“She remembered who she was, and
the game changed.”
Lalah Deliah
So, I began putting together this blog post, the graphics for it, and the reel for my social media accounts that will be added to the end of this piece, and I found myself feeling somewhat comforted and reassured when I realised that there have been some really really amazing moments this past year. In all honesty, my mental health has been in tatters a few times in 2023 (especially recently) so I was pleasantly surprised to find that despite how it feels, actually, that hasn’t been ALL that this year has really been about! So, I feel a lot more eager and excited to get into this blog post which – due to the popularity of it – is actually going to be very similar to the 2022/2023 piece (which you can read here) in terms of it having very little order and I’ve even picked out some of the headings to write about again as well as adding some brand-new bits…
THINKING ABOUT I’M NOT
DISORDERED’S DESIGN & AESTHETIC
Last year, I actually
changed the entirety of the blog including the logo, colour scheme, layout, and
general aesthetic. Having done so, and since it was such a popular move, I obviously
and hopefully understandably, found myself thinking about doing the same again
for 2024, but for two big reasons I decided not to:
1.
I’m still really in love with the current appearance of I’m NOT
Disordered and sometimes, in blogging, you have to weigh up pleasing yourself
against your readers. So, whilst I know some readers might be excited to see a
change, I feel more passionate and content leaving it alone – for now, at
least!
2.
These past few months of creating Blogmas Unboxed and finishing up
and publishing my new book; You’re NOT Disordered (which you can buy here) have been
incredibly hard work and demanded a ton of effort, dedication, and time that
means I don’t have a whole lot of energy left to then start editing and
re-designing everything!
MY FAVOURITE SONGS OF 2023
REFLECTING ON MY LARGEST PROJECT
OF 2023 – YOU’RE NOT DISORDERD: THE ULTIMATE WELLBEING GUIDE FOR BLOGGERS
At some point
in 2022, I searched Amazon and then the rest of the internet for some sort of book
focused on mental health specifically in relation to blogging. I’m a huge
advocate for talking about and publicising my belief that so many people view
bloggers and online influencers as having a somewhat of an ‘easy’ and ‘perfect’
– or at the very least ‘ideal’ – life, which is filled with free holidays and
complimentary beauty products! And actually, this isn’t the full truth because
yes, those benefits to having a large number of followers can occur, but
there’s also so much hardship that can go on behind-the-scenes. So, with the goal
in my head of illustrating the difficulties bloggers can face, added to the
realisation that if I was searching for a helpful book and failing to find one,
others might be too; I began working on You’re NOT Disordered (YND).
Having
started to create the Guide in 2022, I actually originally set the publication
date to be April 20th, 2023 – the sixteenth year since the abuse I
experienced physically ended. In February 2023 however, I had a psychotic
episode that saw me be sectioned under the 1983 Mental Health Act (I’ll talk
more about the admission later in this post) and after spending a few days in
the psychiatric hospital, I realised that it was going to be incredibly
challenging for me to stick to that deadline and I recognised that trying to
force myself to still make it and getting stressed and overwhelmed would only
serve to worsen my mental health – and can it really getting any worse than
being sectioned?! So, I published a blog post (which you can read here) just a day
before being discharged explaining my absence and giving the new publication
date of November 20th 2023 – the seventeenth year since the abuse started
and so, a date that I really liked the idea of changing it to signify and stand
for a moment that is so positive.
When I first
started blogging in 2013, I had no experience in communications and marketing
and so I therefore had no real knowledge or appreciation of the industry and
with me not having huge expectations for I’m NOT Disordered, I didn’t really
see why it would be necessary – or even become necessary – to learn anything
about these topics either. So, as the reader count was rising, and I began
taking things much more seriously and developing a larger standard in terms of
the popularity and influence of my content, I found myself wanting – and
needing – to learn more about the wider field of communications and marketing. I
very quickly found that the knowledge I gained in doing this was incredibly
helpful for my blog, its content, and audience reach/size and one area of
content where I found this particularly the case, was in posts concerning
events. To be more exact, I learnt the pros of creating a hashtag to refer to
an event on social media content and I found that publishing posts in the week
or days leading up to the event – something I refer to on I’m NOT Disordered as
‘pre-event promo’ – created a really useful hype that resulted in a higher
chance of engagement and following when it came to content either during or
shortly after the actual event. I harnessed this lesson/experience and so as
not to lose hype around the book after having announced pushing the publication
date back, I decided to announce YND’s title in March (you can read that post here).
As the year
progressed, I found myself starting to panic more and more at the thought that
the book wasn’t going to be finished in time and I felt that since I’d already
changed the publication date once, it wouldn’t look good to do it again. At the
same time though, I recognised that while YND felt like my priority, I didn’t
want my blog to fall short. So, to give me more time to continue my work on the
book rather than write a blog post, I asked the one person I trust most to help
me to provide some really good content, the Author of YND’s Foreword – Martin
Baker of www.gumonmyshoe.com and Author
of a few books of his own (linked on his blog) – to write a guest piece (which
you can read here). The fact Martin’s
guest posts have proven to be popular amongst I’m NOT Disordered’s readers,
meant that I actually asked him to write another piece of content. This one was
all about his experiences in writing the Foreword for YND and I published it later
in the year to mark the one week countdown to the publication date; and you can
read that one here. I actually
really enjoyed reading it too because I think that when you ask someone to do
something for you, an almost natural concern is whether they really want to do
it or if they might have felt pressured or obligated in some way to say yes. Then,
I – and probably others asking something of someone – worried whether he was
even enjoying it! This post of his reassured me and actually really alleviated
these concerns, plus it was a comfort to know that he was as happy with his
input as I was.
