Recent events in my life

06/08/13 07:30 [Tuesday]
I have been scanning my diary from July 2004 and I suppose it is this which has led me to think of once again setting down in a diary my day-to-day doings. In recent months - years, in fact - I have felt I should only bother to write stuff down in a blog if I have thought it through and it is something I consider ‘clever’ and which other people might consider clever. However reflecting on events in my life over the past few months - years, in fact - I come to understand readers of my blog (and whether there are any interested enough to ‘follow’ I don’t know but one thing I suspect is that people I used to talk to on the internet in the early 2000s and perhaps friends from longer ago than that may from time to time catch up with what is happening with me, or try to) will have little clue what I am about.
On the other hand I am infected a little by Dawn’s reticence, for example in mentioning events involving members of her family in a blog which is public, and more realistically than in 2009-2010 I am concerned with security of various species (for example in saying where I am going to be from time to time). I have to say these concerns - reticence with information and something which sounds like paranoia over ‘security’ - are typical of the schizophrenic personality type (if I can put it like that) and those of us with genetic predisposition have the personality type even at times we are not diagnosed with the illness.
Also I have more immediate concerns, and specifically I mean putting the kettle on for coffee and in addition making toast, so I shall break here.
06/08/13 07:57
We are hoping to move to the little town south of Doncaster where Dawn grew up and where many of her family still live. She misses her family and I myself can see the desirability of being near someone who can support us as we get older. Our bungalow in Kingswinford has been on the market since late 2011, but the market has been slow. We found a buyer and had arranged to move in early April - even paying the removals firm - but the buyer of our buyer’s house pulled out at the last minute so we are still here. Our buyer is still interested and will move in here if and when he sells his house. In the meantime we have had to put the bungalow back on sale - because there is no telling if the buyer we agreed with can sell his house, or when - and in fact we have a viewing in a day or two from now.
The other thing I find mainly to be in my head this morning is our recent trip to Redcar. We went to look after Dawn’s sister’s dog and house while she was on holiday (with her partner and others) and in truth it was a holiday for us too. Redcar, for those who may not know (and I didn’t until say eighteen months ago), is by the sea, but it is no longer a very popular resort because the region is heavily industrial.

Dog-sitting is something we find ourselves doing occasionally, and when we go to see Dawn’s family (for the purpose of dog-sitting or otherwise) we also try to catch up with other friends of Dawn’s in the area. I get to spend time with other people when under other circumstances I might be on my own a lot. In fact for the first year Dawn was living near her family and not with me - she ‘ran off’ as I put it in the summer of 2010 because of my outlandish behaviour before I was on the present medication - that is when I was seeing nothing of her, I used to go to a day centre on the basis that without that life would be completely empty. (I have to say though that the seeming emptiness of my life that year was largely caused by the higher dosage of Risperdal I was on. I would stress to professionals - if I were ever in a position to tell them - that while dopamine-blocking drugs have very desirable effects at the right dosage it is essential to find the right dosage for the individual.)
Many days over recent months I find myself doing the shopping, mainly at Merry Hill shopping centre. This gets me out when I might be bored at home, and another piece of advice I would give (if it were within my remit) is that however lacking in motivation patients might be it is a very good thing if they can engage in some variety. The thing I would also say, though, is that they should strive - possibly with professional help - to find some way of getting this variety which suits them and does not make them over-anxious or negative in other ways. I say that because in the 1980s I was compelled to go to a day centre which I detested and which made me very anxious and very depressed - given the medication I was on and the dosage, a major contributing factor in my unhappy state of mind - because my psychiatrist did not want me at home doing nothing all day every day and he did not strive to accommodate my own interests and inclinations.
What I gather from my Twitter feed is that many people think present-day mental health services are failing in numerous ways, but my experience is that the way patients are treated is immensely better than some decades ago. The fundamental reason is that patients have a voice and the powers-that-be listen to what they want and what they don’t want. Some of this improvement comes thanks to technology: that is people who may be backward in coming forward find it easier to have their say on some version of computer forum, and even before social media took off there was the possibility of using technology to survey the wishes and experience of mental health patients in such a way that the results were accurate and meaningful (instead of the patient mumbling ‘I’m OK’ meaning ‘Leave me alone’).