasta with a little garlic, which she absolutely loved. I kind of feel like we could lose weight and get fitter together. I know we could both do with more exercise when she's recovered.

Think that's probably about it. Haven't done anything very exciting really.

Sparkly pretty things

Finally got round to adding some new jewellery to Etsy.

I have more to add, but I haven't taken pictures of them yet.

I'm actually quite pleased with the way I'm progressing as a jewellery artist. The owner of the lovely bead shop in town has been asking me to take some polymer clay beads in to show her for a while now, and when I actually managed to remember to do it she seemed very impressed. In fact she wants me to run a bead-making class! How exciting!

I can definitely see the improvement in my work since I started back in August.

Unfortunately I haven't sold all that much yet. I'm blaming this on my lack of business skills, having never run a business before. Anyone have any tips on marketing and such? I've been thinking about doing a jewellery blog showing each piece as I make it, the stages I go through, etc. - any other ideas?

More on the charity single

Check us out here! There's even a video where you can see me in all my curly-brown-hair-and-glasses-standing-next-to-the-blonde-soloist glory if you're paying attention.

And now my hair is much darker, with some red though the top of it.

Right, now I'm off to finish my wings for tonight. They will look awesome.

Something interesting at last

Spent this morning doing something pretty cool and exciting.

Recording a charity single!

I'd explain it but I can't be bothered, so just read this article instead.

Tomorrow I'm having my hair coloured (probably red, but haven't decided yet).

And Friday I'm out with some of the girls from choir. We'll all be dressed as fairies.

And I now have a new little studio/workshop as I've taken over our tiny third bedroom with my polymer clay/jewellery stuff, which means we can actually use the kitchen table again. Yay!

Well it's not as boring as last week, anyway...

Body, don't do this to me

Been feeling rubbish the past 10 days or so.

Pretty much the usual I guess, tired, everything too much effort, not getting anything done, not feeling like doing even fun stuff, not sleeping, not taking care of myself (which I'll admit, usually means not showering/cleaning teeth as often as is necessary, and can also mean eating rubbish or not eating enough), not wanting to see people or talk to them, being very boring, and generally wandering round like a zombie.

I missed three rehearsals in as many days simply because I couldn't face the thought of dealing with public transport, being sociable, sight-reading and then more public transport. Not to mention the almost impossible tasks of showering, washing hair, removing unnecessary hair from face (what's the deal with that anyway? Hormones, what the hell did I ever do to you?), choosing what to wear, and organising the myriad of bits and pieces that I can't leave the house without nowadays (pencils, water bottle, sheet music, snack, diary (which I don't even use) notebook, and occasionally knitting).

And that's not like me, I never miss rehearsal no matter how crap I feel. It's always been like the one thing I can keep up with no matter what. But not now, apparently.

There have been a couple of times this week when I've been feeling miserable and thought, "Hey, I know this feeling... I DO NOT want to be depressed again thank you very much". It's not like wanting-to-cry-all-the-time depression, or a feeling-like-I-want-to-die-but-being-too-exhausted-to-actually-go-through-with-suicide depression (been through both and neither are fun), it's just ordinary run-of-the-mill I-can't-do-this-anymore-continually-unhappy-for-no-obvious-reason depression.

And yeah, I'm feeling sorry for myself.

And why on earth have my eyelids suddenly turned against me? I wake up every morning with sore eyes because my blepharitis is back - sometimes my eyelids are actually stuck together. And the creases of both lids have sore flakey itchy patches of what I think is seborrhoeic dermatitis. It's driving me crazy. It's been bad enough to crack and break the skin and make closing my eyes difficult (it's improved since then). You know your eyes are really sore when even baby shampoo stings (washing the eyelids with diluted baby shampoo is the usual treatment). I don't wear makeup often but since I can't right now, I want to, dammit.



Plus my ears as well as the skin behind them right into my hair, and to a lesser extent the whole of my scalp, are all flakey and horrible. If I scratch, it weeps and then crusts over. Not pretty.



Is it the weather (miserable)? Or just generally feeling run down? Or am I reacting to a load of evil chemicals in the environment or something?


Damn. I need to think of something fun to do, quick.