Something
really ironic that happened in the process of creating You’re NOT Disordered,
was with the book’s cover. So, in June – after working on it for a number of
months until I felt fairly confident that it was pretty much just what I wanted
from it – I decided to reveal the final front cover design in a post that was
published in collaboration with a popular Etsy store; Dinky Designs (you can
read the post and find all the store’s links here) who had
kindly printed a foam board of the cover for me – which is actually pictured in
the post too! One part of the cover design which had been a fairly easy
decision process (if you could even refer to it as making a decision!) was that
of the colour scheme because I knew immediately that I wanted to maintain the
shades of blue – particularly the navy – in it. I also knew the general
aesthetic I wanted of it in terms of the background detail and style.
So, here's
the irony: it was so simple to make the decisions on the design of YND’s front
cover and that made the entire process so much quicker than it maybe should (at
least by general standards of Authors going through this stage or aspect of
creating a new book) have been, yet when it came to the final part of uploading
the manuscript and cover to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) it was a whole
different story! It was, in fact, the complete opposite! The cover – which I’d
created on Canva using their
custom size feature to exact the design to the size I planned the book to be –
turned out to be the wrong DPI (Dots Per Inch) which basically meant that there
wasn’t enough detail or quality to it for KDP to accept and approve it. I
didn’t know that at the time though! I mean, I’ve worked formally in the
communications and marketing industry for a number of years – mostly in roles with
St Oswald’s Hospice – and yet I had never heard of the term! And so – with my
determination to still use the cover and not have to completely change it – the
research began; and I found myself pretty much knee-deep in information and my
head was swimming with abbreviations, various website subscriptions, and
measurements!
Something
which I’ve definitely learnt about myself over the years of my mental health
journey and in my blogging career, is that I can be very stubborn and sometimes
this isn’t so great, but most of the time it is because it means I put my
absolute all into something I’m passionate about or convinced of and I don’t
stop until I achieve my goal. However, despite knowing this, due to the sheer
confusion and frustration in the process, I really didn’t think I was going to
make this cover work! Hugely motivating factors though, were the fact I had
revealed the cover on a lengthy blog post I’d spent a lot of time creating, and
I already had some merchandise created featuring the cover for the gift bags
I’d be sharing with my guests at the publication party. So, of course, I
finally sussed out the solution to comply with KDP’s regulations, but also to not
have to change too much with the design and I felt so relieved and completely overwhelmed
with a huge sense of accomplishment!
Obviously
though, those feelings were nothing compared to those I experienced when I
finally finished writing YND but sadly, they were sort of short-lived because I
was now faced with the final massive hurdle that was standing in the way of
publishing the book in time for the publication party which was set for
November 18th. So, when I wrote my first book; Everything Disordered
(which you can buy here) in 2021, I
knew I needed someone to proofread it and fortunately, my boss from my role
with St Oswald’s Hospice agreed to do it. Now that I don’t work there, I was
desperately trying to think of who I could ask to proofread YND for me – I even
looked into hiring a professional but the costs associated with that were just
far too unreasonable. But I still had to ponder it because I knew for a fact
that if I were to do the role, I would likely read the book how I had intended
it to read and therefore I wouldn’t pick up on any missing words or other
errors.
I was talking
about my conundrum in a meeting with the Chief Executive and the Director of
Communications and Corporate Affairs for Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW)and
completely to my surprise, the Director suggested the Communications Team help
me out with it! Of course, I jumped at the offer, and we began discussing a
deadline for the book to be finished being proofread in time for the
publication date… And this, became the hurdle – the difficult recognition that
if I were to proofread it myself, I wouldn’t need to have it completed as soon
as the Communications Team required. Eventually, I ended up submitting over 100
pages to the Team with the decision that I would proofread any additional
pages. However, shortly before my deadline of the proofreading being finished from
the Team, I had completed the entirety of the book and so I sent an email set
as a priority to find out the likelihood that these pages (around 60) could
also be proofread in time. And after a ton of to-and-fro’s the entirety of YND
was proofread literally just in time for me to submit it for approval from KDP
and then have fifteen copies of it delivered to my home so that I could add
them to the publication party gift bags!
Reflecting on
this huge journey with You’re NOT Disordered, as gruelling and emotional as it
was, I’m actually so eternally grateful that it was that way because it meant
that crossing the finishing line was so much more meaningful and felt like such
a huge achievement than I believe it would have been if it had all been plain
sailing!
Finally, I’d like to say thank you to three people:
To my Mum’s
best fried: Thank you so much for coming along to the Publication Party,
there are legitimately no words to describe just how brave I think you are, and
how much I appreciate all that you bring to your friendship with my Mum because
I know it’s full of support, kindness, compassion, and empathy.
To the Chief
Executive of CNTW – James Duncan: I will never stop telling people how much I
respect you and how great I think you are! I’ll never forget when we were in
your car and I asked you if it felt like a huge achievement becoming Chief Executive
and you said “no” and I felt so awkward that I just wanted to open the door and
jump out! Then you added “for me, the achievement when I know we’ve helped
someone.” And in that moment, I couldn’t imagine a better person for your job! I
feel that it really emulates just how passionate, dedicated, and determined you
are to better the Trust and all of its services.
To the Director
of Communication and Corporate Affairs for CNTW – Debbie Henderson: I honestly don’t
even know where to start in thanking you! And not purely due to the act of you
keeping your word in finishing the proofreading of YND on time – even when I
had to hit you with those extra pages! I’m grateful to you because of all that
I feel doing that symbolised. For me, it has felt like you have faith in me and
therefore faith in YND, which means a lot to me when I put so much time and
effort into it. In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve also really seen that you
are seriously in the right job, and I don’t just mean Communications though(!),
I mean working for a mental health organisation. You have always illustrated such
a huge level of support and compassion that I feel really lends itself to your
passion, determination, dedication, and all the talents and skills you have.
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