Question of the day.

Hey people! 🙂

Which of your former classmates had the most interesting or unusual names?

My answer:

I hadn’t had very many with unusual names really. Zofijka is being much more lucky with that hahaha. One that comes to mind is a girl called Luiza, which name has always been somewhere among my most favourites for girls. It’s certainly not unheard of, but not very popular at all. Also, one of my groupmates – not classmates – at the boarding school had a very unusual name, and I’ve never encountered or even heard of anyone with the same name neither before I’d met her, not afterwards, her name was Arnika, as in arnica – the plant. – In my college/high school there was a woman called Adela, which is a classic and vintage name that I love, that has probably never been highly popular as far as I know, although is now enjoying some more attention from parents and was a little below the top 100 last year, but still would rather be associated with an elderly lady by most people. Meanwhile my classmate certainly wasn’t older than in her mid 30’s or something (it was a weekend school for adults in case you didn’t know or remember). Also, through my education, I’d had plenty of classmates with so called “seasonal”, or in any case quite modern names, that is ones that were popular only about the time when they/we were born, were hardly used before, or not for a long time, and felt unusual for some, or fresher than more classic names, and people might have not been as used to them as they are now, but that now feel very much associated with the generation. For example names like Klaudia (I had quite a bunch of classmates with this name throughout my schooling at different stages and in different schools), Angelika (I went to college with two, one spelt with a g and another with a dż), Krystian, Olaf, Oliwia, Nikola (it’s a girl’s name in Poland, unlike in many other Slavic countries), Or some had names that maybe weren’t super popular back when they were born, so might have felt a little more unexpected, but are very high for babies right now, like Kornelia, Marcelina, Nadia and Oliwier. So overall very normal. It’s possible that I don’t remember someone right now, because one year while going to school I had individual education, and was only going to school twice a week, and while in college, there was a lot of rotation, people were dropping out, new people were coming, many were absent for weeks and later on I started to do most of the material remotely and saw my classmates less.

So, how about you? 🙂

The Human Life Of Misha Hhrrru? ep. 8.

Hhrrru? 😻

Yay! Finally I’ve got to write another post. How are you all pets and peeps doing? Here’s another episode of my what-if human life. *****

March 9

I am Misha. I am 8. I just came back from school today. It was mostly a very boring day but the last lesson we had was plast plast –
that is how I call art. – I love plast plast! My Mum does it, and my plast plast teacher used to go to college with her, but she’s not very nice to me because my mum is her friend. It’s the opposite. She is very demanding. She wants more from me than all the other kids. When any other kid does something a bit wrong she says it’s okay as it is, but when I do even a very little mistake, she is very worried and wants me to try more. I used to be a bit sad about it and think I’m so very bad at plast plast, and I didn’t want to be bad at plast plast because I love it and my family always tells me I am a very good painter, but mum told me she does it because she wants me to develop my talent. I guess it’s very nice of her. I want to be a very good painter and now I’m happy when she tells me that something is wrong. But at the same time, she’s hardly ever satisfied. She constantly wants me to improve something and even mum says she’s a bit too harsh on me because I am just a little child. But guess what? Today she was very happy with me.

She wanted us to draw or paint or present in any possible way that suits us, our favourite season. My favourite season is autumn, because I love leaves. I like to think about them. But it makes me sad when I think about lonely leaves. When one fallen leaf is lying alone, or among leaves of a different kind, with no leaf of its own kind, or if there is only one leaf on a twig or the whole tree, it makes me so very sad. When I feel lonely, I often think that I feel like a lonely leaf. Some people say it’s stupid because leaves are never lonely, but I think they can be, very often. Whenever it’s autumn and leaves are falling and I come back from school, I try not to step on them. My mum says I’m too sensitive about leaves and that they have no feelings. But I just love them! I’ve always had. It makes me sad when someone says they don’t feel anything, I’m sure they do. But mum thinks I have such strange thoughts and ideas because I’m the only child and have no one to play with. But I have Feluś, and when I don’t have Feluś I have myself to play with. And even if I had many siblings and many friends, which would be very lovely, I guess I still would be myself, wouldn’t I? With my own thoughts and ideas. I would still have enough place in my heart to love leaves and care for them. And when it’s getting cold, I sometimes take a couple leaves home with me and put them close to my bed, so that they are warm and cosy and they have me and I have them. Mum says it’s unhygienic. But how can something as natural as leaves be unhygienic? Perhaps I’ll have to make a bath for them when I take them home next year before I put them in my bedroom. I wonder how they would feel about that. But I wanted to talk about plast plast. So of course I decided I will paint an autumn picture. An autumn forest with colourful trees and with lots of leaves, but no lonely leaves because I didn’t want to feel sad. I miss leaves because there are none at this time of year. They were all happy and with their leaf families, and leaves on the trees were happy too. i even managed to paint the wind moving the leaves, and light rain was falling. I painted birds and some other small animals, and a little grey cat rolling around among the leaves. I was so engrossed in this that I didn’t know what was going on around me and suddenly I felt someone elbowing me. It was Feluś, he sits with me in class. “Hey, you, Misha, I’m speaking to you.” – he whispered. – “Hmmm what?” – I asked, looking up from my picture at him reluctantly. “I asked why do you painted a cat in this forest. Cats don’t live in the forest”. “This one does.” “Ahaa, and of course this cat is called Misha?” – he asked giggling. – I have a book series about a cat called Misha, and I myself often feel like I’d love to be a cat, and I often include a cat called Misha in my paintings. Feluś thinks it’s weird, and that I am weird, but he likes me anyway. I nodded, and got back to my picture. I finished it, and had a lot of time to wait for all the others to finish. Finally the teacher said the time has passed and that she’d now like to see our works. She came to me and Feluś in the end, and seeing my picture, she gasped.
“Oh, Misha! This is beautiful! Very simple, but you really have a knack for colour, I must admit that. There’s still a long way for you to go but I can say it now in front of the whole class that you are very talented and you need to develop it. But, why did you paint a cat here?” “It’s a cat called Misha.” “Ah, well, I assume this explains everything” – she laughed. – She didn’t understand and pretended she did, I don’t like it, but other than that I was sooooo very happy that she praised me. I got an A for this painting. I’m home now. My mum is abroad for a couple of days and grandma is here. She cooks us meals and all. It’s grandma from dad’s side, who lives nearby, not the one who gave me the books about Misha the cat. I’d prefer that grandma to come here and take care of me. This grandma is always irritated and grumpy and complains about everything and forces me to eat things I don’t like and is always asking what I’m doing and whether I did my homework, as if I never did, and when she’s not watching me she’s constantly watching very strange series on the telly. I’m not a baby, she doesn’t have to remind me of my school work. Today we had mushroom soup and liver for dinner, yuck! I guess grandma can cook better than mum, because mum often swears while cooking, cuts her fingers and does lots of strange unnecessary things and is always in a hurry, when she makes cereal for me she boils milk over most days so I’m late for school because she has to boil it twice or doesn’t remember to take out the cake in time from the oven, and grandma knows what she’s doing or at least she looks like she does, but at least mum doesn’t force me to eat what I don’t like, and grandma doesn’t even let me eat cereal. I had to eat scrambled eggs today for breakfast and I hate them. But actually I don’t like a lot of foods. I don’t even like bread, I never did. And grandma says it’s because I’m spoiled and don’t respect what other people do for me. No, I don’t if they do something I don’t like when they know I don’t like it, it’s malicious. But I actually haven’t done my homework today yet, so I better get to it now. Misha 💜 💙 💚

Question of the day.

