How Am I?

I had a comment today about my last post. Bendy Girl was asking how I was now.

That's the nice thing about bloggers; when you're not feeling your best they rally round with lovely comments and send you virtual hugs to help you feel better.

To be honest, I am not feeling brilliant. I'm trying to take one day at a time and not thinking about Christmas if I can help it. When I was at psychotherapy on Tuesday, the first thing that JR, my psychologist, asked me was how I was feeling. So I told him. I said that I could feel myself going downhill as each day passed. We discussed it for about 10 minutes and then got on with the real stuff.

Perhaps, because he knew I was feeling a bit low, he didn't work me as hard this week as he did last. He asked how I had been after last week's session and when I replied "like a limp lettuce," he laughed. Little did he know that I had described how I was feeling in exactly those terms in this blog.

Today I have been delivering the items that I had been commissioned to knit. 'D' was absolutely thrilled with the cardigan that I had made for her new baby. We had a cup of tea and a good chat about how we had been since leaving hospital. She is a different person to the one who arrived on the admissions ward a couple of days after me, and being back at home with her new baby was all that she hoped it would be.

That took care of this morning, and this afternoon I delivered the cardigan that I was asked to knit by the lady who worked at the assisted-living accommodation that I stayed in when I left hospital. She loved it. The colour that I had chosen was perfect, and it attracted lots of admiring comments from those staying in the accommodation at the moment and from the staff who were there. And there is likely to be another commission in the near future.

So, I have managed to get through another day and while I am not exactly full of the party spirit I am doing my best to keep active and not think about things. When I got home and checked my emails I found one from my OU tutor saying that he had marked my TMA and it was ready for me to collect from the eTMA system. I got 63%, which is not the highest mark I have ever received, but considering I had to cram about 6 weeks work into 2 weeks, and that included asking for a week's extension for me to do the TMA, I am more than happy with it. It's just a short course, but it is helping me to get back into the swing of things, and as it is a creative writing course, there is no right or wrong answer, just how good your writing is. He liked my first and second short stories, but he felt that my third one let me down a bit. I knew that it wasn't as good as the first two, but I have to admit that I find writing fiction quite difficult, so to have written two convincing short stories has pleased me no end.

Computer Away, Knitting Needles Out

The short stories for my TMA are typed up and the finished document has been sent on its electronic way to my tutor for him to pull to pieces. I think that I have a book in me (they say that we all have one book in us) but I don't think that it is fiction.

I rarely have to struggle to find words when writing posts for this blog, but all that is written is factual and has happened to me or is me commenting on strange or annoying or funny things that I have seen or read. Much of my working life was spent writing reports, and these were often very detailed, technical and based on a great deal of analysis. It seems that while I have a way with words I don't have the sort of imagination that would allow me to create characters and situations needed to become a successful novelist.

I'm taking the weekend off from studying. I'm now only about a week behind everyone else on the course and I hope that I can make that up by a concerted effort next week. While this course is not exactly important to me, after all I am not going to be using the credit from it towards a qualification, it is an excellent way of making sure that I have something to focus on and put my energy into.

This weekend I am going to be knitting. I have been commissioned to knit a jumper for the grandson of one of the ladies who worked at the assisted-living accommodation that I lived in when I came out of hospital. I saw her at the bus stop yesterday when I was waiting to catch my bus home. A huge smile broke out on her face when she saw me and she enveloped me in her arms and commented on how well I looked. As we were chatting she asked about how my knitting was going and I told her that I had finished the little jacket that I had been knitting for 'D's' baby. Then she asked if I could knit something for her grandson, in maroon, and could I get it finished in time for Christmas.

I managed to find a nice pattern this morning and some wool which I think will look lovely when it is knitted up. Fortunately her grandson is only two, so it is still quite a small size that I am going to be knitting and with a bit of luck I should get at least half of it done this weekend. I've cast on the stitches for the back and completed the first row. Once I have finished this post I shall make myself a cup of tea and then settle down with pattern, needles and wool and knit away all evening.

Getting Into The Writing Mood

I didn't get much sleep last night but it wasn't too much of a problem because I had enjoyed some extra hours in bed yesterday morning. I was awake about 6.30am, I jumped out of bed, got myself into action mode and managed to be ready to leave the house at just after 7.30. Then it was a quick walk up the road to the bus stop to catch a bus. By 8.10 I was in McDonald's ordering a bacon roll for my breakfast.

Yes, this was a bit of a cop out; I could have made myself a bacon sandwich at home, but I didn't have any bacon and the bread ran out last night. I sat myself down in a corner to enjoy my bacon roll and to help pass the time I got a book of Suduko puzzles out of my bag and got stuck in to them.

The reason that I was on the go so early this morning was that I needed to get to the library for opening time at 9am so that I could find myself a quiet corner, unpack my laptop, course material, writing paper, pen, pencil and rubber, and then get down to the important task for the day.

I was late starting my present OU course (A174 Start Writing Fiction) because I was in hospital. By the time I was home again and getting into a frame of mind where I could realistically hope to make some sense of the course material and get to grips with what was required for the first TMA it was almost time to submit that TMA. I had sent my tutor an email when I was in hospital (yes, I did occasionally manage to get my fingers on a computer keyboard) informing him that I was a patient in a psychiatric hospital and that I wouldn't be able to start work on the course until I was home again. The first TMA was due in last Friday, but I negotiated an extension from my tutor and I had told him that I thought that I could get through all the necessary course material and do the TMA (that's five weeks studying and a week for TMA preparation) in two and a half weeks and that an extension of one week ought to be enough.

