Tag: blogger

A quick announcement about My Inner Mishmash Readership Award.

I’m just writing this very quick post to let you all know that, after a lot of thinking, and now also discussing it with my Mum, I decided that I won’t be sending out My Inner Mishmash Readership Award packages this year. My Mum helps me a lot with the whole process of preparing and organising MIMRAs, coming up with ideas for their contents, finding them, and in particular with sending them out, but because this year has been quite difficult for her health-wise due to yucky menopause and now also her episodic asthma flaring up, I feel it isn’t fair to pressure her with MIMRA on top of that, though I was really looking forward to this as I was in the two previous years and it feels sad that this year will be without MIMRAs, as I find making them very exciting even if there’s a fair bit of pressure involved and a lot of things to do. Unfortunately I am not able to do all about MIMRAs without my Mum’s help, and have no one else who could help me with this here , so this is how I feel it has to be at the moment. Hopefully MIMRAs will be back next year. ๐Ÿ™‚

My Inner Mishmash Readership Award #2! And the winners are… *don’t read if you got a pingback and like surprises* :D

Hi all you lovely people you! ๐Ÿ™‚

Phew, it’s been quite an intense week! I know it’s super late compared to last year and am very sorry for that, but finally, it’s time to reveal this year’s winners of

My Inner Mishmash Readership Award!

My Inner Mishmash Readership Award (or MIMRA for short) is an idea that I came up with last year, where each year, around Christmas, I award three of my

most involved, insightful and engaged readers of My Inner MishMash as a way of expressing my gratitude and appreciation for their presence on My Inner MishMash, and also simply as a way to have some more fun on here for all of us, pre Christmas. Of course I do appreciate every single reader of my blog and am so happy for all of you who are stopping by, but quite obviously I can’t award everyone who visits my blog, so in a way this is also a more symbolic way of appreciating all of my readers.

So, without further ado, I am exxxtremely exxxcited to announce that the winners of this year’s My Inner Mishmash Readership Award are… *applause, drumrolls, fanfares, confetti etc.*

Meg of Where Good Advice Happens,

(and this is her second MIMRA)

Ashley Leia of Mental Health @ Home

(and this is her second MIMRA as well)

and

Astrid and her whole system Astridetal of A Multitude of Musings

.

Meg and Ashley are literally as lucky as they can be, because you can only win MIMRA twice in a row! Although Sofi is trying to convince me that it should be thrice, so… I don’t know… we’ll see next year I guess. But you can lemme know what you think of this idea if you want.

Thank you so very much to all of you, the winners, for being such engaged readers of My Inner Mishmash, such great supporters of Misha and me and such cool people overall! And thank you to all of my regular readers for all their extremely valuable input! ๐Ÿ™‚ And HUGE thanks to my Mum for helping me with this whole thing, brainstorming ideas with me, designing the cards etc. because it just wouldn’t work out without her! ๐Ÿ™‚ Last, but by no means least, thanks to Sofi, thanks to whom there are some pics with this post that you can enjoy. Sofi has made some of them and then today has helped me a lot with selecting the photos for this post and captioning them. After she captioned them, somehow I lost or couldn’t find her very descriptive captions after transferring the photos

This MIMRA has just been sent out and I had no clue which photo was which and got really annoyed and was about to give up on the whole photo thing, but eventually Sofi helped me once again change their names to something more descriptive than img0185 so that I knew what I was posting, lol, and do alt texts properly. All that despite she’s having a really awful day today because she’s sick.

I sincerely hope it’ll arrive to people at least very shortly before Christmas, but since I sent it out almost a whole month later than I did last year (guess I’ll have to start the preparations in August rather than in September next year ๐Ÿ˜€ ) because of the delay with the cards company and some things that have been going on for me personally as well as for my Mum, and since the mail in many countries is overloaded due to Covid and people ordering a lot of stuff online, at least from what I’ve been hearing, it’s possible that, if that’s the case with the mail in your country, you may need to wait for your MIMRA a bit longer than that. Even without such complications, I remember that last year’s MIMRA for Meg was going very slow, but that’s probably because our mail here always tends to be slow with foreign mail for some reasoon, at least in my experience. ๐Ÿ˜€

As a compensation, the MIMRA packages this year have a bit more content than the year before, but to be honest it wasn’t really even planned. Here are some pics (but with the MIMRA boxes closed, so you can’t take a peek in this year, ha, ha, more details about the content later)

Misha is sitting on the stack of grey MIMRA cartboard boxes which are next to my wardrobe. He is looking at you.

Misha sitting on the MIMRA boxes, which are decorated with three Christmas baubles from Sofi's tree, one bauble is grey and the other two are white.

And here’s a little bonus for all of you who like to look at Misha and often ask me about his pics, just because I had one more at hand and because it’s a special, exceptional day when images are being posted on this blog, lol, though it’s unrelated to the award itself.

Misha stretched out on the sheep skin on my bed.

I won’t be telling you what’s exactly in the MIMRAs, I myself am not a huge enthusiast of surprises but I figure most people do like them, but to give you a bit of an idea, there are some Polish edible goodies in there. My goal with MIMRA is to introduce people to new, yummy things that are only a thing in Poland, because I think it’s fun to see how each country has its own candy and stuff. And we generally have a lot of yummy food here. Only it’s so universalised these days (plus I myself haven’t been abroad much which may be an important factor here as well) that sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s Polish and what’s just somehow adapted or something. Last year’s MIMRA winners may remember that one of the things in the award package were biscuits with chocolate and jelly which are called Delicje over here. I was absolutely convinced they are a Polish thing, until last year’s MIMRA winner

Carol Anne of Therapy Bits, and some of the littles in her system,

enlightened me that they are also in Ireland, under the name of Jaffa Cakes, and they do appear to be in many other countries as well! So this year I did a bit more research and hopefully these things are actually exclusively Polish, or at least you haven’t tried them before, but even more importantly that you will like them. However Meg told me that she really enjoyed these Jaffa Cakes and she can’t get them anywhere and would like them in the MIMRA again. I originally didn’t plan it to be so, but because I found something that I thought could be a fun thing for Ashley and Astrid but maybe not necessarily for Meg, she did get a package of them eventually. Ashley and Astrid have something else instead. I’ll just say that it’s something to have a bath with, and I remembered that Meg can’t have baths with such bath products so I think it’s fair enough.

