We need this program in Oz: Ruby Wax’s Mad Confessions

Ruby Wax

Ruby Wax’s Mad Confessions | Channel 4 goes mad | Documentary | Blog | Time To Change.

Reading the summary and readers’ comments on this British TV program from their Channel 4 made me think about how I am coping right now with my own head.

Crepe myrtle from L Street

In the midst of a few physical health issues I’m not doing too badly. As the people in the above program and the commenters pointed out, I could do with some company and a  bit of real-life support. I feel a bit stigmatised as people don’t invite me to stuff. Now maybe they’ve just forgotten about me because I’m not around much or maybe I DO make them feel uncomfortable. That must be the difficulty about having a mental illness that doesn’t make you think or behave in  unexpected ways – you can never quite tell if a drop off in friends is just chance or if they’re deliberately avoiding you.

As I’ve said before, I never really feel lonely and I AM alone during working hours; I just feel the need for different environments and social input from different human beings. Now I can’t drive or walk to the bus stop, my lack of regular company apart from Spotrick and the cats has become more salient. What strategies could I use, apart from spending even more time on the Interwebs?!

Chunks of Pi

My friends and I have been rather tardy in going to see The Life of Pi at the local cinema, but we managed it last Sunday night. I thought that the book was un-filmable, even without modern CGI effects and animatronics, but the movie was an enthralling adaptation of the book in startling 3D [we wore Clark Kent glasses].

Pi & Richard Parker

We were all very happy with it and I felt rather inspired by what I saw, which is unusual for me. For the very few who might not have read the book by Yann Martel [Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize] nor seen the recent movie, it is about a boy who finds himself alone in a lifeboat with a tiger after a ship sinks containing his fathers entire zoo exhibits.

When I first read the novel, which is quite short, I liked it OK although I didn’t think it was great. The writer seemed to go well for the first third of the book and then hit the doldrums, just like the boy in the lifeboat! To my mind the symbolic and philosophical themes didn’t seem to progress for a long interval and I was tempted to abandon ship/book. However, I knew there had to be some sort of resolution, so I went along for the ride. I was rewarded in the end and concluded that the book was an allegory of nature, growth, life and death, where the elements could each mean a number of things, depending on the mindset of the reader. I didn’t relate the themes to my life at the time, but seeing the interpretation of the book by Ang Lee (of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon fame- is he getting stuck on tigers??), I felt quite touched. As said by reviewer Gary Krist in the New York Times Review of Books;

Pi understands that his own survival depends on keeping his ferocious opponent alive and well — ”because if he died I would be left alone with despair, a foe even more formidable than a tiger. If I still had the will to live, it was thanks to Richard Parker.”

Pi, as Pi writes it on the blackboard

The film said to me “Get your tasks of necessity over with and just enjoy doing your own thing. Life won’t come back and give you another go.” That’s quite revolutionary to me at this stage of my life. For years I have been wanting to get my Masters degree and find a job in Public Health, preferably in Policy and Research because I am so drawn to them in many waking moments. However, no one has been very encouraging and I haven’t gained any jobs or scholarships to study further yet, having arrived at a sort of “fallback” position of trying for a PhD for lack of a job. I figured I could still immerse myself in the subject area even if I couldn’t work in it. With the stimulus of Pi I may be shifting my thinking to accepting I have finished my working life and settle for enjoying the crafts and hobbies I can still do with my disabled hands and wrists.

I will still need to learn to value myself and accept I am worth Spotrick supporting financially as my childhood background has almost brainwashed me into thinking I must always have an independent income. At least now I have been unemployed for many years I have somewhat forgotten what it’s like to have my own money to spend the way I wish [while keeping up my household contribution, of course]. It’s still fairly sad for me to see friends going away on holidays to places I had planned to visit before the end of my life, but I am trying to experience those things vicariously now. I have been asking my friends to take lots of photographs when they go away – photos of the places, rather than the standard touristy pix of “me in front of the Tower of London” sort! My friends are beginning to co operate, but they take a bit of flogging [you know who you are, LOL!]. I still get tears in my eyes regularly when I see places on my Bucket List on the internet, but I’m improving.

