About me.

Welcome to My Inner MishMash! 😍

First of all, thank you for visiting. It’s a pure pleasure for me to see you here, whoever you are, because if you are here, I’m sure it’s for a reason and if so, it’s highly likely that  we have at least one thing in common. Who doesn’t like to meet like-minded people, right? 😉 Also I appreciate that you are so inquiring and decided to get to know me a bit.

My name is Emilia, but you can also call me Bibiel or Bibielle, I like all of these, Bibiel is like my nickname. Sometimes on this blog, you will see me referring to myself this way, in third person, as in: “Bibielle thinks…” or something like that. Or even Bibielz, as if it was plural, even though there is only one Bibiel writing this blog, but it’s just fun. Consider it a quirky form of expressing myself, a morbid or childish thing, or something cute – it’s up to you, that’s just what feels right to me at times, especially when I feel particularly excited about something. –

I am a Polish girl in my late twenties, with a whole lot of quirks, fascinations, ideas, fears, dreams and thoughts. I am an introvert and an (overly) proud and doting cat mummy. My sweet baby is called Misha, comes from the breed of the Russian Blue which originates in Arkhangelsk, that’s why his family is called “Archangelic cats” and Misha is undoubtedly my personal guardian archangel. He’ll be eight on 30th January, but I am in total denial of his adulthood which he seems to be OK with, most of the time. So Misha is my best friend and my everything, depending on the occasion and situation.

I am also a Christian (Roman Catholic more exactly) and my faith is an important part of my life. I’ve felt drawn to traditional Catholicism and traditional Latin Mass (also called Tridentine Mass) for a couple years, but in 2021 me and most of my family have started to attend such Masses exclusively and try to stick to the tradition consequently where faith is concerned. In terms of general worldview I like to call myself an open-minded traditionalist and identify as conservative. I am also a daughter, sister, happily single, escapist, defensive pessimist, linguaphile, Celtic harp lover, synaesthete, maniacal kefir drinker, semi-hermit, gem stones collector, a so-called name nerd, equestrian, something between melancholic and phlegmatic, folkie, apparently an INFJ if it matters to you though I have mixed feelings about MBTI, people watcher, apparently a good listener who actually does like to listen to people’s stories and woes, and a more than keen(likely maladaptive to some extent) daydreamer and avid paracosmist.

My interests are quite diverse. I’m very much into linguistics in general, but also some languages in particular (mainly Celtic and Scandinavian. Currently I can only speak Polish, and am learning English, Swedish, Welsh and have started learning Norwegian in 2021, though I don’t really feel like I’m learning the latter in a serious way because it’s so similar to Swedish. And I love all of them, but I would also like to learn all the other languages I love which are: Finnish, Sami, Dutch, Frisian, Faroese, Scots, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Cornish. I have, as you can see, a huge interest in minority languages and contributing to preserve them, even with languages I don’t love as passionately as the ones I listed above, I’m always saddened to hear about them dying or being endangered. While on this blog I only publish posts in English, I do talk about my languages on here a lot, and enjoy sharing music in them. I love playing with words and use them sometimes not in very obvious ways. I like to think about myself, that, at least in Polish, I have quite a characteristic and quirky writing style. In other languages I think I’m still not that very experienced a writer, and therefore not as much expressive, but in Polish I love to for example mix colloquialisms, words from dialects or even swearwords at times with very formal, extravagant or even a bit archaic language. Just love mixing styles. I really really love to develop in this area and always jump on any chance to do so, so hope that I’m going to develop my English through blogging. Feel free to let me know if you’ll see any mistakes on here or will have any linguistic suggestions. I won’t be offended if you’ll correct me and won’t bite, I promise, quite the opposite, will be very grateful for any linguistic suggestions as I love to develop in this field! 😀 I’m always happy to chat about linguistic stuff.

 

Also I am into given names, their meanings, origins, popularity across the world, baby name trends, I love baby name games or helping other people name their babies and come up with ideas that they might not come up with on their own but might like. I am also into such a controversial thing as how our names can potentially shape our personalities…

My other interests include the human brain, medicine, psychology, mental health and disability-related stuff, Celtic and Scandinavian folklore… well, actually everything Celtic and Nordic, as well as folklore in general, so I love myths, legends and fairytales. I am a keen rider and usually horse ride once a week. 

I have quite a big collection of gem stones, both precious and semi-precious, they’re also my big big passion. 

