I’m back!

Hi everyone! I’m very sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I’ve been extremely busy and also have not had any internet for a while and then no stable internet until now! (I’ve moved house, so internet issues are understandable right?)

So, I have been feeling generally good lately but life really is trying to test me at the moment. I’m having a really tough month. So firstly, at the very end of last month, I was in a car accident (don’t worry nothing too serious I’m okay, just got a little bit of whiplash/muscle pain) – it has been really stressful dealing with this and trying to get courtesy cars sorted and fighting the liability on it as I wasn’t to blame etc… it’s been a very hard few weeks with that. Thankfully they are going to repair my car (it was a huge repair bill, I was worried it would be wrote off!) and I should get it back in a couple of weeks.

I had a trip planned to go to the Harry Potter Studios with my mam, but unfortunately the night before we were meant to go my mam had a really nasty fall, she hit the ground face first and has taken a chunk out of her nose and a big gash in her head. We had to call an ambulance and get her rushed to the hospital, after they had cleaned her wounds and checked a few things (she had a CT scan!) she was then transferred to another hospital to see a plastic surgeon – she may loose a little part of her nose unfortunately. We waited 45 minutes before the ambulance arrived and before they got to us she actually lost consciousness, as you can imagine – this was really scary. She is on the mend now, healing but very very sore!

My mam insisted I go on the trip anyway as our hotel and tickets were non-refundable. So, Richard and I set off the next day (a bit later than planned as we slept in, we didn’t get home til about 4am the night before!) and it took us about 5 hours to get to the hotel, with a break for food. We had a lovely evening, went out for tea and when we getting ready to go to sleep I checked the tickets. They had been booked for the day before! What a nightmare! 😦 It was too late to call anyone so I had to wait until the next morning to ask if anyone could help us. I was told there was nothing they could do and that the place was fully booked so I couldn’t even buy a new ticket for the day! He did mention to call back in case there was a cancellation. So we did, the next lady was way more helpful, although there were no cancellations she did exchange my tickers into gift tickets so we can rearrange for another day.

There were a few things we could have done with out day instead, there was a zoo nearby etc… but we were both feeling pretty fed up and disappointed – I was exhausted physically and mentally, so we just drove the 4 – 5 hour journey home, we got back about 3:30pm yesterday.

I was feeling pretty down about everything, just when I thought – “right things have to go well now, I’ve had so many major bad things happening that something good has to happen, or they have to stop now right?” My mam had this fall! I couldn’t help but feel pretty negative and usually I’m normally pretty good at picking out the goods things and feeling positive. Like now I know that it could have been worse, it is pretty bad but worse things could have happened.

At least I still get to Harry Potter studios with my mam when she is feeling better, we are going to go with my sister too which will be great!

Anyway, I’m feeling much better now, I streamed this morning (yes on a Saturday!) It was a test stream as our internet provider said they had fixed the issues we’ve been having. It was really fun, I thought I’d just be streaming about 10 minutes just to check things over and make sure everything was running smoothly. I ended up streaming for about an hour and a half. I have missed streaming so much and probably needed it more than ever this month! So, glad to be back – it always cheers me up FIND MY TWITCH CHANNEL HERE!

I felt I needed to vent a bit, and I have! I’ll check in again soon!

Peace out!

~ Kashi ❤

 

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Tea!

Happy Friday everyone, I hope you are having a wonderful day. Yes, the weekend is almost here. I’ve had an extremely crappy week at work and I’m so grateful for weekend right now! So it’s Friday, late morning and actually today is going much smoother then any other day this week, I’m having quite a nice day actually. So I decided I was going to have a cup of tea.

Then I realised that you guys NEED to know just how good peppermint and nettle tea is!

Wow.

I don’t sound old AT all… or English… at all.

Anyway, it’s just brilliant! I love it, I went through a phase of drinking ridiculous amounts of it at work and I just remembered I had some left in the very back and bottom of my work draw (you know which bit I mean, where things get forgotten about or accidentally fall through the portal to Narnia… can you imagine if there was actually a portal to Narnia in everyone’s work draws at the very back. A random location in Narnia in the woods just has this huge pile of tatty stationary and half empty boxes of tea… haha!)

