I am in the process of revamping this website to make it more user friendly, but in the meantime I’m pinning this post for those of you wanting to get your hands on my books.
I’m really thrilled with the way Ghost Bus turned out and even more thrilled so many of you are enjoying it. Below are the details for where to get both e-books and tree books.
What I love the most about these are that every bit of them is made in NZ. The cover is designed by the very clever Catherine Slavova’s Karnstein Designs , the typesetting and editing was done by Jana Mittelstadt’s Kiwiberry Editing and it was printed by Your Books.
You can get your paws on a copy here for $20 – free postage within NZ.
Ghost Bus paperback $20
For those of you who haven’t read my first book Which Way is Starboard Again? Overcoming fears & facing challenges sailing the South Pacific and extra fiver will get you a bundle of both books – free postage within NZ also.
Ghost Bus/Starboard bundle $25
For those who don’t use Paypal
For those of you allergic to Paypal just drop me a line at annakirtlan@gmail.com and I will flick you my bank account details.
For overseas readers – there is an Amazon print on demand option which might suit you guys better as the rona seems to have made international posting a bit of a hit and miss venture at the moment. You can buy it here:
Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side is available on most ebook platforms. You can check out which ones here: https://books2read.com/ghostbus
Which Way is Starboard Again? Mental Health Foundation fundraiser
A note that I still have an ongoing fundraiser for the NZ Mental Health Foundation tied up with my first book Which Way is Starboard Again? So if you are interested in that book alone and would like to donate to a great organisation, you can find out more here:
Up until last year, I’m a bit sad to admit, I knew very little about the Sir Julius Vogel Awards, which recognise excellence and achievement by New Zealanders in the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres.
As a newbie writer of speculative fiction (the umbrella term for all these genres) this isn’t super surprising, but as a reader it’s a shame because there have been some amazingly talented nominees and winners. You can find out more about the awards here:
Sir Julius Vogel circa 1870s. Image: New Zealand History – Nga korero a ipurangi o Aotearoa
The awards are named after Sir Julius Vogel, former journo and 8th prime minister of New Zealand, who, in 1889 wrote what is now widely regarded to be New Zealand’s first sci-fi novel.
Anno Domini 2000, or, Women’s Destiny pictured a New Zealand in the year 2000 where most positions of authority were held by women – a pretty radial idea for the time. By the time we hit 2000 our PM, governor general, attorney general and chief justice were all women, so he was clearly onto something!
You can nominate Ghost Bus!
The cool thing about the Sir Julius Vogel Awards (or SJVs as the cool kids call them) is that they are fan-based, so you can decide who gets nominated – and if you take part in the National Science Fiction Convention this year, you can vote for them too.
The exciting thing about this year’s awards (for me at least!) is that Ghost Bus is eligible for nomination. Despite 2020 being, well, 2020, there was some amazing stuff published and I’m super proud to be able to contribute to that in my own way. So even making it as far as being a nominee would be really exciting for me and my ghosties.
So here’s where you come in:
If you enjoyed Ghost Bus, you can nominate it for an SJV for Best Collected Work or, if there was a particular story that tickled you, you can nominate that for Best Short Story. The nomination form is below:
Title of work: Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side (or the title of a story you like. Or both. You can nominate as many as you like!) Author/artist: Anna Kirtlan Category: Best Collected Work or Best Short Story Publisher: Anna Kirtlan Contact: annakirtlan@gmail.com
Best fan art
The other great thing about the SJVs is that the categories cover all the things that make speculative fiction what it is – services to fandom, zines, cover art and fan art. Which means Shaun Garea’s amazing Ghost Bus fan art is eligible for nomination too. I have shared on here in via my social media, but just in case you missed it, check these beauties out!
Oriental Bay Piranhas fan art by Shaun GareaThe Ministry for Public Art – fan art by Shaun Garea
I think these are absolutely amazing. If you think so too, please nominate them. I certainly will be! The deets you need are:
Title of work: Oriental Bay Piranhas fan art or The Ministry for Public Art fan art (or both!) Author/Artist: Shaun Garea Category: Best fan artwork Publisher: Estrata productions Contact info: shaungarea@hotmail.com Other information: Fan art for Ghost Bus – Tales from Wellington’s Dark Side by Anna Kirtlan. Can be found at seamunchkin.com and estrataproductions.com
The award
Finally I’ll leave you with a couple of pics of the award itself because I think it’s just glorious. I hope you’ve enjoyed your little history lesson! Your homework is to think back to the New Zealand created speculative fiction that you used to distract yourself last year. If you loved it then show its creators some love by nominating them for all the things.