I hope you guys will like your MIMRAs and enjoy them at least as much as I did making them, and that they’ll bring some happiness to you for the Christmas time. ๐Ÿ™‚

 

Question of the day.

What are you putting off?

My answer:

You may say I am kind of putting off doing some stuff for MIMRA, but I don’t think that’s really putting off, because I am just thinking whether there are some better ideas, as I’m not fully convinced to my current one, so I’m waiting for my brain to come up with something new, but I have to wait anyway because I need my Mum’s help even with the plan I have so we both need to have time at the same time to take care of this and right now my Mum has to do other things. So that’s not really putting off as such. But other than that, at this moment, I don’t think I’m putting off anything.

How about you? Is there any specific reason behind why you do this, like it’s stressful or you don’t have enough energy to do this now or don’t like doing it? ๐Ÿ™‚

Question of the day.

What are you thinking?

My answer:

It’s MIMRA time on my blog now – well, at least MIMRA preparations time, it’s still a fair bit of time left until MIMRA sending time I think (for the uninitiated, MIMRA stands for My Inner Mishmash Readership Award and is a thing on here since last year, it is sent out every year around Christmas/New Year to three of my readers who I think are particularly engaged or provide some particularly valuable input into this little Mishmashy world, and it’s kind of like care packages) –
so I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately. It’s going very slowly this year because I’m sort of undecided as for what I want to do with it this year, at least as for some elements, I have some idea but am not really sure it’s right. But today I got the first items for it in the mail, and was very glad about that, especially that they look like good quality stuff and I was a little bit concerned about this because I feel like it’s something that can have really differing quality especially if you order it online and can’t have a first hand experience, and I’m not really an expert in the field as I hardly ever buy things like these for myself. But it looks really good to me and so I think it was a great choice for MIMRA. So yeah, my thoughts have been going around this topic quite a lot lately. ๐Ÿ™‚

What about you? ๐Ÿ™‚

The Sunshine Blogger Award.

A couple days ago, I’ve been nominated by Meg of

Where Good Advice Happens

for the Sunshine Blogger Award! Thank you so very much, Meg! ๐Ÿ™‚ So, since it’s been a few days already since I was nominated, time to finally make the award post.

Rules:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and provide a link back to their blog so others can find them.
2. Answer the 11 questions asked by the blogger who nominated you.
3. Nominate 11 other bloggers and ask them 11 new questions.
4. Notify the nominees about it by commenting on one of their blog posts.
5. List the rules and display a Sunshine Blogger Award logo on your post and/or your blog site.

Before we go further, just a little clarification, though I’ve said this before when doing award posts. There’s no logo to go with my post, since I’m blind and getting this on to my post seems a bit of a hassle that I don’t really understand how to go about. I know that some blind people do display award logos and similar things, so probably if I really really tried I could get my head ’round this, but, oh well, there are so many more fun and less abstractive things to do in life, and I’m also very minimalistic when it comes to images because they seem to be very distracting for people so that they don’t see the more important things. ๐Ÿ˜›

ย ย  Questions for me:

1. What is your say on all positive approach to life?

Oh no no no! Positivity is okay, optimism is okay, but I’m allergic to people who tell me to always be positive and similar bullshit. I’m allergic to people who tell me what I am supposed to feel and think. If there’s anything that is mine in this world, it’s my brain and no one will tell me what I should do with it. It’s probably because I’d been exposed to such people a lot and actually found it very toxic and invalidating, because even if I wanted… well sheesh, you can’t always be positive when you are depressed, plus suicidal like I was then, right? Also I’ve learnt to suppress my feelings early on in life and still haven’t really managed to unlearn it even though it’s better these days, and that’s why I probably respond the way I do to when not only I feel like I have to suppress what I feel but also am supposed to feel something vastly different. And I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to my brain and feelings and all that. Just like constant, all negativity approach is wrong and toxic, so is with positivity. I consider myself a defensive pessimist, and that has been working really well for me since I’ve adopted this approach in life. But, at least in my view, being a pessimist absolutely doesn’t mean that you have to be negative all the time and about everything, grumpy and complaining and make other people feel miserable. I really enjoy appreciating all the good things in life, relishing them and I love the fact that although I have depression, I am nevertheless still quite a hedonist at least when I’m at what I consider my normal, and I like to be enthusiastic about things. Just not about everything, and not all the time, and not when someone tells me to. And thanks to my defensive pessimism, when something in my life turns out better than I expected, the more happy and positively surprised I can be about that. Oh, that was a bit of an essay! ๐Ÿ˜€

2.ย What you do at times of writerโ€™s block ? Also mention reasons for a writers block, if any?

Sometimes I just wait it through and don’t stress overly. At other times I use some writing prompts, music or other stuff to inspire myself, it also depends what I am writing. Sometimes I just have to get through a difficult period and then my writing brain is back to normal after some stressing event is over. And as for the reasons, as I said, stressful events can give me a writer’s block, or particularly low mood and energy. But most of all I guess it’s the emotional overloads that can block me the most in any way of expressing myself, especially that when I experience them I usually have particularly low self-esteem to the point of self-loathing so even when I write something I usually don’t like it. Sometimes I try to write anyway and it can help if I push through, but at other times it’s downright impossible and then I have to wait until it passes, or try to get rid of some of those emotions that are raging in my brain in some other way.

3.ย When you started or even now do you feel like deleting a frank post,ย  overthinking that itโ€™s too bold ? What you do if it happens?