If I’m not forced to attend some family gathering or am not in bed with a migraine, then most probably you can catch me reading or writing (something as lengthy as it is only possible), being online, talking to Misha in whatever language I feel is right at the moment because he seems to be able to understand all the languages of the world (or just to myself, cuz why not), listening to music (mainly folk, but definitely not only, I believe my music taste is actually quite eclectic but picky at the same time if that makes sense, and some of other genres that I tend to like are rock, indie, some good pop, some early music, experimental, electronic, but I don’t limit myself to only those things), doing something with my languages or out in the forest horse riding.

 

I am blind since birth and also struggle with some other things like balance and coordination difficulties, which are not very severe but do affect my daily life, along with mental illnesses, which I’m going to write a little more about because I would like to be open about it on my blog and I often write about things in my life in the context of my mental health, because expressing my emotions is much easier for me through writing than any other way, and I want this blog to be a therapeutic outlet for me in a way. I’ve had recurrent major depressive episodes since I was 9, I was depressed already some time before, but that’s when I got diagnosed with depression for the first time, then with reactive depression when I was 17 and out of the boarding school for the blind, where I was since the age of 5 and while I learned there a lot, as you generally should at school, emotionally it definitely wasn’t a good experience for me. I was quite neurotic as a kid. I struggle with anxiety – generalised anxiety, social anxiety and some more specific phobias, – and in March 2018 have been diagnosed with AVPD (stands for avoidant personality disorder) and dysthymia  which, for the uninitiated, is like a milder form of depression but one that clings on to your brain with a lot more determination than major depression usually does so it’s more difficult to get rid of (oh yeah, and you can still get major depression on top of that). I’d been in therapy for years, but I quit seeing my last therapist in December 2019 and now am no longer in therapy, mostly because it didn’t really help me all that much and it’s tricky when you aren’t independent when it comes to transportation and I don’t want to be a burden on my Mum with that.

OK, that’s all about me for now.

You can click the links below to find out more

about this blog, learn about what I mean when I use the word

“faza”

on my blog, have a listen to my

blog playlists

on Spotify or

Contact me about anything at all. I’m always happy to hear your suggestions or feedback, or even just chat with you. 

I wish you a pleasant time in my Mishmashy world. Feel free to explore and comment on any posts that resonate with you. 

Thanks for reading and congrats if you were patient enough to reach the end. 😀

43 thoughts on “About me.”

  3. Pingback: *Blog Share* My Inner mish mash #22 | Its good to be crazy Sometimes

  4. First, you already scared me just by mentioning Celtic and Scandinavian (did I get the spelling right?). lol! I’m afraid of words I seldom hear! 😃

    Second, I also read your About this blog page, and you mentioned there again that you are blind. How do you do all these?

    Last, I like this blog. And I appreciate you being responsive to your readers. You have a very interesting About pages too.

    Keep it up! God bless!

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  5. Thanks for your kind words. 🙂 I appreciate them and I’m glad you like my blog. 🙂
    Yeah, so I thought, that it would scare people, but as it is a huge, scary part of my life, I needed to at least mention about it, and those scary groups of scarily sounding languages were also important to mention as it isn’t so that just any language is so extremely interesting to me. Yes, well done, you spelled them both right. 😀 You sound like my Mum, she is also scared by words she seldom hears, especially long words of Latin or Greek origin. 😀
    You mean how I do languages? Generally it doesn’t differ that much from how sighted people do it, although of course I get much more through hearing than it usually is with other people, but that is actually an advantage in this case. The problem is usually with getting apropriate and accessible resources. It can be hard firstly because my languages are so niche and scary that other people would rather prefer to forget they exist and secondly because while creating a course, be it online or an exercise book or something, people not always think about making it accessible, and unfortunately often it is so that not accessible =easier to make, especially in the context of making websites/apps. Also sighted people are usually visuals so it’s easier to give them some graphic like flashcards which my screen reader won’t read to me unless they will describe the graphics. Another thing is with people’s narrow-mindedness, ’cause when you are blind and search for a teacher, people usually get very confused or scared, they are convinced that teaching me must be very different and significantly harder than with sighted people. My Swedish teacher, who luckily was a very open-minded guy, said though for him I was the easiest student to teach. Probably because I was eager to learn and the reason for which I learn Swedish is simply my whim and I picked up the phonetics before he started to teach me. He had to put some significant effort in things like rewriting stuff from normal physical books for me, as we didn’t have any alternative, but that was a very speciffic situation, he had a pretty rare book that I couldn’t find anywhere in an accessible version and generally such efforts aren’t needed to work successively with me. So it can be shitty at times and I’m sure that if the world would be more open-minded/I could see, I would be much further now and would be able to speak at least half of my languages, but generally if you are determined enough and can find some helpful, thinking people, then there is actually no difference between sighted and blind people learning languages.