I managed all the reading fairly easily, and I must admit that I cheated a little and didn't do all the writing exercises because I just didn't have the time. I even managed to come up with possible scenarios for two of the short stories that comprised parts 1 and 2 of the TMA. The third part required me to listen to the radio and pick up something that was on air which I could use to write another short story. I put my headphones in my ears, called up BBC Radio 4 on my computer and listened to a short snatch of Woman's Hour. I couldn't believe my luck. As I started to listen there was a brief discussion going on about the difficulty of buying Christmas presents for men.

It didn't take me long to think up a little story about someone going to do the last bit of Christmas shopping and the difficulty that she was having buying presents for two 20-something males. I needed to write 500 words and they flowed from my pen at an impressive speed. As I completed each paragraph, I would take a break and quickly count up the words that I had written. As with all OU courses, the word count is important and tutors will dock you marks if you exceed the word count by more than 10%.

Trying to put together short stories with such a strict word limit can really exercise the mind, but this morning I managed to write three short stories, all of which were slightly over 500 words in length, but none of them anywhere near where I could have marks taken off. I need to finish typing them up now and then I can use the electronic TMA system to send the finished assignment to my tutor. I hope he is kind to me when marking it; I don't think I could cope with a poor result at a time when I am just about managing to keep myself busy so that I don't have time to think about being depressed.

(Just so you know, there are 741 words in this post)

A Nice Crispy Cos

After yesterday's session with the psychologist I felt like a limp lettuce. I managed to last until 10pm but then I decided that bed was definitely the best place for me. I fell asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow and slept through the whole night, not waking until about 7.15am. I got up, did a few bits and pieces, took my medication, switched on the computer to deal with any emails that had come in and wrote an email to Mr Smiley. By then it was about 9.30am and I couldn't keep my eyes open. So I went back to bed and fell asleep immediately not waking again until about 1.30pm.

How do I feel now? Pretty good really. My mind seems to be working reasonably well although I haven't managed to do any work on my TMA. So tomorrow I will get up early and head to library and I will stay there until I have written my three short stories (each 500 words), typed them up and sent the TMA using the OU's eTMA system.

Today I am not a limp lettuce; today I'm like a nice crispy cos.

Lost Weekend

I have almost completed my first weekend at home since I left hospital and it hasn't been too bad although I haven't really achieved much.

Yesterday saw me going to collect my new toy and then trying it out. Today has mostly been spent sleeping. It wasn't intentional, it just happened. I woke early, about 6am, listened to the rain and promptly went back to sleep. I woke for a second time at about 10am, got myself something to eat, took my morning medication, listened to the rain and went back to bed (it was warm and cosy) and promptly went back to sleep again. I woke again in a somewhat confused state to find that it was dark outside and a quick check of my watch showed that it was fast approaching 5pm. Within a few minutes I could hear the rain starting again.

This means that I haven't done anything very productive this weekend, but at least I seem to have managed to be occupied in such a way that I haven't allowed the depression to take a hold on me. That has to be my goal over the next month or so and I am trying to ensure that I have as many things to do as are necessary to stop me having time to just sit and think. Unless I need to, that is. I am trying to catch up with an OU course that started while I was in hospital and that I have only been able to work on during this last week. It's just a short course, so that makes it more difficult to make up the four weeks that I wasn't working on the material.

The course is one of the OU's short creative writing courses, in this case Start Writing Fiction. I'm not sure that I have it in me to write a novel, but I am very interested in Creative Writing (it may even be why I started this blog) having spent so much of my working life employed in writing reports based on research and analysis of data. Fortunately, writing comes fairly easily to me (except when I am really badly depressed) and I have a fair grasp on the English language so finding words to express myself is fairly easy. If I'm analysing things as I write this, it probably also explains why so many of my posts are quite long.

So next week in between visits to my GP (Monday), to a psychologist (Tuesday) and to see the Home Treatment Team (probably Friday, but it's my call), I shall be spending much time in the library working on the course material and preparing my first TMA which is due next Friday, although my tutor has given me a week's extension because of starting the course late. Why the library? Well, if I'm there I find that there are less distractions to stop me getting on with the work than there would be at home. And to ensure that this all happens as it is supposed to I shall make sure that I get an early night tonight, make sure that my alarm is set so that I get up in good time to get myself dressed and ready for my appointment with my GP and that I pack my bag with computer and books so that I can head off to the library straight from the surgery.

I am so determined to try to ensure that I never again get into the state that I was in a few weeks ago, so I am going to make sure that I plan out the week ahead with all the things that I need to do making sure that there is never too much for any one day and that no days are left with nothing to achieve leaving me with too much time to think about my depression. I've done it in the past (I think that was what I was doing when I was working full-time, and studying for a degree at the same time) and I am sure that I can do it again.

And one other thing has been buoying me up over the last few days; the fabulous response that I have had to 'Tackling the Mental Health Minefield' and the huge increase in visitors to this blog. The next instalment is half drafted and will be appearing on a computer near you tomorrow.

