To Conquer Yourself is to Know the Way

August has been a stressful time for me. It's also been a big gaping hole in the timeline of this blog so I am striving to fill the gap with a few retrospective entries.

In the September sections, you will notice I have attributed the lack of writing to my charity work, busy schedule and rushing to complete my costume projects. While this is all true, there is another big factor which has weighed in this month, which I feel may benefit some readers, including myself, if it were discussed.

I'm going to talk to you about my mental health.

Oh hello inner demons. Not you again!

As I mentioned in my introductory post, I had, as of January, come off my medication for bipolar depression and anxiety. Eight months on now and I am still completely medication free, and tackling my illness through a combination of exercise, social support, and what can only be described as a strong, ongoing awareness of my own mental state. August has been a bit of a toughie - lots of bad days, not a lot of energy, and an unusual amount of feeling lousy. But I had an epiphany this month whereupon I suddenly realised that I class myself as a recovered depressive - no longer a depressed person, but someone with a history of problems who has those problems well in hand most of the time.

So how did I get here?


Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

Being very honest here, if someone had told me eighteen months ago that I would require neither medication nor counselling in order to get through my daily life, I would have thought the were crazier than me - and that's saying something.

Recovery is not something that happens overnight. You don't suddenly wake up one morning and just decide to get better, and then miraculously do so. Neither is there a miracle cure. The pills may take the edge off but all they can really do is prevent you from hiding in your room, crippled with fear and grief. By numbing the pain just enough they can propel the emotionless husk of your being into the real world for a few hours at a time in the hope that you might be able to do a day's work or buy your groceries or whatever it is you have to do, but that is all.

Don't get me wrong, I think medication has its place in the recovery process, but to medicate the emotion out of a human being and consider them "cured" is not the way to go.

When you're in that deep pit of despair, the light at the top feels like a mile away. To strive towards that as an end goal seems impossible, and you can exhaust yourself just at the mere thought of trying. I used to try to imagine myself as a spritely, energetic "well" person (whatever that even means) who could get out of bed when the alarm went off, get dressed without staring into the mirror in self-loathing for several minutes, eat a healthy breakfast before noon and then go out and work a productive day in a job that would give me money to be there, because I was that amazing as a human being that people actually wanted me around and would pay me to do stuff!

Useful? Me? REALLY? Oh shucks you guys...

I realise now that this was a far off fantasy, and dwelling on the distant dream was blinding me to what I could be achieving.

My goals on my road to recovery have been small. They started with trying to get dressed every day. Leave the house three times a week. Get up when I am awake, go to bed when I am tired. Eat something. It doesn't matter what. Just eat.

My physical fitness was the same (I tie the two in closely as I strongly believe the endorphins released during exercise have replaced the artificial chemicals being pumped into my brain by the medication). I started the C25K in January, and despite being a "running" programme, week 1 and 2 are mostly walking. In October I shall be running a half marathon, but back in January when I was out pounding the pavement for those early sessions, the beeps were 30 seconds apart that that was all I could run.

Start small. Aim for the achievable. And congratulate yourself when you achieve it, because it doesn't matter how small the thing is - YOU DID THE THING. And that's good.

You don't dig yourself out of the pit by climbing to the top in one go. Sometimes you need to just focus on getting yourself up off the floor first.

HALP!!!

And let's make one thing clear - I am still not that spritely energetic "well" human being I saw in my fantasies. I still struggle to get going in the mornings. I still forget to eat breakfast, and so aim to just have a milkshake or a piece of fruit, because that is more achievable. I still have no job, or much of an idea what I want to do, or how I shall go about doing it. And I still have days where my emotions become too much and I just want to sit in my room and cry. But I try to remember the things I HAVE achieved, and the things I CAN do, because I've come a long way.

And strangely enough, those bad days are a pretty good reminder of that.


Bad Days and How To Cope With Them

Everybody has bad days. For most people, a "bad day" is often defined as a day when bad things occur. Big things or small things, it doesn't matter. Your emotional state is a response to these things happening. This is normal.