 

I only recently discovered in the last couple of years that I actually like tea, I tried herbal tea and now I have a whole cupboard full of all different teas! I’m not the biggest fan of fruit flavoured teas, they’re okay but my favourite teas are definitely peppermint and peppermint and nettle!

 

I recently went to a friends house where they made me a cup of regular tea. Turns out I like that too! I asked for it without milk as that’s how I have my herbal tea. Herbal tea with milk!? It just sounds so wrong. Anyway, I’ve recently tried it with milk and it was good! What’s happening – am I getting old, is tea drinking for old people?

 

I can’t believe I’ve just rambled on about tea, I clearly am getting old!

Anyway – do you drink tea? What is your favourite?

 

Peace out

~Kashi

A Week In The Life Of Kashi

Hello!

I don’t think I’ve had the chance to just say that here. I jumped straight into a serious blog post, which had a slightly negative theme! It wasn’t meant to be all doom and gloom, it was just something I wanted to get off my chest. Please don’t get the impression that I’m sad or depressed – I’m actually a pretty cheery, chirpy and hyper! (I’m a little bit crazy too).

Look my first ever GIF, woohoo!

Anyway, I thought it would be a nice idea to for you to get to know me a little bit better as this is only my second blog post – you may not know me at all. So, I have decided to quickly go through my typical week.

Right, are you ready!? Brace yourselves!

Monday
I go to work, usually running out of the door after becoming a bit too used to sleeping in over the weekend! I start at 9am and finish at 5.30pm (boo full time hours). I get a hour for my lunch break every day at 12:30pm – 1:30pm and every day I head over to my Dad’s shop as it’s nearby and have lunch with him and/or his partner – whoever happens to be in (which is quite nice). After work I drive home and pretty much straight away get changed for karate as its on 6:30pm – 8pm. Then I live-stream from 8:30pm onwards! (normally finishing at 10:30pm but sometimes a bit longer if I’m really feeling it). After, I usually chill, watch videos and occasionally record videos for my youtube channel – which is usually what I do with my spare time on week-nights.

Tuesday
Work!? Again!? On Tuesdays I start at 8:30am and finish at 5pm, so that I can get to my karate class which starts a little bit earlier at 6pm until 8pm. I normally head over to my mams house with my dad to walk the dogs (two black Labradors – Jet and Luke) and then head home to get in around 9pm-ish.

Wednesday

Pretty much the same as a Monday. Work 9am – 5:30pm. Karate 6:30pm – 8:00pm Live-stream 8:30pm onwards. Except – woohoo It’s hump day! Not that long until Friday! Even better it’s #SkyrimWednesday (I live-stream Skyrim on Wednesdays).

Thursday
Thursday is a lot like Tuesday except I have the added excitement that it is Friday-eve!
Work 8:30am – 5:00pm. Karate 6:00pm – 8:00pm. Then off to walk the dogs. I normally stay up a little bit later on a Thursday, as it is Friday-eve after all (totally justifiable).

Friday
Woohoo! We made it to Friday 😀 Yay! Unfortunately, I have to make it through work first 9:00am – 5:30pm and then Karate 6:30pm – 8:00pm (it’s an advanced class on a Friday, so is normally quite good). Then I live-stream  8:30pm onwards, woohoo Friday Stream!

Saturday and Sunday
This differs from week to week. Occasionally, I literally do not leave the house and just chill, this doesn’t happen very often as I get really antsy if I’m in the house for too long. Sometimes I drag Richard out to do something, or failing that head out on my own – or arrange to meet up with a friend (usually Kate… she’s awesome, go follow her blog here). Quite often I have training at the weekend where I have to head out on a road trip to get there, some classes I go to take 3 – 4 hours to get there and then back again after! It is worth it though!

 Oss, Sensei.

So what do you guys get up to in a typical week?

Oh! If you want to check out my live-streams – be sure to follow me on my twitch channel.

 

Peace out Much Love ❤

~Kashi

 

 

 

Anxiety

To most of you who know me personally and especially to a lot of you who may follow my live-streams or youtube, you are probably wondering why I am posting a blog post about Anxiety. Perhaps you are thinking that I may be going to talk about some of the psychology behind it (maybe I will a little bit – I don’t know yet).

