Life Archives - Page 39 of 63 - Antony Simpson is an Author, Blogger, Nurse & Witch.

Tarot Tells The Truth: Justice In Court

Thursday 13 December 2012 / Antony Simpson / Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

When difficult situations arise in my life I immediately reach for the Tarot deck in the hopes of gaining insight into how things will pan out. Recently I’ve been stressed about a Court Case. About a month before the Hearing, I shuffled my Tarot Deck thinking about the Court Case and here’s the card that came out:

According to the book with the Tarot deck this is what it means:

I won’t go into the details of the Court Case but as always the Tarot deck told the truth. Justice was on myside and it was a successful outcome for all parties involved.

So if you want to know the truth about your future, get a Tarot deck and learn to use it. Good or bad the Tarot deck always tells the truth.

Write soon,

Antony

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Growing Up Gay: My Story

Sunday 7 October 2012 / Antony Simpson / 4 Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Inspired by Born This Way: Real Stories of Growing Up Gay by Paul Vitagliano, I’ve decided to share my own story of growing up gay.

I’m about eight or nine in this photo, it’s Christmas and I’m striking a pose in my Power Rangers pyjamas proudly showing off my new cross puppet. I remember loving to entertain others, being full of confidence and having no inhibitions. I remember being sensitive, caring and sometimes in a world of my own. My mum describes me as a child by saying I was “such a joy to have.”

If you’d have shown me this photo as a teenager I’d have cringed with embarrassment. By my teen years I’d realised that I was different to others; I became very self-conscious of what my peers thought about me and was hiding my sexuality out of fear of what they’d think, say or do. I also became extremely self-critical of seemingly everything about myself.

Today, I look at this photo and aspire to be like that younger version of myself. I am so thankful that as a child my mum instilled me with confidence to be myself and always made me feel loved. I am still learning and developing as I experience life, but there are many goals I’ve been successful in achieving and the others I’m working towards.

If there are any gay youth who are experiencing what I did in my teens I would encourage them to stay true to who they are, only listen to the opinions of people who truly love you – they will love you for who you are, seek out support (Google: lgbt support) and come out when you’re ready.

I look at this photo and think: how did my family not know I was gay? The answer is that they did! I was born gay and I wouldn’t be any other way.

Published by: The Gay UK on Friday 8th August 2014.

Blog soon,

Antony

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A Rough Time for The Fascinating Man

Wednesday 22 August 2012 / Antony Simpson / Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Do you remember The Fascinating Man? Well I caught up with him a few weeks ago and he’s recently been diagnosed with epilepsy. He told me that the doctors said it was something he always had but been triggered by recent stresses his life.

The Fascinating Man told me about the effects it has in his life, seizures that sometimes he feels coming on at other times he doesn’t. He said that he’s been started on medication to control the seizures, but they haven’t yet got the right dosage for it to be fully effective. I was sad to hear his University has stopped him graduating (a few months before he was due to do so) as they couldn’t insure him on placement until he has 1 year seizure-free.

I realised that he’s lost his driving licence as you have to be seizure-free for at least twelve months in order to have a UK driving licence. I asked him how he was getting about. He said that his boyfriend was driving him where he needs to go. Last time I spoke to him (see The Fascinating Man) I got the feeling that he wasn’t completely happy at that time with the relationship, so I asked him how things were. He seemed to indicate that the epilepsy had brought them closer together and that the boyfriend had been really supportive, which I was pleased with.

I know what it’s like to be diagnosed with a medical condition that’s life changing (see How I was diagnosed with Diabetes). I also know that it’s probably effected him in more ways than he expressed in our brief conversation. But I feel so much empathy for him, especially when I’ve seen him work so hard to complete Uni, only to be told he needs to repeat the entire 3rd year with a few months to go. I let him know that I was sorry to hear about his epilepsy and tried to reassure him that everyone has something. Explaining that I have diabetes and a friend of mine has a heart condition. That was then the end to another too brief conversation between us.

While reading up on epilepsy for this blog post I found a really interesting article by Hill entitled The psychological and social impact of epilepsy that could be applied to any long term chronic medical condition. It’s an interesting read and will give anyone not diagnosed with a long term medical condition some understanding of the psychological and social impacts that a person with a long term chronic medical condition experiences.

Write soon,

Antony

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A Catch-Up

Thursday 9 August 2012 / Antony Simpson / Leave a Comment

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Hi all,

I really haven’t had chance to blog recently, so I just thought we would have a general catch-up. So what’s new? Well…

I’ve fully transferred my website to a new hosting provider (see Transfer of Hosting). The main technical glitch was many of the images not showing up. I’ve manually fixed every page and every blog post so they should all be working now. But if by chance you stumble upon a broken image link, copy the address bar in your browser, paste it into the message body on the Contact page and click send. Then I’ll know where the problem is and I can get it fixed.

I’ve had a spell of ill health in the form of lower back pain (see Ouch…Severe Lower Back Pain), but apart from the odd painful twinges here and there I’m now feeling much better.

My good friend Sye is back from Uni and has temporarily come to live with me. It’s great to have him here, he’s good company, I feel happy being able to support him. He knows he is welcome to stay for as long as he needs too.

Sye’s also been a huge support to me in a difficult week I’ve had recently. The reason for the difficult week was financial pressures, Sye was my listening ear (along with a few other people close to me) and has given me some good advice. I discovered I have a leaking pipe under my floor, need to replace the two front tyres on my car and have had some hassle of my buildings management company.

I’ve been to my friend Steve’s graduation-from-Uni meal. It was delicious food in the Hilton in Manchester. Unfortunately I only managed to sit through the meal due to my back pain but I still enjoyed the night out.

I’ve caught up with Simon & Chrys at a recent Food & Fire Evening at Chrys’ house. It was lovely, relaxed and social, just what I needed.

I’ve also been reading Pure by Julianna Baggott which is a post-apocalyptic story about two young people whose worlds collide. Pressia a wretch in a world with deformed people and animals after the detonations and Partridge a Pure from the Dome that was protected from the detonations. It’s a trilogy with the next book out next year and the final book out the year after. It’s a fascinating read and will review it after I’ve read it.

I’ve downloaded OS X Mountain Lion. One of the reviews in the Mac App Store described it as an evolution of OSX Lion rather than a revolution. This review is right, they’ve built on OSX Lion rather than a complete redesign like Windows does. OSX Mountain Lion feels more streamlined, the iMac boots up faster and complete operations with more speed. It seems to just work, it has fixed my sound issues (see Intermittent Sound Problems on the iMac) and has a few cool new features.

The first feature I love is Siri. It’s current use is as an dictation App, but in the future it is likely to be utilitised for starting Apps, putting reminders in iCal and other functions like the Iphone 4S. I think it’s very clever how it learns your voice characteristics and uses this learning to improve the dictation. I like the Notification Centre but it doesn’t work as I’d like. For example, my new emails don’t appear in the Notification Centre like on my Iphone 4. The share button in Apps is useful and being able to post Twitter updates from my desktop makes life easier. But I was disappointed that Facebook integration is only coming in Autumn as this was one of the features I updated for.

That’s about all I’ve been up to. However I’ve got a few events here and there, working on some creative projects I hope to share with you soon and am coming up with some good ideas for thought provoking blog posts.

Blog soon,

Antony

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