Another Milestone

A couple of minutes after midday the 20,000th visitor to my blog arrived. According to FEEDJIT they live in Ilford, Redbridge, their computer runs Windows Vista and they use Firefox as their browser. They are also a regular reader as they came direct to the blog rather than from another blog. It's not a lot of information but it will perhaps allow the person who was that visitor to recognize themselves.

When I started this blog in June 2008 I wasn't sure whether it would be something that lasted for a long time or would merely be one of those things that was started and then became too much of a chore and fell by the wayside. It seems as though I may be here for the long haul though because even when I was in hospital I was concerned about not being able to write to let regular readers know why I wasn't able to post. And what was heart-warming to me was that several regular readers were concerned enough about me to have sent me emails asking if I was okay.

When we start writing a blog we all wonder whether anyone will bother reading it. Will it be interesting enough to attract comments? Will we be able to find things to write about? How much of ourselves should we reveal? Many of us blog anonymously. It is a way of writing about things that affect us or that interest us or that we feel strongly about. We can say things on our blogs that we might never express in person.

I started this blog with the intention of using it to record how depression affected me and how I dealt with depression. Much of it is still about depression, it can't help but be so because that is what shapes me at the moment. Here I can write about how I am feeling rather than bottling it up inside me. It helps; it helps a lot. But the blog has become much more than that. I have included my trips out to various museums and galleries in London. I have blogged about going to the theatre, about meeting other bloggers, and about my knitting.

Sometimes it has been very difficult to write about things that were happening to me. Mr Smiley has been making regular appearances in my blog almost from the start. He is a very dear friend who has seen me at my worst and my best. He has known me as a shy 18-year old who was shy and very unsure of herself and he has seen me as a confident woman who had found her true vocation in life. He helped me through the early days of my widowhood by listening to me when I needed someone who I could talk to. He has visited me in hospital after major surgery; he has even carried my handbag in public to bring it to me in hospital after I was taken from work by ambulance one Friday morning (and many husbands wouldn't do that). And most of all he encouraged me when I told him about the blog and became a frequent commenter. He told me that he thought that it had made a difference to me and at times when I found it difficult to write he was the one who said that I should just write about whatever I thought of at the time. It was Mr Smiley who, when I mooted the idea of writing about my incarceration in a mental hospital, said that I should do it because he was sure it would help other people. So the series of posts Tackling the Mental Health Minefield was begun and it resulted in me winning an award from Mental Nurse. One of the most difficult posts that I have ever written was the one that I wrote on hearing the news about Mr Smiley having terminal cancer.

One of the things that this blog has taught me is that I love to write. Maybe that was why I was so good at my job. That involved a great deal of writing and my reports were always well received. Mr Smiley has suggested on more than one occasion that I should write a book. More recently my GP has also suggested this as something that I should do. The short course that I have just done with the OU has shown me that I am not a writer of fiction. My tutor thought that a couple of my short stories were very good, but he did not realise that they were actually based on things that had happened to me. So, if I am going to write something it will either have to be factual, something that I can research and then write about, or I am going to have to write about me, but as that sounds a bit pretentious, perhaps it will have to be about depression and me.

After nearly 500 posts the blog has received 20.000 visits. I am amazed and hugely gratified that something that has been a form of therapy for me has been interesting enough for people to visit and return again to see what I have to say. Yes, it is a big day for the blog and it is a day that has meant a lot to me too. Thank you visitors, you make it worthwhile my sitting here day by day trying to think up things that you may find interesting and that may provide you with food for thought.

Lost For Words

I finally managed to get some sleep and I didn't resort to sleep medication either. By 10pm last night I could hardly keep my eyes open so I went to bed, laid my head on the pillow and was asleep almost immediately. I woke at just before 7am, made myself some breakfast and went back to bed again and slept some more. I now don't feel so exhausted but I still feel low.

I have been trying to write the next instalment of Tackling the Mental Health Minefield this afternoon. I started to write it 11 days ago and it is still only half finished. I know what I want to say, but I can't find the words. At work I was renowned for my writing ability. I could write clearly, concisely and articulately. Now it is as much as I can do to string two sentences together. I have lost the ability to concentrate; to focus on the thing that needs to be done.