In childhood, did you ever have extra-curricular instruction (for sports, a musical instrument/singing, or participate in any arts and crafts classes or organisations)? This may or may not be related with school.

My answer:

While at the school for the blind, we all had a lot of extra-curricular activities which weren’t always associated with our schooling, but more with the rehabilitation thing. Like, all of us had some mobility training which we simply called “spatial orientation”, which involved learning some routes, using techniques for walking with and without white cane, but also some other life skills not necessarily always closely related to mobility. Many people, including me, had so called corrective gymnastics, I had that mostly for my shortened Achilles tendons. All of us went swimming twice a week after school. Things like that were sort of basic there. I remember I really didn’t like going to the swimming pool, it always stressed me out for some reason, so I looked for any way of skipping that, which was easy since I seemed to have some skin reaction to the chlorine and my Mum didn’t want me to absorb too much chlorine because she read somewhere that people with hypothyroidism (which I had) shouldn’t get too much of it. I really love being in the water, so it’s not that I am afraid of it or something. I love being in the sea or river, I just still have that crazy aversion to swimming pools which I don’t really understand, I would just never go to a swimming pool voluntarily, unless an open one, like Zofijka has. But I hate the in-door swimming pools.

When at the nursery, all of us had horse riding, which I wrote about earlier, that I was so scared of and then started to love to bits, haha. I also ended up getting into the music school, which was a bit accidental. As I wrote even in the last question of the day post, I did a lot of singing there, also on stage. I was taking part in some sort of contest and I had a lot of rehearsals and preparations for that. I guess, being at the age of 5 or 6, I must have been sort of confused whether it was a temporary thing or if I was to have those rehearsals regularl even after the contest, and at some point I asked one of the staff out of curiosity if I’ll be still having that. She was puzzled and said that I’d better ask our… OMG how do you call it in English…? rhythmicity teacher…? People make up really weird subjects, even for nursery children lol. Anyway, she told me to ask her, because she was working at music school, so she would know, or would get in touch with that tutor who was preparing me for that contest earlier. So I did, And the rhythmicity teacher asked me which instrument I was learning to play with that lady. I was very confused, I was just singing. But after a while, not knowing what I should say, I said piano, because she played piano, so I thought maybe that was what the teacher asked me about. And she was like: “Oh, but she doesn’t teach piano…” and she told me that she will talk to the teacher who did teach piano and get her to work with me. And, although I hadn’t ever think about learning to play piano,a week afterwards I met my teacher, who was a lovely and cheerful young woman, with whom I loved to chat with, especially about the Parpills (the creatures I made up), but the whole piano learning thing was super strenuous. I found it really difficult, technically, to repeat more complex things that she asked me or showed me to do. Then after a few years, when I was in primary, that nice teacher had to go on maternity leave and I never worked with her again, instead, I was assigned an older lady, who was very sophisticated and serious, and super calm and had the patience of a saint, which was probably life-saving for us both. Most of the girls in my group at the boarding school were in the music school and quite a few were very passionate and serious about that so I sort of felt like I should too, and once I very carelessly shared one of my dreams with my Mum. Not my real big dreams, you know, just a little, funny daydream I once had that didn’t mean anything, because I’ve had daydreams about being a hundred and one things in my life, and it doesn’t immediately mean that’s what I would seriously like to do for my whole life. Dreams are fun because you can pop in and out of them when you want. My daydream that I shared with my Mum was influenced by a book I read. For a while I wanted to be like the main character in that book – a 30-something sophisticated, elegant mummy with a big family of six children living in a mansion, who was very artistic and liked to play piano for her family’s entertainment. –
I had to hear about that little dream of mine for the next three years until I finally couldn’t take it anymore, my extended family seriously thought I could play the piano, and I felt like an imposter, and I was just frustrated with it and with myself and I quit. The more that that year I had to get my corrective gymnastics hours increased because the creepy shadow of Grice-Green’s surgery was hanging over my feet and the last thing I felt like focusing on was freaking piano. 😀 Some time afterwards I quit the singing thing for good as well, for a mixture of reasons but I guess mostly because it wasn’t my thing any longer. I only sing in the shower now or for Misha’s entertainment who seems to like it for some reason. I later tried learning guitar at home during holidays with my aunt’s acquaintance, mostly to please my Mummy but also because I had a glimmer of hope it could get better this time. Piano felt like a very sophisticated instrument, but I’d heard from lots of people that guitar is easy, and knew people without much talent for music who learned to play some tunes by heart, so I thought if it’s so easy, and since I did have an ear for music, perhaps I could master it too. It didn’t work like that. After four months I was definitely getting it at the brain level pretty well,but couldn’t repeat any of the chords completely on my own properly without at least some instructions or assistance. I wasn’t too disappointed though, just came to the conclusion that being a listener is much more fit for me than being a creator of music. If we all only made our own music, no one would listen to it, I guess. I also had other classes as part of my musical education for a while, which lasted for too short to give me very much knowledge, but I appreciate that experience because I did get some knowledge or understanding of music that I would probably never get otherwise, so while I don’t know nearly as much as someone who completed music school, I also guess I have a bit more insight than an average person would. And later on I was taking part in music therapy which was extremely helpful and relaxing for my brain which was one big nervous wreck at the time haha.

When I left that school to try the integration school out, my Mum made me a surprise organising horse riding lessons for me, which was scary like hell at first for me, but as you know I discovered very soon how much I in fact love horse riding. During my second year there, at 4th grade, I somehow ended up in a theatre club. I really don’t remember how I got in there. I guess it must have been something like that everyone had to pick an after school activity or something? And my Polish teacher was running it so I guess I got in there thanks to her. I really didn’t like it here. Neither did Olek, who also took part in it, well I suppose he must have disliked it even more, I had at least some experience with such things so could grit my teeth and get on with it, but when you’re new to it and not into it… sucks. I’ve had people telling me that I have some acting skills, which at first made me snort out with laughter, but when even my Mum said that I started to think about this more seriously. I like to play pretend with Zofijka, I am good at mimicking accents, I guess, and that’s what people say, but it’s been mostly Polish people saying that to me about English accents so they might as well have no idea, the more that Polish people usually have nasty accents in English, even if they are fluent. And I like to mimic people and how they act too. The thing is, I have to be really chilled and comfortable to do that. Every time I took part in a play on stage, I was stiff as a stick. And while I have mostly very good memory, I don’t do well with absorbing stuff like learning a poem by heart, or a word list in another language in specific order, or lines for a play. I always struggled a bit with that. I remember standing on a stage for hours after school, which always made me dizzy because it was so high and I was like “What if I fall from these stairs?!”, ravenously hungry and stressed, and I know so was Olek. We were doing a nativity play that year, and I was Mary, and hated it with my every brain cell. When we were finally performing in front of the whole school and parents and all, the power was out and mics weren’t working, and we all had to yell our lines, which I remember clearly because I had a bit of a cold that day and my throat was aching so that wasn’t fun. 😀 And I remember having high-heel shoes (did Mary seriously go all the way to Bethlehem pregnant in high-heel shoes), which was a really bad idea because I felt even more unsteady and panicky. 😀 But the whole thing seems rather hilarious to me now.

