Welcome

Anyone who stumbles across my blog at this moment in time will no doubt notice a recurring theme, that theme being bipolar disorder, which, unfortunately, is part of my life. Now, I suppose an about page is meant to be the equivalent of a warm welcome, or a firm handshake, maybe even a hug if I like the look of you, and launching into a soliloquy on bipolar when I’ve just met you would be awkward for all parties. Instead, I’ll direct you here, where you can follow my on-going travails with my particularly obstinate life-partner.

Early Days

I grew up on a council estate in West Norwood, which is located in South East London. My block of flats was called Violette Szabo House. Violette Szabo was a particularly awesome woman who you can read about here.

This is the block I grew up in

For a couple of years during my childhood I lived with my grandparents when my mum fell ill. They lived in a small town called Tilbury, a place famous for its port.

This was my grandparents house

Present Day

These days I live in the house below in Croydon, which looks particularly nice in this picture. I live with my mum and grandparents. Now that I’m getting help for my problems and attending a back to work program specifically geared towards those with mental health issues, hopefully in the not too distant future I’ll be in work and renting my own place.

What do I look like?

This is me, in case you were wondering.

 

 

Alternatively, sometimes I’ll get the urge to grow a beard. You can tell me which look you prefer.

What do I do?

Well, my passion is writing. I have a degree in Professional & Creative Writing and I’m currently working on my first novel. Right now I have a short story being published here. I also write scripts, in fact scriptwriting was the first form of creative writing I dedicated myself to. I did this way before I went to university, with the result being that by the time I got to uni it turned out that I’d actually taught myself everything that was ever covered during my time there. I ended up with the highest mark for a piece of work in the first year and a first for my final year project. Seeing as one of my main motivations was to stretch myself in that discipline it was a shame to find that it didn’t exactly transpire that way. But, in saying that, there were a couple of other modules that definitely helped me develop my overall writing skills and inspired me in the direction of writing my first novel, so swings and roundabouts.

Outside of writing, I’m currently working on what avenue I want to go down in terms of a job outside of writing. Something that is going to enable me to earn money whilst I work on my creative projects and help me get moving forward after a good few years struggling with what was an undiagnosed mental illness. There are a few options but I’ll blog about those as and when the path becomes clearer.Suffice to say that, whilst I identify myself as a writer, I also have a great desire to gain experience in many fields and one of the paths I’m looking at is horticulture.

What can you expect from this blog?

At the moment the blog is pretty bipolar heavy, but I do book reviews, film reviews, sometimes I post poetry, other times I just post things that have been on my mind.