Although I am still trying to complete that post, I felt the need to write something for the blog. It lets people know that I am still alive. I know that you don't know me personally, but the fact that you read what I write and bother to comment shows that you care. That means a lot to me.

I shall try to write some more of the other post this evening. Maybe I will finish it and publish it tonight, but I think that it is more likely that it will be tomorrow. In the meantime you'll just have to make do with this meagre morsel.

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.

WOW!

I'll say it again. WOW!

Yesterday I had 66 visitors to my blog. Now this may not seem a lot compared to some bloggers, but for me it was a huge number. The best that I have ever managed before in a 24-hour period was 47, and I thought that was good. Strangely enough I had had almost half of those visitors before I actually published yesterday's post.

I have four separate ways of determining visitors to this blog and the figures for yesterday ranged between 34 and 66. I am using the figure of 66 visitors because that particular counter does differentiate between visitors who are first-timers and those who have visited the site before. It also looks at IP addresses as a means of identifying visitors so notes when someone visits on more than one occasion during the day and only counts them once.

Anyway, this huge amount of traffic has made me feel quite chuffed, and after the comments that came in yesterday, it seems that the posts about my time tackling the mental health minefield should be helpful/informative/amusing/horrifying for plenty of people out there in the blogosphere.

So I shall now get back to what I should be doing at the moment, which is finishing the draft of the second post in the series, rather than patting myself on the back because I had a good day for visitors. Hopefully I should finish the draft this afternoon and I want to try to get the post published this afternoon.

My Most Popular Post

Since I began blogging nearly a year ago I have averaged between 20 and 30 readers a day. Obviously it's not the most read blog out there, but I am always amazed that anyone reads it at all. The blog was originally meant as a way for me to express how I felt living with depression although right from the start I said that it would also contain my thoughts on many subjects; and it has.

I knew that I didn't want to harp on about how I was feeling; that would have been rather boring and also self-centred. I wanted it to be more of an educational tool so that non-sufferers would perhaps get a better understanding of what it is like to have to live with mental illness.

I have regular readers, and some who dip in from time to time. Fortunately, readers will often drop me a comment, which as every blogger knows is a great comfort as it lets us know that someone has really read what we have written and not just pulled up the page and then passed on to another blog. I have even been fortunate enough to have met one of my fellow bloggers and we have become friends and correspond regularly.

As a blogger you wonder what attracts readers to your blog in the first place and the array of add-ons that are available for no cost that enable you to track your readership and how they have found your blog make this easy to do. One thing that I found out about these add-ons fairly early on is that they don't all register readers in the same way, and more importantly that they don't register all those who come to your blog. That is why I have four different examples of these widgets on my blog.

Over the last couple of months I have been taking a note of Google searches that have brought people to this blog and I have found that I am getting two or three visitors a day because of one particular post. I don't know how many of those visitors become regular readers, very few I would think, but I find it truly amazing that I have written a post that brings so many people here in their quest for information on a particular subject.

That particular post is What is a Shetland Hap Shawl? It was written in response to several of my regular readers who were interested in my knitting projects and when I started writing about the hap shawl that I was knitting at the time, asked me what a hap shawl was. This morning I thought that I would carry out a Google search for 'hap shawl' myself and I was amazed to find that my blog was the second result to come up, the one ahead of me being Heirloom Knitting, the company who got me interested in knitting Shetland lace in the first place.

I haven't knitted any Shetland lace for a while now, I've been too busy on other projects, but I am planning to design a Shetland lace shawl of my own from scratch in the next few months and it is as a result of the wonderful designs that are available from Heirloom Knitting and an incredible book of that name written by the company's owner, Sharon Miller. So, in the not to distant future I will be buying a huge sheaf of graph paper, arming myself with some pencils and a very large rubber, some suitable knitting needles, some yarn, and hoping that don't get too frustrated and despondent when things don't turn out quite how I expect.