Ouch

Concert went well, we sounded good.

Pete's advice about singing high notes worked, because the high Fs in Messe Basse didn't bother me (and I usually crack or squeak a bit). But working really hard in rehearsal on Thursday, singing for two hours (or something like that) at Meadowhall on Friday, then rehearsing hard all afternoon Saturday was obviously pushing it a bit when my throat hasn't been right all week, because by the time we moved onto the Requiem I was having problems.

The third movement, Dies Irae, is fairly loud and shouty and it was at that point I felt my voice going wrong. Most of my low notes were fine. The high notes were a bit strained, but okay. Middle range? Rubbish.

For those of you who aren't singers, you basically have two parts to the voice: head voice, and chest voice (there are other ones, but those two are the main ones). I'm not going to expain properly what they are, but on the higher notes you use head voice, and the lower ones you use chest voice. If you sing up or down a scale you'll find your voice "breaks" at a certain point as you change over from one voice to another (for me this is around the B above middle C, which is pretty normal for an alto - a soprano has a higher break). As you train your voice you learn how to blend the two voices together over these notes to hide the break - so as I sing upwards and approach the B I can gradually increase the proportion of head to chest so by the time I get to the D I'm pretty much completely using head voice. Make sense?

So what happened to me was, I lost the ability to blend. My sweet(ish) choirgirly high notes were fine, and my rich low notes were fine, but if I sang upwards I'd crack, and if I sang downwards I'd go all quiet and breathy. Which was pretty useless since the majority of the Requiem's in my middle range. Oh well.

And I woke up this morning with a really sore throat - hurt to talk and swallow, and my tonsils are swollen.

So I've avoided talking as much as possible, and tried to drink lots. I have a rehearsal tomorrow, and I'll probably end up sitting there and not singing because I don't want to damage my voice any more.

I'm actually scared stiff of getting vocal fold nodules and not being able to sing for a long time. Better to rest now I think, rather than lose my voice altogether. Hopefully I'll be all recovered soon.

Concert!!!

Mozart Requiem tonight. Should be good.

And we sang carols at Meadowhall yesterday, for their turning-on-Christmas-lights thing.

And I was amused to be pretty much the only girl there who wasn't all excited to see Vernon Kay, who pushed the lights-on-button. They think he's gorgeous, and of course he's famous(ish), but I just find him a bit annoying.

And we were on the local news.

But it's still too early for Christmas carols - it's not even my birthday yet!

Typical

I'm having unmistakable symptoms which signal the beginning of a sore throat, possibly with accompanying cold:

Difficulty swallowing
Headache
Aching eyes
More than the usual muscle pain/discomfort
"Tight" feeling in the neck/throat
Sleeping more than usual/tiredness
Difficulty concentrating/thinking/remembering anything
Pain on high notes

Which is just what I need when I have a concert on Saturday.

If you're around on Saturday evening you should come along - Mozart's Requiem and Faurés Messe Basse and Cantique de Jean Racine (all of which I like). 7.30pm, Firth Hall, Western Bank, Sheffield. Should be fun.

I must be ill. It's 9.30 and I want to go to bed - that's very much not normal.

You know, I learned something yesterday

Went to a singing workshop yesterday, run by my conductor Pete and our accompanist Robert, both of whom are singing teachers as well as conductors.
The first half was Pete teaching us how to breathe, warm up, etc. (most of which I already knew but always useful to be reminded), how to sing with different parts of the voice, how to sing louder, and most importantly of all for me, how to sing high notes without that horrible closed up squeaky nasy-sounding effect I usually get on anything higher than a top F (and sometimes get on lower notes than that).

Sometimes I do high notes quite well. There are times in rehearsal when we're warming up by singing scales which get successively higher, and I can manage to keep up with the sopranos almost all the way. I mean it doesn't sound nice, but I can do it.

But with the tips and techniques Pete gave us, I reckon I've added a whole lot of notes to the top of my range, which still sound good - and it was easy. Apparently it's always been there, I just didn't know how to do it before. Watch out sopranos! I might test myself later and see how high I can actually get, because it's always good to know.