Sometimes, this emotional state occurs without any external cue whatsoever. I can't vouch for everyone, but I think this happens to most of us at some point. We all have those days where we wake up and we just feel lousy for no reason. We may try to ascribe it to something anatomical - maybe a minor illness, hormonal fluctuations, a bad night's sleep perhaps?

For people with depression, this is a regular if not constant state of mind. We feel upset, afraid, angry, useless, even suicidal for no discernible reason. But because we as human beings like to be able to assign reason, this feeling manifests itself as a very logical, rational response to a world which we see as harsh, cruel, unforgiving, pointless and full of misery. When this frame of mind is ongoing, merely existing is exhausting. There is no light at the end of the tunnel. The world is, and always will be, a terrible place. We cannot change it. We cannot beat it. Why would we want to live in it? How could we not feel this way in such a punishing universe? In the mind of the depressive, we aren't blinded to the beauty of the world by our illness - we are the ones with the vision. We've had the epiphany. The world is awful and we are the ones who know it. Everyone else is kidding themselves. It's hard to describe the joy I used to take in my own misery, but that's the best way I can put it into words. I was happy that I was so unhappy, because being unhappy meant I knew how the world worked.

I have not "lost it" - I'm the only one who knows what's going on around here!

Even now, this crushing feeling of worthlessness and despair still arises at times, often for no real reason. It brings with it all the accompanying problems - lack of energy, poor eating habits, restlessness and lethargy (these are a fantastic combination, you really should try it sometime) and a sense of utter hopelessness so acute it feels like clarity.

I can try and be rational about it when those moments strike, but it's one of the toughest challenges I face on the road to recovery. I can tell myself "this feeling is happening because the serotonin levels in my brain are dropping too quickly, and the neural receptors... blah-de-blah-de-blah..." but it is hard to dismiss thoughts that manifest themselves with such rationality and poignancy. But perhaps the most terrifying thing is the fear that this is a sign of a major relapse - a sign that what I thought was recovery was in fact just a prolonged cycle of hypo-mania and now I'm just cycling back into depression.

One of the hard things about being mentally ill for so long is that you forget what being "well" actually feels like, especially with something like bipolar where feeling "good" is actually a symptom, and you have to keep evaluating yourself and making sure you are experiencing the right kind of "good" and not the hyperactive, over-spending, physically exhausting, self-endangering kind of "good" that generally prompts doctors to start popping open the Valium and shunting you to the top of the waiting list for psych assessments.

But once you can shake that particular fear, the bad days do actually serve a purpose. They act as a gauge for how far I have come, and a reminder of how much of a different person I am now compared to eighteen months ago.

Okay, so I am not the chipper, happy soul I imagined I would be. I am not an indestructible pillar of emotional strength. I am not an uber-productive money-earning go-getting superhuman-type gal.

But I think it's safe to say I can now live with the person I am. And that's good.

Annie the Mighty. My role model in terms of self-acceptance. Now I need my own theme song...

A New Goal

Here's some exciting news!

Following the success of my Great Midlands Fun Run, I decided I needed a new fitness goal in my life. With this in mind, I have officially entered the Birmingham Half Marathon in just under 2 months time. Training begins tomorrow,

This is only a short step up from the 8.5 miles I did for the fun run, but still quite an achievement for me as I have only really been running since January when I started this whole project.

I ran the Fun Run in aid of Alzheimers Research UK, and the page for donations has just begun to close down. I am thrilled to announce that my final plug on Facebook yielded some more donations from very generous friends. This, combined with the cash donations from friends and neighbours which I finally banked and logged (with added Gift Aid) pushed the total up to £180 plus £42.50 in Gift Aid. I'm pretty thrilled with that, and will be setting up another donations page soon seeking sponsors for the Birmingham Half!

The half marathon itself is on October 19th, which sadly means I will miss the winter Comic Con. Nonetheless this will be a major achievement for me and I am looking forward to the challenge!

Battle on Xenites. xxx

The Crossover Set Photoshoot

Following on from Saturday's XenaFest, my photographer CT and I ventured out into the wilderness of my local nature reserve to snap some shots of the crossover set. It was a challenging shoot, with the summer sun high in the sky (and right in my eyes) and in 25 degree heat (which for pasty British people like us is practically unbearable).

