The title of this post has been redacted on advice from my lawyers!

It's been about 8 months since my last blog post.

My, I am becoming lax with this blogging thing aren't I?

So, during this time I have had my sertraline dosage upped by 50% so I am now on 150mg rather than 100mg. This has balanced my anxiety to a degree. I have had a bit of an odd few months where I have been up and down like a bleedin' yoyo. At this point, I am on a downward spiral. I know it's happening I can see it happening and I am powerless to prevent it happening without feeling like a bloody fraud all the time (thus exacerbating the anxiety even further). I cried off an evening out a couple of days ago because I just didn't feel up to socialising. I realise that this is a self destructive vicious circle, but there's very little else I can do about it. If I do go out and socialise, there is a facade of brightness that is so wearing that I am exhausted at the end of the night. On that note, sleep has been affected recently. It may be that we need a new mattress, but I think it might justybe the weight of work and other stresses bearing down on me.

In positive news, friends have been granted custody of two boys and adoption is very much on the horizon, another couple of friends have spawned in the past few days. So I get to be distant non relational uncle to a few more kids. Sometimes I ask myself if I made the right decision not to have kids. I look at the joy that they bring to people's lives around me I think about the way that they can carry on the generational thing. Occasionally, I have pangs of guilt, most of the time though it doesn't really feature. I am blessed that Ms. J has very much the same opinion as I do and fortuitously, has a large family and more than a couple of nieces and nephews that have adopted me as uncle Mark. My own family is very small and we have never been what you would call close knit.
I think what I am trying to work through here is the existential dread that once I am gone, that's it. No more knowledge that I can pass on, no more cool leather working skills I can give to my kids so they can carry on the Simpson legacy. Maybe, that's why I became a 'teacher', even though I'm not really a teacher as far as work is concerned (which is another bone of stressful contention, but not for unpacking today). I can pass on my knowledge to a wider group of impressionable youngsters... (Did I just use the word youngsters? Fuck, I am getting old!!!) I don't think that they are a proxy for kids of my own as there is an emotional detachment there. I don't know what I am doing here, but I think it's helping a little. The stream of consciousness writing style that I have adopted allows me to ramble on and on at length and make connections with things that I may not have connected in the past. For example, the frustration I am experiencing at work may be because of the fact that I am being blocked from passing on my general excitement for the areas of influence I am interested in. There is some light on the horizon though and if I am involved with it, it could be that I can open a new chapter of my working life. I can't say anything about it here as it is still in development and I would probably be fired if I disclosed it.

So, yeah, odd few months. Ups and downs although the blog is still helping so I think I'll be updating a little more often now. Laying on the couch of my keyboard and pouring my words into the ear of the general populace. I hope it helps others a little. It does seem to be helping me.

Quarterly review.

Hi all, it's been another 4 months since I updated the blog.

What's been happening you ask?

Well, quite a lot to be honest.

The citalopram started to become slightly less efficacious and I decided that the vertigo was potentially problematic. I have now transitioned onto another drug and that seems to be working fine at the moment. Although the dosage is apparently quite low comparatively. 

I was having some real problems at work with stuff and ting. There were no specific problems, but I felt that I needed to step back a bit and consequently I have now received confirmation today that I have been granted a temporary 0.8 contract which basically means that I now will be working 4 days a week instead of 5. It will be reviewed in 12 months time to see how it's going and at that point, I can go back to full time or stay at 0.8  with this development, I feel really confident that I can sort out and cope with the work problems with the black dog in tow.

Another positive thing is that after a number of months I have finally finished the paper for a performance magic journal. It was submitted last night for peer review. The waiting begins now. To be honest, I am fine if it doesn't get published as I managed to get it done. That was a big thing for me as I hadn't done any academic work since my Masters dissertation back in 2008. I wasn't sure if I still had it in me. But it is done now and it has potential according to colleagues.

This might be the next step in my career to be honest. I have been asked in the past to undertake a doctorate and if I can sort out the funding, it might be something that is possible now.

After re-reading what I've just written, it's really interesting that everything is quite positive at the moment. Well... Not exactly everything.

With the referendum result last week, I felt as though I had been set back as I was beginning to dwell on the future and how it will be crap... Turns out that I was pretty much bang on with the thought as the economy is now in the toilet, there are racists emboldened by the result and have come out into the light to spew their hate.