That’s also where my saga of my math compensatory classes (is that how you call it?) started.

At some point during my education at that school, my Mum found a teacher for me, via some local newspaper, with whom I had Swedish, as I always wanted. I loved that to pieces!

I had to go back to the “blind” school in the end, so all my jolly horse riding and Swedish adventures took a backseat because I wasn’t able to take part in them as often anymore, and then they finally all completely disappeared leaving me in a lot of distress (especially the fact that I couldn’t have Swedish) that I managed to sort of suppress and not think about but any time something reminded me about Swedish language I was enormously frustrated.

Instead there was some project funded by EU at our school in which I was chosen to take part and learn English via Callan method, together with some of my groupmates. I guess all of us disliked it because it was really boring, and looking at it now, I really wonder where that decision came from and why they chose Callan method, because I guess it’s the most ridiculous language learning method on the Earth. I mean, it certainly must have been of use in the circumstances in which it was created – for soldiers, to quickly learn the language, I guess soldiers do not need to be incredibly fluent, but just say what they need to say and learn as much as possible as fast as possible. – It’s basically that you memorise loads of grammar rules and learn loads of artificial sentences from the textbooks, no flexibility or anything like that. ANd I don’t think it gave me anything special, was just a waste of our time, and waste of the precious funds of the EU. We really liked to skip those classes if that was possible for any of us, but they emphasised it very much that we shouldn’t because they were paid in advance, so I guess it’s a pity they weren’t a bit more useful.

Basically as you can see we were able to have lots of extra activities there so it’s possible there was something else that I don’t remember now.

When I got out of there I could finally breathe with relief and restart my Swedish and horse riding after my depression got more manageable (the horse riding I still have even though I’m not in school anymore, though I’m having a hiatus again). I also had extra English classes at home for a while, I felt like I needed them to be as well prepared for my English finals as I could, and I happened to get a really really chatty teacher so I really got to talk a lot with him in English, which I liked and which probably helped me to get that 100% result at oral English, not even because I learned that very much from him but because I gained more confidence in that and could speak even more freely. Oh and I also had my poor math tutor, who was courageously teaching me all the stuff we had at college plus helping me immensely with exam preparations. I liked her as a person, but those lessons with her I sometimes still get in my dreams – that I am sitting there and don’t know how to resolve some ridiculously weird equation or something and we both get more and more frustrated and hours are passing and I feel like punching and throwing everything around – really stupid topic for a dream isn’t it?

So that’s it from me, phew, quite a lot, as I can now see. 😀 I really appreciate it now that I can decide on it myself what I want to invest my time in, although some of those experiences were really interesting.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day (25th August).

Hi guys. 🙂

I was feeling shitty all day yesterday so didn’t even write anything, so here’s the overdue question for you, another childhood related one.

Did you like school? Are there reasons that you liked/disliked it?

My answer:

Who likes school? Not me anyway. Okay, at the beginning of my education I liked school somewhat, just except having to stay at the boarding school and except all the stressful stuff. It was stressful and challenging but I guess I liked learning. But it didn’t last long. Things were becoming more and more stressful, and I realised that, at least most of the time, creativity isn’t very well seen, and that most of the time it’s just either boring or freakishly abstractive for my brain, and that it was becoming more and more rare that what I learned at school would be either interesting or significantly beneficial/useful to me and bring something new into my life. I much preferred to learn things myself, things that I found interesting, although that wasn’t always possible, or not to a big degree. I didn’t do socialising literally at all at the beginning, then with years I learned to engage with people a bit more but it was very superficial. At the beginning of primary I remember I loved learning Polish and especially English, with English I stopped loving it as a subject very quickly because we happened to have a teacher that no one of us really liked who wasn’t too approachable or likeable, and then for the next year or two we had in turn a very meek teacher who was a lovely person but couldn’t even have much control over the class, and wasn’t demanding at all so things were either boring or chaotic on her lessons. And most of the time I didn’t have luck with English teachers, no matter in which school I was, I had only a few pretty good ones, and I’ve had fair few of them haha. Polish I loved for longer, as long as I was allowed to write elaborate stuff on topics I liked or that I felt comfortable with and could read at least mostly what I liked or stuff that we were reading for school was interesting. I think I started to get seriously disheartened by Polish in 4th grade but still was fairly good at it, and still there were things I liked about it. But, as you hopefully know, at least if you’ve been here for a while, neither English or Polish as a subject has ever discouraged me from liking those languages as such, although it was very close to it with English at some point and I had to rediscover it for myself a bit and, in a way, relearn it in my own way. I never cared much for grades, neither good nor bad, and I was not a perfectionist at school matters whatsoever, though the bigger tests usually really scared me and with time I did started to feel slightly inferior because of my math dilemmas, but only a bit. I hated that they wanted me to be good at everything (thankfully my Mum didn’t and was pissed off with that approach when she found out there is such so I didn’t want to be good at everything either). I guess I must have some sort of ability to learn things reasonably quickly, which was a bit weird but which really saved me at school, because I didn’t like studying hard, I mean repeating what we had at school and just spending more time than necessary with school stuff, I only did homework and repeated things very superficially before tests if I felt like I could fail spectacularly or if I needed to do reasonably good. I just never like to spend too much time doing boring things that I don’t have much interest in. I had to change that approach when preparing to my finals and spend horrendous amounts of time preparing to my math exam, but, as it seems, even studying really hard can’t always save you. 😀 So, especially as time went by, there were less and less things I liked at school. I was constantly stressed and depressed, having trouble engaging with people and doing a lot of daily prosaic stuff because of various things that I was struggling with, I was awfully neurotic and just hated school with a passion. Somehow I guess though that most of the time I at least managed to keep the impression that I’m doing well, unless someone was a bit more perceptive but I didn’t want people to see, or see as little as possible. I’ve also always been scared of changes, and at school you get a whole lot of them sometimes.

