Writing It Down

Aka Trying to Control Everything

Today has been quite an anxious day. I've got a tingling in my scalp not too dissimilar to the one I had before my hair fell out, and I'm concerned that it might be about to happen again. This time it's just above my right ear/temple so if it does fall out it will be far more noticeable than it was last time. If it does happen, then I'm not sure how I'll deal with it - get a headscarf to wear out and about so people don't notice my horrible patchy head, how to deal with misconceptions, possible fears of how other people will see and treat me...it's not a good place for my brain to be. I'm trying to put down these fears by telling myself that it's just hair, the people who matter don't care, if I've got the time then I can explain it to other people, and hopefully it'll grow back. Plus, I've got a prescription and a referral to help me out with it.

In my ongoing quest to chill the flip out, I've made myself a notebook that I can refer to in order to help calm myself. It started out as somewhere to plan the planet-friendly eco lifestyle that I want to take up, but then I realised I'd quickly run out of things to write, so I've turned it in to a 'Make Yourself Better' book. It's a place to put ideas, plans, lists and things to help me feel as if I've got some control of my life. Plus I got to break out my colouring pens and get creative with it too so I've got some incentive to keep on top of everything. I'm quite proud of it, so I picked some wildflowers on my way home to take some pretty photos of it to share here with you (because let's face it, not many people want to look at bald patches).

I love colouring pens and flowers. Also stamps.

It isn't a fancy Moleskine -  I got it for £3 in Wilko but the binding is such that it opens flat no matter what page you have it open on, and there are a range of pages with dots, lines, squares, and plain paper so it lends itself well to this type of thing. Also there's something very calming about colouring and drawing pretty lines and putting effort in to something, so the creation in itself is helpful, let alone using the actual book.

Time to Save the Planet!

As I said, this started out as an eco book. So, I wrote down all the things where I wanted to make a switch in order to become less reliant on plastic, and check it off once I've achieved that goal. This means that instead of just having loads of ideas pinging around in my head I can keep an eye on what I've done, what I'm doing, where to get each thing from (or where I've got them from), and even though it's just me doing this, I'll feel better for the fact that I'm doing something beneficial not just for myself, but for the environment too. On the next page I've got a bullet list of things that I can do to reduce my carbon footprint. This is split in to now stuff like avoiding palm oil, buying locally and in season, and using charity shops, and future stuff for when I can actually own my own house. (Things like eco boilers, solar panels, planting trees, growing my own veg &c.) Some things are more expensive than what I'm doing/using now, but the things I buy are either good investments (safety razor and wax wraps) or are better quality (especially greengrocer and bakery food).

Yep, some of these are from a kid's cartoon.

The quotes section! I've put in a mix of things that make me think, things that help me realise I'm not alone in my thoughts, and a few funny ones thrown in for good measure to remind myself not to be too serious. So far I've got quotes from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Studio Ghibli movies, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, one from John Green (but I'm hoping to expand that), and Firefly. More will be added soon from favourite authors and shows. It's also nice to sit and write with a nice fountain pen and some good paper, so again, the act of creating alone is therapeutic.

Keeping an eye on everything

This is probably going to be the most useful tool for me. It's a tracking system, split into two parts: the top one is to keep tabs on things that I'd like to be doing, such as me time or disconnecting from social media, or day to day menial stuff that I should be keeping an eye on like exercise and plant watering. The second tracker is for my mental and physical well being, so dizziness and anxiety issues. The top tracker is pretty simple - I've assigned a colour to each subject and if I have done the thing, it gets coloured in. The second one I've assigned a red/amber/green system to, so I can monitor my health with regards to how good or bad I'm feeling. No colour is that it hasn't affected me at all, green for a little bit, orange for a pretty bad amount and red for really bad. I am considering using black if it gets so bad it's debilitating but I'm going to cross that bridge when I come to it. I hope it doesn't come to that though.

Yum! A delicious...exfoliator?!

Finally there's the recipes section. As it started off as an eco book this currently has recipes for an exfoliator, a cleanser, and bubble bars in it, but I'll expand on that. Once my regular food recipe notebook is full I'll probably start filling this one up too with actual edible recipes. Technically you can eat the ones that are in here, but you probably wouldn't want to.

That's my "Make Yourself Better" book. I'm hoping to add a playlist section to document particular songs and tracks that I want to listen to when I'm feeling a particular way, and I'm definitely going to have a section there for songs that make me feel happy or that I'll bop around my living room to. I've got a Gratitude List as well that is pretty non-exhaustive, so if my mood is low I can think of things that I'm thankful for and try to cheer myself up a bit. Speaking of which there's also a "Things I Can Do to Make Myself Happy" section where I've got a list of little and easy activities and ideas that I can think about or do to drag myself out of my bad moments. I'm looking forward to adding to this book - I've made it, I've put things in it, now I've just got to stick with it.