Knitting For Sanity

Whether or not I post to this blog can be an indicator of how I am feeling. When Mr Smiley sent me an email yesterday he noted that I hadn't posted anything since Thursday and without me having said anything to him knew that I was feeling down. He was right; I'm having a bad time at the moment and while I often have things that I want to say, I don't have the energy or the enthusiasm to write anything.

For many this would not be a problem, but while writing on this blog is not actually a life-defining occurrence, it does have some meaning for my future studies with the OU. Later this year I will be taking a course in creative writing and taking a more advanced one next year. These courses will lead to me completing my second degree but will also give me a Diploma in Literature and Creative Writing.

Studying with the OU has been a life-saver for me over the last nine years but it hasn't all been plain sailing. Over the last few years I have only managed to complete one course because depression has made it impossible for me to continue with courses for which I was registered. I am hoping that by taking some creative courses rather than purely academic ones I will break this cycle of having to 'drop out'.

One of the few things that I manage to continue with while I am deeply depressed is knitting. I have become a little manic about it over the last few weeks and have more projects on the go than is usual, even for me. However, I am coming to the end of one of them, a beautiful circular lace blanket that will keep me warm next winter; I should finish it today because I am knitting the edging at the moment and as it is only a 6-row repeat pattern, it seems to be moving around the edge of the blanket at a good rate.

For the first time ever, I have also joined a KAL. For the uninitiated this is a knit-along, and it is for a mystery shawl. The 'mystery' is that none of us, except the designer, know what the finished shawl will look like. The pattern will be available in seven 'clues' which are published weekly; the first was posted on the KAL site last Wednesday and I made the decision to join on Thursday. Having found some yarn in my knitter's stash that would be sufficient for the project I set to work and had completed the 54 rows that made up the first clue within 24 hours. I now have to wait until tomorrow for the second clue which will give me sufficient time to finish knitting the blanket today and sew in the few yarn ends that need to be done before notification of the clue having been posted arrives tomorrow.

The designer lives in the US and plans to post the clue at about midday EDT so that means that it should be available for me to work on tomorrow evening. Once I have finished the second clue I will have to wait again for the next one so I shall get to work on a cardigan for myself in the meantime.

Knitting is keeping me sane at the moment, I am having so much trouble concentrating on things that I am not even able to read. So I have a couple of books sitting beside the bed waiting for the moment that the depression lifts and I can get back to another of the things that I love to do in my spare time.

Once I have the myriad of knitting projects back to realistic levels again, I may do some crocheting as a little light relief. Sending There and Back a book on 'How to Crochet' as part of her birthday present and receiving emails from her letting me know how she is progressing, has reawakened my enthusiasm for this craft. I have decided to make a new throw for my bed and I will be building this from 6-inch squares of various designs from a wonderful book that I bought a few months ago. Having decided on the colours that I am going to use I have to now decide which squares I am going to make and how to lay them out to create the overall effect. This will be the first time that I will have designed something on this scale and I know that it is going to be one of those projects that will take some time to complete, but the joy of crocheting squares of this size for joining together to make a larger object is that the project can be picked up and worked on in any spare moments.

So while I may not be feeling at my best I am still making sure that I find things to do to ensure that my brain doesn't atrophy and that I am engaged in something constructive to pass away the hours. And this has reminded me that I need to charge the battery for my camera so that I can post a few pictures of the projects as they are completed or are progressing.

Post Titles

Sometimes it can be almost as difficult to find a catchy and/or relevant title for a post as it is to write the post in the first place. And sometimes I can't think of what to write at all. Tuesday wasn't one of those days; I managed to add three posts to the blog, none of them particularly earth-shattering, but each of them having something to say about how I had spent my day and how I was feeling.

My visitor figures are never particularly outstanding, although it is nice to know that some people read what I say and take the time and effort to comment. I often wonder what draws people to the blog in the first place so I often have a look at what search terms people use that causes them to have their first look (or even draw them back again later).

I have commented in the past that the search terms "meeting under the clock at Waterloo", "what is a Shetland hap shawl" and "studying and depression" regularly bring readers to the site. Then there was the saga of the students in India who all arrived at the blog by searching for "procrastination is the thief of time"; I don't think that my post with that as its theme will have helped them very much.

Students studying one particular course with the OU (a course that I have studied and mentioned in my blog) arrive at the blog by searching for the subject of the extended essay that forms the final examinable component of the course. They will be somewhat disappointed with the results though because although I mention what the essay is about I don't give them any information that would help them with the essay.

On Tuesday I went out for the day in an effort to try to cheer myself up after a particularly difficult day on Monday. I wrote a post giving details of where I had been and what I had done. Later that same evening I added another post because I had forgotten to include one of the highlights of the day. It was a very short post compared with many on this blog, and it had what I thought was a catchy and relevant title considering the subject. Yesterday I had somebody arrive through searching "keyhole surgery". I don't think that they found what they were looking for though.

So should I be a bit more careful about what I call the posts or what I write about? I don't think so. After all, it may lead someone to become a regular reader, so I don't care how they find my blog; I only hope they take a moment to read it and maybe find something that is worth reading.

Playing Truant

I'm feeling a bit like a naughty schoolgirl today.  I should be spending the day working on TMAs for the two OU courses that I am currently doing, but I am going to play truant.  I did some work yesterday, but today I feel that I need to spend time on myself.