I'm Going To Try Writing Every Day

I'm feeling guilty. I shouldn't really because not writing to this blog isn't something that I should be guilty about, but somehow I do. As each day has passed without me being able to write something I have become more frustrated with myself and it has probably added to my feeling low.

So this evening I have decided that I am going to try to write something everyday. Sometimes the posts will be short I have no doubt, but I need to make myself write even when I am feeling down because writing is one of the things that has helped me over the last nine months. And if I am going to make the best of the courses in Creative Writing that I am going to study with the OU, I need to get myself into the habit of writing something every day.

I will be honest and say that I'm not at all sure what I will write about, but then I have never really planned anything that I have written to this blog before, so there won't be any change there. But I will promise one thing. I will not keep telling you how bad I am feeling; however, I may well tell you what I am doing to try to raise my spirits and they do need raising at the moment.

I have a post half written; it is something that is quite different from anything that I have written before and its content may well prove to be quite controversial with some people, but I am entitled to my point of view and this is the only place that I have in which to put it forward. So I shall polish this half-written post over the next few days and if I am reasonably happy with it, then it will appear here. It won't be earth-shattering, but it will question the way that some people think and why they think this way.

Anyway, I need to say thank you to all of you who have kept faith with me during my relative silence over the last few weeks, and your comments and messages have meant a lot to me in my darkness. As the saying goes, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

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.

My Own Worst Enemy

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy.

I know that I often have problems sleeping, so I have developed a strategy that tries to ensure that I get as much sleep as possible. What I try to do is to tire myself out physically and mentally. The physical aspect can be quite difficult on the days that I don't have the energy to do much physical activity, and the mental side can be difficult to achieve when I have problems with concentration. However, I do my best and one thing that I can usually manage to deal with the mental side of things is to work on one of the crafts that I enjoy.

At the moment the craft that absorbs much of my time, and hopefully mental capacity, is knitting. I have often mentioned before that I have been a knitter almost all my life, and I have always loved the challenge of the difficult, so you will often find that I have several projects on the go at the same time so that I have something that is suitable to meet my concentration abilities at any given time.

Lace knitting requires a high level of concentration as it is nothing unusual for every row to be different when knitting a complex shawl for example. This means that it is not suitable as something to do when watching television. So, if it is a good night for television I will have something which requires little concentration, a jumper or a scarf, for example.

As a result of a large number of visitors to my blog a few weeks ago who had arrived via the same Google search terms I did some investigating. These visitors had arrived via a link in a knitting forum to one of my posts that was about Shetland Hap shawls. The end result was that I joined the knitting forum myself and I have been enjoying reading what other knitters are working on and attempting to answer other knitter's questions. One of the forum members has been knitting a lovely circular blanket (afghan) and has posted a picture of it now that she has finished it. She also gave details of the pattern that she used, so I had a look at the pattern and decided to buy it so that I could knit it in the future. I was able to buy a download of the pattern which was useful as the designer is American, as are most of the forum members, so it was unlikely that had it been a 'paper pattern' that it would be available in the UK.

Yesterday I went for walk and while I was out I managed to buy some wool, at a very reasonable price, to use to knit the blanket. I didn't mean to start the blanket yet as I have a couple of other projects that I need to work on, but because this pattern had a new technique for starting the work, I am afraid that the temptation was too much and yesterday evening I had to have a go at starting it. Try as I might I just could not follow the instructions for this start, which enables you to begin knitting a circular item without a bulky cast on and without leaving a hole at the middle of the item. However, there was an illustration showing what the cast on should look like once it had been completed and because the start of the blanket only required 10 stitches to be created I decided to approach the problem from a different angle. Armed with a knitting needle and the wool threaded through a tapestry needle, I managed to recreate the layout of the stitches and yarn as illustrated and then transferred them to the double-pointed needles required for the early stages of the knitting. Having managed this, I found that I had to carry on with the knitting, at least for a few rows, so that I had the pattern, and the blanket, established and ready to be put aside until I was ready to work on it in earnest.