Sir Julius Vogel Award trophy Sir Julius Vogel Award trophy etchings
It will also be available on Google Play and Apple books shortly (there was a slight hiccup with the upload because apparently I didn’t put enough capital letters in the title). I will update the link above as soon as it goes live.
Don’t worry print purists, there is a paper copy in production. I will let you know as soon as it is available.
Tomorrow I will be publishing my second book and it is a million percent not what I thought my second book would be.
At first my second book was going to be the story of another trip around the South Pacific, but life – in a good way – had other ideas about that.
Then my second book was going to another travel tale about our adventures in the United States when we went there for Paddy’s 50th birthday. That one was called Gators, Guns and Keeping Calm. I got quite a way through writing it and then something terrible happened in my home town involving firearms and I just couldn’t. The tone was all wrong. One day I might resurrect that book. It was a fascinating place and we met some amazing people. I’ll know when the time for that is, but it’s not now.
And then there’s the one I actually finished
My third attempt at a second book is one I have actually finished writing. It’s had a manuscript assessment and needs a bunch of editing but it won’t be long before it’s good to go. It’s the first book in a nautically themed YA fantasy series with a lot of underwater shenanigans and it will see the light of day I promise!
This second book though, my actual second book, started life as a writing challenge. I decided I would take a crack at NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time at the end of last year.
Book stores and pick up artists
It started with a running gag I had with a friend that came about after her insistence that a woman chatting with me about the cover of I book I was holding in Unity Books was actually chatting me up. We then started joking about how book shops would actually be an excellent place to score and that there probably was a secret code among browsers in the know. The idea fascinated me and I ended up writing a short story about it for her. With a bit of a supernatural twist it became a tale called ‘The best pick up joint in town.’
After I wrote it I discovered it was NaNoWriMo time. The challenge was to write a 50,000 word novel in a month and a short story collection counted, so I decide to give it a crack.
A creepy love-letter
Well I didn’t make the 50,000 word mark, but what I did end up with was a collection of short stories that formed a sort of warped love-letter to Wellington New Zealand – the home I have chosen for myself. A collection I felt proud enough of to have a crack at publishing.
Some of the stories are spooky, some of them are silly and some have a pretty high body count, but all, I hope, in some way will make the reader smile. It’s escapism, pure and simple – my gift to a world that might need a little bit of that right now.
The Wellington that was
This is my first foray into fiction, but when I was putting the stories together for publication, it wasn’t the ghosts, aliens and witches that stood out. It was the normal things that aren’t so normal anymore. Hanging out in bookstores, sitting on a crowded bus, buying a kebab at 3am.
What my second book actually turned out to be was a love letter to a Wellington that was. A Wellington I miss, and one I very much look forward to seeing again.
A socially distanced hug
So here it is, book number two. A very different book from number one in many ways, but similar in the most important one. It’s for you. It’s to make you smile if you are feeling shit. It’s a distraction if you are feeling scared. It’s not the great New Zealand novel – instead it’s a written hug from me to you.
I hope you enjoy it was much as I enjoyed writing it and tomorrow I will let you know where you can get your hands on it.
In the meantime check out this amazing cover, designed by the very talented Catherine Slavova’s Karnstein Designs
This blog is all out of order. It’s not the one I was planning to share but events have overtaken things. Sailors may want to give it a wide berth too (see what I did there?) as it is about the opposite of water, it’s about *shudder* being a dirt dweller.
Our home
About three years ago Paddy and I bought a house on a piece of land (and before any of you lot start on about me making him swallow the anchor, he was the one who suggested it and he is very happy here – he has a very large garage!)
It has a substantial amount of regenerating scrub behind it, sadly mostly broom, blackberry and Old Man’s Beard, due to years of neglect from being a rental for a decade. It needs a bit of work but its ours and we love it. I called it a forest and Paddy called it a jungle so we compromised and have name it ‘the frungle’.
The frungle when we first moved in – unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the blackberry and gorse has overgrown a fair bit of this
A bit of bush bashing into the frungle shows old farm tracks with a lot of clear space under a canopy. One day it will be an amazing place for us to wander through and have places to just sit and be. It will need work to get there though, access cleared and I have a vision of a nice terraced garden leading up to it.