It took a few days to get over this depression and anxiousness but I think that I have been through the 5 stages of grief and now have come out the other side. There are those of my friends that are not quite there yet and may be going in a different direction from mine with direct activism. If that is what it takes, then I am 100% behind them. I don't feel up to it myself, but they are fighting the good fight which makes me feel better that there are those that haven't just rolled over (myself included).

In the end, I can't provide anything other than moral support as I need to take care of myself. Selfish? Possibly, but I don't want to go back to the bad days where my thoughts were particularly dark. I need positivity and remaining angry and grief stricken at (what I consider to be) a ludicrous path to take is not helping that positivity.

So, yeah... That's what's been happening... How're you?

Has it really been 4 months since I last updated?

Blimey!

I suppose I was internalising a lot of the process of the CBT (which is not an acronym for cock and ball torture... Well, it is, but not in this context.) cognitive behavioural therapy is quite interesting from an abstract point of view. I've been reading through some of my earlier posts and thinking about how far my journey has taken me. I think that the biggest thing that I've taken from the whole process is a feeling of constant mindfulness. (I know, I know, it's a buzzword and very fashionable at the moment) There's no other way to frame it, I am looking at things that used to trigger negative thoughts and analysing them in a detached way. The nice thing is that I haven't become a Vulcan or anything and I can still enjoy the good feelings and emotions without stepping to one side and analysing them (well, any more than I always have). It's a case of having a good old Rawr!!!! And then realising that's why you did that then packing it up in a little chest and filing it away for future reference for if that situation happens again.

I'm not sure how others have viewed CBT, but this is the way that I worked it through. Paranoia is not really an issue and as a result anxiety has not raised it's head since before Xmas. The depression is something that I still need to work on, but I am still taking the Citalopram and the episodes are few and far between. That's not to say that they have gone completely though. I still feel the warm breath of the black dog on me from time to time, but now it's a much more manageable collie sized rather than the Digby (the biggest black dog in the world sized). I am considering down sizing the dosage over the next few months though. I do find that I occasionally forget to take the pills and after a couple of days, I tend to get the weirdest feeling of vertigo which is not entirely unpleasant but still a little freaky.

What else?

Hmmmm.....

Oh, I mentioned that I wasn't going to be doing as many stalls this comi year before Xmas. I realised how stupid that was and have now actually diversified my stall attendance a little. Trying new routes and stocklines. The workshop is virtually ready (aside from the lack of permanent power in there and a path to it. But the first workshop session sold out in less than a day, (I realise that there were only 5 places, but the point is that people are willing to pay for me to teach them stuff which was a hooooooge confidence booster.

The magic still hasn't really taken off although I have been lightly pushing down other avenues. I think I may need to consider alternatives to purely steampunk audiences and try maybe a small self financed show. I have a theatre at my disposal, I can do it, I know I can with enough practice... Maybe a showcase of different magic styles utilising different magishes. 

loss of control and paranoia

Interesting turn that my thought processes have taken since first publishing my previous post.

While I acknowledge that I have control issues, the bigger problem I have come to feel is that I have deeper issues with loss of control which lead to paranoid negative thoughts.

I'm not sure what I can do with this as I am basically marking time until my next therapy appointment, but my therapist asked me to consider the problems and try and work through the issues to process them in a detached way. This is incredibly difficult for me to be honest. I would like to think I am intelligent enough to compartmentalise my emotions and look at them abstractly under a microscope, but it's difficult to separate the very raw negative emotions and view them from an objective standpoint. I can of course recognise when I am having these thoughts, but I'm not able to detach from them.

Thbere have been times when I have thought seriously about quitting my work here at the university and looking at other avenues of work. It does feel that most of my issues have come from work to be honest.

Sometimes I think that the level of paranoia that I experience can't possibly be justified by psychological problems alone and occasionally, the paranoia wins a small victory in the overall war of attrition for my sanity by performing a sneak attack and getting one of their own under the radar where it acts perfectly reasonably until it sticks its needle in and starts working at that point, I start to feel that surely it can't ALL be in my head can it?

Can it?

I don't know... Having seen the way in which other colleagues have been treated in the past and having them leave employment as a result of it, I can see correlations in what I am experiencing. Sometimes it's a look or a roll of the eyes that is noticed from the corner of my eye. sometimes that's all it takes to make me spiral and let the soldiers of paranoia a loophole to climb in and start making trenches.

Control and the psyche

I only have a few minutes to write his as I will be teaching in about 20 minutes so it might have grammatical and spelling mistakes.