Yeah it happens sometimes that I write a very candid post, and then decide mid-writing that actually I shouldn’t be writing this, either because I don’t like what I wrote in general or it feels like exposing myself too much or sometimes I’m scared that someone whom I don’t want to will read it if it touches on some very sensitive topic. Then I sometimes delete it altogether, but at other times I keep writing it anyway, even when I don’t feel fully convinced about whether what I’m doing is right and feel like it’s very risky. But I rarely delete posts after I publish them, unless some time passes and I decide that for some reason they’re not right, too candid or vulnerable or whatever.

4. Do you believe in planning to the last detail or rough plans or no plan at all?

Hmm hard to say. I’m not a spontaneous person at all, but at the same time I hardly make rigid and thorough plans for anything. I like to be able to know what I’m going to do soon, and I really like routine and hate changes, but meticulously planning very far ahead is boring, so I guess I’m somewhere in the middle.

5.ย What is the weirdest flavour or combination you ever found in a drink or snack?

Chocolate with sea salt! My Mum used to have a phase where she would buy lots of chocolates with really strange things in them – like chilli, some weird alcohol fillings, or sea salt. – I found the sea salt in combination with chocolate particularly repulsive. I loooove love love salt, I mean, I used to eat just salt alone from the salt cellar, and my uncle who was a mariner got me lots of salt crystals from the Dead Sea years ago and I was licking them whenever I needed my salt fix, lol, my grandad used to say that it could have something to do with the fact that I have low blood pressure all the time but I’m not sure if there is a relationship, I guess I just simply like salt, and I also love chocolate, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t or don’t think I do, but together they’re just yuck.

6.ย What is your most embarrassing moment?

I can’t recall one that would be the very most embarrassing, when you have AVPD a lot of things feel embarrassing whether they are or not, so I thought I’d share a recent thing that happened to me, that was quite embarrassing but also very funny. We were in church last Sunday and I was sitting next to my Dad, listening to the homily, and I had a scarf on my face since we’re still having some restrictions in place, but rather lightly at that moment because there was only me and my family sitting in the pew, there is some distance between pews and it was very warm in there, and I wanted to avoid getting overly hot as it happens to me quite a lot in church and then can get embarrassing when my bp is dropping and I’m all dizzy and have to get out or pray that I won’t faint or something. When the homily was over, there was a brief moment of silence, and I suddenly felt like I was going to sneeze. Unfortunately it happened faster than I thought and I didn’t even manage to get out a handkerchief or cover my face more tightly with the scarf in time, and since it was so quiet, I’m pretty sure the whole church has heard me sneezing. ๐Ÿ˜€ Sofi immediately hissed that “Whoa, attention, Bibiel is giving away corona for free! Who wants to adopt a little virus?”, and then Dad started giggling, then I started laughing, and as is usually the case with me in public places where it’s not that appropriate to laugh, when I’ll start to laugh I can’t seem to be able to stop that easily, even if the reason is rather trivial and not that very funny, so I continued to try not to laugh at the whole thing for quite a few minutes. I guess that’s early signs of hysteria. ๐Ÿ˜€ My Mum and my grandma are exactly the opposite, they start to cry in church, cinema, theatre, official events at schools etc. very easily and seemingly over anything, while I get fits of laughter for no reason. I guess it’s worse because crying, while also awfully embarrassing, seems a bit more acceptable in such settings. ๐Ÿ˜€ Anyway, I’ve been thinking that now, and after the coronavirus, sneezing, coughing, or even sniffling or grunting, are going to be way worse and shameful than burping or farting. Too bad for people with allergies like me. ๐Ÿ˜€

7.ย Are you a dog person or a cat person? Why or why not?

I’d say a cat person, just because I seem to get along better with cats and understand them better, and especially since I’ve got Mishmishbut it’s not like I dislike dogs, they can be very sweet too, I love to play with our Jocky for example. I just don’t get along with them quite as well and we’re not on the same wavelength. Dogs seem to like me a lot for some strange reason, even more than Zofijka so she’s always envious when we are at someone’s place and their dog is all over me rather than playing with her, but I much prefer the way cats show their affection rather than have a dog jumping all over me or licking my face haha.

8.ย If you had the opportunity to pick one superpower for the rest of your life what would you choose: time travel, teleportation, telepathy, psychokinesis, invisibility?

I used to want to be able to teleport as a kid and that still would be cool, then I thought that telepathy was the best since you could have so much insight into other people’s brains, but I’ve read a book about a boy who had that ability and that seemed quite overwhelming to have all the bullshit from other people’s brains go into your brain, I think I’d drown in it. These days I think I’d like invisibility the most, as long as it was so that I’d be able to choose when I want to be invisible and when not, rather than be invisible all the time.

9. How do you cope with stress or anxiety? Any special tricks youโ€™d like to share?

Misha helps me the most. If you have an anxiety disorder or are just not very tolerant to stress and don’t have a pet, I highly recommend that you get yourself one if you are able to in your life situation. Music helps me especially with the sensory anxiety stuff, as do some other distractions that can occupy my brain really well. Distraction won’t always make your anxiety go away, sometimes it won’t work at all, but it’s always worth a try. Good sleep is key. It won’t always mean that you’ll feel completely fine and not anxious after a restful night’s sleep, but if you’re sleep deprived and have anxiety issues, I’d think you have it pretty much guaranteed that you will experience a lot of anxiety, more than you would otherwise. I also take medication for anxiety and although I didn’t do it for many years, even though I’ve had anxiety all my life, now I can’t imagine not having a help like that at all and often wonder how I actually got through some anxiety-provoking stuff in the past without it, when my overall mental health was much worse. My anxiety is generally of a chronic rather than panicky and coming and going kind, I have different types of anxiety, but when I get panic attacks or when my anxiety increases significantly in a short time, what I do is I try to think in another language. That is, not Polish and not English. I’m already fluent in English enough that English doesn’t work, and I tend to think about the things I feel more often in English than in Polish these days. But I try to think in other languages that I know. That is Swedish and Welsh. First, that provides a distraction and of course these languages are something I like. Second, it just is a good exercise for practicing my language skills. And third, it slows my thoughts. When I’m anxious my brain is racing with lightning speed, and since I’m not that very fluent in Swedish, and especially not in Welsh, it takes time for me to form thoughts in these languages. ALso Swedish is generally very simple so it’s strange how I can start to think more rationally in Swedish. There really is something in what people say that with each language you know, you get something a bit like a new identity. Often that language trick will actually help me to better realise what I am so anxious about, or will simply help to calm me down. Again, this doesn’t work always, because sometimes it’s impossible to focus, but when it does, my brain can slow down a bit.