However, as CT is now working full time, finding the time to get together to do shoots is tough, so with the light barely passable and the heat bearing down upon us, off we went!

Click for more photos! Let Gab lead the way!

It was a tough shoot, with difficult light and awkward scenery. We had a selection of photos we were trying to replicate, and by the time CT was done filtering out the better ones we found that some hadn't worked and there were really only a handful. We will probably redo the shoot again when we have more time.

Costume wise I am still not quite happy with the colours of the top and skirt which, as you can see, do not quite seem to match yet. I may see if I can maybe take the skirt a little darker and redder to match the top - to save having to take the ribbons off the top - but matching up two very different materials that started life in two totally different shades is nigh on impossible.

But my favourite shot from the entire shoot is probably this one, recreated from a publicity shot of Renee from season one, with the light behind her.

I'm looking the wrong way but the light is spot on and it shows up the detail on the top beautifully!

For the rest of the shoot check out my DA page here:

Gabrielle's Gallery

And for CT's shoot report (along with other Xena-related posts, crafts, waffles etc) go here:

Joxer Of All Trades

Do please add us, email us, leave feedback, etc. We'd love to hear from fellow Xenites. Hopefully there will be more photographs soon when we get the chance - and some better light.

Return to XenaFest

People talk about their "first convention" as if there was one massively defining event which they attended and suddenly became a con-goer. For me there were several. The one which I think of as my first con was a 'Buffy' event down in London when I was 17. This was the event where I met several of my convention friends, my first boyfriend (and my second and third boyfriends, actually) and was actually attending without parental supervision.

Before that I had been taken to the SFX weekender in Blackpool, with my dad taking care of me, and several years before that I had gone to Starfury's 'Chariots of War' convention in Heathrow, a 'Xena' convention held in a hotel which I would later come to know, love and get drunk in many years later.

My first convention. One of many.

But shortly prior to 'COW', my 13 year old self had gone, with my Mum and Dad, to a small, local 'Xena' event in a town hall in Coleshill.

This was 'XenaFest'.

I turned up, in my Callisto t-shirt which had been bought specially for the day, and which I am now wearing as I write this almost 17 years later, and spent the day begging my parents for merchandise and watching a selection of 8 episodes from series 4 which had been sent over on video from the States. This was of course back in the day when there were no internet downloads, and the wait between the US airdates and the UK could be up to a year, and that was if you had satellite. We were a terrestrial only household and as such had not even seen series 3 yet. Fortunately some other fans were able to fill me in on the essential back story for the series 4 opening (why is Gabrielle dead, and who is this "Hope" person they keep banging on about?) so I could sit back and enjoy the weirdness that was 'Adventures in the Sin Trade'. I remember revelling in the ridiculousness of 'In Sickness and in Hell' and being awestruck by 'Devi'. And most of all I remember how amazing it was to spend a day with other fans.

It was a wonderful day out for a young Xenite, but as 17 years had passed I had not held out much hope that they would still be going. So imagine my surprise when I learned that I had just missed one back in January!

It felt like a long wait until July, but it gave me time to get my crossover kit, bag and staff completed. Summer XenaFest fell on July 19th, and I turned up nice and early, all on my lonesome, in full costume without knowing a soul.

For a hardened conventioner, I was nervous as hell. I was used to knowing half the attendees, most of the staff, the organiser, the DJ and the venue like the back of my hand, but I was shaking with nerves at the prospect of walking into an unknown building full of unknown people. What if I was in the wrong place? What if I was the only one in costume? What if everyone else knew each other and nobody spoke to me?

But it has to be said that the Xena crowd were an immensely welcoming bunch and before long I was sat at a table being given glasses of wine and chocolates and trying to work out complex anagrams of Xena quotes for the quiz. (Incidentally, I am very aware that I owe some of my fellow quiz team members drinks, so do please come and collect at the next one as I will be bringing a small vineyard with me in order to make up by debt!) It was a wonderfully jovial and laid back afternoon, and as the evening drew on I was introduced to Anna and Andy and their teenage son, who had all come along dressed as Xena, Ares and Solan. Anna also had large quantities of wine with her, and was so delighted to have acquired a Gabrielle all of her own that I was presented with yet more alcohol.

