Patreon, Poor Health, and Other Assorted Life Updates

Hi! Hope you’re all well. Got some stuff I’d like to talk about. Let’s have a chat, get comfy!

Firstly, I’ve started up a Patreon! I wanted a place where I could share little snippets of works in progress with you all without just releasing them into the wild for all to hear. Patreon felt like the best platform for that. I’ve only set up the one tier at the minimum pledge of a $1. I didn’t want to cut off anyone who wanted to be a part of our little community because of financial means. It’s been going since January, and I meant to announce it then, but some things I’ll talk about later in this post got in the way. You don’t miss out if you’re just joining now – you get access to everything that’s been posted to patrons the moment you sign up 🙂

Onto health! Or lack of it! Some of you might remember a few years ago when I posted about a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome diagnosis. A couple of years after that (and a couple of years ago now) I wrote a pretty optimistic blog post about getting better. If you’ve read the title of this post, you probably know where this is going. As it turns out, I never was cured of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Though I spent 2017 and the earlier parts of 2018 on an upward swing and was able to get out and do things a couple of days a week, I never really got to the point where I could function like a healthy person. Nowhere near it. I stayed positive throughout, but after a semester of uni in 2o18, I crashed to the point that I had to drop out. After that, I spent quite a lot of time in bed trying to recover. I got a little better, but nothing like I had been at the good points during that year and a bit.

As it is now, I’ve spent over a month only able to get out of bed to go to appointments. Mum’s had to drive me to those. Even the ones literally a street away. I can’t get anywhere by myself. Some days, just lying down and watching a video is enough to tire out so much that I have to sleep. It’s kind of rough. I’m not saying any of this to get sympathy and well-wishes, I just want to keep you guys updated on my situation. Things are going to be slow on the music front! I’ve very recently emptied out my poor, mistreated savings account to get myself a laptop on which I can produce, so on the days where my brain works but I’m still stuck in bed, I can get stuff done. I’ve almost got that set up. Downloading hundreds of gigabytes of libraries is a cruel and unusual process on Australian internet. But I’m looking forward to trying to get back into the swing of things, despite what life throws at me. I’m also going through the diagnostic process for some other stuff at the moment, but I’d rather not get hugely into detail before I know more.

I’m hoping to start an online degree at a very slow pace in May, but we’ll see how things go. I’m just trying to take things one step at a time, celebrating the little victories and trying my best not to beat myself up when I can’t be as productive as I’d like. Watching Jessica Kellgren-Fozard‘s videos has helped me immensely with coming to terms with the whole ‘possibly ill forever when I thought it was gone’ thing. If you’re chronically ill yourself, or you’re close to someone who is, I can’t recommend her highly enough.

There’s also another not so little something I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while. Last August I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, social anxiety, regular old general anxiety, and ADHD. These had all been problems in my life for a long while (though I’d only begun to suspect the ADHD at the beginning of 2018 due to not fitting inside of the box of a stereotypical patient) but I’d never even tried to seek help before. I’d convinced myself it wouldn’t be worth it, that there was nothing anyone could do. Here’s the thing, though: that’s a load of crap! Getting help for my mental issues is hands-down one of the best steps I’ve ever taken!

I’m on medication for the depression and assorted anxieties and it’s working fantastically. I was always terrified of the idea of medication due to the widely spread belief that depression meds can dull creativity. Now, on the other side, I know how harmful that perception can be. My depression and anxiety were standing in the way of being able to create the way I wanted to. I’ve started writing again, I feel free about my music again. It’s wonderful. And even if getting proper medication had hindered my creativity, being able to retake happiness is worth immeasurably more.

Hard as it’s going to be, I aim to record a quick little video about all this to put up on YouTube. It’s hard for me to be coherent enough to put a video together, but I’ll just keep trying. Even if I end up on the internet in my pyjamas. There are plenty of worse things.