Tuesday 5 March 2013

Hectic-ness

The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery but a process of creation.  You are not discovering yourself but creating yourself anew.  Seek therefore not to find out who you are, seek to determine who you want to be.     (Neale Donald Walsch)

 
 
I love quotes.  Always have.  They inspire me.
 
Today I am grateful for a pocket of respite in a week that has been trying.  A moment of calm from my son, almost 24 hours without a shriek.  Though his other tics are still rife, it's the shrieking that is the most debilitating, a noise that drives all capability of thought and anything other than basic functioning, out of the window, it's so draining.  He was asleep by 11pm last night, a vast improvement, meaning we were all feeling a lightness of step this morning.
 
I am still waiting for Camhs to refer me to the consultant.  I was promised a call today that never came, so I rang them.  Out on a home visit, doesn't work Wednesdays and a promise I will be called back on Thursday.  How difficult can it be just to make an appointment?  Just write my name in the diary next to a date.  That's all I want.  Five weeks ago, the diary was already fully booked until April, heavens only knows the waiting time now. 
 
Just hold on.
 
I am forever searching for solutions to this.  I read last year that many of the symptoms of Tourettes are caused by allergies, so I went on a bit of a crusade, keeping a food diary, eliminating certain food groups...I just couldn't find a pattern, so I kind of gave up on that one.  However, Milo's worst night this week (violent convulsions and ear-splitting shrieking, sniffing, grunting, constantly) was after he had had hot chocolate before going to bed.  Out of desperation, I banned all treats from his diet over the weekend, filled up the 'goodie drawer' with nuts, replaced tea and biscuits with tea and hot cross buns, and made sure his blood-sugar levels were kept charged with carbohydrates.  He was markedly calmer on Sunday, and Monday was shriek-free.  Tourettes tics have a tendency to wax and wane in severity, sometimes changing completely in character overnight, so this repite may just be a coincidence (though we haven't had a 'wane' now since the middle of November).  I also discovered that Milo takes his dinner money and buys chocolate from the vending machine at school instead of something substantial from the canteen.  Seriously schools, why?  Why spend a fortune promoting healthy eating and then install a vending machine in the school?  Teenagers aren't responsible enough to make the right food choices.  Good grief.  I made Milo promise to buy a baguette, and he did on Monday (finished it in the car on the way home!) - and Monday was shriek-free!  How wonderful if the sugar thing turns out to be a contributing factor.  I shall pursue it.
 
Work has been hectic too.  More teaching schemes to be introduced, more paperwork to complete, less and less time teaching the kids.  I've spent less than half an hour with the children in my class in 2 days, instead having to prepare resources and do planning for a new maths scheme which involves half an hour of extra maths tuition and an hour of unnecessary preparation and endless record keeping for each lesson.  Bah.
 
 I got to thinking about the quote in this post.  I do want to create a new life for myself, yes, that's true, but I also want to re-discover the spirit of the person I was in my twenties, wracked with insecurity, but bold and fearless in my endeavours, driven, optimistic, an achiever of anything I set out to be.  I was selfish and self-absorbed then, not particularly mindful of people's feelings, leaving a trail of devastation behind me in my search for affection and security.  Those parts of me I've left behind, I've learnt a lot and grown up since then.  The free-spiritedness, the bold, the fearless, the driven and the optimistic twenties me, I want to rediscover, and add to the grown-up me who is aware, compassionate, loyal and inspired, albeit lacking an enormous amount of confidence, and weighed down by financial restrictions and fear.
 
So, now comes the real work.  First I have to give a voice to the vision of the life I want to create for myself, being specific about the details.  Then I have to dissect every area of my current life, identify what is and what isn't in line with my vision, and then I have to start making real plans to change things.  I have to make real goals and take baby steps towards them always moving forward, always holding my vision clear, and commit, commit, commit to making this happen, until one day I wake up and find myself right there, in the middle of my dream.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


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