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  6. You are a warrior! 🙏 You have so many gifts and such resilience that I am in awe! Inner Strength is such a virtue to have, and you, dear one, have it in abundance! Hugs!

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  8. Pingback: *Blog Share* My inner mish mash #26 | Its good to be crazy Sometimes
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  14. Hi there!! My name’s Meg, which I think means pearl? I love wordplay and name meanings too! (But I’m terrible at other languages.) My main blog isn’t linked to my avatar, but it’s over at whenbadadvicehappens.wordpress
    .com

    I love all things psychological too, and I majored in it in college. 🙂 I’m sorry to hear you’re blind. That makes me sad. I sense you like (or will come to like) the Internet as much as I do–I’m schizophrenic and have difficulty interacting with people in “real life,” but I love interacting online!! Drop me a line sometime, and I’ll follow your blog–looks interesting! 🙂

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    1. Hi Meg. 🙂 It’s nice to meet you. It looks like we have quite a lot in commonn which I’m glad about. 🙂 Yeah, your name does mean pearl, but I’ve also heard a theory that it may be derived from Persian and mean “daughter of light”, I think both these meanings are beautiful. My legal name (which I changed at 18 to Emilia) is from the same family of names. I’ll follow your blog in a minute. It’s great you majored in psychology, I had such plans too when I was younger, but nOW I think I’d rather do something with the language in the first place. For me personally, it isn’t a big deal that I’m blind, I’m blind since birth so it’s just my reality and I just don’t know how it is to not be blind, can only imagine. It does limit you, but there certainly are worse things that people or even I myself have dealt with, and if I had a choice, I’m not very sure whether I’d like to see, just because my world would change so much. Can relate to the interacting thing, it’s incredibly difficult for me in real life, but it’s real fun online and I do spend a lot of time in the Internet. Glad you like my blog. 🙂

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  16. I adore you already! So glad I found you through Bee’s blog. What an amazing about me page, I can see we have a lot in common already. I am amazed regarding you fantastic English writing and the fact that you are blind also is amazing. You are very talented. I look forward to discovering more of your posts and perhaps getting to chat about mythology and writing, two of my passions also.

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  17. Hey emilia,

    That’s a lovely introduction, although I do know most of those things about you still as always it is a pleasure reading your words..

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  18. Nice to meet you Emilia! I read through your about me and it was awesome to hear all of the different things you’re interested in 🙂 I’m very into symbolism, mythology, religious icons, etc. so I also get kind of obsessed with given names and meanings – I think it’s cool.

    Looking forward to reading more of your thoughts!

    Best,
    MB

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  19. Hello Emilia –
    I am so pleased that we found each other via Alli’s weekend coffee share.
    Today was my first chance to circle back and review your site and information.

    I have to say, wow! Your English is amazing.

    I would not have guessed that you are blind. I used to go to church and study ASL with a deaf part of our congratulation and there I heard that it is thought to be easier to be blind than deaf because a blind person can still easily communicate with other via a share audible language while the deaf almost rely on their sign language because, for them, learning to read is so hard partially because they can never hear the words they are trying to read.

    I would love to have you as a reader of my work so you can tell me how well you mentally see my stories. I decided several things when I setup my framework for my story collection:

    1) Each has to be 2000 words or less to make it a short, about 10-minute, read.

    2) Each is told in first person using a rowdy tone like the two of us were sitting and sharing a drink or meal while telling fun stories of our lives. We would be laughing and just soaking up the fun of our friendship.

    3) Each would be vivid, I want my readers to feel like they are right there nearby as the story unfolds, watching and maybe gasping at how some of my scenes happen. Did I meet this goal for you? I do add some photos for seeing readers, but that obviously can’t help you. To work for you, my words have to be very well chosen I think. One of my first stories seemed to have met this requirement as I’ve had some great feedback. I would love for you to try it It’s from my grammar school days in a small town about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco, where I was born and raised. This one is something of a laugh riot, so I advise sitting down to enjoy. I call it; “The Giant Inner Tube Adventure” and it’s at this link: https://garyawilsonstories.wordpress.com/the-inner-tube-adventure/

    4) Each story needs to deserve a reader’s attention somehow. It either must be entertaining or teach something while still being fun.