10. Is the universe finite or infinite? And why do things even exist at all?

I think it’s finite but really really REALLY huge. And I think if something exists, especially when we are talking about living beings, there most certainly must be some very clear purpose to it, even if we don’t know it yet, or struggle to understand it. I’m sure we’ll all know it some day.

11.ย If you had one week left to live what would you do?
I would make sure that Misha would be well looked after and treated, have everything he needs for his whole life after I wouldn’t be with him. I mean my Mum is his main feeder anyway so he wouldn’t go hungry but they don’t know his habits quite as well as I do, or his dislikes, so I would do everything that I could to make sure that he would have someone who would always care for Misha and not make stupid tricks on him like scaring him with the vacuum cleaner just because it looks funny. I don’t know who it could be though, probably Mum because he is very attached to her even though she often gets irritated with him and screams at him which he doesn’t like. I would make time for saying a proper goodbye to my family and would spend a lot of time with them, I would probably have to explain some things about me to them. I think I would give most of my things to Zofijka. I would spend a lot of time preparing myself for death spiritually so that I could die happy. I’d like it to be a possibly happy week during which I would do some things that I never did before but that I would be sure that I’d enjoy them. Nothing spectacular or extravagant, just small, pleasant things. And I would like to do something really helpful for someone.

I’ve recently nominated quite a lot of people for the Real Neat Blog Award, but this time I just nominate everyone who reads this post. And you can answer the questions that I was asked, as I don’t really have many ideas at the moment.

 

Happy Easter, pets and peeps!

Hhrrru? ๐Ÿ˜ป

This is Misha. I am soon going to sleep because all my peeps are soon going to sleep, but before I do that I wanted to wish all of you, on behalf of the Emisha team – that is Mila and me – a very happy happy happy Easter. I hope it will be a very joyful time for you if you are Christians and if you are not and are just celebrating for the fun of celebrating something I hope you will be able to have as much chocolate as you can keep in. And if you are not celebrating I hope you have a lovely, beautiful Sunday and won’t be stressing too much about that human plague thing. If you are a pet like me I hope it will also be as happy day for you as it’s going to be for me and that your peeps will stay at home even though it is a holiday and spend some more time with you, but hopefully they won’t be too noisy and intrusive and will let you have a bit of time for yourself too. Happy Easter to all our readers. ๐Ÿ˜ป

Emisha ๐Ÿ’œ ๐Ÿ’š ๐Ÿ’™

Question of the day.

When did you join WordPress and when did you start blogging? How did it feel like at the beginning? How much has changed since then?

My answer:

I started blogging when I was 13 I guess, in a programme developed for the blind. It served as a way to get blind people together, or something like that, it was fully accessible of course, people could message each other, there were forums, groups, people could have their sound avatars, it could play a variety of multimedia, stream Internet radio, YouTube videos, had a very simple browser, some audiogames etc. etc. and also blogs. It was very easy to make a blog there, you didn’t have to do much except agree that you want to start a blog and write. No making up a URL, choosing a theme, playing around with widgets, SEO or plugins. It was both good and bad. Good because of course it was easy and fun, very quick and absolutely everyone could blog and pretty much everyone did blog, more or less consistently. You didn’t have to worry about how your blog looks or that something doesn’t work with a screenreader or whatever. Bad, because despite it was built somehow based on WordPress, there was a very slim chance that someone outside of the community, who didn’t have an account there, would find your blog, unless you’d give them the URL address. And you weren’t able to make it more personalised, like adjust things and make them more your own, which would annoy me right now but I didn’t care about that back thenn at all. I started blogging out of curiosity, it felt very interesting and cool to me, and people were telling me I’m good at writing so I thought I could do that well and enjoy it. I did. I wrote mainly about my daily life I guess, and some other silly stuff like logging my dreams, I don’t remember really… I had 3 different blogs there over the years, one after another. The programme was soon left by its developers and it was hanging in the Internet for some more years before they killed it completely, but slowly different features were dying, for example YouTube was gone when YouTube got an update, stuff like Google search and Wikipedia browser followed and so – very slowly – did the blogs since they were based on WordPress so people were migrating to different platforms, seeing that things are getting less and less stable, before their old blogs would disappear completely, or they just stopped blogging altogether.

And that was more or less when I started blogging on WordPress, no idea which year it was but I guess I could be about 17. I’m not sure. I had little to no technical idea how one sets up a blog properly, I don’t think I have it now but the second time round I guess I either had more luck, more help or more determination to do it right. That first time was a disaster and the blog wasn’t even very accessible for myself, let alone for my blind readers, and my readers were mostly blind, mostly people from that old community, because my blog wouldn’t even show up in Google, unless you’d search for its actual name, which wasn’t very generic at all so not many random people would think about that. ๐Ÿ˜€ It was called Drimolandia, so kind of like Dreamland (it doesn’t mean Dreamland in Polish but I’d say you could call it a polonisation of the English word Dreamland, drim is how you would phonetically spell dream in Polish, and -landia is like English suffix -land, in countries). So, my traffic was just absolutely, extremely, unbelievably low, how low I can fully comprehend only now that I have a (much) better performing blog, seriously, in the whole career of that blog my record daily amount of views was 35! ๐Ÿ˜€ I think I could also blame Polish WordPress, there is a lot of Polish blogs set up on pl.wordpress.com but, at least from my observations, people don’t get many comments usually, and forget about the kind of community that is in the English blogosphere, with stuff like writing prompts or blog awards (okay I’ve seen a blog award post once). I copy-pasted all my posts from the previous blog I had onto Drimolandia, hoping to expand that further and write new posts over time, but because working with WordPress editor was a really painful, slow process – I don’t know if WordPress was so inaccessible then or if I had such a rubbish theme or what – that I had less and less motivation and finally abandoned it altogether and just left it hanging in the Internet by itself.