Scottish loch

 

So this week could be quite influential for me and I haven’t changed my mind yet in the light of a week’s distance or reality biting.

Does this sound like a good thing? Have I missed something that’s going to wreck it all?

Comments welcome.

Here are some reviews of the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/life-of-pi/

Acknowledgements: Pi poster with multi decimal places http://hoffnermath.files.wordpress.com/2009/

Movie poster: http://theawesomer.com

 

Praise was a no-no

Child development: The right kind of early praise predicts positive attitudes toward effort.

_____________________________________________________

When I taught developmental psychology to young teacher- and childcare-trainees, I fought a losing battle most of the time trying to show them how to use praise in the best way to enhance the lives of the little ones in their charge. All the other teachers on the programs thought that you must “treasure the precious little children” by [wrongly] “boosting their self-esteem” in saying “wow, that was good” or “don’t you look gorgeous”, no matter the merit of child in any way.

This article points out where I was doing OK and they were NOT encouraging the children to try hard and put their best efforts into whatever they did. I believe the “wow, you’re wonderful” style of upbringing has resulted in generations of youngsters who won’t put in an effort, try to get by on appearance [at which many succeed & others derive much misery from], feel entitled to a good job no matter how lackadaisical their performance and are intolerant of less than perfect traits in a partner. Who knows?

As I mentioned on Google+ in response to this article, my life has been heavily influenced by getting no praise or the wrong kind when I was a little kid. I was virtually “squashed down” because apparently the “tall poppy” syndrome reigned in the 1950s. I can only remember a few instances where I was praised for any achievement, and this was by school teachers or other kids’ parents. As an adult [in years, maybe not in mind!], I have not usually tried very hard at most things, because I achieved most things as a kid by just turning up and doing. No one will believe me, but I got into med school that way- however, lack of effort after being ill for a long time probably made me drop out, where I might have been able to cope with some coaching and support for a while.

Kids I went to school with apparently often tried to topple me from the top of the class, but, not having put any effort in myself, I didn’t notice their frustrated efforts! Therefore, I didn’t congratulate them or praise them either because I hadn’t experienced it myself. These days I sometimes chat on Facebook to some of these old friends and discover how “victorious” some of them felt when they topped me at something and how some of them were jealous of my performance/”marks”, disliking me as consequence. It all seems so trivial now, but THEY have mostly succeeded in life with good jobs and happy families, whereas I am long term unemployed with a still “itchy” mind!

So, from many years of experience and contemplation I would say to parents “Be alert to your children’s achievements in every sphere and give them plenty of praise about the way they achieve.” My idea would be to teach kids as many things as you can quite deliberately so they don’t have to make so many mistakes along the road to becoming adults themselves. Teach them about praise too, once they are old enough to get the idea, and they will become sought after companions in life for their peers. Show children how to do things and don’t keep saying “No not that way” and correcting them – let them work through and discover for themselves the best methods once you have shown them, except when it’s dangerous, eg. diving off the high board!

Surely I might be happier and healthier now, maybe even suitably employed if I had been able to build on a solid basis of feeling competent and autonomous when I was learning to become human. I’m working on it.

What’s affected me this week?

I was chatting to a friend at aquarobics this morning and he said that I tend to promote a lot of causes and “sad cases” on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. He thought this was all very noble but he felt that I should try to communicate about happier themes, since I am becoming like the national news! Maybe I would be able to dig myself out of my frequent depression by latching onto cheerful topics.

Bird & lotus

Now, I hadn’t noticed that I was negative in this way before and it hurts a little to think that the things I am most passionate about – affordable health care for all, looking after our ecology and food supply, reducing the use of manufactured chemicals in our food and environment which could enter our bodies, using discussion not weapons to solve national, tribal and territorial disputes and being at least civil (if not kind) to each other and to animals – seem negative. All these things tend to occupy my mind during the day, when I am mostly alone, since I don’t go to work like my partner. How am I going to change these themes around? Perhaps I could seek out positive stories or I could blog about other topics altogether. Would anyone like to weigh in?

Bronwyn Clee was saying, in her blog announcing #52b52w that:

Ideally all posts will be authentic and informative and have a clear message.