    I’m much older than you. I miss my deaf friends from long ago now but we lost track of them when we moved and started our own family, but still recall some of their ASL language.

    I’d love to have your opinion of how my tales work for you from both the perspective of a Polish gal (have you ever been to the US?) and as a blind person. I don’t think it makes sense to ask if you can “see” my stories, but I hope you experience them with clarity of understanding just as if you were right there with me as the memory happened. I’m pretty sure you would be laughing with me (maybe at me) most of the time.

    I would welcome any ideas you have that I could do to make my stories more accessible and enjoyable. To make it easier, here’s my main link: https://garyawilsonstories.wordpress.com/

    In the meantime, I’m going to follow your blog and hope you will visit a few more of my stories and be a friend I know from Poland. I would greatly value your friendship.

    Warmly,
    Gary A. Wilson

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    1. In a way that you were thinking about dictation makes sense, because now that people use more and more touch screens, many blind people decide to use dictation to write on their smartphones, but I don’t know anyone blind without an additional disability who would do that on the computer regularly. I personally much prefer to write than to speak, and this is an easier and more enjoyable way to truly express myself for me, so I always choose writing when possible. 🙂
      Well yeah, communication online is quite easy for me, usually.

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  20. I really appreciate your opinion about my English. Blogging has helped me a lot in developing it, among other things.
    How cool that you got a chance to learn some ASL. Hm, when it comes to my own opinion I’d also say that it’s easier to be blind than deaf, but I’m saying that primarily because I’m used to being blind and that’s normal to me, and I would also think that not being able to communicate with people properly could be a source of huge distress and frustration, even though I know some deaf people who are quite good at communicating, but there are always some limitations and obstacles they have to deal with in regards to that. As someone who also experiences some minor communication difficulties (though of a completely different nature than those of people with hearing loss) I know what a difference it makes when you can actually communicate with someone effectively. Overall though, most able-bodied people I know tend to say they’d rather be deaf than blind, which used to really astonish me as a child, so I believe it’s hugely subjective. I think the possibility of experiencing blindness feels more scary to most people, while to me the possibility of experiencing deafness is a much more frightening thing. Because it is so subjective and individual I try normally not to make such comparisons who has it better or worse, it depends on SO many things.
    Thank you for sharing your story with me, I enjoyed it thoroughly, as I did the one about Carmen. I am now following your blog and will be coming back.
    I think your framework works really well, because I find your stories pleasant to read, and they really do have such a feel as if you were telling them in person and as if I was there observing it, which I always appreciate in other people’s writing. They are also very vivid – especially the second one – which I was able to imagine very realistically. Granted that I’m generally very imaginative, haha, but a lot always depends on the writer and I think you’re doing a fantastic job from what I’ve read so far! 🙂 Hope my feedback is of some help to you. As for “the perspective of a Polish gal”, since I’m a Polish native speaker my English isn’t quite as good as my Polish of course (and no, I’ve never been to neither the US nor any other English-speaking country), and my reading in English is a bit slower and less efficient than in Polish, but I’m reading more and more in English and things with gradually more sophisticated vocabulary, more or less successfully, and I didn’t have the slightest linguistic issues with your stories.
    I do think it makes sense to speak about seeing. Blind people don’t normally avoid using words like see or look etc. because there are many ways to see things – not just with your eyes – and also that’s simply easier in everyday life than replacing it with some other words.
    As for ideas, you mentioned that you also post photos along with your posts. If you would like to make them somewhat more accessible to the visually impaired, you can put some alternative text to go with it so that we have some idea what it is more or less – although having a look at your blog now I believe you already do it which is great and helpful. –

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  21. Thank you Emelia for all the insight you gave me with your response. I have a follow up question. My wife and I were chatting about you and we were both wondering what type of tools you use to blog you must have a reader but do you have a tool that helps you write? Perhaps an application that you can dictate to? Regardless your English is amazing. You are more articulate and explain things better then many Native English speakers. I was trying to think if I had any stories that would be similar to your daily experience of blindness. I think the only story I’ve got that even comes close is from a cave that my parents took me to when I was very young. In short I found myself in total darkness unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Most of my readers find it Charming but you might find it silly. Here’s the link in case you’re interested in reading it.

    The Dark Cave Adventure

    You are a gem Emilia and I hope soon to earn the right to call you a friend.
    I too enjoy wordplay but of course I’m only good at it in English but if you ever have English questions please bring them to me and I’ll do my best to help you sort it out. I understand that English slang in particular can confuse non native English speakers.

