I just had a very pleasant stroll in the rain, ending with lunch on a very wet bench by the pond in the park. Coming home with a wet bum is a theme for me.

I spoke with my doctor and I’m coming off antidepressants completely. The side effects are just not worth it. I’m gonna white knuckle it again.

I’m on week 5 of daily (all day long) headaches, a side effect of medication I’m on. The doc told me to give it 4 to 6 weeks for them to go away. I think it’s time to come off the meds. The benefits are not worth this. I’m having to take a lot of pain killers and my quality of life is not good.

Anxiety is pretty intense today. It’s kicking my ass. I came into the park: watching the trees and just breathing this air is helping a lot. I love windy days like this. It’s only 12C and it feels so good to be outside.

Updating categories on aeryn.me - RSS feed updates

Just a heads up for anyone following this blog by RSS. I’m updating and changing, deleting, and re-organising categories on this blog. Which will affect Category RSS feeds. These may break. I’ve already put in some redirects but maybe I missed, or messed some up. Or will do, as this will be ongoing for a little while.

The only feed that is definitely safe is the main site feed, here:

Some recent posts on my side-blog Being Me

Being Me is my personal side-blog about mental health; healing; spirituality; woo-woo; self-realisation and all that good stuff. I don’t normally share these posts to social feeds, but I like to share my experiences through writing and vlogging.

Read More →

I’m enjoying the cozy late afternoon vibes..

  • raining outside
  • cooler temperatures
  • woolly jumper
  • watching a Cecilia Blomdahl YouTube video
  • a hot pint mug of earl grey and honey
  • a chocolate nut bar
  • all obligations met for today
  • a simple evening ahead

I’ve been finding life very challenging recently. I keep saying this, even though I’m tired of speaking it. Because it keeps ramping up. I think it’s best to acknowledge that and be honest – to admit I’m having a tough time.

I think so many of us are. But not many like to talk about it.

After seven years without psych meds I’ve gone back onto antidepressants this week. It’s too early to say if they’re actually helping or not. But I definitely feel like it’s a positive step forward for me despite feeling very conflicted about taking them again.

a zero sum game?

I’ve been experiencing a bit of a mental/emotional breakdown over the last few days. It’s been rough. And I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection. Not deliberately, but it think it’s just part of it.

Parallel to this I finally came to the decision that I would go back onto antidepressants after seven years being off them. Day one has been very groggy so far.

I also realised I am spending far too much time and energy consuming the opinions and views of others, whilst partially abandoning my own truth and my self.

I really want to talk about this stuff a lot more. It’s super important. And maybe I will.

In the meantime I will be withdrawing somewhat from the current social media paradigm (again). Even from the wholesomeness of the Micro.blog timeline.

I don’t know what this will look like for me. But I need to address the balance of consuming and creating. And I fear that social media – no matter how wholesome – is an absolute dead weight in that equation. For me at least. As if trying to find balance is a futile exercise. A kind of zero sum game where the entire Internet always wins just because I took part in it.

What I love about the internet doesn’t have much to do with social media at all. I really enjoy reading blogs about people’s lives: their struggles and triumphs; their art; moments in their day; all that stuff. I enjoy interacting with them in my RSS feeds or email subscriptions. I love to reply and chat, or just offer empathy, a word of support about whatever it is.

Anyway.

I’m going to continue to post my work to these three blogs that I have (below). But I’m not sure how much of it I will share to social timelines (Micro.blog and Bluesky) any longer. Or how active I will be generally.

Maybe this is just a little break and I will ease myself back in later.

Thanks for reading,
Aeryn

My blogs-

  • aeryn.me - mostly short form posts; thoughts; snaps and clips from my day
  • Art Journal
  • Being Me - longer posts, blogs, podcasts about mental health; healing; spirituality; woo woo

RSS feeds and email newsletters can be found on those sites.

Over, and out.

I’m unpacking things I made, and trinkets I bought in my childhood. This is incredible! Wow.

They’ve been in storage for basically decades at this point, and have remained in unopened boxes through several home moves I think.

Some of them are wrapped in newspaper from 1988!!!!

Today is home building day

Today I’m grateful for community support. For beginning to feel like I fit in somewhere. For having help with travel. For friendly faces. For affordable food made by people who care. For Scrabble and a coffee. For a space to make art. For people who listen. For the chance to show someone I care.

I’m really enjoying journaling recently. I find it’s helping me create a personal and private space for me to share – with myself.

I have a couple of nice LAMY Safari fountain pens filled with black Atramentis Document ink. It’s a really nice combination to write, or draw with.

My next journal is going to be a Midori. I’m trying something a bit different from my usual Moleskine.

I love the feeling of writing by hand with these tools. It helps me feel grounded through the writing.

I still like to hand-write on my iPad, and I’m not going to stop, but there’s nothing quite like creating, building, and adding to a tangible, physical object, book, or notepad.

It’s been a tough, emotional, overwhelming day.

I was gonna self-soothe with some unhealthy takeout food tonight but I decided to make a better choice for my body.

I feel a little bit better about making this small positive step forwards, even when I feel self-destructive.

I think probably too much of my life is performative and masking. Trying to fit in and meet expectations. Trying to be someone I’m not. Trying to do things I can’t. People pleasing but feeling unworthy of receiving. It’s very tiring.

I keep trying to fix myself. Maybe I’m not supposed to be ‘fixed’.

Brain is fried. It’s been a week of crappy paperwork and speaking on phone, which I find really difficult and overwhelming most of the time.

Even speaking with an org that is there to help left me deep in energy defecit.

I just want to play and create. I hardly do either these days.

Sad face.

I got myself signed up today to a community taxi service. Hopefully I’ll be a bit more mobile soon.

Another really nice thing happened today. I was brave enough and feeling ok to make it to my support centre for the first time in a couple of months. I was aiming for the art group. I bumped into a friend there and we sat in the art room and chatted for a couple of hours to catch up with things.

My family has been going through quite a tough time over recent months and for various reasons related to that I’ve hardly seen my youngest during that time. But tonight he came round for pizza and an X-Men film. It’s so nice to be with him again. He’s hilarious and cheeky. Love him so much.

Having just experienced a minor heat wave for the last few days, I’m really enjoying the rain outside and the feeling of freshness that it’s bringing through my open windows.

I’m drinking freshly ground black coffee and writing in my journal and creating a blog post.

It feels cozy. ☕️✍️

Curation and consumption seem to be intimately connected when being social on the internet.

It’s too easy to get caught up being a rubber necker of some drama or another.

I find time and money invested in curation to be very good for my social health. And can save time later as an added benefit.