Then I joined another blind app which is still alive and being developed, based on that first one in terms of the general idea, created by one of the former users of that old app who is also a programmer. It had blogs too and I was blogging there for virtually a couple months. That was about the time when I started having my wild ideas about having an English blog, and not necessarily, preferably not, in the blind community. I really enjoyed being there and I liked a lot of people, I know many of them in real life from school or other places. And that was fun in a way, and in a way it wasn’t. I’d been thinking for a long time that I actually don’t like the fact that a lot of people there knew me in real life, or knew someone who knew me, that they had their own idea about me and had every right to it of course, and I felt like that was holding me back from making all those blogs what I really wanted them to be and I felt that I had to hold myself back and wasn’t really writing for myself and was censoring myself all the time or I felt very exposed otherwise. Maybe freaky for some, but that’s how I felt about it. Also, I was interested in things, or involved in things, that I wanted to write about, but even when I did, I didn’t really feel it was interesting for my readers and that they got it, because they didn’t feel it. I felt weird, I mean, I know I’m weird and I like being weird and if someone tells me I’m weird I take it as a compliment, but it wasn’t that kind of weird. I wanted to have a wider group of readers and for it to be more likely that someone who can really relate and/or will be interested can read it, whether they will let me know about that and comment or not, so that I could seriously feel that my opening up is useful and pays off somehow. Otherwise I could write in my diary, which I’ve had for years and write freely in it about everything that comes to my brain. Then also all the mental health stuff started to come up to the surface for me and I couldn’t ignore it any longer, some time later I started diving deeper into the English Internet, writing with people, learning more about myself and people in general, finally it felt necessary for me to have an outlet, for all that was going on in my brain, especially the mental health struggles as I had little support then, and that community wasn’t an option for me to write about such private things , and I also felt for other reasons that I needed to leave it.

And that’s how My Inner MishMash started out, in 2018! I’m so glad that I actually did it, and made this idea come true, it was beneficial to me in so many ways. I wonder now if I have written a post on that, if not, one would definitely be necessary at some point. My Inner MishMash was born on January 24th, but more officially on January 26th, as I was setting it up for 2 days, I was so scared not to screw it up! ๐Ÿ˜€ I don’t think it has changed very significantly over those two years (though maybe it’s different from a reader’s perspective?), other than when I sometimes look back at my older posts I can see that my English has improved a bit more and I have developed a bit more of an individual writing style, though it’s still very far from my very characteristic Polish writing style and sometimes I feel like that sucks, but I guess such things take time. On the other hand, as I’ve said many times, I feel much more emotionally expressive in English so everything has its good and bad aspects.

How about your blogging? ๐Ÿ™‚

Mystery Blogger Award.

Hi people! ๐Ÿ™‚

I was nominated by the fantastic Astrid of

A Multitude Of Musings

for the Mystery Blogger Award! Thank you so very much, Astrid! ๐Ÿ˜ Also thanks to

Okoto Enigma

for creating this award. Unfortunately I’m not going to put the award logo with this post as I have completely no idea how to do it.

ย ย  Rules:

 

  1. Put the award logo/image on your blog.
  2. List the rules.
  3. Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
  4. Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well.
  5. Answer the 5 questions you were asked.
  6. Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.
  7. You have to nominate 10-20 people.
  8. Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog.
  9. Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice; with one weird or funny question (specify).
  10. Share a link to your best post(s).

My answers to Astrid’s questions:

  1. What is your favorite color? – I can’t tell just one. Well I guess I love black the most, but I also love white, blue, green, grey, and some shades of silver, pretty equally.
  2. What is the biggest challenge you face right now? – I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety and rumination that I feel has worsened quite a bit over the last few months, especially the rumination part, and some changes in different areas of my life, not big, as in very much life-changing, but still significant, and with my fear of changes.
  3. Do you have any pets? – I have a 3.6-year-old Russian blue cat called Misha, who is the most mine. We also have a mixed-breed 1-year-old dog called Jocky who is particularly Zofijka’s, and we have some fish as well, which are mostly my Dad’s.
  4. (Weird/Funny) Would you want to be the opposite gender for a while if you could? – Meh, not really… Without any offense to the guys (it’s not my intend at all) I don’t think it could be particularly interesting or fun (for me) to be a guy.I think I’m happy being a woman, even though it has its fair share of downsides. That’s why I find it quite hard to personally relate to the issues transgender people face, and I feel it must be horribly daunting not to feel like you are the right gender. Haha, actually, thinking about this question reminded me about the time when I was a little girl, perhaps 6 or 7, and wanted to be a boy just because I wanted to be like my Dad and be named Jacek. ๐Ÿ˜€ I still love the name Jacek and will probably always will, but I wouldn’t like to be a Jacek myself. That just shows that while I’ve never seriously struggled with my gender identity, I had had real name issue since very early on, until I’ve become an Emilia to the world, and I’m glad that now it’s over. One true advantage of being an adult – you can legally change your name. ๐Ÿ˜€ Well, OK, perhaps I could be the opposite gender just for a little while, just to see what it’s like, sort of get a broader outlook on the world, understand men a little bit better, just like a kind of experience to learn something from it, that could be something interesting. But nothing that I’d genuinely want very much.
  5. What was your major in college? – I’m always sort of confused about the education system in the English-speaking countries. If we’re talking college as in the UK, like sixth form, after secondary school, I was doing a college for adults, on weekends. I was two years behind my peers, first year because that was just some sort of practice at the school for the blind where I was going to that people were starting a year later and were having a sort of preparation year the previous year, and the second time because of some sort of mishmash with my transition from the integration school back to the school for the blind, long and complicated and boring and irrelevant story. So by the time I was about to start college, I was already an adult and made a decision that it will be easier for me in an adult college. And there weren’t really any subjects we were supposed to choose to study more in depth, as majors, as it works in standard schools like that in Poland. We were all having the same classes from general subjects. However, in my last year, I sort of accidentally learnt that our majors formally were geography and history. But that was just a formality, apparently, and didn’t mean anything in practice. As for college as in America, so like almost a university, I didn’t go to college in that sense. After I did my finals at that school – which as my regular and loyal readers know was a painful process because of many things, but primarily emotionally, it turned out, quite as I expected, that I didn’t pass the math exam. Here, if you don’t pass one subject, in practical terms you don’t pass anything (even if you have 100% from two other exams as I did, haha). And, for reasons that I’ve previously written about on here, I decided not to rewrite that exam, perhaps just for now, perhaps not at all, we shall see.

