Multiple Sclerosis brings me a New Life Focus

I've decided this blog though is going to be my blog where I can talk about my health condition. You see, nearly a year ago, I had a collapse of sorts and went through a new medical journey to find out what was wrong with me. I have written about this and posted poetry and articles on the internet about it. I also had a lot of help with my Facebook friends who supported and advised me. This helped me considerable.

Knowing I wasn't alone made me feel that I could get through the tests and waiting and then life readjustments that my new medical condition entailed. In February last year (2010) I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). This was a bit of a shock, but mostly it was a relief to find out what was causing the weird things that were happening to me.

The diagnosis has caused some changes, but for the most part my life is still the same. My writing is still one of the major interests in my life, and my life plans are still in place, even though the actioning the plans has shifted slightly and slowed down quite a bit.

Now, I'm almost feeling like things are becoming more under control and I am working out what things are important to me and what things I can let go of.

This blog, poor thing, has been languishing here on the edges of the bloggoshpere. I was so keyed up and eager to reach out to the greater creative world back in January 2009.

I started out posting to this site regularly, writing about the various ways of expressing creativity. I've blogged about writing, art, cooking and various other things. But life did its usual trick of getting in the way, and my posts became rarer and rarer.

I got too excited about this whole blogging thing, and over extended myself. Now I have six Blogspot blogs (plus a few extras that I don't know how to delete). So I try to post to my main Blogspot blogs as often as I can manage to organise myself to do, and the others rarely get any real action. People sometimes accidentally visit, but there's no connection felt between them and me.

So from now on, I will post at least once a week to this blog, writing about MS and its impact on my life. I will also post links to my relevant other pieces of writing. I post my writing mostly to an online site - Triond.com. If my writing is viewed by others, I can earn a little bit of money!

As a person without a proper paid job, earning my own money helps me feel I'm playing my part in life. I don't earn much, but then, I don't need much - I get money from the government and my husband has a full time job.

Writing is the one thing that helps me stay balanced, when my body is going so far out of balance! So that's it. Come and join me here to find out about one person's life with multiple sclerosis.

Ideas can be a Blessing or a Curse

Creative people think a lot, always coming up with new ideas. This can be fantastic, with a new idea to look at constantly - look at it, evaluate it , action it, then onto the next new idea. This is great when it happens.

But those ideas sometimes are anything but great. Some people seem to have a little voice in their head, telling them bad things - 'you're stupid' 'that won't work' 'why bother'.

Do you have one of those voices? If you do, you know how debilitating it can be, having to fight through the voice to get to the creative ideas you also have in your head.

If you have an imagination, as well as one of those voices, you have to find ways to make the voices shut up, so you can get on with the creative things you want to do. I have found gratitude is the thing that helps keep me to stay focussed on the positive things in my life.

Staying in a positive frame of mind helps you more easily to shush up that voice inside your head. It's easier to ignore the voice and soon that voice may just disappear because you're too busy doing things to pay any attention to it.

So, if that voice is bringing you down, start writing your own list - 'I am grateful for ...'.

Or you could do something similar to what I did, soon after I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I wrote a list of Ten Reasons Why Multiple Sclerosis was a good disease for me to get.

Writing this list was a huge boost to me, and the comments and thoughts I've received after I posted it to the world online have been lovely. If you have something that has happened to you, think about it in a different way and write your own Ten reasons why... list.

If you then share your list with others, you'll probably find it to be a positive and therapeutic thing.

Good luck, and please, leave a comment telling us if you're done anything to help make that nasty voice go away.

Finding Happiness

It is good to be able to find happiness in situations whenever you can. Sad things happen often, and if we're not careful, we can get ground down by it.

Today, for instance was - or could have been - a sad day. Today my father Murray West, harness racing trainer, had his funeral. I had decided to think of this as a happy occasion, celebrating his life.

My father had lived a good life, for the most part. He was a good father and a good horse trainer. Most people who've been involved in the South Australian Harness Racing industry would know, or know of my father. He'd trained many good horses.

The latter part of his life was washed with sadness, that began with the death of my oldest brother, Jeff, in 1993. Jeff had driven Dad's horses and the two of them were a formidable combination. I feel that Dad's interest in living lessened after Jeff's death.

Life continued on though. Dad kept training horses, producing winners still, but his heart wasn't really in it. Then Dad's mental health began to wane, and he became more forgetful. Dementia set in.

This continued until Dad had to go and live in a nursing care because it was too hard for my mother to keep looking after him. This went on for over three years, until his health was very bad. He died just over a week ago.

Because I had decided to celebrate Dad's life, I thought about what I would like to read at his funeral service. I had one poem I had written about my dad, but when I re-read it a few days ago, it didn't seem suitable.

So, a couple of days ago, I thought about what I wanted to say, and I wrote a sonnet. It talked about wanting to keep happy memories of my father, as well as touching on the dementia that stole my father from me.

Several people spoke to me after the funeral, saying how much they liked my poem for Dad. This made me happy - Dad liked rhyming poetry and I was happy to be writing a rhyming poem just for Dad.

So, this was my way of finding happiness on this sad day. I'm still feeling sad about Dad, but I'm happy I was able to celebrate the life of a good man.

Finding Places Where Creativity Fits In

In the past few months I['ve been taking on more 'Community' type of things. It's partly because of what I'm studying at the moment, and partly because of my natural inclination.

I like to help people and I like to be happy. Helping people helps me to be happy, so obviously helping people gives me a double dose of happiness. So I've been getting involved in projects where others are helped.

This has introduced me to a broad range of people involved in the Community Service sector. An amazing thing I've found is that lots of these people are incredibly creative people. It might be so for a number of reasons, and it would be interesting to study this idea further.

One reason for this creativity might be because Community Services isn't a highly resourced sector, so workers have to make much from little funding.

Another reason might be that having more creativity leads you to considering life from a bigger range of options, and you have more empathy because of that factor.

I'm sure there are many other reasons, and I'd love to hear what other people think about it.

Please leave comments, I'm interested in taking this idea further - I'd love you to be involved in this with me.

So You Think You're Not Creative?

Can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t paint, can’t write creatively. Does this sound like you?

Do you ever wonder what you can do to express your creativity? There are classes you can go to for these things, but you may think it’s not worth it if you’re not interested in them.

A better idea for discovering your creative self is to explore the things you are interested in. For instance, maybe your passion is gardening. There are many ways to be creative in the garden. Topiary is the art of shaping bushes to look like other things – you could have an English box shrub that looks like
a crown for instance.

Or your passion may be for your beloved car. You clean it, drive it, adore it, show it off to friends and other admirers.

You can explore your creativity with your car. One of the things that excites many, many loving and creative car owners are the various things you can update and upgrade on your car.

There are many places you can go to for these kinds of things. You could trek around the place, or you could do it in the comfort of your own home. You may want to pimp your car by giving it sexier lights such as euro tail lights.

Change the look, make it your own. Make it Your Creative Statement!!!!!

There may be lots of cars the same make as yours, but you can make your car stand out and say – Hey Look at How Creative I Am!