Unfortunately I became hooked on it, and as it grew I found I wanted to start work on the next chart (it is worked using a set of charts to illustrate how the stitches and patterns involved are developed) and then the next. This meant that instead of going to bed at a reasonable time and reading a little before going to sleep, I was hooked on my knitting and was still going strong at about 3am this morning at which time I started to yawn uncontrollably and realized that I really ought to go to bed. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow but was awake again by 6.30 with the sun streaming through the window. Not enough sleep really, but I found that I couldn't turn over and drop off again.

There you have it. I'm tired, but I have things that I must do today, so I am up and having now had something to eat and got myself ready to face the day, I must get on with my chores, go to the Post Office to do some business there, then go for a walk to get some physical exercise for the day, before coming home and maybe having a short nap to make up for the hours that I missed last night.

Tonight I really must go to bed early, but I bet I won't. You see I really am my own worst enemy!

Don't Panic

At some time late yesterday afternoon I lost my Internet connection.  I didn't realize that was what had happened at the time, I thought that there was a problem with the site that I was on at that particular time.  It was when I realized that my email was offline that I knew that the problem was at my end, so to speak. But by that time it was too late in the day for me to start worrying about it; it was something for tomorrow.

I overslept this morning, so ended up rushing around to get out of the house in time to catch the bus to go off to my psychotherapy session and then on the way home I did a little bit of shopping so that I would have some bread to make a sandwich for my lunch. So it wasn't until this afternoon that I could try to determine what the problem was.  I fired up the computer and found that I still didn't have a connection.  The problem with this is that the Internet is my lifeline and without it I lose much of my contact with the outside world.  But I wasn't going to panic.  I just had to hope that it wasn't going to be anything as serious as the problem that I had in the summer when I ended up without an Internet connection for nearly three weeks.

I went to the router and looked at the lights.  Yes, they were on, and then on a closer inspection I realised that the most important one wasn't illuminated.  Okay, I thought; I remembered that when I had a similar problem once before I was told to switch the modem off for a couple of hours and then to switch it back on again and see what happened.  This is what I did.  Then it was time to switch it back on again and wait for the lights to sort themselves out and see what happened.  Disaster!  That most important light wasn't illuminated again.  It looked as though I was going to have to make a phone call to my ISP and ask for help.

But I decided to try one thing before I did that.  I checked all the cables that enter the router to make sure that they were all secure. And the one that connects the phone socket to the router seems to have been just a little bit out of position and when this was jiggled into position, the all important light was illuminated.  Then it was a quick check of the computer and access to the Internet was possible again.  What a relief.  I was connected. Communication was again possible.  But what has puzzled me is how the connection could have been there one minute and not the next and that this seemingly be caused by a slightly misaligned cable input to the router.  How did this misalignment occur and why did I lose the connection at the precise moment that I did?  I suppose this will never be answered, and as I am now able to surf again, I'm not going to worry about it too much.

Having got up to date with the blogs on my blogroll, I had a quick look to see who had been visiting my blog in my absence, and I see that I have had another visitor from India googling "Procrastination is the thief of time".  I really would love to read the essays that are being produced on this subject, just so that I can see whether anybody admits to having visited my blog.

Musings And Strange Searches

I'm still suffering some of the after effects of the myriad infections of last week.  The chest infection is still causing me some problems; every now and again, for no apparent reason, I start coughing and find it difficult to stop.  It's a real chesty cough and occasionally it catches me so much that I end up gasping for air and with stars spinning in front of my eyes.  I'm sure it will eventually get better but it is still draining me of what little energy that I have.  I also seem to have a lot of catarrh and I will be glad to be rid of that too.

I have also been having to sleep quite a bit over the last few days. I expect that is as a result of the infections too.  Most of Tuesday was spent in the arms of Orpheus and I managed to sleep at night too, yesterday was a little better with me only sleeping for most of the morning, and today I slept until about 9am.  I shall have to set my alarm tonight because tomorrow morning I have to get up early for my psychotherapy appointment.