I still have just over a week to get the three TMAs completed so it isn't exactly imperative that I work on them today, but the sooner I get them completed the better.  Yet, today I have woken up and decided that I shall have a lie in, just because I can, and that I shall have a lazy day just doing things that I want to and that I enjoy. This is a little bit naughty because I have just had a couple of days away from studying because I was feeling very depressed and I was unable to concentrate.  But there is a big difference between not doing something because you are unable to, and not doing something because you don't want to.

Today, it is very much a case of the latter.  So I am going to indulge myself.  I'm going to do whatever it is that I feel like doing, and I am going to eat whatever I feel like eating.  I shall be naughty and not count the cost or the calories.  I shall do a bit of knitting, read a book, or watch a film on TV.  If I feel like having a quick nap, that that is what I shall do.  I am going to be selfish and think only of myself today.

I shall just have to work twice as hard tomorrow.  That is one of the penalties for playing truant.

Six Months Of Blogging - I Didn't Think It Would Last

Tomorrow it is six months since I started this blog. I'm still not sure what possessed me to do it, but I am glad that I did. There are times when that six months seems like a life time, and others when it has seemed to pass in a flash.

I wasn't really sure what I would write about when I first started, except that I felt that I needed to explain what it felt like, for me, to suffer with depression. My depression was not something new, I had been suffering for nearly 10 years, but because I live on my own it often feels as though there is no-one who I can talk to about how I feel, and even if nobody read the blog, I felt that I was at least speaking my thoughts out loud and not keeping it bottled up inside. I have been asked why I called myself Madsadgirl, and all I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm not mad, although there are times when I have doubted my sanity, I am sad some of the time, but there are also times when I am quite happy, and at my age I am stretching a point to call myself a girl, but the name sounded catchy and I couldn't think of anything else.

Many of my early posts were about depression, but I was aware that this would make a pretty boring blog and may not attract much in the way of readership if everything that I wrote was negative, so I also included posts about being a student with the Open University, about things that I had seen in the news and that I had strong opinions about, about the way that members of the medical profession, particularly GPs, were being vilified by some members of the government, particularly as these men and women do a difficult job and rarely get the thanks that they deserve.

Sometimes I wrote about things that were happening around me, for example the dreaded roadworks that are a consequence of the replacement of London's Victorian water mains, and I wrote about the sometimes funny and sometimes beautiful things that I saw around me. Knitting has also been a subject of a great many posts, even if it was only to say that I was having to unpick what I was working on and start again because I had made a mess of it.

Of course, depression and the effect that it can have on a person still remains one of the main reasons that I write this blog. I have written about the discrimination and stigma that those with mental health problems face, and I write about them through experience. I have also written about what it is like to undergo psychotherapy, not short-term cognitive-behaviour therapy that many undergo, but long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy with the traumatic issues and feelings that this can raise, and the relief that it can bring in being able to understand why I am the way that I am.

Sometimes I write almost every day, sometimes more than once a day, and sometimes there can be days between posts. My aim has always been to write something meaningful and that will cause anybody reading it to think about what life can be like for other people. I hope that I have achieved this aim and that what I have written over the last six months has helped people to understand what life is like for someone with depression and that it has given hope to some who find themselves in a similar state.

All bloggers say that they are surprised that anyone reads what they write, but we would be liars if we did not admit that there is a hope that someone else will read what we have written. I will never have the following of some of the blogs that I read, but I am thrilled that I have managed to attract more than 4600 hits since the blog started. I am honoured that some of my posts have been considered of enough value to warrant such worthy bloggers as the Jobbing Doctor and Dr Grumble to select them as shared items on their blogs, and I know that each time they have done this I have experienced a marked increase in traffic to the blog. Thank you, Gentlemen; it has been much appreciated.

Like many bloggers I tend to see what leads people to read my blog. Obviously the word "depression" brings up many hits when a Google search is carried out, and this is a way that a few find their way to my blog. Another frequent search term is Open University, or OU, sometimes with the word "studying" sometimes without. Psychotherapy is another term that has appeared frequently, with or without other search terms. I have been amused by those studying with the OU who have found their way to my blog when trying to get ideas for the particular TMA that they are working on at the time. That has happened for both of the courses that I am studying at present, but I am afraid that they will have gained nothing from what I have written other than to learn that even after many years of studying with the OU, I still find it extremely difficult to sit down to write an essay for a TMA.

I have made a number of virtual friends through this blog, and I have met one blogger, with whom I now correspond on an almost daily basis outside of this blog and who is now much more than a virtual friend. I started to write this blog anonymously, and I still think that was a good idea. I didn't tell anyone that I was writing it until it had been going for almost a month, and even then I only told a couple of people. Six months of blogging and there are still only a handful of people who know my real name and anything about me, and I find that something of a comfort. This means that comments received on my blog mean that much more because they do not come from people who feel that they have to make a comment because they know me.

So here I am, six months on. Has writing a blog made any difference to me? The answer to that is definitely a resounding "Yes". I have written about the good times and the bad, I have written about the funny and the sad, and I have written sometimes when my heart was breaking but I knew that writing was the only way that I could carry on. And receiving comments when I have written at these difficult times has helped me through them and helped me to come out smiling on the other side.

To all of you who bother to read this blog I say a big "Thank You", you have made life worth living again, and to those who comment "Keep commenting, I love them", and to those of you who read and don't comment "Why don't you?"; although I moderate comments I have published every one that has been written.