Inside the frungle
We’re not afraid of the hard work needed to get there. When we arrived the garden in front of the house was a mess of infill soil, rocks and tree roots. I cleared the roots, ripped all the rocks out to make a rock garden and have created a lovely flowering area that all the neighbours comment on. We love our little patch of dirt and are doing what we can to make it better for everyone.
Before
After
The council
Last week we received a flyer in our letter box from the council, with one of those cutesie brochures with cartoon people holding seedlings that you would have to be a nature hater to object to.
It said they wanted to redesignate part of our property as a Significant Natural Area (SNA) and include it in the district plan. The flier included a map that was so tiny it was impossible to tell where our property was on it and a phone number that went straight to an answering machine. When Paddy finally found a copy of the map online that he could expand we discovered they wanted our frungle, the entire section next to us and most of the property our neighbour lives on, along with other neighbouring properties. There are nine of us affected locally. One is away overseas and one threw the flier in the bin because she doesn’t read English. Hardly the most robust consultation.
According to the ‘Our City Tomorrow Planning for Growth’ website there are 160 properties in the Wellington City area affected. Around 50% are owned by the Wellington City Council and the rest is private land.
So why worry about a new property designation? Well this would put our little frungle in the same category as the nearby park filled with walking tracks, wind farms and other areas of special significance – all of which we thoroughly support the need to protect. When Paddy spoke to the council they said not to worry, we can still do what we like with our land – and that might be true, for now. But all it will take is one change in the district plan affecting all the significant natural areas and it’s no building and predator baits in the backyard, and if we complain we don’t have a leg to stand on because it will affect all significant natural assets.
Our family
This is where I know some of my green friends and I differ, and that’s okay. I’m a big fan of live and let live. When I discovered some of the people behind this move were involved with Predator Free Wellington a few alarm bells began to ring.
I love and will always have cats. Cats are family to me and one of the reasons we bought where we did was because it was a cat friendly area. It’s off a cul-de-sac, away from traffic with a decent enough sized backyard to keep a meow happy and not prowling.
I wake up every morning to the sound of birds not being murdered by my cat. She is well-fed and drugged (catnip) and gets lots of love and attention. In the year plus we have had her here her prey count has been zero birds and one live mouse I had to move to a safer location myself. She is a menace to anything stuffed with catnip and and utter thug when it comes to other cats. There are actually less moggies in our frungle since she arrived.
The great grey hunter
Before Tilly (aka Dingbat) arrived there was Ollie. In 16 years his bird count was two and one we are pretty sure flew in the window, got stunned and was passed off as his own catch. He was so proud when he did find something (live mice usually) that I find it hard to believe he led a savage, bird corpse-strewn double life. Once, when moving flats, we discovered a massive mouse hole behind the beanbag he slept on. Not only that, the mice had also been pulling rubble from inside the walls to build a little ramp for easier access. I had to respectfully ask him to hand in his cat card after that.
The goodest boy
The mouse highway we found behind Ollie’s beanbag
I find it hard to believe that I have had the only two dud cats in the world when it comes to hunting and I think if you make sure they are well-fed and entertained your backyard tuis will be safe. Ours certainly are.
It sounds a bit paranoid but there are areas around the country now where you can’t replace your cat when they die and I suspect those places probably started their lives as SNAs.
Treating everyone like an arsehole
Don’t get me wrong, I have zero issues with council land and reserves being declared SNAs. I just want to know that we can keep our own piece of dirt, the one that we pay a mortgage and rates on, safe for us and our family and protected for the future. I would like us to be trusted to look after our own backyard.
One area that has managed to work with its community and agree to voluntary protection of privately owned natural resources is the Hutt City Council. Their mayor apologised to the community for the distress the situation had caused and committed to working with them to protect their natural resources rather than doing it to them.
“With the involvement of mana whenua, land owners and other groups, we will be able to lift the profile of this issue and it will give us the opportunity to understand more about the importance of biodiversity to our community, as well as what we can do as a community to protect and enhance it.”
For this the council is now being sued by Forest and Bird.
According to Forest and Bird’s North Island regional manager “Voluntary arrangements on their own won’t be enough to protect and restore our native bush and wildlife. The good efforts of the majority can be undone by the reckless actions of a few.”
Their solution appears to be that, to get the best out of human nature, you need to treat everybody as though they are going to behave at their worst. Someone might be an arsehole so we will treat all of you like arseholes to make sure that doesn’t happen. That really does seem like flawed logic to me.