Before I get on to that, firstly I would like to quickly describe a few of my ‘traits’. I am confident and optimistic (most of the time). I am a karate instructor (and student), teaching children and adults of a varying ability and skill level -meaning I am patient, respectful and approachable. I am friendly, compassionate, dedicated. I have qualities of an extrovert but I’m certainly not a complete extrovert – I’d pick a night in gaming or reading any day over a party or nightclubbing! Most of all, I am a strong person. These characteristics do not describe a person with anxiety, right?

Wrong!

Anyone can experience anxiety, I think everyone probably experiences it at some point during their lives, even if it is just a small amount. Perhaps we have evolved to be anxious. In the ancestral environment it may have been beneficial to have some anxiety, for example if an individual is cautious and worried about being eaten by a predator, they will probably be much less likely to be killed by predators. In the ancestral environment you are much less likely to be killed by predators if you are part of group, if an individual is anxious that they may be excluded from the group then they will take precautions to ensure this does not happen (which would probably include more worrying and anxiety). Both of these examples may lead to the anxious person staying alive and passing on their genes, the latter may explain why a lot of people experience social anxiety in modern times!

[disclaimer, I have not researched this and do not have citations for the above – they are just my wandering thoughts, but it makes sense and I would argue this with evidence if it was a real essay or report with some alternate points of view – but you are not here to read an essay! So let’s move on!]

[by the way, welcome to my blog. This has been here years, I have only just had a little bit of motivation to finally write my first ever post.]

Anyway,  that may give us a little bit of insight into understanding why we experience anxiety.

I experience it a lot. Now, I say a lot, but it is not really bad, it does not take over my life. I know there are people who have anxiety disorders and they really struggle with it. I’m sorry and I hope you guys have found ways to get on with your life and cope and be happy :o) (I’m always here for anyone that needs to vent about anything like this too, just send me a message!)

Here are some examples of my anxiety, I sit and think about conversations I’ve had with people. “Why did you say that?! Now they’re going to think you think BLANK or that you did BLANK” I’ll repeat conversations I’ve had with other people to Richard “…do you think they’ll think I’m BLANK”.

I get anxious about karate, if I ever miss a lesson even though I go 3 to 5 times a week I still feel bad for not being there, I’m on the phone to my dad “Is it okay though, do you need me there” I’ll get off the phone and discuss with Richard how bad I feel for not going! (Poor Richard gets it all) Richard normally ends up getting very frustrated as he cannot see why I get into the state I get about it and nothing he can say can help, no matter how rational he is being. This has improved a little bit recently I’m happy to say!

I have an example from just today of how I get anxious about my work colleagues. It snowed today and the roads around my work were not prepared, I got stuck a couple of times and had some scary skids in my car. I had to phone in and say it was too dangerous to continue, they were fine and said I could take it as a holiday – but all day I could not settle and just enjoy the day off. “What if they think I could have got in? What well they be saying!?” “The snow is almost all gone here, I feel really bad now…”(the police from the region I work advise not to drive unless absolute necessary as it was so dangerous still up there, even though it was okay where I live and I knew this). <— I mean this is silly why do I feel bad about this!?

They’re not just thoughts either, I become quite irrational about all this stuff, I could list more but I don’t think there is any need.

I actually suffer from night terrors which I think are a form of anxiety attack? I’m not sure and haven’t ever researched it (I probably should). This is something I haven’t really told anyone about in detail, as I’m a little bit nervous about doing so. They are the most terrifying thing I experience; I wake up with a start and my actions are not my own, I don’t feel under control – I will get up and usually stand up on the bed or run out of the room shouting “I don’t want to die!” I believe this is what is described as a feeling of impending doom? Now thankfully, since I have moved to the place I am currently living I have only had one, Richard is pretty good at calming me down and dealing with it quickly. Once he gets me back, I feel a bit confused and don’t know why I did it.

Writing this has helped me a bit I think, it makes me consider a rational point of view where I normally would have irrational thinking.

So, in summary; strong, confident, outgoing, extroverted people could be suffering from a lot of anxiety that you don’t know about as it has been masked by these qualities.

Of course, anxiety can be hidden in anyone out-going or not. If someone you care about has some irritating insecurities, please try to be thoughtful and attentive. Ask them about it , you may not realise what is going in in their mind. Or maybe you do, then you should talk about it – vent to someone (and do not feel anxious afterwards about how much you ranted to them) or I don’t know… write a blog post about it?

Anyway, peace out – Much love ❤

~Kashi