Oh and I added a tone to the bottom of my usual range as well, but I don't know how I did that. Now I can sing almost all the notes in the tenor range (I can sing down to a low E, and the bottom of the tenor range is a D), and I've reached my actual physical limit. Cool.

The second part was Robert teaching us sight-reading, with a lot of useful short-cut type techniques. Now when I joined SingSoc 3 years ago I was awful at it, but I've definitely improved a lot since I joined (particularly when a certain alto who always got everything perfect left and I could no longer just listen to her and sing what she was singing).

I think my main problem in the past has been over-reliance on my ear, which has always been very good. I always learned everything by ear because I could - however in a choir you often don't get anything played to you unless you get it horribly wrong.

We went thought loads of exercises yesterday, of the type you get when you take instrument/voice exams at Grade 4 and above. The first ones I didn't find too tricky because they were just pitching notes - this gave me confidence because I thought I'd struggle.

I did struggle on the next bit though, when we moved onto actual pieces of music - I had trouble with doing pitching and rhythm at the same time. I blame it on being tired after all that work though, because I usually manage better than that with more difficult music. I'll try the exercises at home and see how I do when I'm not exhaused

In general, I feel much more confident. I mostly held my own with people who had much more musical experience and knowledge than me (if not singing experience) which means I'm better than I think I am.

And I also learned something important about sight-reading - I perform much better when I relax a bit, and stop working so hard. There's a part of my brain that knows all this stuff fairly well, and I should just stop thinking so hard and let that bit do the work for me.

More on the synesthesia thing

So I've been thinking about this some more tonight, especially as a friend of mine told me she's read my last post and that she has coloured numbers.

I was discussing the number form/coloured numbers thing with Michael when I came home (he has a day form too, and an alphabet form) and realised that there are some numbers and letters which have an associated colour in my head. I didn't know I did this.

It isn't at all strong, and I don't "see" the colours in the way that I "see" the positions of days - I just have a "feeling" that certain colours go with certain numbers and letters. I don't feel uncomfortable if those letters/numbers are printed in the wrong colour, but if I was to choose colours for them to be printed in, I'd tend to pick the same ones every time. I can easily ignore it since it isn't that strong.

A is red. C is yellow, D is green. F is purple. G is brown. H is green. M is dark blue. Lower case n is green, but upper case N doesn't have a colour. S is white.

1 is white. 2 and 3 don't have colours. 4 is dark red, 5 is a mid blue. 6 is pinkish purple, 7 is green, 8 is blue (but a lighter blue than 5), 9 is pink. Bigger numbers don't have colours either, but the digits that make them usually do. (The colours I've used here aren't the exact shades by the way, just the closest ones I could find on the text palette).

Some musical notes have colour as well. It's not the actual pitch that gives it colour (they don't change colour if someone plays the music in a different key or whatever), just the position on the staff. Some correspond to the colours of their letter, like the yellow C. But some are different, like the D under the staff (brown).

Interestingly the E on the bottom line is blue, but the E on the top space is white. A is red like the letter, but the As above and below the staff (not shown) aren't coloured. The F way below the staff (the lowest note an alto can reasonably be asked to sing) is dark green, the F in the bottom space much lighter mint green and the top line F isn't coloured. The higher D (second line from the top) is dark purple.

Weird, isn't it?

The shape of time

Well I said I'd draw my day and month forms, so here they are.

Apologies for the poor quality, i used my new digital pen and I haven't had chance to play with the software much yet.

The colour of my life at the moment...

... is red.

I've been trying hard to find a particular yarn for a custom order. One of my return customers wants four knitted hedgehogs made in "Santa" colours - a bright scarlet red with white.

Now I have probably 6 or 7 hedgehog-friendly yarns in red, but all bar one tend towards crimson and more purple kinds of red. Typical. Actually it's probably that way because I prefer purple to orange, so I've picked out reds that reflect that.

I'm also making red beads at the moment, because I've sensed an opportunity to sell jewellery to the girls in Ladies' Choir. We wear black in concerts, and try to wear red jewellery. Several people have mentioned that they don't have anything red - so that's where I come in! I have three necklaces ready so far, hopefully should get a load more done over the next few days.

