The Thing About Me and Adrenaline

For those of you who haven't clued in - I'm crazy! No, seriously. I suffer from a clinical mental disorder. I have OCD, as well as accompanying debilitating social anxiety disorder (we're investigating if it's a product of my OCD or a separate condition). Alongside that I've had to deal with depression, and self-harm (moderate cutting and dermatillomania - ie obsessive skin picking). Because my best friend also suffers from a mental disorder, we decided to vlog about it, and our experiences. We've had a very positive response so far, until today when someone decided to be very accusatory and a total know-it-all because he happens to suffer from something that I mentioned. Rather than say what he didn't like, he (paraphrasing here) said that we aren't qualified to talk about mental illness, and his is more difficult to deal with than ours.

That upset me. Immensely. I can take constructive criticism. I can respond well to that, and figure out how to adjust it when people tell me what I did wrong. Instead, he belittled our efforts to provide a positive space for other people going through similar things to what we are. We weren't at all trying to say that we know everything. That couldn't be farther from the truth. In the context of the video, I simply mentioned that borderline personality disorder is an example of mental illness, and that people are often misdiagnosed as bipolar when they have bpd, which means that they aren't necessarily given proper treatment. Which is bad. I was more trying to bring more awareness to bpd (which is often very overlooked, sadly), but I suppose my intentions were misunderstood. Now I'm fretting that I've done something wrong and also very angry that someone would have the audacity to be so cruel about it. I checked out this gentleman's channel, and he seems to discuss bpd in all his videos, presumably to raise awareness, much the way we are (although for us in a more general way right now). It's like he thinks we're enemies when were working towards a common goal - showing that there are others out there going through things and that sometimes life is tough. I get the feeling he's the sort who blames everything on his illness, and that the world hates him. Sometimes you just have to go through it and make the best out of it. Be someone with and illness, don't let it define you. It's only a part of the bigger picture, and it's all about what you make of it. My friend and I are turning it into an opportunity for us to bond, and to hopefully help others.

The side effect of me being so antsy about this has to do with adrenaline. When I get agitated, my flight response goes into overdrive and I shake uncontrollably, get chills and have difficulty breathing. It also usually leaves me exhausted, but unable to sleep for a very long time and with a horrible headache. Basically, in his search for conflict, the lovely composer63 has left me extremely ill, but I'm sure he's sleeping just fine. In the future, the folks at luneverse (our channel) shall just delete those comments if they aren't polite.

First Day

Happy NaNoWriMo everyone! I just finished my word count for today. I'd forgotten what an amazing feeling that is, knowing that you've accomplished that before 9 in the morning. There's something oddly liberating knowing that you have such a concrete goal that you'll just force yourself to write through any rough parts. If only I could do that every other time I hit a wall.

In the past, when I've hid a wall during WriMo, I used this awesome program called Write or Die. I've discovered that I can't with this computer though, since it has a habit of doing very odd things without my telling it to. I discovered this when I was several hundred words in this morning, and it decided to highlight it. Given the speed at which I type, I didn't notice until I'd hit something and it overwrote everything that I'd written. It was a lovely way to start the day. I still managed to finish though. Hopefully that will be my only NaNoWriMo fiasco.

I hope anyone else who's decided to take the plunge doesn't run into any problems. Good luck, everyone, and remember, it's not to late to start!

Proper Submissions

I've decided on what shall be my new projects. In preparation for NaNoWriMo (less than a month away!!!!!), I'm going to be attempting to write a series of short stories. When I say series, I don't mean series series, like Harry Potter, I just mean a succession of them. They aren't going to be the same. At all. Hopefully. That's my goal, anyway.

Unfortunately, though, I shall be the only one to see these. For now. You see, it's long been a dream of mine to actually have something published, and since I've realized that the novel publishing just isn't going to happen for a while and I'm not even going to attempt it because people who are pretentious enough to write a first draft and assume it's good enough should never be published. In fact, they should have bricks thrown at them and rusty nails driven through their feet and the roofs of their mouths. I have very strong, hypocritical opinions on those who automatically assume that they're publishable that I shall likely address properly in another blog post at some time (I'll write myself a note on a sticky so I won't forget). Aaaanyway, I'm going to be writing these particular pieces in the hopes that after some serious revision, they may be ready for submission for the 2012 unsolicited season. While some places are okay with the work having being posted elsewhere, many places get very upset, so I'm not going to risk it. Therefore, my writing shall be kept strictly secret until it's either published or turned down so I can avoid legal ramifications. Besides, while I won't give away too much about the plot, I'll be blogging about NaNoWriMo non-stop, most likely, to give those of you who are too lazy to give it a shot an idea of what it's like. It's really not that hard. Seriously. I'm not one of the crazy people who can get a hundred thousand words before it's half over because I happen to have a life, but there's no reason not to try. Try it at least. Seriously.

POINT IS I'm writing again. Yeehaw.