I’m not so sure about sticking to all three guidelines all of the time. However, I’m being authentic in asking for some ideas on how I can be more positive. I’m just not into positive affirmations like “I write uplifting blog posts” for motivating myself, although I’ve adopted the

Almost 22

practice of putting Smiley stickers on lots of things. Some friends have been mildly shocked by finding the Smileys on my laptop, phone and handbag! For a long time I had an excellent Smiley on the kettle so that I could smile at it every morning. It even had a name, Edwin, and I would say good morning to Edwin & grin cheesily as soon as I got up. One positive step I can take is to put a replacement Edwin sticker on the kettle right now!

Ending on a positive note! How did I do?

Finding hope

I’ve joined the 52 blog posts in 52 weeks blogathon started by Bronwyn Clee, so I thought I would announce my theme. My personal goal is to find hope for the longer term future for myself.

If you’ve ever visited this blog before you might have noticed I get visited by the Black Dog quite a lot, although less during the past 12 months [yayy!]. Hearing about my miseries may have put you off coming back, so I’m resolving to pursue a happier path if I can, blogging about daily events and topics that take my fancy, tying it all back to the “HOPE” theme.

Just a bit about the “setting conditions” so you know where I’m starting from this year:

I’m now over 60, feel as though I’m about 30; I live with my partner Steve, aka “Spotrick”, and currently, three cats: Moustiers [nearly 22 years old], Mogadon [six] and Bendix [four]. No kids or grandkids courtesy of mistaken genetic instructions. I’ve had several “careers” and I had been hoping for a new one, but it hasn’t happened. Firstly I was a junior sort of university lecturer (in developmental psychology), then I was a researcher in mental health (mainly on a psychiatry ward of a general hospital with eating disorder patients), then a general public health and computer network dogsbody all over the place. I’ve been doing a Masters in Public Health over the last several years and have finished except for the details that I and my supervisor need to decide about my dissertation/journal article. Hopefully I can sneak into the April Graduation Ceremony.

I V

This year has a loose plan of generating some longer term hope for me and I don’t plan on applying for any more jobs because that could mean pressure and negative mood triggers. My application to volunteer at the South Australian Museum for one day per week is being considered right now and I hope to get that so I can introduce some outside structure into my week. If successful, I will be part of one 4-person team among several, which will digitise the non-written Aboriginal artefacts the museum holds in storage. Only 2% of the collection is ever on display, so we have the other 98% to record in detailed photographs and notes before they need to change the display again! It sounds like quite an intriguing project. We will be cataloguing everything from tiny pieces of bark cloth to whole canoes hewn from trees.

When I get this structure to my week, there are other things I would like to fit around it such as doing more online courses to keep my brain alive, rallying people in the field of public health around Australia to use online social media to keep up to date and have short meetings, my various crafty hobbies, continue my Street Name Alphabet photography project started last year, keep socialising with friends every second day on my shrink’s prescription[!] and make our small garden beautiful again by looking after what’s there and adding to it. That’s plenty to do, I reckon, without having any pressure or time limits and should keep me moving forward while I search for long term hope.

Knowing that most of the other bloggers in the  #52b52w crowd have jobs/careers/family commitments to occupy their time, it might seem a bit weird to have my sort of goals, but that’s the way it is and I’m sticking to it.

Hopefully I can gain some ideas that will lead me towards my goal by seeing how the rest of you are travelling towards your goals and futures in your blogs. Happy blogging  #52b52w crowd.

 

What will keep me going in 2013?

Just gathering my wits at the moment to make a blog post. I managed to get through 2012 with a few wobbles in the middle surrounding mis-haps in the arts and the inability to intervene in the fate of a beautiful cat. Around Christmas things were better than the previous year due to a win in the arts, brought swiftly to earth by an abrasive encounter at a pre-Christmas party.

On the upside, I managed to recover from the abrasive encounter with the support of dear friends and family, plus juggling my pills and vitamins! Currently I feel pretty good and I’ll do my best to continue along this trajectory.