What Do You Write About In A Milestone Post?

This is the 200th post to my blog.  I knew that the milestone was close, so I checked the total a little earlier.  Surely such a milestone requires a really good post.  But that means that I have to wait until I have got something significant to write about.  I didn't feel like writing a summary of what has gone before.  So this post will cover some of the things that I have written about in the past, not as they were when I wrote about them before, but as they are now.

One thing that I have regularly complained about is the work that is currently going on around my area of London in an effort to replace the capitals aging Victorian water mains.  The work is still on-going and when I went to the bank today I saw that yet another road has been closed to through traffic.  So far the work within a one mile radius of my home has been going on for almost a year and I am sure that it will be continuing for some time to come.

I have continued to study with the OU; I've completed one course (which I got the result for this week) and I am currently working on two more.  I have had a bit of a rough time with the studying over the last couple of weeks because I haven't been feeling on top of the world.  However, I am going to have a concerted effort this weekend to try to get two of the three TMAs that are due at the beginning of January written, so that I can get the other one completed before Christmas too.  That way I can start the New Year up to date, or even slightly ahead of where I need to be.

Knitting has been one of the things that has helped to pass the time when I haven't been feeling wonderful.  I've knitted four jumpers and a cardigan to keep me warm over the winter, and a hat to keep my ears warm.  I also have three different shawls in progress as the moment.  The Shetland lace shawl that is being knitted for a baby due in February is growing slowly.  It is a difficult pattern to follow and is definitely not for periods when I am feeling very depressed as it just makes me feel worse when I have to unpick it stitch by stitch to correct the mistakes.  The second shawl is a beautiful shawl which has grown quickly and probably could be finished in a couple of evenings when there is nothing much on television.  It will be lightweight, weighing less than 75 grams, and very soft and fluffy as it is knitted in a mixture of mohair and silk. The third shawl is a Shetland hap shawl and this afternoon, I finished the main part of it and now I am knitting the border.  I started with 800 stitches on the circular needle which it has been knitted on, and 17 stitches on a separate needle which were the start of the border.  One stitch from the main shawl gets joined to the border on every other row and there are 160 repeats of the 10-row pattern that makes up each point of the shawl.  I have so far managed to complete 5 repeats so there are only 155 to go.

The other two subjects that have represented a major part of this blog are depression and psychotherapy.  I still have very long periods of depression, followed by short periods when I don't feel so bad.  Sometimes I can fall into a trough in a matter of hours and other times it happens over a period of days or weeks. Psychotherapy has made a difference to my life; it has allowed me to find out so much more about myself and to understand why I am the way that I am. Psychotherapy has been hard; it has sometimes been traumatic; it is often very emotive.  But psychotherapy is certainly helping me to cope with things better, to regain some self-confidence, and to increase self esteem.

So a lot has happened over the time that I have been writing this blog, and I am sure that a lot will continue to happen as the months go by.  What started off as an exercise to see if I could write anything worthwhile has turned out to be one of the best things that has happened to me for quite a long time.  I hope that I will continue to write for a long time to come, and that people will continue to read this blog.  It has been a bit of a lifeline over the last five and a half months and has brought me a lot of new friends.

This is what I have decided to write about in this milestone post.

Achieved - Yet It Doesn't Feel Like An Achievement

Earlier this year I had to give up studying for an MSc because I was having real problems with being able to concentrate while studying.  It is quite common for those suffering from depression to have periods where their capacity to concentrate on anything becomes severely impaired, and my worst one to date occurred in March.  But the problem with giving up studying was that I was left with more time on my hands with nothing to do and so the depression got worse.

I have always suffered withdrawal symptoms as each OU course finished and I waited for the next one to begin, but this time it coincided with a total lack of confidence in my ability to write an essay, something that had never occurred before.  I knew that like getting back on a horse after you have fallen from it, I needed to find something that would help me to regain some sort of confidence in my ability to write, which was something that had always been one of my strongest attributes when I was working.  To this end I decided to take one of the OU short courses.

These courses were not available when I started studying with the OU; they have, however, built up quite a selection of these courses over the last few years.  I looked at the courses that were available to see if there was anything that took my fancy.  Having read through the options several times I decided to settle for the OU course 'Starting with Psychology'.  There was a book to read, two TMAs to submit, and a long essay which counted as the examinable component of the course.  If I successfully completed and passed the course (the OU calls it 'achieved' rather than 'passed' on these short courses because you have to show that you have achieved a number of learning objectives, so are not give a numerical score for the work), I would earn 10 points which could be put towards the 360 points needed for an Honours degree.

I did the course, submitted my ECA, and yesterday the course result came out.  It says that I 'Achieved'.  But what did I achieve? I managed to write a couple of essays. I must have managed to take on board some of the course material because I showed that I had adequately used that material in the compilation of the essays.  I had managed to include references, to show how certain aspects of the material related to the questions set.  Yet at the end of it all I don't feel as though I have really learnt anything at all, and because of the way that things were marked I have little idea whether I wrote a good essay or not.

I'm still having trouble putting an essay together.  I have got to write three over the next three weeks on three different subjects. This should be easy enough for me to do, and yet I have not got any confidence in my ability to write a reasoned piece of prose at the moment.

The OU has decided that I achieved the standard necessary to be considered as a successful candidate on that course.  I, on the other hand, don't feel as though I have achieved anything.