When I was 17, I got out of the school for the blind permanently and for a year that I had left until starting college, or however else you’d call it in your country, I was having individual education at my local school, where my brother was going to. My dream was always to be homeschooled, but I knew that was hardly possible, so I was happy that the psychiatrist who saw me at the time agreed with my Mum and therapist and the headmaster of that school who felt I could benefit from doing that year in individual education. And my poor teachers would benefit too, they weren’t really prepared for me appearing suddenly and I know most of them were deadly scared of the prospect of teaching a blind student. So I think it was easier for them doing it just with me than in the class, if it felt so challenging for them. And that year was the best year at school for me. I am sure that had I been at that school all the time it wouldn’t be a good decision, but I sort of regretted I didn’t come there earlier. I discovered that – while I was reasonably good at most subjects before – I was doing much better when learning one to one, and also I liked that I could really get to know my teachers well and they could get to know me well. I had exams at the end of that year, before going to college, but I don’t remember being very stressed about them. I was, a bit, for sure, but not quite as much as I was before previous or later major exams. I only remember finishing the syllabus for most of the subjects ridiculously quickly and reading my Vreeswijk’s poems translations or my short stories to my Polish teacher during our lessons and such. They really liked me there and I liked them. Sometimes I came to Olek’s classroom and had had lessons with the class (we were in the same class even though he’s two years younger than me because I had two years delay) and I kinda got along with a few girls in there even though they didn’t even know where people speak Finnish but oh well, never mind. I had a whole big classroom just to myself where I had all the lessons, and I remember passionately reading “Outsider” by Colin Wilson during most breaks while listening to music on the headphones so, if you know me, you’d figure out I was pretty chilled there, as for my standards. 😀 So yeah, that school I did like.

Then I went to that weekend school for adults, which was just boring. I also found it hard to socialise with people, especially with most of the teachers, those who seemed to be plain scared of me or something like that. I was really struggling with math stuff, and the rest was usually quite boring. I had one good friend who was helping me with things like getting around which made it all much easier for me, and I had some other fun people in the class too though a lot of people were dropping out or coming as they pleased since it was a college for adults so no one could pressure them to do anything really, and many folks got some benefits at work or something like this when they were learning at the same time so they enrolled often just for the sake of it. It all felt a bit artificial for me but then school is generally one big faking in so many ways for me so I was just trying to get through that period as best I could. At some point my Mum got tired of driving me back and forth and I was tired of sitting in the class while they were looking at slideshows or doing something from a textbook that I didn’t have and we collaboratively decided to ask my teachers if I could do the learning at home and just come in for exams and such. They all agreed with great relief, and promised profusely to send me what they are doing in class and the topics of the assignments and dates of the exams, but then I had to send them countless emails asking for that and that was rather yucky and resulted in a couple situations where I knew just last minute that I had an exam coming up or wrote an assignment a day before the due date. I hated that and it annoyed me like shit but overall when I stopped having to go to school every weekend life became a bit easier practically, and even more so for my Mum.

So that’s it, my experience with school, quite eventful, but mostly miserable, and made me feel really spiteful towards the whole education system, so that if someone wants to rant about it, I am always open and happy to chime in, just for the sake of it. Though Mum claims I am intoxicating Zofijka with my spite when doing it with her. I’m not sure I even care, is that awful of me? Zofijka mostly thinks what I do anyway, and comes with her school troubles to me a lot of the time, and I have to get my shit out somewhere finally too.

How much did you hate school? 🙂

Question of the day.

Hey people! 🙂

Here’s today’s question for you from me. 🙂

Who taught you to write a CV/resume?

My answer:

I had classes at my last school, don’t know in which other countries something like this exists and how you call it but we in Poland call it a bit pompously basics of entrepreneurship, I guess I had it for two or perhaps three years, I don’t even remember now, anyway you learn different things to do with economy, business, having your own business, employment, just all sorts of things to do with entrepreneurship. And I remember very vaguely we were learning to write CV during those classes too. But, actually, by the time we had that writing a CV thing in our syllabus, I was already learning largely by myself, that is, many of my teachers seemed awfully scared of contracting blindness from me I guess, some were actually treating me like an air, which wasn’t making things easier for me with the anxiety and communication difficulties, one seemed actually even more sociophobic than me, or rather Emiliophobic, as his social phobia would only come up in contact with me and he was like almost literally tip-toeing around me as if he thought I’ll kill him if he’ll make me angry, 😀 and that attitude was really making me very pissed off whenever I saw him. Oh and he was scared of my Mum like hell too. Besides, the vast majority of them were using slideshows a lot or other things that weren’t really accessible for me. So at some point I just came up with an idea that I will teach myself and they’ll send me what they’re doing, the topics of control assignments and such and I’ll be sending the assignments to them and coming to exams. And they very happily agreed to it, as my Mum said it, with great relief, especially my poor Emiphobic history teacher. But that was relief to me too as you can imagine given the above circumstances, even though I did have some really awesome teachers there too. So, going back to that CV thing, I was supposed to tackle this on my own, which was tricky as I had no idea about CV’s whatsoever, those things still confuse me a lot. So I asked my Dad for help, as he’s had a lot of experience, and, practically, it was him who taught me that. But, actually, even though it’s been maybe three years since then, I doubt I’d be able to write a serious CV applying for job without any guidance. I still find all those things rather confusing. But I do have the basic idea at least of what it should be like, haha.

How was it with you? 🙂

Question of the day.

Who taught you to read?

My answer:

Since despite multiple attempts and good will my parents have never learnt Braille, moreover, doubted I’ll be able to learn it when I was little, I learnt to read at school, as I think the vast majority of blind people would. In spite their doubts, it really didn’t take me that much time to master it. I didn’t like reading at the beginning, but once I’ve become more fluent at it I grew to love it and my teacher was actually saying I read way too quickly and too much (no idea where the boundary between enough and too much lies in this case 😀 ). Nevertheless, when she found out that I feel slightly bored with the stuff we had to read at school, for some time she wrote little stories for me that I could practice reading during longer school breaks when I was at home, they were all – just as I wanted it – about a little boy named Jacek. These weren’t hard to read either, especially that I would tell the whole plot to her earlier so she’d know what to write, and I was actually the one making them up, but at least that was fun and not boring and felt quite special to me. 😀 I guess though that with time it became a bit of a pain in the neck for her, haha, so I had to move on and start writing stories myself which turned out to be even more fun as no one would understand my ideas as well as I do!

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

What are you remembering?