This is not what I want to be doing
This whole situation makes me really sad. I am not the sort of person who regularly complains to councils. I used to be a council reporter back in the day and spent just about as much time in council chambers as they did. I know how hard they work and I know you can’t please everyone..
I am a greenie. I never, ever thought I would be in a position where I would be opposing Forest and Bird. I am for policy about protecting the environment. Paddy and I often have spirited discussions about banning plastic bags. I’m all for it and he reckons noone has ever asked a dolphin whether they like the taste of plastic or not (don’t worry he’s winding me up – he uses reusable bags!). I am for protecting the planet for the next generation.
I’m a dirty leftie. I am all for public health and public education and putting my taxes towards benefiting all of us, particularly those worse off. I don’t believe in holing up in our private worlds, doing what we want and not caring about anyone else, but we need to do this together.
To the Wellington City Council,
If you come between me and my home and my family, I will fight you. And I don’t want to fight you, I want to work with you. Considering local body elections are coming up really soon, I would hope you feel the same.
The petition
As a group of concerned residents we are starting a petition on behalf of our community and those around the city who may not be aware of what may be happening to their land. We hope the council will take notice of this and work with us rather than against us. If you would like to support us, please visit the Welink below
A few months back something truly sad happened. After 13 years of loyal service, the mega boat fridge Paddy built – the one that made it all the way round the South Pacific, helping out cruisers with less functioning fridges and housing the 50kg Tuna of Terror – cooled its last cold thing.
Since we were no longer living aboard, it took a while before we actually noticed it. It wasn’t until I stayed over on Wildflower to make it easier to catch an early morning flight that I made the discovery. First the lack of noise tipped me off – the fridge’s comforting buzzing and whirring was part of the boat’s soundtrack – then it was the smell.
While we didn’t have much food in there, it was enough to make it smell like something had died and was in the process of quietly decomposing. So I did what sensible adult would do, I slammed the lid shut and hoped the problem would go away.
It didn’t.
The cleanup
On getting home and finding the problem hadn’t fixed itself, there was nothing for it. We picked a weekend, gathered all the cleaning products known to mankind and set to. The smell was horrific. We grabbed black rubbish bags and threw the freezer’s contents in them without pausing to identify what anything used to be (the former bait was fairly easy to work out though.)
Once the offending former-frozens were jettisoned (stuffing black bags into the marina rubbish bins while stifling gagging noises when fellow yachties walked past) we scrubbed the living daylights out of the fridge and freezer cabinets.
Being a chest freezer this necessitated extended periods of time hanging headfirst over the edge of the cabinet, holding my breath while the blood rushed to my head. I am pleased to say though that this and a combination of cleaning products, bleach, vanilla essence and airing the thing out, means Wildflower is now blessedly stink-free.
A new obsession
Wildflower’s lack of refrigeration left Paddy with a couple of choices. He could buy a new fridge or he could build the Mother of All Fridges. I’m pretty sure you can guess which option he went with. Building Fridgezilla is actually something Paddy had been talking about for a while when the old fridge was starting to reach the end of its life.
And so the research began. I would come home to find Paddy mesmerised by YouTube videos on how to build a boat fridge. So many YouTube videos… I had no idea so many people were so passionate about refrigeration – and that so many of them had YouTube channels.
Note: Paddy says most of the stuff on YouTube is biased towards air-conditioning but the principals are the same for freezers and refrigeration.
I joke about it but it’s actually pretty cool that people are so generous with their time and prepared to share information that otherwise giant nerds like Paddy you wouldn’t know.
Goodbye kitchen table
It started off with a few packages arriving at the back door with the odd switch or coil in them
Who knew our back door had a signature?
Then our kitchen table turned into a steampunk nightmare of copper piping, wire and dials. Every day a new package arrived and the mountain grew bigger. A hermetic compressor, suction line accumulator, sub cooler, liquid refrigerant receiver, a water cooled and air cooled condenser appeared, along with lots of copper pipe and fittings, various valves and (after some negotiating) a big orange bottle of refrigerant.
Note for nerds: Paddy says he was going to put the whole thing on a basal platen made of prefabulated amulite, but when he discovered that didn’t exist he used aluminum, which he got from his mate Gregor’s workshop
There’s a table here somewhere!
Man and refrigerant
I am also learning a lot of things about fridges.
For example I know Wildflower’s new fridge will use British thermal units, which Paddy tells me are the best kind of thermal units you can get.
“BTUs have always been better than kilowatts. If you don’t believe me just go on Google and see how many BTUs there are in a kilowatt. There’s more, so it must be better” – So sayeth Paddy.