Bear with me - this seems irrelevant but it's not. Sometimes I look up something on Wikipedia, and while I'm reading the article I'll open up links that interest me in other tabs. When I finish the article I close the tab, and move onto the next tab, and do the same thing. It's kind of like surfing, except I end up in loads of different places at once. Often I just mean to look up a couple of subjects, and end up spending hours reading page after page - I call it "falling into a Wiki Hole" (see also Wookey Hole - nothing to do with Star Wars - and K-hole).

I fell into one when looking up the word red, just to check out if there were other good words I could use.

Somehow that lead me to the page on virginity, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.

While on the synesthesia page, I made a not-really-very-surprising discovery. I have a form of synesthesia. I'm not going to explain what synesthesia is, follow the link!

I have number form synesthesia, specifically for days of the week and months of the year - each day or month has a position on a circle for me.

Days follow this pattern: the week forms an oval shape, wider than it is tall. Wednesday is exactly at the bottom of the oval, Saturday and Sunday at the top. The days run anti-clockwise so Monday is on the left and Friday on the right, and the weekdays are closer to each other than they are to the weekend.

Strangely, the months run clockwise, unlike the days. The year is a circle, not an oval, but the months are unevenly spaced. December is at 9 o'clock, April at 12 o'clock. July is 3 o'clock and 6 o'clock sits just between October and November. And for some reason, I can't help by think of December as the start of the cycle (it's in the same position as Monday).

Maybe I'll draw my day/month forms so you can see more clearly what I mean.

If I know that Tuesday is the 13th for example, and want to count forwards so many days, I see the oval in my head as I count, and the numbers fit into the form in the right positions for the days. if that makes any sense.

I discussed this with my mum fairly recently, and was surprised to find out that she has the same thing, except her days and months both run clockwise and Monday and January are at the top. Whick is kind of logical, because she's reflecting the clock face.

Anyone else experience this? Or something similar?

The non-sexual crush

So I sort of have a bit of a crush on someone.

Someone I'm not sexually attracted to at all.

It's a sort of wanting to impress them, being more interested in whatever they're talking about than you usually would be, being more aware of them than others in the room, caring what they think of you kind of deal, rather than wanting to sleep with them.

It's weird.

I've noticed that when this happens to me (not that it happens very often, not since my teenage years), it's usually a woman that's the recipient.

Now I am sexually attracted to women as well as men, but don't identify as bisexual mostly because I'm not interested in romantic/sexual relationships with women - in general they are just too complicated, with all that expecting you to be a mind reader and saying one thing and meaning another and insecurities that you get so often. Note that I'm not dissing women at all here, neither am I saying that all women are like that. Those that are? It's a social conditioning thing. But I digress. Plus, penis = good.

So anyway. This crush is a man. I've known him for a while, although I don't know him very well.

I've been trying to figure out what it is I like about him, and what he has in common with my previous crushes - and I've come up with a little "crush wishlist".

1) Funny. Makes me laugh, in a clever not-just-endless-fart/penis-jokes kind of way. Which also leads to...
2) Clever. But not obviously cleverer than me. Not that I've administered IQ tests - he could very well be more intelligent than me but he doesn't act it, and that's the bit that matters. Clever enough to be intellectually stimulating, but not clever enough to be threatening or make me feel stupid.
3) Slightly vulnerable. Guess that's the maternal side I haven't got coming out.

This probably explains my little list of People I Don't Fancy But Would Still Sleep With, which notably includes Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Billy Connelly, Rich Hall, and Jennifer Saunders. Okay, so I do sort of fancy Jennifer Saunders, but not enough to discount her from this list.

What is it about funny people? I don't get it.

Well surprise, surprise. Blogger's being a twat again.

Bastards....

I've been trying to comment, on my OWN BLOG, so I can reply to the comment's I've gotten recently.

Apparently that's just asking too much.

Despite being logged in, my blog looks like I'm not, i.e. it says "sign in" or "create blog" at the top rather than "new post" or similar. When I click to sign in, I go straight to my dashboard, which I'm signed in to. But if I try to comment, the page just refreshes and my comment vanishes.

Pippa says the she's having trouble commenting here as well, so it's not just me.

So you were going to get actual content, but instead you get yet another moan. For which you can thank fucking Blogger.

And I'm out.