Take me with you! Teach me everything you know!

As well as being more than a little tipsy, the vino had clearly lubricated my wallet and so by the time the charity auction came about I was more than willing to donate £45 for a stack of autographs. It was all for a good cause though, and it'll save me some pennies come convention season!

It was a truly wonderful experience, and I cannot say enough of a thank-you to the organisers and the fans who have kept the event going for so many years, and who made it such a welcoming event to attend. I'm counting down until the next one!

In The Bag!

So while Captain Transvestite was gamely stitching my ribbons, I focussed my attentions on accessories.

One of the problems with cosplaying is having somewhere to store your wallet/keys/phone etc. If your costume has no pockets you are often left lugging a bag around with you which does not match your costume one little bit. You find yourself constantly rushing to put your bag down out of shot for photographs. Fortunately, Gabrielle shall not have this problem!

The bag appears in several episodes throughout a few seasons, and looks to be made of brown suede with braided leather strap and trimmings, dark brown leather thonging around the edges, and wooden beads. I ordered some scraps of suede for £3, and an entire sofa's worth of scrap leather - seriously, somebody had a sofa reupholstered and stuck all the leather from the old covers on eBay so I now have enough tan leather to make everything in the world!! - and a bit of thonging and some beads and I was ready to go!

The basic shape was easy enough but because my suede was all small pieces I had to make each side out of three bits. Fortunately the front has the fur flap and two leather braids on it, so I put the seams where the braids would be so they could be covered up.

The fur piece looks like it should be a flap to go over the top of the bag to close it, but is in fact just a decorative piece on the front panel.

I then punched holes all around the outside at 1" intervals and laced dark brown 2mm leather thonging around that, which was fiddly and time consuming but looked nice! Thonging gives the illusion that the bag was constructed without the aid of machinery and is in fact only held together by the thin leather twine around the edge.

The tan leather was cut into strips, stitched together at one end and braided to form the trim. This was then glued onto the front of the bag. I added 8 thin strips of suede as tassels and covered the join with a 10mm strip of suede with a brass button on.

Next I attached the beads to each of the leather "stitches". I had bought beads in two colours - pale wood and dark wood. It was quite time consuming threading five beads in order onto the cotton, looping the end around the leather, then threading the cotton back through four of the five beads and tying it in a square knot around the end one. I sealed the knot with a tiny dot of superglue as one of the first few I did came undone the first time I moved the bag so I realised I had to make them more secure.

Finally I attached the strap. The strap was braided leather just like the pieces on the front, so I made another two and glued them together for length, covering the join with a bit of leather. The ends are supposed to be on the outside but with a machine that was struggling to get through the sheer amount of leather and suede involved, I had to improvise and tucked them inside.

The overall effect, while inaccurate in places, is pretty awesome. I'm quite pleased with this and now Gabrielle has somewhere to keep her smartphone.

If You Can Get the Staff...

Following my adventure in prop building I have become rather fond of the simple but effective process of making the Gabwhacker and decided that my new series 1 costume deserved a series 1 specific staff.

A fellow blogger, author of Xena Prop Treasures, had sent me some reference photos of Gabrielle's first standard issue fighting staff (no not the Amazon one with the bird on it, although I may do that one when/if I make the Amazon Princess costume).

The series 1 staff differs slightly in colour and materials. The wood, twine and leather are darker and the middle section with the overlapping spiral whipping appears to be a mottled bronze colour with a metallic shine. In terms of construction this middle section is also shorter, with longer grips, and the leather sections are in between the two, as opposed to at the ends.

I wanted this staff to be suitable for use and so rather than choosing the dimension to match the one on screen, I veered towards a thinner wooden dowel which would move faster and be easier to handle. And I happened to already have one of these - my ORIGINAL Gabrielle staff which I made when I was 13.

I had often planned to recycle this as scroll materials so it would eventually see use as a Gabby prop, but this seemed more fitting. I stripped away the old wrappings and started work on it again.