A mysterious love note
Things got even more fascinating one weekend when Paddy was away for work and I spotted a hand written note on the coffee table in our living room.
‘That’s nice,’ I thought. ‘Paddy’s left me a note. I wonder what it says?’
I picked it up and quickly realised Paddy hadn’t written it. In a woman’s handwriting was the very un-Paddylike sentence ‘I love you, you handsome (something a little tricky to make out) wonder’.
I was, understandably, a little surprised.
Examining the note more closely I discovered it was not exactly a new one, and apparently not from New Zealand. It was written on the back of a deposit slip from the Camden National Bank in Maine USA and the empty date section started 19– , so definitely not written recently!
The mysterious note
So what was it? Where did it come from? Was it a memento from a past love? Did a time-traveler from the US have a crush on one or the other of us?
When Paddy got back I handed it to him and said ‘sweetie, do you know what this is?’ It turns out he was just as puzzled as I was. When I told him where I found it he had a eureka moment and burst out laughing, then fished out a retro looking book.
He had bought a second hand copy of Refrigeration for Pleasureboats by Nigel Calder online and when he opened the package a piece of paper that had been used as a bookmark fell out. He didn’t think much of it and put it on the coffee table. Mystery solved.
Help us find the handsome wonder
Except the mystery isn’t solved, not really. Who is the handsome wonder? Did he ever get his note? Was it a secret admirer? Unrequited fridge-building love? Did he and the note-writer live happily ever after? We need to know!
My workmate Liz helped with one piece of the puzzle – the two words in the note I couldn’t quite make out.
I love you, you handsome ‘car heart-clad? car hat Dad?’ wonder.
I was puzzling those two words out loud in the office when she said ‘I know, it’s Carhartt!
It turns out Carhartt is a US brand of work wear (Liz was gifted a pair of Carhartt overalls and says they are brilliant).
So we now know the full text of the note reads: I love you, you handsome Carhartt-clad wonder. Which in the context makes a lot of sense!
As for the rest of the mystery, if anyone can help us, we would love to hear from you.
Our clues so far are:
A second hand copy of Refrigeration for Pleasureboats bought on Amazon.
Richmond – written on the side of the book in vivid. It could be a surname, it could be a place, it could be the name of a boat.
A deposit slip from Camden National Bank in Maine.
After migrating from the kitchen to the lounge the parts made it to the garage and formed the shape of a fridge (or at least a condensing unit – which Paddy tells me is all the smarts of a fridge). It makes all the whizzing and whirring motions a fridge should make and passed its tests with flying colours.
For the fridge nerds: Fridgezilla was pressure tested with inert gas to 300 PSI (pounds per square inch of pressure) – 50 PSI more than it is going to use when it’s running – to make sure there weren’t any leaks. He found a couple and fixed them. Then it was vacuum tested to suck out all the moisture and it vacuum tested down to 200 microns.
From the lounge to the garage
One happy engineer!
Even more for the fridge nerds
If you know the lingo, are building a fridge or are just really interested in enginerding, then here’s a five minute video explanation of the condensing unit of the Mega Fridge.
Stay tuned for when Fridgezilla is on board and cooling its first ice cream!
It was a pile of socks I had been staring at for more than a year before finally trying, and failing, to do something with.
I used to have a system. When an odd sock came out of the wash I would put it in a basket in the corner of my room. Periodically I would upend the basket and paw through it, reuniting them with their mates.
I don’t know when the basket became a monster.
One day the multicoloured mess became insurmountable. I had so many socks I couldn’t close my sock draw and the unmatched pile had become a semi-dormant cotton volcano threatening to erupt.
Some of the culprits
The odd sock basket came with me when we moved to our new house – and sat there for a year.
It would glare at me malevolently, reminding me that we had been in our new home for 365 days and I still didn’t have my shit sorted.
The sock pile embarrassed me. I would shove it in a corner and forget about it for a while – then another odd sock would turn up. I would promise myself I would take the basket upstairs, sit in front of the telly and sort the damned thing out – but then I’d be too tired from work, I’d have to cook dinner, there were cat videos on the internet that needed watching…
Yes I realise I was projecting onto the basket. My socky nemesis became a representation of all the things in my life I had been putting off doing. If I could conquer the pile of socks, then everything else would follow.
So that was what I was going to do last weekend. I was finally going to slay the sock monster.