3 things about me:

1. When I was a child, I wrote a book, consisting of quite a few smaller books, about creatures I made up that were called Parpills. They were black and red and fluffy, and the main character of my book, the Parpill called Parpillo, had loads of adventures. I still have my Parpill books, and the illustrations that one of my teachers made for me, and they’re so fun. I still love reading them sometimes, and so does Zofijka, because it’s all written both in Braille and in normal print, though she always laughs and says they’re freaky! ๐Ÿ˜ญ I wonder why… ๐Ÿ˜‰

2. Apart from my languages, that I am talking all the time on my blog, I was learning German and Italian at some point as well. German was at school, and I do like it, just not love it as my languages, andI was decent at it but nothing more, and then I courageously tried to do something with it on my own too because I sort of felt I should, but lacked motivation terribly. I have to many languages for now, maybe later, but I’ll have to live a really long life to learn all my languages and then have time and space for some others. Italian was my generous attempt to help out Mum who wanted to learn this language, but she doesn’t speak English so doesn’t have that many resources as she would have learning through the medium of English, and she said she needed some help. It was one big shit and a failure for both of us! But oh well, I am just not a fan of Italian, too many people love it. I also speak some Kashubian and i am half Kashubian, but it’s not much and, perhaps it’s hypocritical of me, but I don’t feel much of a connection with this language, I don’t even truly like it, I definitely love Polish way more, even though Kashubian is an extincting language and I’m all for saving extincting languages.

I am an auditory-tactile and auditory-taste synaesthete, which I love, and have some other sensory quirks, and some that are a bit resembling of some kind of synaesthesia as well, but aren’t that exactly. I love my brain for that.

I nominate:

This time, anyone who feels like participating and would like to feel awarded. Feel free to join in, and let me know if you do. ๐Ÿ™‚

ย ย  My questions for you:

1. If you could choose any material thing in the world to have, but only one, what would you like to get?

2. What trait do you most dislike about yourself and do you think other people dislike it to, or is it just your opinion?

3. When was the last time you laughed really hard?

4. What typ(es) of situations are the most distressing for you?

5. Weird/funny, inspired by Astrid’s question and my Jacek quirk, if you were born the opposite gender and were given a chance to pick a name for yourself, how would you name yourself?

ย ย  The best post:

No idea if it’s really my “best post”, or if it’s objectively very good, guess it’s average, but I think, as for my debut short story in English, it was pretty good. But you’d have to judge, if you haven’t read it yet.

The Power Of Food And Music

So You Know.

I guess I haven’t participated so far in S.Y.K – So You Know – a weekly series hosted by Candace of

Revenge Of Eve,

so here are her questions for this week, and my answers.

 

  • How long have you blogged? What is the anniversary? – I have blogged on and off since my early teens, at first I had a blog in a Polish online network for the blind, I had a few blogs on there, as I was restarting my blogging a couple times. Then I moved to Polish WordPress a few years ago, first because I wanted to reach a wider audience, and second because simply that network wasn’t working anymore. This was also when it slowly started bothering me that most people from that network, although I liked them and was friends with many, knew me in real life, and while I’d be happy to be open, even very open on my blog, and share things with like-minded people, I didn’t feel comfortable with all of them knowing me personally or knowing someone that knows me, or knowing people I was mentioning, so I couldn’t really be a very honest blogger. I also wanted to find my own niche, like people that would have similar interests or at least a similar way of looking at some things… But the Polish blog didn’t really work out, because after being on that network for the blind I was completely clueless about setting up my own blog, and messed it up, my stats were even lower than before and I was getting hardly any traffic, so I soon got discouraged. Another thing is that Polish WordPress, at least from what I can see, isn’t quite as active and dynamic as English, and people are much less interactive. Then I tried with yet another blog at another network for the blind that has been created, but I’ve been making myself some English-speaking friends and thinking more and more often about having a blog in English. It was more like my dream than something I would think seriously about for a long time, but suddenly it started to feel like something I would really really like to do, because I could find more like-minded people then, and I’ve started to discover some things about myself, including learning about or maybe accepting and defining my mental illness(es), moving on from some things, and I’ve also noticed that it’s easier for me to write about my feelings and just express myself in English, and my English started to develop speedily, miraculously and uncontrollably. So much so that now I am hardly ever in touch with any Polish people, and if I get an email in Polish I’m very surprised (or jumping up with fright because it’s either something formal or scary and means some problems ๐Ÿ˜€ ). So, that’s how My Inner Mishmash came to life! My Inner Mishmash is two years old now, soon will be two and a half. But I can’t tell you exactly for how long I’ve been blogging like altogether.
  • What was your original purpose for beginning a blog? – This one, like I said, a need to connect with people, to find perhaps something like my tribe, to improve my language skills – maybe someday I’ll make it a multilingual blog, we’ll see, – and expressing myself, because I’ve always had trouble expressing myself and writing is the easiest way I can do it, which doesn’t always mean it’s easy. ๐Ÿ˜€ As for my first blog, I guess it was just curiosity, I didn’t even fully know what blogging could be about, but it was within my reach and I’ve always loved writing, so just thought “Why not?”.
  • Did you research about blogging before establishing your own? – Before establishing both my WordPress blogs – yes, a bit. – As I said I was clueless about all the setting up and just creating your own blog in general, personalising it, customising, all that. I was especially careful with this one, because I didn’t want it to repeat the story of my Polish WordPress blog, and I also had to ask a few people for a bit of help at the very beginning. I also researched a bit about increasing traffic, but I’m far less neurotic about my stats than I thought I’d be.
  • Has your purpose evolved or changed directions? If so, what was the determining factor for the change? – With my Inner Mishmash, I guess my purpose hasn’t changed, although one thing that I’ve also decided that I want it to be an essential part of my blogging is being engaging with my readers. When it comes to my blogging journey as a whole, it has definitely evolved and blogging is so much more for me now than it used to be at the beginning. I guess what caused it was simply that I was changing, and changing my views, my situation was changing and I was growing up, learning things about people and myself, just quite a natural process I think.
    • What determines your measure of success as far as blogging is concerned? – Most of the time, I try to be laid back about my blogging. I just want it to be pleasurable for me, I’m also always happy to see that my readership is growing or that they enjoy my scribbles.