The Poor Jelly Baby

Sometimes it can be really difficult to find something to blog about. I know that this blog is mostly about how I live with depression, but it would be really boring if that was all that I wrote about, in fact it would be ... depressing. This means that I write about other things too. About the knitting that I am doing at the moment, or in the case of the Shetland lace shawl, undoing; about things that I do that are out of the ordinary (talking to a lot of GPs about patients having access to their medical records for example); sometimes about things that I see on my travels (sometimes beautiful and sometimes funny); and, of course, I write about my struggles with furthering my education with the Open University.

One of the things that I do every day is to look at a number of news websites. One of these is that of the BBC, and it was while looking through that this morning I found something that I felt I had to blog about. It was an item with a link to the 'Screaming Jelly Baby'. But why would a Jelly Baby be screaming, I hear you cry. Well, it's an experiment, one of a series, that have been put on YouTube by the TDA in an effort to try to attract people to teaching science.

You can find the 'Screaming Jelly Baby' here. By going here you can see all five of the TDA videos. The idea is that the most popular of these will be replicated on a large scale at Train to Teach events in February and March 2009. At the moment the poor Jelly Baby is in the lead.

In case you were wondering, the experiment using the jelly baby is to illustrate the process of respiration, in particular the conversion of food to energy.

Under The Clock At Waterloo

It was reminiscent of a 1940s film. A rendezvous had been made to meet under the clock at Waterloo at 10am this morning. The station was filled with people searching the boards to find out which platform their train was leaving from. There were greetings between those who had not seen each other for some time; there were partings as some set off on adventures or off to some far away place.

I was there, standing under the clock, waiting for someone who I had never met before. Someone with whom I had never spoken. Yet I did not feel as though I was meeting a stranger. I was meeting someone who over the last few months I had come to look upon as a friend. There was no newspaper under my arm, nor a carnation in my buttonhole. I had told the person that I was meeting that I would be wearing my new blue jumper; I hoped that they would recognize it.

This was going to be a first for me. I had never made such an assignation before, I was suddenly a little apprehensive and yet I was looking forward to this encounter. Thoughts went through my mind. Would we get on together? Would we find anything to talk about? We both had mental scars, yet this was perhaps what had drawn us together in the first place.

Today was the big day. Today, I was meeting There and Back.

I have to admit that we have been corresponding by email for some weeks now, and as she was making a visit to London we decided to meet and chose under the clock at Waterloo as our meeting place as so many must have done before us. We walked from the station to get away from the crowds and went to Starbucks for a mug of hot chocolate. And we talked, and talked and talked. For two hours we talked and covered a wide range of subjects, but the thing that we talked about most was our addiction. Yes, we are both addicted to studying with the Open University. We talked about courses we had done, and courses we were yet to take. We talked about families, and about other bloggers.

It is a strange thing, this blogging world. We often comment to each other about how we will never meet and yet we seem to have so many things in common. But for There and Back and I, we shall no longer wonder about the person whose blog we read, for we have met and we enjoyed each other's company. In fact, we enjoyed it so much we have already agreed to do it again some time. What was important about this meeting is that both of us find it difficult to meet new people and we are often uncomfortable in crowded places. Today, I think we both went some way to beating this fear and we have lived to tell the tale.

Just in case you may think I am speaking out of turn, one of the first things I asked There and Back was whether she would mind if I wrote about our meeting in a post. She said 'No', and that she had thought of doing the same thing. So look out for a post on her blog in the days to come.

Another New Jumper

Yes, I've finished another jumper. Nothing very special this time, just something for wearing about the house or when I pop to the shops.  This time I didn't procrastinate over sewing it up either, which makes a change.  I only finished knitting it this afternoon and I got going on the sewing up immediately.

Knitting keeps me going during the evenings while I'm watching television, and as this one wasn't too complicated to follow, it meant that it grew quite quickly. I should perhaps have been doing some studying rather than working on this jumper this afternoon.  I did about an hour and a half on my Human Biology course this morning, but my eyes started to glaze over and I could feel myself drifting towards sleep, so I gave it up for a while.  I shall look to see whether there is anything worth watching on television tonight and if there isn't I shall try to spend another hour or so with the books.

There was a message on my student home page on the OU website on Monday letting me know that my first TMA is due soon.  As it is not required until 14th November, I don't call that soon.  I'm not worried because an hour or so with the TMA will see it ready to send in, but I think it may have been a bit worrying for those new to the OU because this week's reading forms part of the material for the TMA.

On a different note, I see that I have now written more than 150 posts for this blog, and this evening will probably see the visits counter hit the 3000 mark. Not a lot of visitors by the standards of some blogs, but it is more than I ever expected when I started writing this blog in the summer, at a point when I was feeling pretty low.  The fact that I regularly get comments to the things I write also helps to brighten my day.  So I must say thank you to all of you who take the time to read my blog and write comments; I really do appreciate it.

How Do You Make Notes?

One of the things that I have always had a problem with while I have been studying with the OU is the compilation of notes.  Practically every course has a section in its Introduction booklet or Study Guide entitled 'Note taking' or 'Making notes'.  Every year I read this section and tell myself that I will make sure that I do indeed compile good notes so that when the time comes to revise for the exam I will be prepared.  But I never manage it.