I had a plan. I was going to watch Guardians of the Galaxy in preparation for seeing the second film before it finished in the theatres, dump Mount Socksuvius on the floor and sort it out while watching something that made me smile.
It all fell to pieces when I couldn’t make that happen. I missed the film being on television and was annoyed with myself for that, but that was okay because it was on Netflix -I’d checked the night before. Only it wasn’t, it was only on Netflix US not NZ. I tried TV on demand, nope. Lightbox, nope. It was a 2014 film for chrissakes, it should’t be so hard!
This upset me much, much, more that it should have.
The problem with being a functioning nutbar is that you often have no idea what silly little thing will make that functioning stop.
OCD is like that for me. Most of the time I’m pretty flexible. If situations change on me I can go with the flow and find a way to make things work. Other times I plan things meticulously in my head and if things don’t conform 100% to that plan I get really upset – irrationally so. The worst part of it is, I know it’s irrational. That’s why it’s so frustrating. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel so upset, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to stomp my feet and pull my hair out.
There doesn’t always have to be a reason, but this time I think there was. I was a bit stressed, my circadian rhythms were only just starting to sort themselves out after returning from my first (non-sailing related) OE, I was trying to start a new writing project (more detail on that, and the OE, in the next blog) and it seemed my house and garden were falling down around my ears. I was trying to do all of things and achieving none of the things and now I couldn’t even watch my movie and organise my damned socks.
Chucking them out and starting again wasn’t an option. I have issues letting go. I like my socks – they’re interesting. They have cats and boats and skull and crossbones, stripes and spots and so many shades of orange.
Of course you can match cats and boats or spots and stripes, I do that all the time – and I have done that with as many as I can, but some are different sizes or different types. Some are gym socks, some are socks to wear with boots. It doesn’t always work.
One of the upsides of having OCD is that, usually, this sort of thing is fun. I love organising books, sorting out nuts and bolts on the the boat, colour coding buttons – but for this one I have a massive block.
And what did I do with the ones that didn’t match? I didn’t want to put them in the landfill, I don’t think socks are recyclable and odd socks are a pretty stink thing to donate to an op shop.
Paddy, who had been stoically coping with my irrational anger and looming tears, came to the rescue with that one. Car enthusiasts use a lot of scrap material as cleaning rags when they are tinkering around with their automobiles. I could put the ones I wasn’t going to keep in a rag bag and chuck that in the clothing bin. No sock left behind!
As I sat there contemplating the pile in the middle of the floor and I had a sock-related epiphany.
The sockpocalypse (asockalypse?) I was staring at was a perfect metaphor for my own brain. It’s exactly what I imagine it looks like in there – an unruly pile of colours and textures that don’t always always do what they’re told.
A bright, beautiful pile of crazy that’s sometimes impossible to keep under control.
I love it and I hate it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The best socks I have ever owned have all been bought for me by my Mum. They come in packs of three and either all of them match or none of them do. They’re interchangeable so it doesn’t matter if you lose one and I think they’re the answer for me.
The socks, like my brain, are a little bit different and help me do things in my own way.
Don’t pair? Don’t care!
I went out yesterday and bought Guardians of the Galaxy on DVD so I can watch it any damned time I please.
The giant pile of socks is still there, it’s in the middle of the lounge so I can’t miss it. I know it’s silly, but I feel like if I can get that under control I’ll be able to handle everything else.
I’ll get the house and garden sorted, I’ll start exercising again and I’ll write – a lot. Watch this space!
Last mental health awareness week I recycled my coming out of the cray cray closet blog but a lot has happened between then and now so I think it’s time for a new one.
One of the drawbacks of writing a book about being a functioning nutbar is that it puts a whole lot of pressure on you to be exactly that.
You’ve just gone and revealed your biggest weakness to a bunch of strangers.You have told people they can get through it because you have gotten through it. You’ve told them you’re okay so you have to be okay. Otherwise you’re a big fat fraud.
The funny thing is I was okay. Everything was going great. I’d had a book published, I’d made my dream come true. I’d been getting all sorts of great feedback, I’d been in the paper and on the radio, I’d done a bit of public speaking. My life was full and busy, but it was full of good things. There was absolutely no excuse for my brain to break.
In hindsight the warning signs were there. Things had been going so well for so long that I had slipped back into bad habits, I was staying up too late, drinking far too much coffee and having energy drinks for breakfast. Then I was wondering why I wasn’t sleeping. I was permanently wired – jumpy, paranoid, clenching my teeth and counting on my fingertips (an old OCD habit). I was getting slack about remembering to take my meds.
