I was thinking of creating a blog today, and then I remembered I had one.

I have not been here in 5 years? That seems a bit crazy.

I've said it before. I have a hard time being public, but I would like to get over that. Unfortunately, I also seem to have a not-so-great memory.

For the past few years, I have mostly been making junk journals. More recently, I began making low content books on Amazon and have sold a few. I am also selling vintage jewelry on Poshmark, and I have an Etsy shop with a few graphic tee shirts. I plan to try to sell some of my handmade journals there as well as other things soon.

There seems to be a big learning curve to everything I want to do.. and my brain wants me to work slower!  I like to believe it's because I want to do too much and not that I just have lost my ability to think well.

I retired from my job a few years ago after an assault by a patient. The assault itself was not terrible, just scary how it happened so fast and why it happened. I had no broken bones, and my cuts were minor. I mainly had aches and pains that did not really kick in for a day. I've been hit before. My fingers, hands, and arms were twisted, and that seemed to trigger arthritis. It's pretty painful and makes me not want to do several things. I also lost my passion for drawing and painting, and I really want that back.  I feel like the most damage may have been to my mind. I had flashbacks of that incident ending differently and other incidents where I was hit or almost attacked haunting me. I had lots of nightmares and hallucinations. And I had crazy, crazy anger! I would go off on people, entirely out of control, much like the patient who attacked me was angry at his Treatment team leader. Unfortunately, I took the heat for him.  

One of the oddest symptoms that still lives on is my memory issues. I have a ridiculous blockage of the names of my patients and coworkers other than maybe 5 or 6 people. It's crazy! I could picture some faces. People I worked with for years and had seen just a week or two earlier are just a blur if I can remember them at all.  I can not recall their names. The woman I shared my office with, her name and face come and go. The nice nurse? A complete mystery. The doctors..no idea who they were. The treatment team I worked with had about 8 or 10 people I met with regularly. To this day, I still can't remember most of the people on the team or the patients I worked with. I was checked out for several things, but nothing explains it other than PTSD.

I do remember two people. One who took the time to tell people that I was faking my injury to go to college. I already have a master's, and I don't need to fake an injury to get another degree. And my supervisor, who I once considered a friend who made my life hell. She seemed to think of me as her personal artist. I was there to "decorate" for her and make gifts (for her) to give to others. Nothing I could do pleased her, and she complained to me about me constantly. She also insisted that I, along with a few other people, eat things.. sugary cakes, candy, donuts at our treatment team meetings, or we would not be permitted to speak. Yes, that is insane, and it is abusive. It's another story, but I feel I needed to just mention it now. She did a lot worse than that; I will have to talk about it sometime.

I saw a therapist who diagnosed me with PTSD and a pain disorder. I had a lot of pain. I went to physical therapy, which made it worse. Massage therapy made it much worse. Red light..no good. Acupuncture seemed to help a tiny bit, but.. well, in the end, it made me worse. I had to change therapists when my worker's comp ran out and saw a local guy who would fall asleep about two minutes into our session. I switched to another therapist who was older and sick with cancer. Although she seemed pretty good, she was developing some cognition issues in remembering things. She died shortly after I began seeing her. 

Despite not having a therapist now, I am feeling a little better. I feel more in control. I think I remember a lot more people, but not as many as I should at this point. Being a therapist myself, I had decided not to practice but was encouraged to maintain my credentials, which was hard to do, but I have. Hopefully, I will figure out a way to help people meaningfully soon.

If anybody read this.. wow. I don't think anybody ever looked at my blog. Congratulations. Tell me how you are doing.

This is a link to my Etsy store; feel free to tell me what is wrong with it.. there should be plenty of things to say.

Keggys Creations by KeggysCreations on Etsy