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With seminars and essays, research and writing. With plotting and planning and travel. With life with a small person, a tiny whirlwind of mess and noise, with time off school and a small person ill and grumpy…

I don’t remember the last time I stopped.

Today was her first day back at whirlwind school, the walk in, full of chatter; I love our conversations in the morning, and the soft little hand in mine. I was also very happy to hand over my tiny dervish to the depths of mathematics, phonics and pencil crayons and begin my journey back home.

I walk next to a road, lined with an alley of trees. Halfway home there is a gap in the fence which I wiggle through, hopefully avoiding a coating of green dust. The soil is soft underfoot and if I look up the leaves overlap one-another like a green, tissue paper mosaic; like the “stained glass windows” we used to make when I was at school. Previous rains have made a beautiful setting, stunning. The soil more rich, the greens more vibrant, and the smell of the damp earth and fresh leaves is crisp in my nose. I pause and inhale, the weeks of tension fall away.

I still have work to do, an essay to write, an exhibition to advertise; but not now. Not yet. It can wait.

Xx

I’m going to Paris tomorrow! 🙂 I’m unbelievably excited!

For those of you who don’t know, I am going on a short pilgrimage of Art and Culture; Paris for two nights, Vienna for two nights and then home.

I have never been abroad apart from a group and I most certainly haven’t organised it myself before now. But I’m not worried in the slightest, because, due to my anxiety, I have been thinking about how everything could go wrong for the past two months. I have numbers for everyone and everything I could need, printed itineraries at home and in my bag, and one on Drive, just in case. I have two types of insurance, all the medicine I could need, and several different types of charger… Just in case.

I’m not worried or anxious because I have literally over thought EVERYTHING for weeks. My bags have been packed for two.

And believe it or not, my bag isn’t even that big.

Now all I need to do is figure out how to sleep, the night before my big day…

No anxiety here, just pure excitement. 😊 Xx

… I’m sure you know that already.

I know that I should keep writing to you all but sometimes I just can’t find the words amidst the black mist of my vision. Movements and thoughts are slow like swimming through tar, and sometimes all I can do is ignore the world.

I’m sorry for those days, and I’m sorry that they happen a lot. There will be gaps in my attendance, but I hope you know that I still think of you and I will be back as soon as I can.

Xx

Did you know? Did I tell you?

I have to go away for a while. My curious website, where I spill the contents of my brain and my creativity is being assessed.

Oh my! Oh dear!

Wish me luck dear readers and I shall speak to you again in March.

Christine Sîan, 12th January 2019

(University of East Anglia, MA in Creative Entrepreneurship)

Were you ever given a label? A nickname or a diagnosis? A box to fit in?

So many people detest the idea of labels, “people just are!” And do you know what? I get that, it must be difficult having people see you for the great neon sign above your head and not who you are as a person. The you that wakes up groggy on a Sunday morning, the way you drink your coffee and the kinds of shit on TV that keeps you sane. Your favourite colour, your most loved animal, your favourite pair of jeans.

But what are labels if not just words? I understand where you are coming from when you say you don’t want that.

But do you see me?

I had nicknames and labels and things I got called.

But I didn’t have a diagnosis.

And they kept trying to medicate me for the person I was, and the symptoms I had, and they just, couldn’t, get it, right.

They threw pill after pill in the vague direction of the target that was me and missed, every single time.

Plink.

Plink.

Plink. …

And one day I got fed up with not being told what was wrong with me, because there was something wrong with me, and I got obstinate and I asked the shit questions and pushed for a response a little more succinct than the usual bullshit.

And for once they listened, and they talked to me like I was a human being needing answers, not just another statistic to medicate and make quiet. So I got my answers and I got my labels.

MY labels.

And the great neon sign that you hate so much, I carry with pride, because people will give you labels whether you want them to or not, so it may as well be the right ones.

And for the first time in my life, I was not stupid, I was not thick and thoughtless, and I was not the one who didn’t try very hard.

I was the one with ADHD. Who actually tried very, fucking hard, and was far from stupid and far from thick, and if you thought that I didn’t take the time to think… well, it may not be about what they wanted me to, but all I did was think.

Christine Sîan, 11th January 2019…

Diagnosed with ADHD, CPTSD, EIPD in 2016. It is far from easy, but every day, I have reasons to be proud. Xx

I just did my first piece of actual coding! The writing on my first post came up trying to be black lettering on a dark grey background. That won’t do! So I found out where the colour was set and it happened to be that it wasn’t in an easy to change box or scroller wheel but in the actual computer language in the background.

Fascinating! I think there might have to be a later post about the mathematical values of colour. I just had quite an intriguing little lesson there! How wonderful!

For the record, in this particular type of code, #000000 is black, and #FFFFFF is white! Learning is the best thing!

Christine Sîan, 11th January 2019.

I was an odd child apparently. I say apparently, I think I was quite; I simply thought differently to other children, got more involved in the things that I focused on than other children did. Consequences are usually a learning curve for most small people, but for some reason, cause and effect never really caught on with me. I was never deliberately badly behaved, I just, well, didn’t have the same thought processes that others did.
My favourite thing in the world when I was young were wax crayons, they were an all round, wonderful experience. They came in a neat little, yellow box with a small cut out window in which you could see a selection of the colours on offer; but not only could you see them, you could touch them and roll your finger across the bright, papered cylinders.
Once you opened the flap, you would see the slightly flattened points of the tips, all in neat rows like a battalion of soldiers; and underneath the lid, where the tips had pressed the top of the box, were coloured dots, a rainbow of freckles.

After running my finger across the front of the the box and along the lid, the next port of call was to always bring the box up to my nose. It’s a particularly distinctive smell, slightly sweet, and well, waxy. A scent that to this day, still makes my childish heart happy.

All of my favourite types of art were made with crayons back then; the pictures where you would draw fish under the sea and paint over it all in blue watercolours and the fish would resist the paint and still be vibrant marks, swimming under the water; or the pictures where you’d cover the whole paper with colour and then colour over all that with black, just so you could scratch the top layer off in places and create a night sky with luminous stars or fireworks.

However, my absolute joy, the art I loved to create the best, was wax-crayon radiator art.
It only worked when the heating was on of course! I would sit, cross legged and begin the painstaking, yet cathartic process of peeling the paper shell off the crayons that I wanted to use, creating a small pile of confetti within my lap. Once finished and I had a line of shiny, naked sticks, I would carefully select each one from its place in the row and then, touch the tip of the crayon to the radiator. The colours would glide on! None of this scribbling lark that was so necessary on normal paper! And the smell! The smell was divine! The usual sweet smell when warmed would fill the room and with it, my nostrils and I would sit almost ecstatic with sensory bliss.

Once there were a few colours on there, they would drip and meld together, creating brilliant glossy blobs that would run down the channels of the radiator like vivid raindrops ambling down a window pane on a stormy day.

The most delightful part, if it would get to that stage before my step mother found me, was when the radiator had cooled and the glutinous wax had solidified into shiny beads and trails; I then had the glorious experience of picking it ALL off again. How utterly sublime!

(And if she did find me? Well, she never did understand. Strangely.)

Christine Sîan, 9th January 2019