My answer:

Recently lots of things have been reminding me about one of my close friends, with whom I am no longer in touch with, and it’s kind of bittersweet I’d say. I am thinking a lot about him recently somehow and it is both very nice and hurts at the same time ’cause I’ve been missing him a lot. Also, I had a bad dream last night, not like a full blown nightmare or sleep paralysis, but just not a pleasant dream, nothing more, and it involved some school stuff. I had to be up very early today, and that fact, of being up so early, and having that bad dream, it together reminded me that oh wow, today a year has passed since my finals. And, ugh, I’m so glad all that havoc is over. Both with the preparations and the finals. Last year was so devastating for me because of that, and then the finals themselves were absolutely scary for me, or rather accompanying events, not the actual finals, I guess that was kind of traumatising, or re-traumatising maybe I should say, I don’t know, that’s what my Mum says too. Grrrr scary! And then my Mum reminded me of that horror again. So glad it’s over and I don’t have to see those people from there anymore. I’m having a good day generally today, but my Monkey Maggie the Inner Critic is very active today and wants to constantly remind me that what happened then was only because of me, and, well, I guess at this point I’m no longer sure of anything. As if I ever was. 😀 It’s hard to stay rational when dealing with her really.

What are YOU remembering? 🙂

Question of the day (1st April).

What’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for you?

My answer:

Hm, there were lots of very nice things that people have done for me… I don’t know whether nice is an appropriate word for that, it sounds a bit like an understatement, but one particular thing comes to my mind right now. When I left the school for the blind at the age of 17 which was quite a sudden thing, I was sure that I’m not going there again, but since I was still a minor I had to go to school somewhere, which was hard not only because of my blindness and lack of preparation of mainstream teachers for teaching blind students here, but also because of my additional difficulties, at that time especially emotional which were quite significant, so, honestly, there weren’t many other options, if any, and it looked like I’d have to either come back there anyway or take a risk and just wait until I’ll be 18 when I won’t have to go to school anymore. Because of my awful depression at that time and my brain being a mess, as well as that would be just practically easier for everyone, I got an opinion from the psychiatrist that I need individual education at least for the time being until I’ll be doing some higher education. But yeah my Mum and me had a real trouble finding an actual school that would be willing to accept me and that would be doable for me. After weeks of fruitless looking around and research my Mum went to some meeting for parents in my brother’s school, and after that, completely out of the blue, my brother’s class teacher asked Mum how is her eldest daughter doing. Maybe it wouldn’t be that strange but actually Mum could have sworn that she had never told him anything about me or even my existence, quite unlikely that Olek would do it, so it felt a bit like paranormal. 😀 So Mum told him everything about my situation, and he was the sort of guy who was full of enthusiasm, to the point that he was slightly naive, and when Mum told him everything he dragged her to the headmaster’s office and told her that he’ll certainly agree for me to go to their school as well, especially that, if not my blindness, that would be my sort of default school because it’s nearest in the area so would I choose them they’d have a duty to approve me. And, indeed, with a lot of help from Olek’s teacher (who ended up being my teacher too because although I’mtwo years older than him, I was two years behind with school stuff) and willingness from the headmaster, who unfortunately got fired before I even started going there because of some nasty drama or intrigue or whatever that was going on there and in which he got unfortunately involved in, I started going to Olek’s school. I was in the same class as him although I had individual education just twice a week so only interacted with his class occasionally. I was lucky because despite a rather low educational level and complete lack of knowledge about people with disabilities in that school, my previous school’s educational level was high, and the year when I changed schools was the year when I had exams before choosing further education, so it was a lot of rush, but I had a lot of knowledge from previous years so it went very smoothly, especially that I was doing much better in individual education than I earlier did in class and finished the year with great results, better than ever before. And despite those exams being ahead of me I completely didn’t feel any pressure or even much stress, I was just very laid back and didn’t have to care too much. Because of individual education, I had a more sort of personal contact with teachers, they knew me well and I knew them, one teacher was fascinated by my fascination with Vreeswijk so in the last months of school when we had practically all the syllabus done I read my translations of his poems to her. As I said, people didn’t have the slightest idea about blindness and possibilities that blind people might have, so I experienced some rather condescending attitudes from them and I could see that they were absolutely gobsmacked that I could even write, and the same teacher who would a few months later be delighted with my Vreeswijk’s translations, was close to passing out at my first day of school when she learnt that she’ll be teaching a blind student, while the art teacher gave me an A just because I knew who Leonardo DaVinci was (while my brother who did a whole presentation as it was required of the rest only got an equivalent of a C), but because other than that they were nice to me, and because I was and still am incredibly grateful to them, I could distance myself from it and not take it personally or something. I think in my whole education it was the happiest year for me in many regards, and I regretted that I didn’t know it could be like that some two years before I changed schools, so I could go there earlier. Though I’m glad I didn’t go only there, because if I did, I would probably not learn much of neither academical knowledge (Olek’s classmates didn’t know in which country Finnish is spoken 😱 ), nor any other skills, so I guess all experiences we have are for a reason. I really don’t know though where I could be now if not that Olek’s teacher, I’m not sure I would even like to know as that certainly wouldn’t be the nicest place unless some other miracle would happen. He was an utterly weird guy, the kind that people always make fun of, and they did, like all the time, but at the same time he really cared about people. So yeah, that would be probably the nicest thing.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day (25th March).

If you could disinvent one thing, what would it be?

My answer:

School. I’d disinvent it, and then invent it again so that it would have a completely different structure and would stop being brainwashing, as well as, among other things, it would also be optional for parents to send their children to school, home/flexi schooling would be highly encouraged, school would be more of an alternative for those children whose parents can’t or really don’t want to homeschool them, or to gain some additional skills that parents can teach their children but would like them to know, like some stuff that is of a special interest for the child or that they would like to base their career on in future. Schools would also be more of a place where the children could meet and play so that people wouldn’t complain that they don’t grow up together with their peers, and parents would be taught there on how to homeschool their children and just learn about parenting. But in fact I’d rather have someone else do that than do it myself, I don’t fancy dealing with this rotten system. 😀

How about you? 🙂

It’s over.

Yeah, can’t believe it! 😀 My shitty finals are OVER!!! And no matter what will be my results from the written ones, I am still proud of myself, because of the oral exams. And OMG I was so lucky yesterday.

Yeah, yesterday was my last exam, oral Polish exam. I won’t lie, I was pretty stressed before it. I am rather good at Polish as a school subject, I love Polish as a language and I guess I know a lot about it, but this whole list of obligatory readings we have is overwhelming at its best. I guess it’s not a thing in most countries, but here, no matter on which educational stage you are (well I don’t know how about uni, but below it for sure) you have a very speciffic list of books that are obligatory to read that your class has to do and there are speciffic books for all years of school. The original purpose of it is to promote readership, ’cause, you know, in other circumstances some people, particularly little children, would hardly read anything, I still know people who only read obligatories, or just their summaries, Zofijka would be the perfect example, although she’s still young so things will hopefully change. On the other hand these books are usually incredibly boring, well that’s my opinion, so I really don’t know how they can help in increasing general readership, but well, that’s not my problem and that’s not the purpose of this post to write about it in detail. There are a lot of them so it’s rarely manageable to do all of them during a school year unless discussing obligatory books would be the only thing you’d do during Polish, and some of these books are more optional than others, but still somehow you are expected to know them all perfectly for your finals, because you never know what question you may get on the exam, and most of the question evolve at least partly around these books. So I was kinda worried what if I’ll get a question about a book I know very poorly or don’t know at all. You know, if you know the topic at least superficially, you can always say something, but if you know barely anything, it’s hard to pretend it’s otherwise. So I was hoping for some possibly light and versatile question or a question about the book I know really well and which we’ve done in class.