On Monday I went to make the video that was postponed a couple of weeks ago because of the maker's illness.  It was decided that to protect my anonymity in view of the subject matter of the video that my part of the video should be done as a voiceover of my presentation.  It all went fairly smoothly and I am now waiting to receive a copy of it to give my approval for its use.  It should be interesting because with my voice being very husky because of the chest infection it will be almost impossible for anyone who doesn't know me exceptionally well to recognize my voice on the video.

Today is the first time that I have actually felt inclined to update my blog, and prior to writing this post I have spent a little time looking at who has been viewing my blog over the last few days.  It can be very interesting to see what leads people to your blog in the first place.  Depression and psychotherapy are often the search terms entered into Google, but over the last few days there have been a number of searches from one country which have used a completely different search parameter.  For some strange reason there have been a number of searches from India for the search term "Procrastination is the thief of time", something that I wrote a post about a few days ago.  I'm not sure whether it is a school essay or one for university students, but there have been multiple searches.  Unfortunately I don't think that my blog will have helped any of them to write their essays, but it has amused me to have my blog come up in these circumstances.  And I'm not easily amused at the moment.

Lacking In Energy And Enthusiasm

I haven't enjoyed today very much.  I'm not sure why I am feeling the way that I do, but today has been one of those days where it has been difficult to get out of bed, and difficult to summon up the enthusiasm to do anything that could be considered as either useful or meaningful.

The most energetic thing that I have done is to have a look at blogs on my blogroll and moderate the one comment that I have received to my post of yesterday.  And as I was reading the comment I was struck by the fact that The Witch Doctor was the first person to comment on my blog, and has been the first to comment on it in 2009.  Thank you Witch Doctor for taking the time to comment, both when the blog began, and on such a poor post from yesterday, and thank you for the hope that the tide will turn for me in 2009.  I really do appreciate it.

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.

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.

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.

A Pretty Good Day

I may have procrastinated (what a fantastic word that is) a bit today but I did eventually sit down with my books and get on with some studying.  Well, not actual studying, it was a case of essay writing actually.

The first TMA for my present module requires me to write two short essays.  The first was drafted some time ago but today I spent some time going over it and polishing it so that it now reads pretty well.  It certainly answers the question posed and I think there is sufficient use of references to make it worthy of a reasonable mark.  It probably still needs a little work on it to try to cut out a few words as it is a little over the required word count, but not seriously enough to attract penalty.  I still have several weeks before it needs to be submitted so what I will probably do is take another look at it next week by which time it will be like looking at it afresh and will therefore be easier to amend as necessary.

Later I went over the notes that I had already made for the second essay and started to draft something out to see whether there was enough information in my notes to compose a meaningful answer to the second question. From this first draft it looks as though I may have judged it quite well.  I have even managed to find some interesting data from sources outside the course material to help with my argument so I am feeling quite happy that I can work at this essay over the next day or two and produce something that flows quite well.

I have also managed to do a bit more knitting so my jumper is nearing completion.  It is progressing so well that I hope to have it finished and sewn together by the time the weekend is over.  It will be nice to have something new and warm ready for the winter.

And this is my third post of the day.  Okay, so they have been shorter than many that I write, but the fact that I have been able to write three posts, each covering a completely different subject is an indicator that I am feeling quite good.  When I am feeling really bad, it can be difficult to write something, and when I have got something to say it may take some considerable time to actually compose the post.  However, today each of them have flowed from my fingers quite easily and that also helps me to feel better about myself.

This blog has been one of the better things that I have undertaken in the last few years.  In some respects I wish that I had started earlier, but perhaps I wouldn't have been ready for the commitment at that time. I think I am now, and I know that it has been useful in helping to promote my self-confidence.  So I will continue to blog, and write whatever comes into my mind at the time. While I may still find it difficult to talk to people face to face, at least I am managing to articulate how I feel and what I think through the written word.

Do I Have Writer's Block?