I start every course full of enthusiasm for the task. Reading the course material and carrying out the activities and exercises that are proscribed is not a problem. However, producing notes that will help me to remember all the necessary information to help me pass the exam seems to be completely beyond me.  I have read various books about strategies for this task, and no matter what I try, I never seem to be able to succeed.

The last few courses that I have completed have not included an exam, a substantial piece of written work being submitted in place of it.  This suits me fine because I am afraid that exams cause me to go into a state of extreme anxiety, which generally starts a couple of weeks before the exam date and is likely to continue until I get the results.  I have never failed an OU exam yet, but I have had a couple of close run things.

While the first of the courses that I am taking at the moment is one that relies on a long written piece in place of an exam, the second course does not, so note taking is something that I need to address again so that I can revise for the exam in as efficient a manner as possible. So, how am I going to produce these notes?

To start with I am going to skim read each chapter, highlighting important points as I find them. Then I shall read each section of each chapter more carefully and make handwritten notes of significant information and producing a precis of that section.  After that I shall put a bullet-pointed version of these notes into Microsoft Office One Note with references to the pages where the information came from.  As I complete each of the course books I will print out these notes and store them in a folder with the course book and the TMA that covers this part of the course, and hopefully by the time it comes to revising for the exam I will have a comprehensive series of notes and references that will enable me to give a good account of myself in the exam.

I think that this should give me the best chance of getting a good mark in the exam; only time will tell.  But if any of you out there have any suggestions that will help me to make the notes that I need and to revise efficiently, I would be very grateful to receive them.

An Adventure

I gave up using my car earlier this year because the increasing price of petrol was making it impossible when living on a pension.  So travel anywhere these days is by bus and one of the things that I have discovered is that the buses that I remember from my childhood don't always run on the same routes as they used to.  That hasn't proved to be too much of a problem because I can go on to the Transport for London website on the Internet and enter my start point and where I want to go to and select the method of travel that is preferred (in this case bus) and a few seconds later I will be given a series of options.  So far I have been really lucky and for every journey that I have wanted to make I have only needed one bus to complete the journey.

Today I needed to go to the local DHL depot to collect a package.  I checked the Internet yesterday and the journey could be completed using one bus.  I had a longer walk to the bus stop today than I usually do because the bus I needed comes from somewhere different to the one that I have been using for most of my journeys recently.  That wasn't a problem, it was only a 10 minute walk to the bus stop and the wait wasn't too long when I got there.  Because I was unfamiliar with the route I had taken my mini London atlas with me; it meant that I could follow the route that we were taking, judge when I needed to get off the bus and then follow the map while walking to my final destination, the DHL depot.

It all went very smoothly, I found my destination without any trouble, handed in the card with the details of my package and a few minutes later I was signing for it and setting out on the return journey.  Again everything went smoothly and the whole adventure was completed in about two hours.

The package was worth the effort.  It was the books for my next OU course; Human Biology.  So this afternoon is going to be spent going through all the preparatory reading and possibly starting to read the course material. The course officially starts next Saturday, but I am sure that I can get quite a bit done in the next week although it will undoubtedly be more difficult to follow that the other course that I am doing.

So while I had a little adventure getting the books, the big adventure will be studying the material and learning a new subject.

My New Jumper ... And Other Things

I have talked about knitting quite a lot in recent weeks. It was one of the handicrafts that I was taught as a young child and I usually have some knitting on the go at all times. Sometimes it is the craft that I do in every spare moment and sometimes it takes a bit more of a back seat to things such as cross stitch, card making, or crochet.

Having mentioned the fact that I was knitting myself a jumper, Steph from the Biopsy Report asked to see a picture of it when it was finished. Caroline from Dom Care Dragon has been wondering where the pictures were as it had been several days since the completion of the jumper, but a picture still had not appeared.

The delay had been caused because my camera had decided it wasn't going to work. I was somewhat annoyed, but I bit the bullet and bought myself a new one. I can't complain because it is a good one, and I got it for a good price. I ordered it on Sunday and it arrived yesterday. After charging the battery, I set the date and time on the camera, armed myself with the instruction book and found my way round the camera, turned off the terrible beep that occurred each time I did something, and took a couple of test pictures. Everything worked fine, so I deleted these few frames. Then I got my new jumper, draped it artistically (well the best that I could manage) pressed the shutter button and 'hey presto' I had a picture of the jumper. Out came the SD card from the camera, in it went to the card slot on my laptop, a few seconds later the image was on my computer, and now it is included in my blog. So, for Steph and Caroline here you are, my nice new jumper; it was knitted in aran weight wool and cost me just less than £10 for the wool.

I am pleased to say that my cold is nowhere near as bad as yesterday. I had a reasonable night's sleep, and I have stopped sneezing; I have a bunged up nose, and I have decided to stay wrapped up warm indoors. I shall be doing some knitting this afternoon, my next jumper is almost halfway to being finished.

I don't think it is worth me trying to do any studying because I am not sure that I would take anything in. But tomorrow will be different. I have psychotherapy in the morning, then I shall be going to collect the books for my new OU course, and tomorrow afternoon will be spent glancing through them before starting the hard work for this course. It will be the first time that I have studied two courses at the same time since I started studying with the OU in January 2000. It will almost be like being a full-time student.

