Kozumikku Sandā - Interview #1 | UnwantedLife

March 12, 2022

Hello Readers

I've decided to release my Interviews on a few different platforms as part of an experiment to see where they attract the most authentic interactions.

Hope you enjoy this ride.

cosmicTaryn

Please introduce yourself to cosmicTaryn readers.

UnwantedLife is an invisible disabilities blog that covers topics such as learning difficulties, mental health, self-care, invisible disabilities, and related content.

When it comes to my blog, I’m pretty much an international man of mystery, but I will give you a few hints. I’m a guy of mixed ethnicity (black and white, a bit like dichotomous thinking) who has struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts since being at primary school. The damage of bullying doesn’t stop when the bullying ends.

I’ve also been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder, persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia, supra ventricular tachycardia, irritable bowel syndrome, dyslexia, and reactive hypoglycaemia. I have quite the smörgåsbord of issues.

Outside of my health problems, I love watching anime and listening to all kinds of music. All except for house music that is, man that genre is boring. The genre that comes top of my list is Metal in all its forms, Rock On!

Last year, during the pandemic, I finished my postgraduate degree, which was different(?). For the second time, I didn’t attend graduation, although this time it wasn’t my choice to skip it.

My only drive in life is to help people avoid ending up like me, but I’ll cover that in the following section.

Describe how did you first get into blogging?

I had to defer a year while doing my postgraduate degree and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. My health issues made it too difficult to work, especially in my chosen field, but I knew I wanted to do something to try and help others. Then one day just before Christmas in 2018, I had a sudden thought of writing a mental health-based blog.

Before I could let me sabotage myself, as I do with almost everything I do, I acted, which is rare. Thus, I started my blog on the 7th of January 2019, with the first article being about the difficulties I have with meeting my partner, because of my mental health issues. That article went live on the 14th of January 2019.

My blog started as a mental health blog where I’d write about my experiences with mental health. However, the blog soon expanded to include dyslexia, health, and invisible disabilities. Thus, the blog became an invisible disability blog (mental and physical health) that combines my perspective and experiences with advice, information, support, and related content.

How did you figure out what niche to base your blog in?

Mental health has always been a factor in my life, and I’ve always wanted to know more about it and why people act the way they do. As a result, I’ve had a fascination with psychology and sociology, which lead to me studying these topics.

When I graduated from my undergraduate, I started working at a substance abuse charity and then, later on, worked for Mind. My niche is all I really know, I might not be an expert on it, but I’m passionate about it and love learning more about it whenever I can. Which is no easy feat when you’re held back by dyslexia. Learning, for me at least, is hard with how my dyslexia presents itself, but when you love something it’s easier.

What do you enjoy most about blogging?

The best part about blogging is researching my content and then putting it all together in such a way that hopefully, it’ll benefit at least one other person in the world.

What do you find most challenging about blogging about your topic?

Proofreading is the hardest part for me, made harder when Grammarly isn’t working properly, which happens far too frequently. I make typos and spelling mistakes all the time and I won’t notice even when I’ve read my work multiple times, all because I’m dyslexic. My ability to spell never improved beyond the very basics I learnt at primary school, as I was poorly taught and didn’t get my dyslexia diagnosis until I was in my mid-thirties. So yeah, I suck at proofreading without a spell and grammar checker to rely on.

How do you manage time to run your blog efficiently?

I don’t have much going on in my life at the moment. I’ve been stuck waiting on a series of doctors to help me get my quality of life back, but to no avail. My main issue is getting motivated to start doing work on my blog because I’ll easily just veg out in front of the TV given half a chance. In fact, my lack of motivation and joylessness got so out of hand that I went back on to antidepressants recently to try and tackle my motivation issues. I’ve also sent myself a 10.00-16.00 Monday-Friday work alarm as well, which seems to help.

Who has impacted you most in blogging and how?

To be honest, it’s probably a close tie between Taryn Allie and my partner. My partner has always been supportive of my efforts, but I often talk about them in my articles so that can make things weird sometimes. But, cosmicTaryn, I’ve been talking to for almost as long as I’ve been blogging and has often, probably without realizing it, given me a reason to keep blogging with their random acts of kindness.

In the future where do you hope your blog will take you?

I hope my blog will lead to me making enough money to support the blogs existence and the time and effort I pour into it. I’d also like it to help me create my community for the alt music fans I’ve been wanting to do, so I can extend on the work started by the Sophie Lancaster Foundation.

What do you do in your spare time when you are not blogging?

I do volunteer work as an eCounsellor, watch a lot of TV and stream videos and films, I also listen to a lot of music, play video games, and occasionally, I’ll even exercise. I’ve also been working on a self-funded survey study to help me with my aim of starting a community centre project for the alt music community.

What music do you listen to, and which song is currently on repeat?

I mainly listen to music from within metal and its sub-genres, although I have been listening to reggae and 80s/90s classics from my childhood recently, with the occasional bit of rap mixed in. There are two songs I’m currently listening to regularly, that’s Bottom Feeder by Parkway Drive and Bystander by Sumo Cyco, both are great tunes, and the latter band, Sumo Cyco I recently got to interview, which was amazing.

Off the top of your head, who would you give a shout out to on Twitter?

Like I said the last time you asked me this question for your previous blog, I’d always give a shoutout to @CosmicTaryn.

Is there a way for your fans to connect with you?

You can find me on pretty much all the popular social media sites, so feel free to hit me up anytime.

Care to share what you will be working on next?

I hope to make time to work on my store idea for my blog and add advertising/sponsor packages to help generate income so my blog can at least support itself. I’ll also carry-on researching articles for my blog and drafting new ideas, and hopefully, I’ll find some time to investigate doing my PhD.