Several things lying around the house (never tidy, but usually not a pigsty) have reminded me that reading has been a good tonic in the past, so I am glad to have a large pile of reading to look forward to this year too. Sonia Faleiro‘s book Beautiful Thing. Portrait of a Bombay bar dancer, is still sitting on the edge of the coffee table, reminding me how surprisingly moving some books can be. I was captivated by this tale of the knife-edge existence of a young woman with the “ambition” to be a genuine dancer, not just a roughly used barmaid. Convinced that her life was quite positive compared to others in India, she made me realise how different circumstances shape different personalities and how everyone has their own frame for their dreams of a “better life”.

While there is nothing in my “to-read” pile that promises to be as inspiring as that book, there are plenty that will keep me occupied with mayhem and mystery!  eg. Michael Connelly‘s The Black Box. He’s always a good read.

Spotrick gave me for Christmas a little book of poems titled I Could Pee on This and other poems by cats.(Author Francesco Marciuliano). On the cover is a cheeky ginger & white kitten who looks similar to our Bendix. The contents are hilarious and are good cheer-ups if I’m feeling a bit meh. Here’s the beginning of “Unbridled love”:
I knead your chest with my sharp claws
To show you my affection
I bite your arm and don’t let go
To show you adoration…

That is sooo characteristic although I wish there was something I could do about the biting! My forearms sometimes get gory teeth-marks from those “adoring” chomps- ye-owww.

I could pee on that

Books are generally for bedtime reading for me, whereas I often get occupied with online courses during the day while Spotrick is at work. While in 2012 I was finishing my Masters degree, with that merely needing some corrections this month, I’ll have more time to concentrate on other things. Last year I did some online courses through EdX and Coursera including “Listening to World Music”, and “HarvardX: PH207x Health in Numbers: Quantitative Methods in Clinical & Public Health Research” , gaining course credits that could be used in real life if I wanted that. Several other courses I sampled, but didn’t complete formal assessment were Computing for Data Analysis (4 weeks of learning to progam in R), CalTech‘s Machine Learning and Community Models of Public Health . I have just started “Economics for Scientists”  as I think it will help me understand more about health economics and the political economy of health, with the hope of enrolling for a PhD connected with those later in the year.

Incidentally, I was stunned to hear of the death of the man who practically invented the “political economy of health” . Gavin Mooney was murdered in Tasmania, along with his second wife Del Weston, whose son from a previous marriage is being held in connection with their cruel slaying. I only met Gavin late last year at a seminar and he seemed a great believer in making the best health facilities available to the most disadvantaged people. He was a lovely guy, and was obviously held in very high regard by people throughout the community as seen by the tributes in Melissa Sweet’s Croakey blog.

Not ruminating about things like the previous paragraph is something I have to develop this year and I have become sufficiently motivated (I think) to get back to some of my art & craft activities, like knitting and quilting. I meant to make some cushions for several friends for Christmas, but time flew by too fast while I was finishing off the degree. Though Christmas is almost a distant memory, I’ll keep going on the cushion project, starting with a log cabin pattern in greens for a friend who has an unusual green leather lounge suite.

Green theme

These fabrics are in the mix and I am putting my new electric scissors to work cutting the strips just right as my wrists and thumbs are wrecked for working with manual ones.

There’s a lot of fabric hanging around here that needs to be made into clothing as well, but I’ve been very slack on the sewing for many years- I can’t get moving on it. This year I’ll get out some projects and see what happens- maybe inspiration will stay with me for a while. I really like these bright, lightweight cottons for making summer dresses and tops:

The garden is starting to look more lush than it has since we moved in, largely due to Spotrick’s efforts in tidying up old plants and pots. I’ve also been blitzing the plants with plenty of fertiliser and misting water under the larger ones on hot days. My ambition is to almost obscure the courtyard walls!

 

These Were a Few of Their Favorite Things – and a few of mine

These Were a Few of Their Favorite Things – NYTimes.com.

I’ve been interested in science, reading & discovering things since I was tiny, but never had any of those wonderful construction toys that boys seemed to get for Christmas. I had plenty of dolls that I loved to dress up with clothes I had sewn & knitted for them & I was always pestering my mum for “scraps”.

At about 4 or 5 I received a wind-up train set and rails for Christmas, but never really got to play with it the way I wanted because my father immediately commandeered it and made long guided rail things from plywood around the rooms. He would usually take the wind-up bit out of my hands saying “don’t overwind it”.