Not Quite The Day That I Planned

I didn't manage to sleep right through the night.  I fell asleep pretty quickly last night, but woke several times. However, each time, except for the first, I was asleep again within about five minutes.  I eventually decided that I had slept enough and decided to get up about 10.30 this morning.  But it is such an uninspiring day.  There have been brief periods of sunshine, but in the main it has been cloudy, and the howling wind doesn't make going for a walk a particularly enticing proposition.  So I decided to have a lazy day.

I've read a few pages of my library book, I've watched a little television although there hasn't been that much worthy of my attention, and I have indulged in some bacon sandwiches for my lunch.  There is something about bacon sandwiches that always helps to make me feel a little better.

I decided that my TMA can wait until tomorrow so I am having a study-free day.  I have had a look at the OU website though and I see that I now have access to the website for my second course, which means that the books should arrive soon.  And I have found that it is possible for me to view the study calendars for both courses at the same time so that I can keep an eye on when TMAs are due for each and ensure that I manage to keep up to date with the work for both courses.  I have spotted one possible problem area and that occurs at the beginning of January.  I have to submit three TMAs (two for one course and one for the other) within a few days, and as I hope to be going to Canada for Christmas and New Year it means that I will have to work hard over the next couple of months to make sure that the TMAs are completed before I go away.

The rest of the day is going to be spent relaxing, perhaps reading a little and maybe doing some knitting (I shall be starting a new jumper if I do), and undoubtedly watching a little television this evening, or watching a DVD if there is nothing much on.  Perhaps it isn't what I had planned for today, but I have at least managed to catch up on my sleep and I feel as though I will be ready to face another week of studying, and all the other things that I have to do.  I may not be feeling brilliant, but neither am I feeling like I did a few weeks ago.  

It's A Roller Coaster Ride

Yesterday seemed like a pretty good day.  I managed so much work on my TMA that completion today seemed like a formality.  Then yesterday evening I managed to finish knitting my jumper. All that was left to do was to sew it together; not a job that I enjoy but I thought that it would be something for this evening.  However, things haven't quite turned out that way.

I had another bad night for sleeping.  Although I hadn't slept well Thursday night, I had managed to achieve a lot yesterday, and when I went to bed I felt sure that it would not take me long to get to sleep.  But sleep was still evading me at 3am when I again put on my glasses and picked up my book to read a little more.  I know that I managed to read a couple more pages and then I must have just drifted off to sleep because I woke at about 6.30am with my glasses still on and the book in my hand. I went to the bathroom, got myself some breakfast, took my tablets and then, because it was still not particularly light, I went back to bed to read a bit more before getting up to work on my TMA.

That didn't happen.  Again, I fell asleep with my glasses on and the book in my hand.  It was gone one o'clock when I eventually woke up.  But the euphoria of yesterday had dissolved and today I had no enthusiasm for the essay at all. How could things change so fast? Why had my mood plummeted like that? I'm not sure, but I suppose that is just the way that things go.

Anyway, this afternoon I have made an effort towards finishing my jumper. The shoulder seams have been stitched together, one sleeve has been sewn into place and the second about halfway so.  One side seam has been completed, so just one more to do.  Fortunately, because the wool came in 400g balls, there are no ends to be sewn in.  Another hour's work will see the jumper completed and it will be ready for the colder weather that is sure to come.

I'm hoping that sleep will come a little easier tonight.  In a few minutes I will take my evening medication, and in addition to the usual ones I will take a couple of little blue tablets which will hopefully help me tonight so that I can sleep right through, and then tomorrow I will have another go at the TMA.

And Steph, when I have charged the battery in my camera, I will take a photograph of the finished jumper so that you can see what it is like.

The Essay Progresses

Sometimes I have real problems finding enough to say in essays to fill the word count required. For this course it seems to be that I am having the opposite problem.

I have drafted and redrafted the essay for the first part of the TMA, and I am still a few words over the limit set but it is possible that by careful rephrasing in one or two sentences I can lose the excess 24 words fairly easily. That is one of my tasks for tomorrow.

I felt from the start of preparing the material for the second essay in this TMA that I would have significant problems saying enough to reach the word count. My notes have been massaged, and drafted a couple of times, and I have just sat down to type up what I have written so far and I find that I have already used 417 words of my 500 word limit. This would not be a problem if it were not for the fact that I still have the two most important areas for comparison to write. It seems that this essay is going to turn out to require in excess of 600 words to carry out the task set.

The OU is very strict in its word limits for essays in the TMAs. If they say that the limit is 500 words, it must mean that it is possible to answer the question set in that number of words or slightly less. This means that after I have finished drafting this second essay, I am going to have to wield a fairly strict 'blue pencil' and ensure that I express myself a little more succinctly. I'm sure that it can be done, but I'm not sure that it is going to be a quick job. It looks as though there is quite a bit more work to be done on this TMA before it is ready to be sent off.

However, I have checked the course calendar, and with the additional reading that I have already done on later chapters of the course book, and the activities and exercises associated with them that I have also carried out, I am about 6 weeks ahead of schedule now. Part of this is because I am finding this course fairly easy after having spent a couple of years studying at postgraduate level, and partly because I am finding it so interesting that I don't mind setting aside the time to do the work.

The bonus in all of this is that because I am finding it fairly easy to keep myself occupied, my depression is nowhere near as bad as it was just a couple of weeks ago. Studying was my lifeline in the early years of my widowhood; it seems as though it is still maintaining my sanity and helping to lighten my mood even after all these years.