A tale of three book launches

The last couple of weeks have been an amazing, exciting, terrifying blur.

I nervously presented my book-baby to the world and so far the reaction has been really positive.

I even had one lovely reviewer describe it as a “Monty Python sketch come to life” (see lovely review here) which is more than I could ever ask for!

Of course being me, I wasn’t going to do anything by halves (or the easy way) – so instead of one terrifying book launch, I decided to have three.

The first launch was at Wellington’s Unity Books – which is an amazing independent book store and my local. Having a launch there was the pinnacle of book-geekdom as far as I was concerned so I was absolutely rapt when they agreed to do it.

The elation turned to terror when I suddenly realised that I had signed myself up for getting up in front of a group of people and talking about sailing, the book and mental health.

They billed the thing as an ‘event’ which made me even more nervous. It sounded like people were expecting a song and dance routine!

Lunchtime 'event' - complete with book boat and seamonster!
Lunchtime ‘event’ – complete with book boat and sea monster!

It’s rather ironic, given that my day job involves advising people on how to present themselves to the public and deal with the media, that I am terrified of public speaking (and don’t even get me started on media interviews) myself.

I’m the person behind the notepad, I do writing, not talking.

Despite my misgivings, launch number 1 went really well. Aided largely by the fact that I was standing behind a desk so people couldn’t see how much my knees were shaking

Proud Book Mummy
Proud Book Mummy
This is the face of fear
This is the face of fear

We had a great crowd of people (they even had to get more chairs!) including my lovely supportive workmates (who totally weren’t frog-marched over from our office across the road) family members who I hadn’t seen for years, friends and even a few random strangers. The guys at the book store told me afterwards that getting randoms to a first book launch is quite a good sign!

The real star of the show however was my dress. A fabulous cat in the hat number designed by Catherine at Caff10. She’s a Hamilton-based clothing designer who does really funky, really reasonable stuff. Check it out for yourself .

Cat in the hat frock - courtesy of Caff10
Cat in the hat frock – courtesy of Caff10
The Captain and I (he scrubs up alright doesn't he?
The Captain and I (he scrubs up alright doesn’t he?)
Kirtlan whanau represent!
Kirtlan whanau represent!
Signing my life away
Signing my life away

I read a chapter called I Want My Cat! and  got to sign lots of books for people, which was brilliant. Signing a copy of a book you wrote is the most amazing feeling which I am certain will never get old.

The folks at Unity were brilliant. They made me feel really welcome, helped calm my nerves and even did a really cool write-up afterwards which you can read here: 

The second book launch was a necessity. A boatie book had to have a celebration at a boatie place so I did a signing and talk at the Evans Bay Yacht Club.

When I first told people I was having a launch at a yacht club they thought it would be really snobby, all boat shoes and suits.

Evan’s Bay isn’t like that though. As well as a base for learning to sail it is a working boat yard, full of some of the most amazing, down to earth people I have ever met.

The whole thing was a much more relaxed affair (the two beers and a wine I had before doing the talk may have gone some way to settle my nerves too). I read different chapter called Floating Trailer Trash about how yachties looked out for each other and I think that went down pretty well. I also got to sport another lovely Caff10 dress – this time covered in cat faces with love heart eyes (yes there is a theme here…)

Note the nerve steadying wine
Note the nerve steadying wine

As the yachties asked questions, heckled Paddy and gossiped with my parents I felt more and more at home. Several came up to me afterwards to share boating stories and a couple even quietly pulled me aside to say they lived with anxiety too and thanked me for speaking out.

I left with a huge smile on my face thinking “these are my people.”

Dad and I (with fab Caff10 dress)
Dad and I (with fab Caff10 dress)

Book launch number three had been in the making since before I’d even finished the book. I was on a regular pilgrimage down to Oamaru (where I lived and worked for a few years at the Oamaru Mail) when I came across a store called Adventure Books. It’s a gorgeous shop that specialises in adventure and travel books and it has its very own indoor boat. I immediately decided I had to have a launch there.

The boat at Adventure Books
The boat at Adventure Books

A few Oamaru connections making a few inquiries later and it was all on. I even did an interview with the Oamaru Mail which felt very surreal I can tell you!

Oamaru Mail story
Oamaru Mail story

 

The plan was I would do a reading and a signing and take part in a ‘slide night’. It was the first time I had done my book spiel with pictures and I was a little nervous about how it would go, but I needn’t have worried. The shop was awesome, the crowd was awesome and having photos to talk to meant I could relax and ad-lib a bit more.

Lots of locals came up to chat and ask questions afterwards and it felt like a real success.

