I'm not a particularly personal person when it comes to online stuff, so I've wondered how to go about this update for a while.

If you arent one of my lovely commissioners, who I tend to be in more contact with, you might not have seen much activity or updates on my schedule. The process for commissions has sadly been a bit slower because of what's been going on.

(If this is too much text and TL;DR, please just read the bolded paragraphs as those are very related to the work I do here)
Essentially there are 3 things going on:

Firstly, in the long term, I'm in the process of achieving government benefits (related to point 2 & 3),this is a long process and its suddenly amped up. I will likely be going to the tribunal for this, which is taking a lot of my time, as I need to attend a lot of doctors and other meetings.
Currently, in the UK due to the tory government's changes and Brexit, many people like me, and people with serious illnesses are being rejected. 3/4 people who apply get rejected, and 97% of those who do get rejected and go to the tribunal will be accepted. The government has made cuts and want the people running the benefits scheme to reject 3/4 people who apply, thinking we'd give up and not go to tribunal, where most of us get accepted. It's a messed up system. One of my best friends IRL has Cystic Fibrosis, and everyone in her charity and herself included is also being rejected. (if you don't know of CF, google it and tell me you don't think its a condition that should be accepted for benefits..)
Currently, this month has been full of dealing with this because it's all come to a head at once for me... I have been dealing with this process since June, and it takes this long to deal with... It sometimes is quiet, and sometimes I'm overwhelmed with appointments, letters, calls, emails, etc.


Secondly,I've been attended doctors' appointments about this throughout this month. You might recall I mentioned a few doctor's appointments catching me up in my last update. I was a bit optimistic then, but essentially, I've been stalled and complications have happened. I had two appointments initially, and I believed that would be it, but with the (unofficial but correct) diagnosis I received through one of these appointments, I have been referred again and again and am backed up with doctors' appointments about it now.
Since June I have been trying to get this diagnosis, it takes a long time to diagnose anything but particularly long for this one.
The low of it is that I've been (unofficially as of yet) diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, which is a chronic pain condition in conjunction with mental issues.
My condition has worsened as I started the diagnosis process, which is normal, the condition does get worse over time and can fluctuate with good days and bad days, and I'm willing to say I've been going through a fair few bad days this month. I've had days where my limbs seized up and would cause immense pain to move where no pain killers I can get (without an official diagnosis) have worked. I haven't been able to sleep because of pain erupting during my sleep. Walking has been hard, but more relevant, my wrists, shoulders, and arms have been in a lot of pain. When I started this diagnosis journey, my doctor and I feared it might be early-onset Arthritis, which got ruled out, but I'm saying that as a case of "hey it can be that bad".
One other thing with Fibro, that's important here, is the issue of brain fog, which is hard for me to explain, but the best explanation is that when enough pain is triggering my brain's response, I become slow at thought and find it very hard to retain information and understand what's happening. The name brain-fog is really the best description for it. But I apologize if I'm slower (mentally and physically) than usual and easily get confused or make mistakes. During this period especially it's been bad. But I am more than happy to fix any mistakes, like forgetting an aspect of a commission or alteration and continue at them until they're up to scratch, it just might take longer, and might be confusing for you, I'm sorry.
For more information on Fibro, here's some info, as I can't go into it all.

Thirdly, and maybe the least important is my general mental health. I'm in the same process as I am with the other 3, in that it's taking a lot of my time and energy to try and get treatment.
Much like PIP, this is a government issue. My condition (BPD) is complex and there aren't many trained professionals in the UK for it.
The state of mental health here is that there is access to therapy for people with mild Anxiety or Depression across the UK, but if you have a more complicated or severe issue, like me, you don't have access to those support systems because they're not qualified of our conditions. It's now a year since I first tried to get therapy, and it's looking likely I might be able to find a therapist now! However it's still unlikely, these things take months to apply for, months to get a response, an initial assessment, usually followed by being rejected because therapists under the NHS don't know how to treat me, and then being put on anti-psychotic medication cocktails until they decide it's 'fixed' me despite BPD historically being unreactive to medication and the best treatment being DBT therapy. I also have a lot of interpersonal and trauma-related issues I need to talk to a therapist about. It's been forever, and I'm not in the slightest hopeful anymore.





All of these things combined and some other issues, has really been slowing me down, and I've been using every moment of free time to work on commissions or art, but I haven't had the time to type this down and update people, and I'm still slowed by this.