Question of the day.

What was the thing that first motivated you to start blogging?

My answer:

Well I had my first blog when I was… 13, 14 maybe, I don’t know if there was any special motive, like a very big one. I had just joined a sort of online network for the blind and you could blog very easily on there. I read some of other people’s blogs just to get an idea what a blog actually is, and I simply thought “Wow, that’s a cool thing, I’m gonna try this”. It was an easy decision because I always loved writing and was good at it. So it just sort of felt right, and was easy enough to do, you didn’t have to care about any technical stuff there like, I don’t know, a theme or anything, and there wasn’t much chance that you’ll get a lot of readership from outside the network unless you’d just give out your address to people, you just clicked “Create a blog” and it was there, so I didn’t really have to think much, it wasn’t like a very serious decision, though since then I’ve almost always had some sort of a blog.

So how about you? ๐Ÿ™‚

Spook and Morgue need our help.

Hi guys! ๐Ÿ™‚

I’m sharing the video made by Spook, daughter of Morgueticia from Take A Ride On My Moodswing

. They are in a very difficult life and financial situation, and as a result, Spook has never been on a vacation, which I think is a real shame that it has to be so! So she has created a fundraiser, and is asking people for donations, so that, with our help, she can finally make this little dream – that so many of us so often take for granted – come true.

I know there are all great people reading my mishmashy scribbles, (you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t great), so I also know they can count on your help. If you can’t donate anything at all, please share the video so that more people know, on social media or on your blog or where you can. Here’s Spook:

Mystery Blogger Award.

I’ve been nominated by the fantastic Carol Anne of

Therapy Bits

for the Mystery Blogger Award! Thank you very much, Carol Anne, it’s greatly appreciated. ๐Ÿ™‚

ย ย  What is Mystery Blogger Award?

 

Mystery Blogger Award is an award for amazing bloggers with ingenious posts. Their blog not only captivates; it inspires and motivates. They are one of the best out there, and they deserve every recognition they get. This award is also for bloggers who find fun and inspiration in blogging, and they do it with so much love and passion. Created by: Okoto Enigma.

ย ย  Rules:

 

  1. Put the award logo/image on your blog
  2. List the rules.
  3. Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
  4. Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well
  5. Tell your readers 3 things about yourself
  6. You have to nominate 10 20 people
  7. Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog
  8. Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice; with one weird or funny question (specify)

3 things about me.

1. I sleep with a hotwater bottle most of the year, unless it’s really warm, otherwise my feet are too cold and I can’t sleep.

2. I love chocolate and mint ice cream! ๐Ÿ˜‹

3. I can’t remember any phone numbers, even my own. ๐Ÿ˜€ For me it’s actually not a problem at all, but some people find it very strange. I usually am not very good at remembering any numbers or similar things. They usually completely don’t matter to me, unless I really have to care.

ย ย  My answers to Carol Anne’s questions.

1. What time do you usually wake up?
Usually? There’s no such thing as usually when we talk about my sleep cycle. ๐Ÿ˜€ Anything from 1 AM to 1 PM I guess, depends on the circumstances and, I don’t know what else, maybe moon phases LOL. OK but if I go to sleep decently and need a decent amount of sleep like most people do and nothing unusual gets in the way I usually try to be up at 7-8 AM I dislike waking up too late.

2. Do you write poems?
Mm, yeah, sporadically, I do, but I don’t treat it too seriously. I used to write some occasional poems for school which people liked, but I didn’t, and writing them was a nightmare for me in some way, like quite an arduous thing. I sometimes wrote sort of dark-humoured poems or similar stuff and sometimes I do now too, but not too often. I once thought that maybe if I could write poetry it could be some way of expresing myself for me, but I don’t seem to feel very comfortable in this genre, I guess I’m better at prose.

3. Which day of the week is your favourite?
I guess I don’t have one at the moment, I don’t have a strict work schedule or anything like that that I would have to stick to, I can organise most of my time on my own the way I want, so most often I don’t have more or less favourite days of the week, OK I don’t like weekends a bit, they are often boring and lousy or too much people around.

4. What is one thing you struggle with every day?
Let’s say collectively, my brain. ๐Ÿ˜€

5. If you could make up a special day what would you want it to be?

Globalย  Misha Appreciation Day.

I nominate:

This time, anyone who would like to take part. ๐Ÿ™‚ Feel free. ๐Ÿ™‚

ย ย  My questions.