I think that I have been doing quite well since I started writing this blog.  While I haven't written something every day, I have managed a post rate that averages out to be more than one a day. Some days the posts are short, pithy little morsels; some days they are long, and more considered pieces.  It's always difficult to judge your own writing, but the fact that I have received comments from readers saying how much they have enjoyed a post or how it has made them think about the subject covered indicates that I must have reached some people.  Just occasionally I have felt the need to write to say how desperate I am feeling at that moment. Such an occasion arose on Friday, when my mood became so low that I wrote the post almost as a cry for help.  And the blogging community is such that I received encouragement and a feeling of not being alone because of the comments that people added to that post.  Let me say here and now, I really appreciated your comments and they certainly helped at what was, for me, a very dark moment in my life.

I have gradually been coming out of that very dark corner over the last couple of days, and I knew that I was getting better, when I managed to put a quite amusing comment in an email to a friend.  It wasn't a laugh out loud amusing comment, more a case of a clever play on words type of amusing.  He enjoyed it anyway, because he commented on it in his reply; in fact he thought it poetic.

But one thing has been difficult over the last few days; finding something to write a post about. Normally I don't have to think about what to write; it just seems to spring into my mind, and the post almost seems to write itself.  Sometimes it's something that I have seen that provides the inspiration, sometimes it's something that I have read or heard.  And sometimes it is something that I feel passionately about, like trying to fight the stigma and discrimination that exists around mental illness.

Even when I have not been feeling too good, I have managed to write on an almost daily basis, because there has been something to say, but I have found it very hard since Friday to find something to blog about.  Have I got writer's block?  Is it possible that my creativity has deserted me?  No, I don't think so.  It's just a case of nothing much happening, so that it seems as though my inspiration has deserted me, when actually it is still there waiting for the right moment to leap into action again.  

After all, I've managed to write this, haven't I?

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

Yes, three-quarters of 2008 is past, Christmas is now looming and before we know where we are 2009 will have arrived. It's a bit early to start weighing up the year to determine what sort of year it has been, but there is no reason why I can't reflect on the third quarter of this year, the period for which I have been blogging.

If you were to ask me why I started to write this blog I really couldn't give you a truthful answer. At a period when I seemed to be having a really hard time, I started to read blogs. It started with just one or two; I would read all that the person had written to their blog, or a significant part of it at least and if I found it interesting I would bookmark it. Then I would look at blogs that they read, and see what they were like. Through this means I found that the medical profession, be they qualified doctors, or medical students, seemed to be the most interesting to read. Yes, a lot of what they wrote related to medical matters, but many of them wrote around that too. Then I started looking at blogs written by people who suffered from mental illness, and found that I had a tremendous amount in common with many of them. Not surprising really, seeing that I suffered from mental illness myself. But what caused me to make the transition from being a casual reader of blogs, to being the writer of one of my own, is something that I don't think that I will ever be able to answer. The best that I can come up with is 'IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME".

My first steps were tentative. I had to create the blog to start with and I didn't have a clue how to do that. I'm not a computer whizz-kid, I'm too old to be that, and I'm female too, which many would see as an insurmountable barrier to being able to do anything of a technical nature. However, I had used complex computer systems when I was working, and was capable of using a variety of applications, many of which were highly specialized, so creating a blog couldn't be that difficult, could it? So I had a go, and within 30 minutes of starting I had created my blog, managed to find a suitably catchy title for it, had a good look at the various templates that were available to me, added a few gadgets, and managed to write my first post. It all turned out to be extremely simple; even this middle-aged woman could do it.

Having created it, I was next faced with the problem of what I would put on it. For the first few days I just wrote about whatever came to mind. It might be something in the news, or something that was mulling about in my mind. As I have said before, I didn't expect that anyone would find anything interesting enough to bother to read it, but I was soon proved wrong and I now have a relatively small, but regular, group of readers. It was nearly a month before I told anybody about the blog, and even now, there are only a handful of people who know who I really am. To everyone else I am Madsadgirl, and that is one of the joys of writing a blog, I don't have to tell anyone who I am unless I want to.