 

Bill from Adventure Books and I
Bill from Adventure Books and I
Old friends
Old friends

Another thing I got a kick out of was seeing my poster all around town, in cafes and shop windows and in the historic precinct. It felt pretty cool to be world-famous in Oamaru.

Window

Nothing says you've made it like a poster in the historic precinct!
Nothing says you’ve made it like a poster in the historic precinct!
Next to World Book Day even!
Next to World Book Day even!

Of course when in Oamaru you have to do as Oamaruvians do – so here are a few random steampunk pictures

Steampunk HQ train skulls
Steampunk HQ train skulls
Infinity portal at Steampunk HQ
Infinity portal at Steampunk HQ
Steampunk HQ boat
Steampunk HQ boat
And another shot of the Infinity Portal because it's awesome!
And another shot of the Infinity Portal because it’s awesome!

So that has been my mad couple of weeks. Thanks so much to everyone who has been part of it – I can’t wait to see what comes next!

Anxiety, depression and being the funny one

I’ve written, rewritten and deleted this blog more times than I can actually remember. The timing has always seemed wrong. Every time the issue of depression or anxiety has become a topic of discussion it has been around real and tragic events. Talking about myself has just seemed tacky, like dining out on someone else’s pain.

In hindsight that may also have been a convenient excuse to keep putting it off, and I’m not going to do that anymore. If I can’t talk about it now, when everyone is talking about it, when we should be talking about it, it’s a bit gutless really.

Last week an insidious, lying, bastard of a disorder took some of the light from this world.

It was a shock because it happened to the funny one – the talented one, the one who everybody loved.

How could someone who brought so much joy to so many people possibly have been in such pain? It doesn’t make sense.

But in a sad and strange way it does. When you are the funny one you aren’t allowed to feel sad, or you won’t allow yourself to. You are the person that makes other people smile when they are feeling bad and when you can’t do that people don’t know how to handle it – you don’t know how to handle it – you feel like you are letting yourself and everyone else down. The pressure can be immense.

For those who know me well this is not news, but for those of you who don’t – my name is Anna Kirtlan and I have lived with mental illness for most of my life.

I don’t talk about it in detail that often. I was diagnosed in a time when people didn’t talk about it – there were no brave celebrities and sportspeople putting a face to mental illness, there were no campaigns letting people know that 1 in 5 people were going through the same thing you were and there was a constant fear that if you let someone know you could find yourself in a nice comfy padded room.

Things have changed a lot but there is still that hangover there, there’s still the fear that lighting the fuse and pressing ‘publish’ on this post could have an impact on my life, my career prospects, the way people look at me.

What’s more important though is letting people who might be in that black hole right now know that they are not alone and with a little help they can claw themselves out.

Mental illness it does not make you weak. It does not make you selfish and you don’t need to just “cheer up and get over it”. You don’t need to justify feeling the way you do. You have an illness – and an illness can be treated.

So if one person stumbles across this blog and feels the stronger for it, then outing myself so publicly will be worth it.

It took me a long time to be able to speak out about this stuff. I felt I had to wait until I’d ‘proved myself’ – until I’d gotten my degree (which I was told by a well-meaning counselor not to pursue because the stress might be too much), my journalism diploma (which was much more stressful – and rewarding – than the degree) and had held down more than one high pressure job. I waited until I was chief reporter of a (albeit small) daily newspaper before I officially came out of the closet. That was before the paper had a website though – so you won’t find it if you google my name.

Several years ago now I did one of the scariest things of my life (and I am including sailing offshore in that list). I stood up in front of a hall full of teenage boys and talked about mental illness. I had been invited to do this after talking about my experiences in my weekly column – in support of a mental health awareness week initiative the district council had cooked up. The youth branch of the council had designed and produced bright orange t-shirts with five stick figures on then – one of those figures coloured in to represent the one in five who live with mental illness. The idea was to get as many people in town wearing them as possible.

The school was Waitaki Boys High in Oamaru – the hall was huge, and full. I got up on the stage and almost walked right back off again. There were three of us – a radio presenter (bi-polar), a district council spokesperson (post-natal depression) and myself (obsessive compulsive disorder/anxiety/depression).

The kids were amazing. They laughed at all my stupid jokes, but otherwise you could have heard a pin drop. Afterwards they were jostling to put on orange t-shirts. When I came into work the next day one of my workmates came up and gave me a hug. “What’s that for?” I asked. “My son told me about your talk at school yesterday,” she said. “It’s the first time he’s told me about something that’s happened at school for weeks.” I’ve never forgotten that.

So I’ll tell you guys what I told those kids.

