It has been a while since I have posted a blog and commented on Moodscope. My creativity has taken a hit – only writing poems occasionally and my one and only painting has not been finished. I've started to learn crochet but the main concentration has been on keeping myself together mentally but creativity was the very saviour when I was low.

Right now, I have information overload and have had it for some time as I am sure many of us have. My husband likes to have the news on but if I lived on my own, I would probably be in a bubble, only occasionally surfacing, my head emerging out to see if I would get shot down or wounded somehow.

I was recently wounded by words and actually cried. After a very intense period doing three funerals in a week plus doing my caring role and literally weeks before Christmas (a time I find hard anyway) I received for the first time some feedback which I felt was very unfair. I'd worked really hard on a particular service, and had sleepless nights and even had to check something at 9pm the night before and the client had approved what I had sent only to then say everything was too long after the event, despite me including everything she wanted. I felt absolutely burnt out. I do two jobs that are so different and it is hard to juggle everything but I know I am very lucky as a key worker to be able to do both. So you get that sort of guilt piling up as well in the background. Doing two diametrically different roles both requiring great mental energy and resource which after the events of completely holding it together, I fell apart temporarily.

I'm like a sponge so I soak up lots of things, including many things from the past which are still present in my sponge (if that makes sense) and with the information overload, when you are busy and have several names to juggle in your head and you cannot get things wrong, it puts immense pressure on inside. Add to that other elements of myself (checking and constantly checking stuff which I have to keep in check!) and panicking that you have missed stuff because in taking a service, it is literally one time you cannot get things wrong. But you realise that is part and parcel of the role. But I find myself questioning at times how can I still do this being so emotional a person, but yet strangely able to hold things together at the crucial time. It is the small stupid pointless things that break me, not the important and larger things to deal with in life.

So I stepped back. From Moodscope. From “friends” that I realise were only acquaintances and who are only interested in the gossip about me and did not invite me to things because “we don't know when you are at work”. And strangely enough, during this really odd time, somehow I learnt the important stuff... who has your back, when you need to cut down your hours (doing so as of next week in the caring role), what keeps you together, when you can push yourself a little more and when you just squeeze the sponge out because you will go crazy otherwise and I'm more than half way there.

Liz

A Moodscope member.