A life in pieces

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Welcome to my website!

A life in pieces is just that – my life presented in pieces via different media. Take all those pieces together and you will view (just about) the whole of me, and my life in Great Britain in the 21st Century.

The components of A Life in Pieces are:

In the past I have struggled to maintain a daily blog (although back in the dim and distant I did once manage it for four years without interruption – but I was young and earnest then). It occurred to me that if I use a variety of ways to communicate with you, I could still provide daily updates, without having to write a blog piece – because sometimes words don’t come easily – even for a writer. Sometimes I will post photos here too.

I hope you find something of interest, and perhaps some commonality. You can comment on my blog posts, reply to my toots and comment on my YouTube videos. You can also drop me an email via the Contact page.

Thanks for stopping by.

Fighting Back

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One day at a time. Step by step. I’m fighting back

I’m probably feeling better tonight than I have done in weeks – or maybe even months. Who knows? Once you get sucked into a fug of black dog and misery, it’s very hard to remember ever not feeling so low and desperate. Looking back on the past three weeks, and the start of the fight back, I can see I have come so very far. Correcting my iron levels has been a big part of this, but also a change of mind. I’m trying to be more active – proactive – and take control of what is happening to me. There are still moments of anxiety – thoughts that pop into the head and nag in the middle of the night – but the periods of sleep between waking are longer, and the thoughts I am having are far from desperate. They are more optimistic.

It has certainly helped that my back has been behaving. Now that I am not taking the acid inhibitor, I have cut back on the anti-inflammatory drugs too. I would have needed to take up to 1200mg a day to keep things moving and manageable. Over the past week I have taken just two tablets – with five days between. I am pushing myself to walk each day – not far – but some – and to leave the house every day. I failed after 9 days, and spent two days in the house when I was sick, but other than that I have gone out even if just for a loop around to the main post box outside the post office, and then back home. This tends to be in the evening. This is also a part of my strategy for coping with the nighttime home-alone-anxiety. Keeping on pushing. Continuing to fight back.

Another strategy is to work less. I have not worked any weekends since the third week of December. In February, I have every week as a four day week, as I am using up TOIL and annual leave. I have a whole two weeks booked off for Easter, and aim to be back in Felixstowe for the period. I’m missing Josie now, and feeling much more inclined to get in the car and shoot up the coast to check all is well at the caravan, but I figure I can do that on one of my long weekends as we move into March, and springtime. There shouldn’t be any problems up there, but if there are – they will keep until then.

How are you? I hope you are well too!

Feeling less germy

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A day in bed

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Not everything is sorted

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