The staff is already painted a darker brown than my newer one, so I left the colour alone and applied new trimmings. I started in the middle with the fabric, then added the twine. In the interests of making the staff easier to use for fighting and display, I deviated from the original and centered the twine grips at distances of 1/3 along the length of the staff. These are the points where one is supposed to grip a staff, so having the twine in the right place to grip will give my a sensory indication of whether I am holding the staff correctly.

To keep the middle section shorter, I made the grips 11" long and the centre section 8". I left a 1" gap between each section to be covered with a 2" strip of black leather to hide the gap. The middle section still looks too long, but this is partly down to the narrower dimensions of the wood and the fact that I wanted to keep the grips in a suitable grippy-place.

I then painted the twine a darker brown, matching the on-screen colour as best I could and giving it a grimy, weathered look. I also painted the centre section, using a combination of black and cream paint in dry brush strokes, then over spraying it with gold spray paint to soften the strokes and give in that metallic sheen.

The fur section on the end was wrapped and secured with superglue, and discoloured a little with weathering spray like last time I then added the 2" strips of leather either side of the fur, and over the gaps between the wraps.

So I now had a staff and a costume ready to go!

Check out the photoshoot for better pics of both!

Crossover Construction

My ribbon arrived courtesy of Captain Transvestite's brother, who happened to be in town, on Wednesday. I cannot express enough how delighted I am with the embroidery! The attention to detail is amazing. Incidentally, CT now has a specifically Xena-related Tumblr account entitled 'Joxer Of All Trades' and has blogged about both the ribbon embroidery and the subsequent photoshoot of the outfit, so go check them out!

Wednesday was dedicated entirely to the production of the top - or rather the completion thereof as the basic shape had already been worked out over the week or so prior. Working without a pattern I had to come up with the shape myself. I know absolutely nothing about pattern drafting and as such worked on a basis of trial and error. I created a "toile", which is essentially a mock up of the garment out of cheap fabric upon which you can try out different positions of seams, edges, etc. I ended up making about four variants of the design out of old curtains before I found a pattern that worked. Here you can see my curtain fabric mockup with two different shapes of shoulder seam - one straight and one curved.

How very 'Sound of Music' of me.

With a basic design decided upon, I made myself a proper pattern out of newspaper, much like the did in the good old days, and finally felt confident enough to cut into the real fabric!

This was a little nerve wracking as this material has taken three lots of dye in order to get anywhere close to the right colour - and I'm still not entirely convinced by it. I may yet wind up taking all the trim off again and dipping it in some dark brown to take the brightness out.

With the basic top cut and sewn, it then hung on the wardrobe for a week or so while I waited for the ribbons to arrive. And of course they finally did and after I had stopped squealing over them and how perfect they were, I had to set about embellishing my very basic top.

As I discussed in my earlier post, the three stripes around the neckline consist of the two embroidered ribbons and a distressed blue cotton in between. I had found a pre-distressed blue cotton going cheap in my local fabric store, and thought this was pretty much perfect for the look I was aiming for.

It's actually also a possible alternative for the peasant dress jacket, when I come to give that another go, but we shall see.

I cut a curved strip, following the neckline shape as best I could, and then sewed it onto the top in one continuous piece. From what I could see there are no seams along the striped section at all so I was trying to remain true to that design. I also attached a wider strip of blue around the bottom, with the rough edge on display on the outside. These blue strips are long enough to tie into a double knot at the back to fasten the top. I also added a second layer over the top of the first so as to layer up and make it a little messy, fitting the rough and distressed look of the garment.

Next I added the ribbons - the brown machine-embroidered one around the neck and the empire line, and the navy hand-embroidered one also around the neck a little further in, allowing a gap of about an inch and a half for the blue cotton to show through.

Completed top, with trim. Skirt beneath.

The overall scale and look seemed pretty bang on!

I also remembered, just as I thought I was finished, that the sleeves also have a stripe around them, which looks like a slightly paler brown edged with the same navy frayed ribbon. So I used a scrap of the skirt fabric backed with a leftover strip of frayed denim and attached those to the edges of the sleeves.

All embellishments attached, Gab Costume the Second was ready to go!