Luckily I could get some more sleep yesterday because my exam was to start not earlier than at 10:30 AM so we left at 7 AM to get there. Zofijka wasn’t going with us this time. When we got to the school, I had just 15 minutes to my exam.

I came in and drew the question, got the sheet and other stuff and had max 30 minutes to prepare to the talking. Normally it’s 15 minutes, but when you’re disabled you always get those fucking 15 mins extra which I hate, because I am usually done with everything long before the standard time finishes no matter whether it’s easy or difficult and no matter whether I did it well or wrong, and then there’s lots of fuss about it that I finished so early, I think if all those experts are so nice to adjust exams to us, there are plenty more things to think of than this, I don’t think many people make use of soooo much time, not all disabled students are disabled because of learnign disabilities.

I looked at my question… and you know what? I actually started to laugh, because it was so damn easy! I did some very brief notes but I doubt it even took me five minutes. So of course the committee was very surprised.

The topic I had to talk about was to describe changes in modern Polish language. You know, stuff like what the fact that people communicate via Internet or texting has changed in the language, for example, or lots of new words, etc. I got a text about it to read and then discuss it, say something about my own experiences in communication and what changes in the language I personally have noticed, and also talk about one more work, either a book, or a film, or even a song, anything that could illustrate how the language has changed.

So, ahem… well, ain’t I lucky? 😀 I talked and talked and talked. I was so afraid of this monologue, but this was such a broad topic, and one that I could really talk about a lot, so it was very easy for me to talk about it for 10 minutes. I am a huge language freak and I always notice the slightest things about how people are talking, writing, when they say things wrong or write something incorrectly or slapdash, or ignore all the punctuation or diacritics or write slapdash, and it usually drives me crazy far more than it should, I guess, well unless someone does it on purpose, ironically or something, then it can be cool at times. I’m of course talking about Polish, not English or any other language, since I don’t feel like an expert in any other language, although I am also very attentive for details in other languages. 😀 SO it was a perfect topic for me and I was talking about it actually quite expressively, I think, and I made the committee interested, because when I finally got to the limit and didn’t have anything else to say and we got to the part in which they could ask me questions, they had a lot and we had quite a lively discussion hahaha.

I came out after like 15 minuteswhile there were 45 in total for me, 😀 and there were already all the other students that are graduating from that school and passing their finals sitting in the waiting room, also that girl whom I know from the integration school about whom I’ve written before. I’ve seen all of them on Tuesday and although felt very tongue-tied around them then, I now knew them a bit better and we smalltalked while waiting for the results and supported those who were still to have the exam. Smalltalk is certainly not my favourite activity and it’s absolutely draining, especially that there were lots of them (yes 9 people is a lot, if you didn’t know it before, in my classification it’s a crowd) and they all knew each other while I was new, but I felt like it would be even worse if I wouldn’t talk to them at all. But we waited for so long that finally me and my Mum decided to go out to the park and have ice cream and one of the guys there offered he’ll call us when they’ll be announcing results so we could go with no issues.

I told Dad how well my exam went and how it’s actually a miracle because I’ve heard from others there were tons of other absolutely stupid questions which other people got with which I wouldn’t manage even half as well as with that one and that was just something perfect for me. I was feeling very high, well it was such a moodswingy day for me. I felt like I love the whole world and all the people together and every single individual on its own, and I think my Dad felt quite the same. We just sat in the park with ice cream and were observing nursery kids, to which, particularly my Dad, wouldn’t turn even the slightest attention in other circumstances. But we were watching them quite amazed, my Dad even in a rather maudlin way, I’d say. 😀 How much one small success and a strong feeling of relief can change in people’s attitudes. 😀 Wonder how people act just after they get to know they’re millionaires. 😀 Maybe that’s why so many millionairies support charities or children. 😛 My Mum on the other hand was very happy that I cut that awful Maggie (the headmistress) down to size once again and was sure I’ll get 100% once again. I wasn’t as sure, but anyway, I was happy my exams are actually over and the last one went so well. I was rather stressed on the prospect of seeing her again to announce my result to me, was afraid she’ll manage to crack me up once again, but even though felt rather confident and really proud of myself, although Maggie (my inner critic) had still other things to complain about, but I didn’t listen to her, or pretended I don’t, even though she tried to scream as loud as she could.

Finally the break started so they had results for all of us who’ve already taken the exam. I came in and once again the headmistress asked me how much I think I got, this time there was max 40 points to get. Silently I hoped for 40, but just in case I said only 35. She said that the committee rated me much higher and I got 100%. I was slightly surprised this time, even though I really wanted it to happen and know I did the exam really well.

– 100%? Again?! –

The committee started to laugh, and the headmistress said, not without some bitterness, that it seems to be my manner and that it’s not much of a surprise for me. I laughed and said it starts to be a little boring. It was a surprise for me, but it wasn’t at the same time, I’d say, if it makes any sense for anyone else than me.

Luckily she didn’t say anything more at all. I only waited for that girl with whom I was going to the integration before and who was in the same class as Olek to hear her result which was also very good. Everyone congratulated me, my Mum almost cried, as always in similar situations.

I felt like all the stress from the whole past year is suddenly going out of me and it felt so good. Sure, I still don’t know what I will do with myself now, no idea at all, but it’s so good to feel that this stressful and boring at the same time, stage in my life is over and I can now finish my education if I want to, which I definitely want, or at least have a break from it for a while, I’m so indescribably fed up of our education system, I mean of any education system that could possibly exist, believe me. I don’t say I am completely breaking up with the education system, if I’ll pass that damn math, I would love to study Celtic studies online at University Of Wales Trinity Saint David, but I just don’t know how things will go, even if I pass.

The headmistress’ assistant came to my Mum and gave her the address of the website where I can check out my results before they’ll be sent out to the school. Mum asked her if I could maybe have my certificate sent home and not go all the way to school and back again in July and it turns out that no, but we can ask the district committee to not send it to the school and then we can take it from the district committee, since it’s closer, and less stressful for me for sure, I really don’t want to go to that school anymore again. I told Mum that anytime I’d been there, I felt like something horrible was about to happen. Hard to specify what or even what kind of thing, but just something horrible. Probably just because of all that horrific and I guess triggering stuff that happened to me when I came there for the first and second time. Mum asked me whether I could be afraid that she leaves me, and, although it sounds so irrational, I said that maybe yes, maybe that was it what I was afraid of happening, hard to say though.

On the way home Mum was calling all the family to tell them I passed both English and Polish oral exams for 100% and my Dad was doing the same but with his job colleagues, even if most of them didn’t really care and didn’t even know he had a daughter, but he also wanted to let it out somewhere.