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    1. Well, I use some assistive technology stuff, mainly it’s my screenreader, which reads everything that’s on the screen, it uses speech synthesis and so called text to speech technology to do that. I don’t have any specific tools to help with writing – usually blind people just learn the computer keyboard layout by heart, just like many sighted people do to be able to type without having to look for the keys, it’s faster to type this way. – I use the mouse very little, only when it’s absolutely necessary and you just can’t perform some action from the keyboard, and I’m very ignorant at using it, although some blind people actually do use it a bit more, but I use key commands whenever I can. Also I have a Braille display so apart from reading things with a speech synth I can also read them myself in Braille which is helpful in my opinion when nreading in a language that you don’t know very well or when you need to pay very close attention to what you are reading. I use also some other devices/apps but that’s the basics, hope that gives you some idea.
      I absolutely didn’t find your story silly! As I commented on your blog I can well see how creepy that must have felt for you at such a young age. And it actually was indeed quite charming haha. It made me think about what I’ve heard from some people who visited restaurants in which only visually impaired people work and which are totally dark, they seem to be in different places all around the world and help to raise awareness of visual impairment and blindness, when people come there they eat in complete darkness. Anyway, I’ve heard from several people that they’ve been to such places, and one person was actually so scared that she got a bad panic attack in there. While I have no idea about neither light nor darkness because I don’t see either and it doesn’t mean anything specific to me – I just don’t see anything, neither darkness nor anything else, however abstractive that may sound to a sighted person – I can understand how that could be a really scary experience. Sensory deprivation is very scary.
      Haha yeah, I still do struggle with slangy words sometimes, although I find slang and dialects of any language very interesting, so I’m getting better at it. 😀

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  22. This is even more amazing to me Emilia.

    I would have bet that you used a dictation tool of some kind because while thinking what I might do, that seemed to make some sense. I often use the dictation feature of my mobile phone for text messaging because it can be so much faster than fussing with the tiny screen keyboard which is so error prone for guys with big fingers like me. On the other hand, the dictation capture software is also error prone and often mangles my sentences into near non-sense.

    I want to share another story with you, but first I want to add some text to describe the flower known as the “poppy”. A lot of my readers loved it, but most of them live nearby and so know well what a poppy looks like. But it is another “charming” story about a very young boy caught up in a scary situation on 2 levels. From the adult perspective, readers immediately see that one problem is nothing, but watch as life unfolds into insight for the little guy.

    I’ll ping you when it’s ready and hope you’ll consider giving it a test read. For now, my job is calling and I must attend to it.

    Thank you for reading my Dark Cave Adventure. It’s a fun memory (now) and I love sharing it with friends.

    Oh, a final comment. Actually, I think you are wrong about not “seeing” anything. I understand you are talking about normal eye-sight, but Emilia, you “see” so many things so much better than so many sighted people.

    I wish I knew some nice Polish way of complimenting you on your communication skills. I would use it right here.

    Blessings

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  23. Hi Emilia,

    Okay, my work week really crushed me and I just crawled out from beneath a huge project. But I also just upgraded a story I wanted to share with you about a rough ride my younger sister went through about 55 years ago. Everything turns out okay, but it was scary for a while and my father accidentally made it worse for me.

    I wanted to add some alternative text for blind readers, so you can more easily enjoy the story. I hope you’ll find time both, to give it a read and let me know how this story works for you.

    Here’s the link: https://garyawilsonstories.wordpress.com/the-poppies-are-back/
    I hope this finds you well and loving life.
    Blessings

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    1. Nice to hear from you. 🙂 Regarding dysthymia, I think it can be reeeally tricky to diagnose sometimes. It took ages for me, and was quite a frustrating process. But if a diagnosis could be helpful in your case, I really hope you will get it.
      Norwegian is so cool, I really like it! 🙂 And it’s quite a fun and diverse combination with Mandarin. 🙂

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  26. Hi Emilia,

    Thanks for liking my blog post. I’m a budding blogger and any amount of support does wonders to my motivation. Thank you so much ❤

    I wanted to check out your blog and to know you as a person and so I clicked on your About page. As I was reading your About me section, I thought you are a young, 20 something girl and quite eloquent too. Until I came across the words that you are blind! It threw me off completely. I couldn't imagine how a blind person could write so beautifully. And your English is quite good to be a second language. You are doing pretty good, don't believe otherwise. I'm quite amazed by your passion for learning. I wish you good luck for your endeavors. You will find me as one of your many followers. And I hope that I can help you see the world through my writings.

    Love,
    Sunshineswati

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