It’s exhausting being on edge all the time. Eventually you are going to crack – and I did quite spectacularly.
It had been a great day. I’d caught up with some very dear friends who were visiting from overseas. It was lovely and sunny so we started the day with a boozy brunch and went from there. We ended up back on the boat that evening. We had a brilliant catch up and loads of fun. Then everyone went home – and I kept drinking (I’m not a big drinker so this is quite unusual for me). I had decided I wanted to turn my brain off and that was how I was going to do it. When Paddy tried to get me to stop I shut myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine (again, this is not normal behavior for me).
The night ended with me lying on the floor of the boat screaming unintelligibly and refusing to move. It have been quite frightening for poor Paddy. Eventually I crawled into bed, freezing cold, and passed out.
No surprises that the next morning I felt awful. But it was a frighteningly familiar kind of awful – the thick, black hole in my stomach told me this was no ordinary hangover.
I spent the day alternating between feeling like my heart was going to pound out of my throat and just feeling leaden. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I felt empty and numb.
I finally had to admit it to myself – I was not okay.
I talked with Paddy, who had noticed I hadn’t been ‘present’ for a while. Like I was going through the motions but I wasn’t really there. It was such a relief to finally admit it.
It is so important to let people know when you are not okay, but it can be a massively hard thing to do. When I was a teen living with mental illness I didn’t know how to. I have a letter a friend wrote me when I was about 15 that I keep to remind me how important it is to communicate. It says “it’s like you are lying on the floor crying out in pain but not telling anyone where it hurts.” I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. But for the first time my friend got me thinking about how what was going on with me was affecting other people. I thought by bottling it up and keeping it to myself I was protecting my friends from having to deal with the mess in my head, what I didn’t realise was that what I was doing was even more frustrating and confusing. It took a long time and a lot of trial and error before I felt safe and comfortable sharing with people I cared about, but it was definitely the best thing for all of us.
So here I was admitting defeat and calling in the professionals. I called in sick at work the next day (one of the few times I have ever let myself do that for because of my mental illness) and visited my GP. I would have had no qualms taking the day off if I had the flu or a tummy bug but, despite my preaching in print, this was so much different. I couldn’t possibly show that kind of weakness, what if people thought I wasn’t going to be able to do my job?
There was no choice really. I had to go private. I could have gone into the public system but would have ended up on a waiting list – and when you are a sweating, shaking, twitchy mess, a waiting list just isn’t going to cut it. I was lucky,I could afford it. So many people can’t and that’s so wrong. I won’t start ranting about the state of our mental health system or I won’t stop, but I will say everyone needs access to this type of lifeline. There are good public services out there – they just need money and support so they are available to everyone, everywhere in the country.
My nerves about talking with my work about things proved utterly unfounded. They were great, and totally fine with me leaving an hour early once a week to take my brain in for a tuneup.
So I sat down with the head doc to see what we could do. We decided not to mess with the meds because they seemed to be doing their job, it was just me being rubbish about taking them. Instead we tried to unpack some things. We talked about what was going on in my life and every time I went down a new tangent she would gesture towards the carpet and mime putting something down. ‘Okay we’ll put this one in that basket and come back to it later. By the time we were done I was convinced she was going to run out of space on the floor for all the imaginary baskets.
“So basically you’re saying I’m a basket case then,” I dad-joked. This was to set the tone for most of my visits. We would talk about stuff, I would get uncomfortable and start cracking jokes. By session three she worked out we weren’t getting anywhere. Every time we scratched a surface I would throw walls up by trying to make her laugh.
In the end she said to me “you seem to have a real problem with having a mental illness”. I was outraged. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve written a book about having a mental illness, I tell people there is nothing to be ashamed of because, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Of course I don’t have a problem with having a mental illness!”
But I had to be brutally honest with myself – I did. I had to be okay because I had told the world I was okay. I’d told everyone that battling with your own brain does not make you weak – but I wasn’t drinking my own Koolaid. Do as I say don’t do as I do. It’s okay not to be okay, but not for me.
Realising that was a turning point for me. I actually started working on things. We reached a natural conclusion where most of the baskets were empty or at least only part full. I was looking after myself, taking breathers, easing up on the coffee and booze and getting my medication levels up again.
I still get twitchy at times but I am on top of it now. I’m enjoying life and I’m healthy again.
