Presently in a state of flux. A liminal state of becoming.
Short Version:
I'm a neurodiverse mum, of neurodiverse kids juggling many obsessions, a reading addiction and long-covid. I live in South East Queensland and passionately love books, coffee, plants and the ocean and passionately hate hot weather.
Long Version
I used to think of myself as a writer, but kids and moves and floods and fires and long-covid have stolen my brain and my words are floating somewhere away... over there. (At lease, I fervently hope they are.)
I like to think eventually they'll come back, but at the moment my brain is so crammed with appointments and to-do lists and bills that need to be juggled and things that should have been done but haven't that honestly if all my unwritten words knocked on my brain with an axe they would just bounce off.
Because my brain is full with the millions of boring stuffs of things broken that need to be fixed and cleaned and allied health people I need to email, and things I need to nag my kids about or their lives will be ruined for ever and have they actually brushed their teeth today? And how the bleep am I going to survive another summer in Queensland and I need to plant more trees and more trees because obviously trees and shade are the only way to survive. More trees. All the trees. And now I need to water them all or they'll die and I'll be a murderer.
So yeah. I'm a mum. And I have the permanent mountains of guilt and love and washing and frustration to prove it.
I'm a neurodiverse mum to neurodiverse children. So we live in a permanent state of chaos and creativity and angst and obsessions and appointments. And a lot of school based PTSD.
And I have a lot of obsessions. Photography. Spiders. Bats. Evolution. Evolution and Baby carriers. Weaving. Beads. Moss. Plants.
And of course my over-riding obsession/addiction. My reading addiction. I still have a book (or two) a day habit. And that's not counting all the journal articles and newspaper articles I read. The world is a fascinating place and I want to know. All the stuffs. And no. I have no interest in cutting back.
And when I read stuff and have obsessions about stuff I want to tell people about it. All about it. At great length. But my husband gets home from work late and catatonic because the health system is disintegrating and his work place is about 5 doctors short and people have this cute idea that doctors should be happy to die (literally) for the Greater Good. So he gets home and sort of grunts and falls asleep.
And because we keep moving I don't really know anyone and, oddly, most people are not so happy to listen to my stream-of-conciousness monologues about the awesomeness of bats and spiders or my intense detestation of lawns. (Which should be dug up and re-planted with trees. For shade. Because shade is everything. It is all about the non-heat. And of course trees are awesome and insanely beautiful.)
And... then add long-covid to the mix. I can presently climb our front steps without groaning and moaning and howling like a husky who has been deeply wronged, but that's a fairly recent development. I can't do anything much without needing a lot of recovery time. It's taking me... awhile to come to terms with this.
It is still taking me awhile to get my head around it.
And even harder to come to grips with is my inability to put the words together. And the way the words run away from me is one of the things that has worried me the most.
So I'm going to start writing more regularly, mainly as a way to get words on paper and reassure myself that even if it's only rants and rambles I'm still writing.
September 2023