Wimmer-Heinrich-HWN passenger train set

I quickly learned about the remedy for “over-winding” by taking the little engine apart while dad was at work in the South Island (NZ; he was a government statistician in the 1950s and actually went around and collected some of the data, as they did in those days!). After figuring out clockwork motors, I proceeded to take apart music boxes and wind-up monkeys & put them back together again without anyone noticing. What fun!

No chemistry set ever came my way, in spite of pleading every year, but I did get to play with the usual household substances like vinegar & baking soda, making terrific froth plumes out of soft drink bottles. Developing films in the laundry was vaguely chemical, but you couldn’t experiment with that stuff.

I WAS really interested in stars and space, due to my father showing me the Southern Aurora and tracking the first orbiting space satellites, like Sputnick I & II. He kept an ear out on shortwave radio to find out what times to expect them and we always went out on the front lawn with his old German Field Ambulance binoculars that he had acquired from a mate when he was younger. I can remember the first space dog Laika and the poor monkeys & chimpanzees that were sent up to perish in plumes of fire on re-entry.

Laika – Russian space dog

We kept track of many space objects and star and planetary happenings, and when I was a young adult (at least in years), the appearance of the comet Kouhoutek was quite a colourful spectacle low over the Pacific Ocean in front of my parents house. There was a phase I went through when I was around 14, wanting to be an astrophysicist & work with the Parkes radio telescope (The Dish). I would try to figure out the speeds and heights of orbits necessary for satellites of various weights to circle the earth and where they ought to appear at certain times – what a mess of maths that was!! No computers to help me then.

One thing that really cemented my interest in science was a children’s encyclopedia “of everything” that I received when I was eight. I read that thing to death, over and over. The parts I remember best are the chapters about the solar system and “how the body works”. I knew then that I wanted to be a doctor “when I grew up”.

From my encyclopedia

However, the book puzzled me for years because it didn’t explain exactly what happened to food-waste, once it went past the stomach: I spent years thinking that the solid waste went out through the large intestine and somehow got separated from the liquid waste that exited via the small intestine! It took some exploration of mum’s nursing textbooks to get a handle on the kidneys, which ultimately fascinated me with how they could extract the liquid from blood without letting it all leak out in your pee!

I was a pretty weird little kid at times, with allocating all my little friends in third grade a strange “disease” out of my list from the Pears’ Cyclopedia (1960 edition; I was 8) when we played hospitals! My pals got sick of it before we’d even finished “A”: they’d had achondroplastic dwarfism, asthma, acromegaly and ataxia thrust upon them before I was outvoted on what to play at lunchtimes! Incidentally, the poinciana thorns in the playground (horrors they’d say these days) got a good work-out as “needles” for the play-nurses to prick their victims!!

 

A simple glass of water

Only too well I know how distractible I am when my mood is not topnotch. To illustrate, let me tell you the saga of my attempt to get a glass of water to wash down my lunch of almonds and fresh fruit.

1. Into the kitchen I go. The devil kitty (Ms Moustiers Ste Marie, “don’t mess with me”, toothless, 21 years old and chief Demand-0-Cat) yowls for food; I fed her half a dish of chicken about 15 minutes ago.

2. Searching on the sink for the rinsed catfood spoon, I discover it has been left dirty, so I wash it.

3. I have to find a new container of catfood in the pantry.

4. Feed kitty.

5. Notice that last nights debris has not been sorted, parceled and sent bin-wards.

6. Wrap two lots of discards & recyclables.

Fantasy in the backyard

7. Take rubbish to bins, which have been left in the drive from yesterdays garbage collection run (just rubbish & metal/glass/paper recyclables, not green recyclables).
8. Go into garage to dispose of green waste.

9. Of course I noticed while out the front that I had parked the car on a tiny sliver of garden hose sticking out from the garden bed. Must shift it.

10. Into the house, fetching the car keys & promptly yowled at by THAT cat again.

11. Move car- get out, lock it. Still parked it on another piece of hose.

12. Two more car moves, including out onto the street; at last nothing is caught under the wheels.

13. Re-inflate squashed hose by running high-power jet through it for 30 seconds.

14. Back inside, feed kitty again.

15. Get clean glass, fill with tap water.

16. Sit down again,

 

Folding towels sucks

I can’t believe that folding a towel & 6 tea towels made both wrists go click & hurt enough to draw tears. Grand Theft Suckage!