I guess my messsage is- and it really is – it’s okay not to be okay. The busiest, toughest, most outspoken of us are all allowed not to be okay and realising you aren’t okay is the first step towards fixing it – no matter how many invisible baskets you have to use.
PS – this is not a recipe to follow for everyone by any means. Talk therapy works for some people and it doesn’t for others, medication works for some people and doesn’t for others, exercise, getting out in nature, eating and drinking healthy -it’s the same deal. I find a combination of all three – meds, talking and making time to get out and about works for me, but none work on their own. It’s a process of trial and error and whatever works for you is totally legitimate.
Six months ago I lost my idol. The man very much responsible for me being me. I was devastated at the time and so was much of the world. David Bowie was such a huge part of so many lives – it was impossible to believe that someone who was so brave, intelligent and downright magical could be gone.
I said everything I needed to say in a blog I wrote at the time but what I didn’t share was a tattoo I got two weeks after.
It didn’t seem right at the time, the internet was wall to wall Bowie and it just seemed a bit soon and a bit twee. I got it for me, it was part of my grieving process and I wasn’t ready to share it with the world.
It all just sort of came together. The idea popped into my head fully formed while I was talking to my Mum on the phone. I wanted the black star from his final goodbye album, but that on its own was too dark for me.
Then the Aladdin Sane lightning bolt flashed through my mind, cutting across the star.
It represented everything that was sparkly and spiky and magical about him, that was it. That was my tattoo.
A friend of mine recommended a tattooist (Craigy at Union Tattoo) who just happened to have a cancellation, so what I was expecting to wait a while for happened within two weeks.
(Unfortunately the only decent pic I have of it is the one taken just after it was done. Have you ever tried to photograph your own wrist?)
It’s only little but it’s perfect. It makes me sad, but it also makes me feel strong and I smile every time I look at it.
It also turns out to have a very practical purpose.
I wanted the design on my wrist but didn’t really think too much about which one. In the end I just went with the one I didn’t wear a watch or fitness tracker on. It wasn’t until I was doing pilates (yes I do pilates – I may not be particularly good at it but I do it!) and I was having my usual issues of working out left from right, that I suddenly thought – I can use my tattoo!
It turns out it’s on my right side – my starboard side. I suddenly had an epiphany – I have a star on my starboard side. I wrote a book called Which Way is Starboard Again? and Bowie has answered that question for me forever!
Next time I’m out sailing, if a boat is heading towards Bowie I’ll know to keep clear.
I also conducted my own nerdy celebration of Bowie on the six month anniversary by helping orchestrate an augmented reality tribute. Before there was Pokemon Go there was Ingress (and before that Geocaching) – both are GPS based games that get you out amongst public art and sculptures and places of significance. My Dad got me into both, being a retired airforce navigator and fascinated with that sort of stuff.
I won’t go into too much detail but basically two warring teams united to create a digital lightning bolt across Lyall Bay.
The details are here (you don’t have to understand the lingo – the pictures say it all.)
Bowie was always an early adopter of new technology – I like to think he’d get a kick out of it.
I’ll end on a quote from a book I have recently read – Simon Critchley’s On Bowie, which sums him up perfectly for me.
“Bowie has been my soundtrack. My constant, clandestine companion. In good times and bad. Mine and his.
What’s striking is that I don’t think I’m alone in this view. There is a world of people for whom Bowie was the being who permitted a powerful emotional connection and freed them to become some other kind of self, something freer, more queer, more honest, more open, more exciting…He was someone who made life a little less ordinary for an awfully long time.”
PS. SHAMELESS PRODUCT PLACEMENT! Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is on sale $19.99 for blog readers. Free postage within NZ
So, rather ironically given I work in communications for a living, it turns out I am a bit of a rubbish self promoter. I need to try harder to let people know Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is out there.
To that end I have spruced up the blog and transferred it from the basic seamunchkin.wordpress.co to seamunchkin.com. If you already follow the blog your subscription has been transferred and nothing will change – it just means it’s easier to share and buy through the website.
I’ve put up a page about the book here and even have a dinky PayPal button
which you can also access here for people who would like to buy signed copies with special messages directly from me.
All the Facebook, Twitter, G+ links have been updated and I’ll put a redirect on the original blog so, other than the new look, it’s pretty much business as usual.
So if anyone you know is interested in reading about sailing, anxiety, projectile vomiting and ant wars I would really appreciate it if you could point them this way.
Thanks for bearing with me – back to your regularly scheduled programming!