But that's kind of the point of today's post. I had a brilliant session today with my therapist and if I don't get it down on digital paper, I'll forget.

Basically my therapist asked me about embarrassment as I had an episode of anxiety and paranoia last week when colleagues appeared to be laughing at me due to my relative lack of academic credentials. I won't go into what happened, but it lead to a revelation (and it's only my second session)

One of my earliest (if not THE earliest) memory that I have is one where I had to relinquish control to a higher authority. Admittedly, I was little more than a toddler, but the issue with control is still there. I was not in control of myself so I felt helpless and inadequate as a result. This has gone through most of my recollections that have coloured life choices and times when I have had decisions to make. It's difficult for me to ask for help as I need to control myself.

When I was young, my mum told me that I have two ears and one mouth. This has lead me to listen more than speak. I am an overanalyser to a large degree. The control issue is central to my raison d'etre 😄. Why have I such a need to control myself and remain restrained in everything I do?

I need to process this information over the next week or so. I have a lot to think about, is it a case of relinquishing control occasionally? Is it a case of managing control issues? Is it a case of acknowledging that I can't do some things and other things are out of my control? I dunno yet, but I am determined to think about it.

When we were talking about it today, my therapist asked me why I had started smiling while answering a difficult question. It was definitely a case of the penny dropping and realising an issue when previously I hadn't connected those two neurons together.

To be continued. This might take a different turn yet again and the blog might become my virtual sounding board... A sort of dear diary if you will. If you want to continue reading, feel free. Full disclosure of everything is healthy. I want others to know who I am and hopefully neurons might start firing and connecting with them.

What's up?

I thought that I'd better let you guys know (well the guys that read the blog that is) that it's now basically the close of the season. I am utterly exhausted to my bones and have only one more confirmed trading engagement this year.
I can feel myself swinging backwards on that big pendulum towards the dark time of the year and I'm not just talking about the amount of sunlight in evidence. There isn't much I can do about it unfortunately. I did have my request granted for some more intensive CBT, but I was late for my first appointment which consequently was cut short (for obvious reasons) and my re-scheduled first session was cancelled on me due to illness.
I'm going to Brighton this weekend with my lovely missus which should shrink the dog a little.

What has got me like this you ask? To be honest, I dunno. I seem to go in waves. Which reminds me, (on a more than slightly oblique note) I finally understand Pink Floyd's The Wall now... Listening to it at a low ebb was a hell of an eye opener.

Sorry, what was I saying? Oh yes. waves. It's all or nothing at the moment. there doesn't seem to be regularity to it unfortunately and I can't measure it to see when my danger periods are. If I am going through the high intensity CBT, it may become more evident, I dunno.

One more potential magic gig this year too... Hopefully, I will be performing at Whitby in the rifle club. I won't be trading, so might just come for a day or so. I was maybe hoping that I might be asked to another event to perform, but that wasn't to be and they got another act in instead which did sting a little, but it's understandable as I am in no way up to the standard of this act.

What else is up?

Ummm... Not sure... Work continues and I get out of it what I put in basically. While there are no students around, it's difficult to get motivated and I must confess to mooching about doing a bit of tidying here and there without much in the way of conviction. Leatherworking is going to be taking a back seat for the coming year and I might do one or two events, but not on the scale that I have been doing it over the past few years. I think I would prefer to work on stuff that I want to work on rather than stuff I feel that I have to work on for the benefit of the stall...

I did enter a piece into the exhibition for judging at the Asylum this year. I thought it was pretty good (I'm now using it as my regular rucksack) When I went to collect it, I was asked not to exhibit any more as my stuff is becoming a little too well known. That made me feel good for a while as people are getting to know my style, but then it sent me downwards thinking that innovation has suffered as a result of the stall and feeling as though I need to make stuff that is marketable rather than stuff that stimulates my head. That's one of the major reasons why I'm not trading much in the coming year. I want to re-evaluate why I do what I do and how.

I'm staying off facebook for a little while as I see only the negatives now and the news has been bringing me down for a while... It's OK, I just need to climb the pendulum a little bit to make sure that the waves become shorter.

This one's going to be rough. Sorry in advance

OK, I make no apologies for this blog post (obviously apart from the one in the title). I've been mulling it over for a while and something that Derren Brown posted a link to this morning galvanised my resolve to do it.