So what have I achieved with this blog? Well, as someone who lives on her own, I have found a new group of friends that I might never have found had I not started writing this. Why am I saying 'might never', when we all know that what I mean is 'would never'. I have found a way of being able to vent some of my anger at the position in which I find myself. I haven't specifically written about the things that made me so angry, it is more a case of being able to write about things in this way I have been able to channel my thoughts in a different, and I have to say, a more creative way. I also hope that I have been able to present an articulate description of what it is like to suffer from depression over the long term and the devastating effect that it can have on your life. The simple exercise of writing something to post on most days has helped me to focus on the here and now rather than dwelling on the past which it is impossible for me to change.

But, perhaps the biggest achievement to come from writing this blog, is that I seem to have regained a little bit of self-confidence. Now then Mr Smiley , I bet you didn't think that you would ever hear me say that.

Essay Writing And Other OU Things

Three days on from my post about working in the library to try to complete my end of course assignment, it still isn't finished. I haven't been procrastinating (what an incredible word that is) it's just that other things have taken priority.

I did quite well on Monday. While I was in the library I managed to write the draft for the reflective part of the assignment, check the word count (I have a maximum of 200 words to look at three aspects of the learning experience on this course) and polish what I had written. I have managed to reflect on my learning skills and answer the three questions posed in a total of 185 words. Close enough to the word limit, I would think.

I also went through the course material and selected the information that I wanted to use for the main task of the assignment, a 1000-word essay about happiness coming from outside and within. Having selected my data, I wrote an essay plan and started selecting specific examples that I would be using as references in the essay.

One thousand words is not a lot to have to write, many of my posts on this blog are longer than that, but over the last year or so I have been finding it increasingly difficult to write essays, so this short course was really intended as something to provide me with a no-pressure opportunity to do a little essay writing. I was pleased with the amount of work that I managed while in the library on Monday and thought that I would do the same again on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, Tuesday was one of those days where I found it very difficult to drag myself out of bed, so the essay was forgotten. Yesterday was a no starter because I was going to have to disappear for a couple of hours in the middle of the day to go for a mammogram, and to do some shopping while I was at the large supermarket in whose car park the screening unit is situated. However, today I think I will attempt some time in the library again and with a bit of luck I will get the job done.

I want to get this assignment finished; while the course has been interesting it perhaps wasn't the brightest choice of courses for someone in my position. But, never mind, it has kept my mind active and added to my knowledge, and I don't think that I could have asked for more. But the real reason that I want to get this course finished is because I want to start my next one. This next OU course will really help me with my essay writing. There are seven tutor-marked assignments and an end of course assessment in lieu of an exam, and the essays seem to range from 500 words in length to 2000 words. This should exercise me much more because instead of there being only one course book as there is with my present course, the next one has four course books, two books of illustrations, four set books, audio CDs, DVD videos, and DVD-ROM. With such a multitude of material from which to draw for the essays, getting all the information into the word counts is going to be the problem that I face, rather than being able to drag out the argument to get close to the word limit.

Mind you, the real reason that I am looking forward to doing the next course is because it will be bring me closer to the final course for my second degree. What is the final course going to be? Creative writing, of course. I can't think of better preparation for it than writing this blog. I mean, this is creative writing for real.

The Forgotten Dream

Yesterday I couldn't think of anything to write about so there was no new post for my few regular readers. This morning I was having a dream about writing a post, it was clearly formed in my mind, and I was sure that it would be well received because it was on a subject that we all hold dear. The problem was that I woke up, and on waking couldn't remember what the post that I should be writing was meant to be about.

They say that you should keep a pad and pencil beside the bed for those moments when you have a dream which you want to remember, or when you have the spark of inspiration just as you are about to drop off to sleep, and that you know will have disappeared for ever come the morning. Unfortunately, the pad and pencil would have been of no use to me this morning, for it doesn't matter how vivid the dream was, I couldn't for the life of me think what it was that I had dreamt would make this memorable and informative post.

Never mind, because I know that I have something else to write about. I am busy forming it in my mind as I type this story about my forgotten dream. My next post will be important for some people, I don't know whether it will be read by any of those that it is aimed at, I can only hope that it is. It is about something that could save lives, and yet unfortunately far too many people fail to take advantage of even though it costs them nothing. Well nothing except a little bit of their time.