At the moment I’m feeling rubbish. I’m feeling down, the dizziness hasn’t helped and the pains not been great either. It’s just making me feel crap.

The show must go on. And that’s making me think about the masks people wear. I’m not talking about the full masquerade scene from phantom of the opera. I’m talking about the masks where everyone tries hard to put on the best possible show. And do everything conceivable to stop other people seeing behind the curtain and looking at what’s really happening.

How many times have you been asked ‘how are you?’ It’s a really common question that people are asked a lot.

Then think about how many times you’ve lied and said ‘I’m alright thanks’ then gone to ask them the same. The question is so common and most of the time generates a lie from the person being asked.

You could be having the day from hell where the cat might have stolen the car. You stubbed your toe getting up this morning. Your 3 year old burnt the toast for breakfast and you’ve been told to unalive yourself by some nut job on the internet. Someone would ask “how are you?” And you would still probably say “I’m fine”.

I’m Fine, it’s that sticking plaster that’s keeping that mask from falling off. People do everything humanly possible to keep that mask stuck firmly in place. Heaven forbid you let someone truly see what’s going on with you and how you’re truly feeling.

I think mainly though that a lot of people ask the “how are you?” not really wanting to know the answer. And that makes me think that people don’t really care any about other people anymore.

But it just sounds creepy say to someone “how are you? , “no” “really, how are you?”. There must be a better way of asking the question. Do you have any ideas?

And

Why is it a bad thing to let people see the real you and everything you’re feeling?

There are so many questions that go along with the bit about the real you, it’s your thoughts, feelings, illnesses, disabilities, if you fit somewhere into the LGBTQIA community.

Not sure why but that’s taken me the best part of 3 days to write. I’ve started them something has happened then I’ve been distracted. Started again then something else happens. It’s just been an ongoing thing again and against and again.

I’ve nearly had a melt down tonight too. Someone did something that wasn’t appropriate, in fact it was disgusting. They (no idea who it was) posted something in a Facebook group that I look after. I someone let me know and I got rid of it as soon as I could, removed the offensive post blocked and barred the user and also tweaked the rules for automatic blocking and barring in an attempt to make sure nothing like that happens again.

The fact that happened in the first place shocked me but with me being me it made me worry and panic. I wrote a post apologising to everyone in the group and letting g them know how to report things like that if they see anything again. But I feel like I failed, I dropped the ball, something inappropriate slipped through the net. I know I apologised but it doesn’t stop me feeling bad that something like that happened in the first place. So this evening I had to do something to distract myself a bit. I started redoing the tile from yesterday but on a bigger scale. I still feel bad just writing about it and it hits me deep inside.

I’m sorry, I don’t feel I can say that enough. I feel I’ve just let people I care about down and that in some way I failed.

There have been some lovely comments on my apology post though. That does make me feel a little better.

It’s at time like this I really do hate being the way I am and hate that this is the way my head no works.

Talking about the way my head works. I think I may have ADHD. Over the past few weeks I’ve seen different things about the symptoms of ADHD and someone of them have rung bells in my head to say I’m like that. So I went on a website about it and did a test that is on there. It asked questions about different things you do and the way you react to them. So I took the test and answered the questions honestly and the result said :

“the patient has symptoms highly consistent with ADHD in adults and further investigation is warranted”.

Only a clinician can diagnose ADHD.

So I could have it and think that it is a possibility. So Monday morning I will start the ball rolling to get that looked into. I know only professionals can diagnose it and that the waiting list is huge bug I think it does explain a hell of a lot about the different things about me and they way I am.

So onto crafty things there has been a fair bit recently I’ve made cards, tangles, finished crocheting the shawl for mum. I may as well start there. Here is a picture of the shawl I made for mum. It was only a week late but I got there in the end.

Looking at it that picture makes the shawl look very eagle like.it’s just missing the head.

I’ve made a couple of cards for people too. 1 for a friend and the other one for the foster kid that’s with us to give out. here they are:

As usual here has been the tangling and here are the tiles:

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I’ve also don’t some more samples for Sandra for book 10 which launched today. These are the samples I did for Sandra:

You might see that one of those has parchment work on it. I’ve been doing quite a bit with parchment recently.

• 

• 

• 

They are just me playing around and figuring things out. I’ve also found parchment instruction videos on YouTube and I’ve been following along trying to improve my parchment work. If I get it finished I’ll share a picture of the piece I’ve been working on.

But sticking with Tangling I’ve been working on my diary. this is the cover:

And this is one of the pages

I’ll work on the other pages like that as I go along.

As it’s taken so long to get this far I think I’ll leave it there for this post.

Love and light.