It feels so good to be over it all. Dad asked me when I am making a party to celebrate it. I said that before we can have a party we need to know what my other results will be like. Of course we were joking and I am not planning on making any parties, we’ve all wasted too much energy and sleep already.

But I thought it could be nice to celebrate it in some other way, however don’t have any clever ideas yet.

Any suggestions, anyone? Or has anyone of you any ideas how we could celebrate it here in My Inner MishMash? 😉 My brain doesn’t seem to be very cooperative now, so, any suggestions/wishes/ideas are appreciated. 😀

Last exams ahead.

So today I’m going to Bydgoszcz to the school for the blind wher I am taking my finals, to take the last two of them. I can’t sleep again, although it’s almost 1 AM and we have to wake up at 4 AM, so I thought I’d schedule some posts for you and I’ve just done it. I’ll be off for three days. That sucks because I’ll have one day off exams in between and it doesn’t seem to be a very nice perspective to traipse around the city for so long, but I know it’s reasonable because there’s no point in going there today, coming back and then going back there on Thursday. I am so grateful for my Dad that he took another few days off work and will be there with us, otherwise things would be, well, poor. I’d have to repay it for him in some way, have no idea what to do though.

Anyway, I’ve scheduled three song of the day posts for those three days, I hope you’ll enjoy them.

OK, so I think I’ll try to fall asleep once again, it definitely won’t help me in the morning if I’ll be a Zombie.

Question of the day (10th May).

Do you like to draw? If yes, what do you like to draw? And if not, have you ever liked drawing?

My answer:

No, I am not a fan of it. For some people maybe even just asking a blind person if she likes to draw may seem weird and pointless, but it isn’t really. I know blind people who actually like to draw. There is some specialised stuff that makes it possible, including thick foils on which you can simply draw with a pen or a pencil or whatever and you get a tactile graphic. This is mostly used at schools for purposes like geometry, physics or other incredibly boring stuff, such things tend to generally be pretty expensive, and not used so much for art purposes, but why not.

For me though drawing is no fun. First of all, I usually can’t do it properly without some assistance because of my coordination issues and stuff, and I don’t like doing things with which I have to rely almost completely on others, ’cause it’s just boring and the work isn’t really mine. Another reason is that at least in my school all these foils and other specialised drawing tools were usually used as I said for more scientific purposes, which made it even more boring and didn’t really allow me to learn how to draw artistically. Therefore I haven’t drawn anything in like four years already and don’t think I’ll ever come back to it as I’m graduating and have never drawn anything outside of school.

I did however draw with Zofijka when she was younger, but I did it without any specialised tools, just in her colouring book, simply to make her laugh. That was fun, but not something I really really liked and would like to do often, it’s rather boring when you have no idea what actually you’re drawing and where. 😀

So no, I don’t like drawing, and I never liked it before.

How about you? 🙂

Question of the day.

What were/are your favourite classes at school – and were the ones you liked most the same as the ones you were best at?

My answer:

It is hard to think about any classes that I really liked. I liked Polish as a language, same as English, but had become discouraged to it both as school classes fairly quickly, as they were both so very boring and I rarely was learning on them something I thought could be really interesting or useful. Most of my English skills are actually self-taught and I don’t feel like any of the schools I’ve been going to has taught me much more really useful things than basics. I’ve been very good at both Polish and English though, slightly better at English.

Then there were German classes when I was in primary and secondary. It isn’t one of my favourite languages, like I mean in my top favourites, so I didn’t feel as motivated as with English, but I still do like the language and was fairly good at it, but OMG it was so incredibly boring, plus most of the classes were actually completely wasted because of my classmates, who were mostly boys at that time, with whom the teacher couldn’t cope at all. And I feel like she wasn’t the best at explaining things either. When I left the school for the blind where I spent most of my childhood and school time, I had one year of individual learning until I started the school from which I’m graduating now, and during that year I finally happened to have a cool and concrete German teacher and I really enjoyed having lessons with her and learning German. But as I said I was never particularly motivated to this language so I just left it after I was finished with individual learning and now I can barely understand someone speaking German, not to mention my own speaking skills.

I kinda liked art at the school for the blind, but only because our art teacher was incredible and was one of the very few people I was getting along somehow more naturally there and who genuinely liked me despite I sucked at her subject as much as it’s only possible. She was a very warm and creative person and she understood it that I need much more assistance with doing arts stuff and some things are just nearly impossible for me to do because of my coordination issues and other stuff and didn’t make much of a deal about it. It was her who actually discovered my writing skills even though her subject wasn’t about writing at all and we had kinda unwritten agreement. She was helping me with technical stuff a lot, often just making what we had to do during the class for me to make it faster and more efficiently, while my task was writing. Like I was writing poems for all the students’ mums or other people so that they could have them on their cards or other gifts if they didn’t have much creativity in writing themselves, I was making up some slogans for posters, stories to get along with different art works etc. and although it was something I was doing more of duty than pleasure, I was glad I still had something to do and that she was so understanding.

So overall I don’t think I could say I had any really favourite class. I was OK at most of the classes but not passionate about anything.

You? 🙂

A little heads up.

Just wanted to quickly tell you that tomorrow I am starting my finals. I am not staying for the night at that school tomorrow and will head back home after I write the exam for the weekend and come back there again for Monday and Tuesday, but because I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to post anything tomorrow I scheduled the regular song and question posts for tomorrow so that I won’t leave you with nothing guys and there will be something going on on here even if I’m not here. There’s a few hours drive to that school where I’m taking the exams and I have to be in already at 8:15 AM, have no idea at what time I’ll be at home. At the weekend I’ll also schedule some posts to come in on Monday and Tuesday.

I really hope that after this whole exam hustle will finish I’ll be able to make this blog more dynamic, as there was hardly anything besides the series posts here in weeks, I plan on changing it and writing some more lengthy posts, so, yeeeah… be warned. 😀 And Misha will come back, I promise!

So that’s it from me now, just in case you’d be wondering what’s going on and why I don’t reply or anything, as I just don’t know at what time I’ll be back.

OK, off to sleep now, don’t feel sleepy at all, but have to be up at 4 AM. (:| Don’t know how I’ll do it, so wish me luck with this please. 😀 I had one big exam in the past which I actually passed in the total Zombie mode and it was horrid.

Question of the day.

If your school separated you by reading groups which level were you at?

My answer:

Neither of my schools did that, or anyway it wasn’t something casual. But in school for the blind where I was for most of my education we often had reading contests – class, school or interschool, in the Central Library, and I kinda liked to participate in them and pretty often was winning some leading places. Also, I don’t know how it is in other schools around the world, but we usually had so, that if we were reading in class, usually the teacher picked a person to read a bit, then another to read another bit and so on, and the rest just followed the text. Because I read quite well, teachers often picked me, just to have it done a bit more efficiently than most of other students would do it and not waste too much time. And I know many of my classmates were annoyed by me, because I usually read pretty quickly and they were lost easily. 😀 Also later on I had a very lazy Polish language teacher who used to take an advantage of the students whom she perceived “more bright” and so she often wanted me to read stuff to a classmate who was dyslexic. So I guess that all says I was pretty good at it.