First of all, mental illness does not make you weak. It took me a long time to realise this, but it takes an incredibly strong person to fight against their own brain.

I joke about being Anxiety Girl but there is an uncomfortable amount of truth there. I joke about a lot of things, it’s what I do. I am the loud, tacky, bright coloured one. It was an identity I chose for myself in high school after I came to the conclusion that I could hide away and be bullied or stop caring about what people thought of me. It was immensely liberating and helped me create life-long friends.

When you go from being the ‘out there’ one to a gibbering wreck however it’s a little hard to explain. I started showing OCD and anxiety type symptoms from a very young age but it wasn’t until I was in my teens that things really started flaring up. When I was at my worst I wasn’t eating or sleeping and could barely leave the house. I couldn’t stand up or sit down for more than a couple of minutes. I couldn’t stand having people physically near me, but I was terrified of being on my own. There was something affecting me physically but there was nothing that could be tangibly treated. It wasn’t a bug that needed antibiotics or a wound that could be healed.

None of it made sense. Bad things weren’t happening in my life, I had good friends and a loving supportive family, there were so many people out there so much worse off than I was. I had no right to be feeling this way.

I was the bright bubbly one so how could I possibly explain this black evil thing – these compulsions that made no sense. The anger and frustration at myself was visceral.

My parents took me to our GP and he put me in touch with the amazing 198 Youth Health Center in Christchurch (now 298 Youth Health) they in turn referred me to Youth Specialty Services   – unfortunately based next to the mental hospital then known as Sunnyside – which was pretty frightening for a teen. (I used to tell people I had remedial Maths lessons when I had my appointments – they believed that, I was crap at Maths).

That’s where my recovery began. I fought against it for a while, but eventually a combination of counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy and (I’m not ashamed to admit it) medication started to work for me.

One of the biggest helps was when a psychologist sat me down and drew a diagram of what was going on in my brain. She showed me how the chemicals in my brain were out of whack and how medication could help balance them up again. She said it was no different from a diabetic needing insulin to balance their blood sugar levels and that I had  no reason to be ashamed.

Over the years I did go off and on the meds. Particularly in the 90s when a number of high-profile studies came out saying how terrible they were and that  doctors were prescribing too much. When I went off them I would be fine for a while but then everything would come crashing back with reinforcements. This  happened while I was at university but with the support of my family, friends and partner at the time I got back on the rails and passed with a double major. I now accept that happy pills are a part of my life and I am okay with that.

I have pretty much kicked the OCD symptoms now, but the anxiety still rears its ugly head on occasion. I am an A-grade worrier. If being terrified was an Olympic sport I could represent New Zealand.

The trick is to learn the difference between practical fear and completely pointless fear.  For example, fear of falling off a boat in rough seas is sensible. It’s self-preservation and you can address it by making sure you are firmly attached to the boat by a safety harness and by not doing anything stupid. An absolute conviction that the boat is going to fall to pieces every time it makes a perfectly normal creak is not.

You may ask why then, if I am such a ball of neurosis, I would even consider getting on board a tin tub and sailing into the middle of the ocean? The answer is simple. I’m not going to let fear win.

I still get anxiety attacks from time to time, often in situations that people normally wouldn’t find stressful at all. Driving breaks me out in hives. I can do it, but I hate it. Put me in a high pressure work situation and I thrive, ask me to drive down the road and pick up a bottle of milk and I become a nervy, sweaty mess.

Funnily enough sailing doesn’t often do that to me. When things get a bit bumpy I may freak out a little but even then there’s a huge sense of accomplishment and pride when I get through it – and the beauty of a watch on a settled night with nothing but stars and ocean for company is incomparable.

I guess what I am trying to say is that mental illness may never completely go away but it doesn’t have to stop you living the life you want.

And for those of you who haven’t experienced this just remember, more people around you have than you think. And it’s the people you don’t expect  – the zany ones, the bright ones, the people you respect and admire – it’s your boss, your doctor, your teacher, the fix-it person you go to when everything’s falling apart.

These people don’t need pity or sage advice, they just need to know that you know and you care and you don’t judge. You can’t fix them, but you can support them while they fix themselves.

As for Robin Williams – the amazing man who inspired this post – don’t focus on how he died, focus on how he lived and how he managed to touch so many people in his short time on this earth.

Dead Poet’s Society was one of the first films that truly inspired me, Mrs Doubtfire was one of my comfort films when I was feeling down. He’s been a fixture of my life through film and TV for as long as I can remember and the world is a better place for having had him in it.

Resources:

Mental Health Foundation

Lifeline Aotearoa

Youthline

Sparx

The Journal