1. Do you play any computer games? What kind(s) do you like?

2. If you had to choose, do you prefer very hot or very cold temps?

3. Are you a good multitasker?

4. What do people like most in you?

5. What colour of socks do you like the most to wear? (Zofijka’s question, the funny/weird one).

 

The belated FridayFour.

It’s well over weekend, butย  here’s another of the posts I wanted to write during the weekend but finally didn’t. It’s my first time participating in Rory’s Friday Four

, it’s fun so I thought I’d still give it a go despite it’s already Tuesday. ๐Ÿ˜€

Here are Rory’s questions and my answwers:

 

1] How often do you update your โ€˜About Sectionโ€™, in your blog and do you consider it an important aspect to your blog and if so โ€“ why?

Well I have my current blog for exactly 13 months. That sounds like a lot but not very much can change usually during this time in your life and yourself. But when I started this blog and created my About page I decided that I will try to revise it every year or so and change it if necessary. And so I edited it a month ago. There was actually more to edit than I thought it would. Yes I think it is an important part to any blog, if you have an About page, it’s easier for new readers to find out who you are and what your blog is like, whether it can interest them, which is not always easy just looking at a couple of your random recent posts. Also if you write about things that aren’t necessarily obvious to a random visitor, I think it makes your site more friendly and approachable if there is a place on your blog to which people can go to actually learn what it’s all about and why it is the way it is. I am quite an inquisitive person when it comes to other people and when I visit someone’s blog, I like to know what they are like just out of plain nosiness, but it also helps me to decide whether it would be relevant for me to follow them.

2] Which do you prefer and why and what entices you to become involved with them?

a] Competitions

b] Challenges

c] Quizzes

d] Prompts

i like challenges and prompts a lot. Challenges can be very fun, and bring bloggers together in interesting ways, while prompts are great if you want to stimulate your creativity with something new or have plain old writer’s block that won’t go away on its own. I’m not very competitive usually, and so far I’ve never tried doing quizzes on my blog, though it doesn’t mean I don’t like them, overall I often enjoy playing quizzes.

3] How often do you โ€˜reblog or share other bloggerโ€™s posts?

It depends, I don’t know what’s often or what’s not in general but recently I’ve done it fairly regularly. I follow quite a couple blogs that are focused on some of my interests and I reblog regularly posts from some of them.

&

4] What prompts you to do so?

I reblog posts from blogs that I find interesting in hopes that maybe someone who will stumble upon my blog will find them interesting as well, as well as because I want to share what I like, show those bloggers that I enjoyed their posts, and also, as much as I can, perhaps encourage others to visit them and make those bloggers at least a bit more popular. I also reblog posts that i can strongly relate to or that move me deeply in any way, or if I see a blog that is very interesting to me for some reason but with few likes or comments, for example when someone is a beginner. I want to show them they’re doing a good job.There are lots of blogs out there, and lots of people start blogging, but so many find it disheartening, even if their blog is great, and give up so easily.

My Inner MishMash is a year old!

Whohooo! Yaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy!!! Congrats to me! My Inner MishMash is a year old today. I just realised it a while ago. How cool! What should I do with this fact? Any special celebrations? Changes? A giant birthday cake? I just really forgot about it sort of so didn’t think about anything, what a shame! But oh I’m so proud of myself for having this blog, developing it and sticking to it, and I think it has helped me so much in various areas of my life throughout this past year. This was such a damn good decision to start it and I regret I didn’t think earlier about it, well I did, but that I didn’t start it. But well I guess my English needed some time to become more communicative. Yay! Happy birthday, my dear blog. ๐Ÿ˜€

Stoicism

This is a very powerful post, to which I can hugely relate as someone constantly trying to unlarn bottling up emotions and living with consequences of doing so all the time for years. If you struggle with similar issues, I highly recommend you reading this. ๐Ÿ™‚

New Beginnings

We all have a different reaction to pain.

Some of us react externally, such as jump in shock, scream, cry, or become enraged.

Some of us react, but rather internally than externally. Such as concealing the pain deep within the mind, making it appear as though they feel nothing on the outside but truly suffer inside.

Instead, the outside reaction might just be a smile. Or even nothing at all. Almost appearing as though they are immune to the pain inflicted upon them.

Maybe they want nobody to see them in pain. They wouldnโ€™t want people to show any care for them so they can endure their suffering alone. As if nobody would be able to heal them.

Or perhaps they think people would view them as weak. A pathetic human that could never stand a chance through life. They want to eliminate the possibility of being embarrassed by hidingโ€ฆ

View original post 651 more words

Hey people! ๐Ÿ˜Š

I’m still alive. Well I guess you don’t doubt this, as I’ve been reblogging some posts and commenting some of your posts, but I haven’t posted an actual post here in over a week and I’m really really sorry about that, I didn’t mean to definitely.

I’ve been ill with bronchitis since the weekend, I tend to get bronchitis inevitably every year sometime in autumn or winter and it’s somehow related to allergy and asthma, and that has made a bit of a chaos for me and I’m just behind on everything.

Tomorrow it’s probably going to be a busy day for me, busy and boring altogether, so I don’t know how quickly I’ll catch up on everything.

I just wanted to let you know that I’m still here, didn’t give up on blogging, and will now try to catch up on the song of the day posts a bit as I’ve intended to show you so many great songs, and if I’ll manage then I’ll post the question for today for you as well, and I hope I’ll be able to do some more longer writing later this week too, when I’ll feel better and get back on track with things.

Hope you are all doing well. ๐Ÿ™‚

Back to the big world. :D

Hi people! ๐Ÿ™‚

So now as my blog is public again, I’d like to say it once again to those who didn’t read my blog while it was private. Although I am now public, I decided that I am going to protect some more personal posts with a password.

If you’d like to access them, feel free to Contact me. and then I will decide whether I will give it to you or not. That’s it for now. ๐Ÿ™‚