How was it in your case? Also, do you think separating students by their level of skills is actually good? Are you one of those who think it makes children less self-confident, or do you think it helps children on a higher level to develop quicker, while also helping children on a lower level to go up, but in their own pace and with the support adequate to their needs?

Question of the day.

Today, my question for you is:

When did you start learning to read?

My answer:

I was prepared to it long before I actually started to learn to read, it started sometime when I was in the nursery. They basically prepared us how to read Braille, using different things that imited how it works and we were taught how to use, but not to write yet, different Braillers, it was more of a play than actual learning though, we didn’t actually know why are we doing this. Well I was actually interested why because it seemed boring for me and a bit pointless when I was 6 yeas old or so. And there even is a film about us, I mean our nursery and I was going to it when it was filmed, and they filmed me doing all that stuff with one of the staff’s assistance and all of the sudden I asked her “Why am I doing this?” Everyone who was around then or watched it found it very funny, but actually, I think it’s very important to have some sense behind what you’re doing, isn’t it? 😀 And she answered that it is because it’ll help me to read in future and that I will read lots of fairytales and all and she thinks I will love to read books and maybe write my own lol. And it all came true more or less and my family is making laugh of her that she was a prophetess, I even read fairytales pretty often to this day. 😀 So yeah, that was about my reading preparations and then I went to the reception and it was then I started to read. I really liked to learn it and truly always looked forward to learn new letters, I considered it a lot of fun. That was when I was 7-8, I know normally reception is earlier, but I went to the nursery when I was five, I don’t think it would do me much better if I went earlier, plus most of children there were even older than me. SO it was rather late on. I remember that we went to the library with our class teacher and were drawing books for ourselves and the one I drew and that was my first longer read was “God And Mouse” by Angela Toigo. It was rather boring, at least so I thought then, but I think my opinion wouldn’t change that much if I’d read it now, although I read it in one afternoon.

When did it all start for you? 🙂

Question of the day (10th March).

What is one thing in your personal life that concerns you? Can you change it?

My answer:

As it is for most people I suppose, there are lots of things that concern me and it’s hard to pick the one that concerns me the most. I think the one that I’m thinking a lot about, that is very stressful and affecting my mental health are my final exams coming pretty soon, not even full two months. I think stuff like exams is always stressing for people, so I’m anxious about how it’ll go. But what I’m even more anxious about and what is strictly related to it, is what should I do afterwards. You know, usually people after finishing school find it challenging to start something new and don’t know what to do with themselves and it’s even more complex with disability and mental issues on top of that. I find it all very anxiety provoking, overwhelmingly depressing and worsening my anxiety in other areas of my llife.

Also there is a very recent thing that ocupies a lot of space in my thoughts recently, but is more or less concerning for me since almost 4 years already. My psychiatric diagnosis. Having my depression worsened since a few months I was thinking a lot of that what is this I’m struggling with. Is it so scary/rare/weird/complex that specialists can’t find a name for it? I was thinking whether I really want to know what it is but although realised it won’t change things itself, I just felt like it would help me feel less inadequate at least. Labelling isn’t a good thing in many ways and isn’t constructive on its own, but it can help us to find more appropriate support, to feel less alone in what we struggle with.

And since a few days it is occupying my mind even more often. And due to that, some important things have taken place in my life very very lately. I hope to tell you more about them in a separate post, but to put it basically for now, a few days ago I’ve made a little (or maybe not so little) research myself on what could be going on with me and then had a long talk with my ex therapist on the phone about very many things and at the end she told me she’ll look around for a psychiatrist who could assess me. I think that now I’m suddenly much much closer to getting a diagnosis.

But still feel somehow concerned. SOme stuff I’ve got to know lately shocked me a lot, shocked my Mum… So yeah, these are things that concern me the most lately.

Your turn. 🙂

Sleeping and feeling more decently. :)

Yes, my sleep is now not very far from proper and I am happy about that. That Zombie day on Tuesday was so awful and exhausting. Thanks sooo very much to all those of you who supported me that day. I was so overwhelmingly depressed that actually at the end of the day I almost ended up self harming again, somehow resisted the urge, but then was even more frustrated and sick of myself, I self harmed just a bit more than a month ago and I had much longer periods without self harming in the past. The fact I didn’t finally do it didn’t really matter for me, I felt absolutely awful for feeling such a bad urge. Finally I went to bed at such a cosmic hour as for my sleep cycle as 7 PM, earlier than Zofijka. 😀 I usually go to sleep the last, only sometimes Misha is up for longer. and slept for… 12 hours! It was a very refreshing and heavy sleep, I actually don’t remember any awakenings. My mood lifted up a bit too so I felt functional enough to write my geography control assignment. It was so boring. Not like I expected it to be very very interesting, I’ve been always finding school extremely boring overall, but anyway it was boring. I had to write about different forms of nature protection in Wejherowo County where I live, like Tricity Landscape Park for example. I think I did it well. Last night I had another night of good sleep and have a feeling tonight will be so too. I don’t expect it to last long but as long as it lasts, I’m very happy about that. Emotionally/moodwise today I feel tolerably. Definitely not good, but functional. Recently I don’t feel very functional, so I’m glad about it. I gave my Mum my assignment to print out. My geography teacher is an elderly guy and rather extremely not up to date with new technologies, which makes it a bit hard for me and my Mum. Normally I could just send him this assignment in email, but as far as I know he doesn’t have any email so my Mum needs to take the time to go to the printing house and then deliver it to him. But well education system sucks in general, not that there aren’t any exceptions of course. Tonight Zofijka is sleeping with me. While my anxiety is definitely more manageable since last week, Zofijka who is a rather worrisome kid, is recently a bit anxious. They watched some scary stuff in class, well scary in her opinion. She seems to be always overly scared of things like demons, ghosts, vampires or paranormal phenomena. While her friends find it very intriguing, in my opinion probably also overly. So she wanted to sleep with me. She wants to sleep with me every night, but this time I agreed as I know how fantastic it feels to be scared in the middle of the night and alone, especially if you’re just a 10-year-old child, although I’m not very enthusiastic about sleeping with other people. I’ve just watched an episode of Happy Valley with Mum and then some film about the Tudors on Epic Drama. We love British films as you can see. And we had ginger tea and some chilli crackers. It lifted up my mood, I hope it will stay so until tomorrow. I think I’ll be going to sleep soon, it’s 10 PM so rather early but I somehow feel sleepy and I don’t really have much to do right now other than sleep, especially that I must be rather silent as Zofijka is sleeping.

Wishing you all good night and sweet dreams, or a nice day, whatever time is now where you live. 🙂