As I say, I've been umming and ahhing for a while about it because it is very personal to me and something that I had blocked out for the majority of my adult life. In fact, I only remembered about it when a memory was triggered last year and the whole story came tumbling out to my long suffering wife.

I don't want any sympathy for this, it happened, I blocked it out, I remembered it and I moved on. This is a catharsis thing. (Again with the catharsis thing Dude! Give it a rest why don't you?)

So here it is...

My dad used to watch the wrestling on Saturday afternoon every week with Giant haystacks and big daddy and brian Jacks et al. When I was in primary school, there was a guy that used to hang around the school gates talking to parents trying to publicise his wrestling club, he had a very old fashioned mutton chop moustache thing going on and looked quite charismatic and eccentric. Friends of friends said not to have anything to do with him as he was a dirty man. At this point, I can only picture him in a grubby mackintosh now, even though I am sure he never wore one as the parents would've surely beaten him away from their kids if he looked so dirty... Maybe it's my memory playing tricks and I clothed him in stereotypical paedophile garb. 

I can't quite remember how, but one of my friends got invited to the club and asked me to go with him. It wasn't for him and he only lasted a couple of weeks. I however persevered. I wanted to impress my dad with my wrestling abilities and emulate the guys on the telly. It was held at a little hall in the Tilery area of Stockton on Tees and looked a little dingy but there were proper mats and there was a healthy uptake of boys up to the age of around 12-13 so it had to be legitimate. I have to admit that stuff like that didn't really feature in my mental precautions, but I have a feeling that it must've struck a chord with my parents and the parents of the other kids who regularly dropped their kids off at the hall every week.

So fast forward a little bit, I am getting exercise and learning something in the process as it turned out, it was very different to the display wrestling that I had been exposed to and there was a lot more rolling around in the floor. The guy that was branded a dirty man ran the club and did so quite well in my opinion, I was learning some competition wrestling and getting better weekly. We didn't go to any local or national competitions though and this began to trouble me. Why do it if there was no reward? 

Then came the yearly (apparently) inter club wrestling competition. This is the thing that I blocked out for so long. (Quick spoiler, there was no physical fiddling so don't be afraid to read on). The competition was held on a Saturday rather than on a regular training night. The weigh in was a little strange though. We all were required to wear the regulation suit when practicing, but at the weigh in, the chap insisted that we disrobe entirely to use the scales. The older boys were adamant that they were leaving their underpants on at least, but the younger boys all dutifully took their clothes and underpants off to be weighed with the chap kneeling down in front of us looking at the dial on the scales. Nothing felt wrong about this at the time and indeed I was chuckling about the older boys not wanting to take their pants off to get a more accurate reading on the scales. As it turned out, there was no-one else in my age-weight group to wrestle with so I automatically achieved a gold. I still have the little plastic plaque somewhere in the attic. After that, I kind of drifted away from the wrestling. If there was no competitive element to it then what was the point? I didn't have to do anything to get a gold so there was no challenge... After that, I started going to judo at a more prestigious and above board class at the sports centre in Thornaby when I hit senior school and consequently broke my arm at a competition meaning I would never compete again.

The point is that even though fiddling wasn't involved with me at least (no idea about with the other boys) and I can't remember the chaps name, so I can't research it. I'm not actually sure that I want to see if anything happened to the guy or the wrestling club just in case I find something I don't really want to.

There is a point to all of this. A person in a position of power abused his authority and even though I had been warned about him, it didn't even register that he was doing something wrong when he asked the boys to get naked to be weighed. He abused us without touching us, he took away our right to privacy, his authority was not questioned (except by the older boys and even then they acquiesced by disrobing to their pants). I wish I could confront the bastard now and ask why he did that. Likely as not, he's probably dead now as he was certainly getting on when I was that age. So, no closure on it. Just because he didn't touch or ask us to touch him, it doesn't mean that lives aren't ruined as a result. I think I got off pretty lightly and was only psychologically fucked up as a result. I might see if I can find the plaque to ritually burn it to placate my demons.

I had managed to block it all out until earlier this year, I am glad that I did remember as it could explain some of the problems that I had with male role models later in life. In fact, I am sure that it had soured my relationship with my dad.

He was the one that dropped me off every week and the person that I wanted to impress most by being like his Saturday afternoon heroes. 

No jokes in this one guys... This was purely getting it out of my head and onto digital paper. I seem to be doing this rather a lot recently. Is it a good thing? I certainly feel lighter for putting it here.