Coping Musings: Illustrations & Coffee Humour

Two things help me cope: 

1. Humour
2. Art/Arts and crafts (incidentally, why is it arts & crafts and not art & craft? English is such a weird language 🤣). 

As a child, I learned crochet, sewing and embroidery from my grandmother. We spent many a great afternoon having coffee and making stuff together and -unlike whoever my current teacher at that moment was- she was never put off by the fact I was left-handed. I also learned other various crafts at school but as I grew up, I forwent them for the pursuit of science. 

Three or fours years ago, however, during a three week stay at the mental health hospital ward, my awesome assigned occupational therapist had me working on various crafting projects twice a week. That re-kindled my love for the arts & crafts. 

Now I do papercrafts and I am also teaching myself some graphic design. This piece I made last year is based on a tutorial for typography-based design by Design Cuts -who are fantastic, by the way- but I changed their quote for a coffee related one. Because, you know, coffee.

Do NOT get between a Colombian and her coffee. Ever!

Um, yeah… I have a weird sense of humour. I know.

Such an SSG thing to do

It was about mid-January when I realized Valentine’s Day was coming up.

I set up to make some valentines card to sell. Got my computer and designed something close to 20 cards. I was on a roll. I spent about a week designing them and I have to say I was very happy with the results.

Then it was time to get to the actual paper cutting, die-cutting, glueing, etc.  That’s when I realized I was out of glue.

Went to the one and only craft store here and they didn’t have it. So I ordered online.

It finally arrived on February 1.

I had hoped to have the cards ready to sell by that date but okay. I said to myself, “Myself, it’ll be ok. You’ll have the cards ready in a couple of days and then you can start selling them”.

Ha!

Doodles

Well, I was so tired and weakened yesterday that I fell asleep in the afternoon and it all happened again. The nightmares, the sleep paralysis, the hallucinations.

As a result, I refused to sleep last night.

Haven’t slept yet.

So I decided to make digital doodles instead.

Cat doodles, of course.

After all, I am a bona fide Crazy Cat Lady.

 

Another little victory

I feel like I need to give myself a sticker or something. 

Are you ready for this?

I swept and mopped the whole place! Mind you, it is a one bedroom apartment but still. 

And then… and then, I showered, got dressed and went for a walk!  

I banged my knee against a door and I have a bump and an ugly bruise but I don’t care. 

My mood improved almost all the way up to a 100% just by seeing how clean and tidy the place was. 

I must not let it get that messy. That’s another bloody vicious cycle: The more depressed I get, the less I am inclined to clean and tidy up ==> the messier and dust-bunnier the place becomes, the more depressed and/or anxious I get. 

The good news is that my bloody OCD prevents me from letting accumulate dishes in the sink so at least the dishes are always done. I just want to shoot myself if I go to the kitchen for whatever and see dirty dishes in the sink. I don’t even want to think of dirty dishes on the table or worse, littering the floor. It’s like having creepy crawlers all over me… gaaaaaaaah

*Take a deep breath* Oy! That was close….

Anyway, Meatless Monday. All my days are meatless, but on Mondays, all items in the menu are 10% off at my favourite vegetarian/vegan restaurant.

   

 Soy meat rice noodle. It tastes as good as it looks. Yum!

I think I smiled all the way back home :)

What do you know?

soooooooo

Today, I took a shower for the first time in a week.

I also went out for a little walk.

Yay, me.

First, I went to the Asian store at the end of the block and got my favourite filipino bread, the one that tastes just like Colombian bread. It is called Pan de Leche and it is delicious.

Life: A Chart

Doesn’t it feel like this, sometimes? Most of the time?

A success story

Those of us who struggle with Mental Illness know how difficult it is to even get out of bed sometimes.  We treasure the little victories, as well as the big ones.

Even simple things like showering sometimes become a huge task.  Feeding ourselves.  Getting groceries.  Finishing school.  Landing a job.  Keeping a job.  That’s just a small sample of things that most people take for granted but that requires a major effort from our part.  Effort that let us both physically and emotionally exhausted.

It is easy for us to become discouraged.  To lose hope.  To not see the light at the end of the tunnel.

But every now and then -and more and more as time goes by, we read about stories like this.

Neil Marshall was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 21.   He had to drop out of a computer science degree at the University of Waterloo.  Now at 33,  he just defended his Master’s thesis in Mathematical education at Brock University.