That was the last straw for today. Having already delivered the recharged laptop next door (they got loaned a Macbook Air without a charger- duh…), fed the cats, put on a load of washing, Swiffed the floors of cat hair, made cups of tea and taken daily pills, I was just revving up to clearing the local pigsty, since Spotrick is ill & all.

Its obvious

So the rugs will have to stay hairy, the bedroom piled with boxes exchanging summer clothes for winter, the washing stalled before Spotrick’s work clothes are washed, the dishwasher unemptied from yesterday, the fishy plastic bag stuck in the sink clogging up the drain, the dirty dishes from last night and breakfast festooned over the kitchen, the cat food strewn over the kitchen floor & the bathroom not subjected to it’s weekly super-sprucing, the snail pellets not distributed around the tree dahlia, the kangaroo paws not planted in the front garden, the pillowcases not changed for 4 weeks, the hedgetrimmer not bought from the hardware store (so the hedge is untrimmed so the clothes can’t hang on half the line), the bins not put out for 2 weeks due to WTF and…and…and.

I’m taking the rest of the day off. SOD everything & I’m having peanut M&Ms for lunch.

I’m writing a post. Duh!

I haven’t posted much in either blog for a while- just the occasional outburst. However, my head has been FULL of ideas on what I want to say to the world. My drafts are also getting a bit overwhelming.

So- here I am. The first thing is about my disappearance from Facebook. I was quite happy on Facebook and made lots of online and real life friends there. It also allowed communication with various groups I belong to in photography, wine and dining. The problem happened over the last four weeks, with Facebook twice banning me from “Adding new friends” for 7 days. I hadn’t been aware of trying to friend anyone unusual or completely unknown to me and I hadn’t said anything offensive to anyone there. Maybe the new relatives I had been given the names of in New Zealand and Queensland complained about me, believing me to be a stranger, despite sharing my surname. Or, they suddenly got worked up about some feud my father is supposed to have had before I was born- who knows?

Most likely it was a series of totally false “complaints” by people connected with our mutual friend’s suicide last year as the first Facebook ban came around the anniversary of his death. If people want to blame me for a suicide, I don’t want to argue with them- but they needn’t interfere with my interactions with other people I know as friends. Further hints that these people might be behind the Facebook bans was at a dinner I attended, about which I previously blogged (above)- a woman came up to me and said something like “Oh you’re that Kay Walker from Facebook- humph!”. I didn’t know her, but vaguely recognised her face from some social events years ago. I guess she wasn’t pleased to find me at the dinner with a Facebook Group so made further complaints. It’s a mystery to me.

Maybe I am paranoid, but I’ve also discovered that some people on Twitter and Google Plus have recently banned me as well- or “blocked” etc. I have commented on one person’s blog a few times as I share similar experiences with depression and drugs with her, but the comments never appear. What have I done to her? Maybe I should learn to use more lists on Twitter so friends from one sphere don’t suffer the Tweets of my other spheres. Irrelevant Tweets don’t bother me- I know people lead multi-facted lives- but if they bother others, perhaps I could change my ways.

You see, the Internet is one of the few ways I get to interact with other people these days. I’ve been completely unemployed for 5 years now and was only employed sporadically for 7 years before that. I’ve been up and down with my depression [like the Assyrian Empire], but managed to maintain a small group of real life friends over all that time. The rest of my socialising has been via the Internet. With my exit from Facebook (I feel I have been hounded off there) and the way others are blocking or dropping me elsewhere, I’m starting to get a bit worried. I’ve made a few moves to join some other sites to make up for my losses, but they are not so much with people who could ever be friends IRL- eg. on Pinterest or Tumblr. They’re more to share interests.

Speaking of interests- Spotrick & I attended a pleasant (if freezing cold), sunset photography meetup yesterday at Gillman, near the industrial Port Adelaide, north of the City Centre. There we met some previous acquaintances and a bunch of new people who all seemed very pleasant. We also took a few good photos and shivered together!

Here are several pix from the trip.