JamieVoiceOver

I'm one of the Co-hosts behind the Blackwell Podcast. Not sure what I'll be using this account for yet.

[jamievoiceover-blog]

Role Models

I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while, and I wanted to do a video on it. However, I feel like writing it may improve my writing ability and it’s the perfect excuse.  Here are some people who I look up to in no particular order:

ASHLY BURCH 

It’s hard to put into words how much I admire Ashly. I remember when I was in hospital for a month a few years ago, I had sleepless nights. I was scared and anxious for the future. I needed to get my mind off all the troubles I had, so I watched HAWP. I cannot express how important humour is in this world. I remember trying my best to stifle my laughter at 3 am to prevent waking other patients. I felt at ease. I wrote to her after I got discharged and she took her time to respond. It was a way to lift my spirits and obtain a motivation for the podcast again.

I got to speak to her a few times for podcast interviews, and when listening back, my nerves are very present throughout. I think it’s understandable why I was so anxious,even after the amount of time I’ve been interviewing people. Nerves are a nice feeling to have. They make me feel grounded.

DODIE

To some people in the LIS community might now have an idea on who Dodie is, so I’ll give a brief description. She’s an musician who has made so many amazing songs such as “You”, “Sick of Losing Soulmates” and “Would You Be So Kind”. I look up to her openness on mental health topics, and how real they can be in the world. I recall making a pretty idiotic post a long time ago and she retweeted it, so that’s like a good story to tell

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to attend any of her gigs when she’s in Belfast because either physical or mental illness gets the better of me, so I lock myself in my room. It’s unfortunate, but it just makes me more determined to go the next time.

HANNAH TELLE

Hannah Telle is unique. It’s a friendship that I never thought I’d actually have. I remember how nervous I was speaking to her in our first interview 2 years ago, and I am grateful for the amount of times she’s joined us on the show. Her passion for the creative arts and her being so open helps make her something that Life is Strange fans can easily relate to whether it be her funny anecdotes, or the emotion behind her music. 

If you told me 3 years ago that I’d be friends with her, I’d highly doubt it. I cannot express how emotional it makes me. We message each other occasionally and I plan to meet up with her later this year. I am honoured to call her my friend. Still makes me tear up thinking about it.

LADY GAGA

Okay kids, this is where it gets complicated. Lady Gaga was my life in high school. Her music got me through a hard time. I got bullied for liking her music which kind of made me stop listening to her music, but her messages about acceptance stuck with me, and I feel like it’s heavily shaped me into who I am today. I’m currently listening to her work to catch up on what I missed and it’s been like 5-6 years since I last listened to her, so I got a bunch of catching up to do. 

Nevertheless, she’s still in my heart as my first “Role Model.” Whenever she tours next, I am going to try and get tickets and go with some friends. Thinking back, I really miss her work and I can’t wait to delve back into originality of her art.

[jamievoiceover-blog]

What a Day is like for me.

So I don’t really know what the next addition for this would be, so I thought I’d explain what an average day is like for me.

I wake up at around 10-11am. Sometimes I take headache medication if I wake up in a groggy mood. Then I make myself a coffee and sit down at my desk and  turn on my computer. 

What I do on there varies from what day it is. If it’s the week of the podcast, I edit the episode so whenever the audio is ready, I just drag, drop and match the transitions to key phrases throughout the episode. I find it easier to do it earlier in the week than editing it after we record so we can release it sooner. However, if it isn’t podcast week, I mainly just watch Youtube videos and play games to distract myself.

 Once in a while I get a really bad abdominal pain which takes over for about 5 minutes or so. I would take something to help that, but I am too afraid of taking stuff I don’t really need. I never have taken unnecessary medication. Whenever I was recovering from surgery, I stopped taking pain relief 3 days after the procedure because I knew how risky it was to take. I don’t like to take chances that would alter my health/ mental state.

Throughout the day, I get a shower, brush my teeth and make sure I’m ready in case I got to go out to the store or something. With food, I honestly don’t eat much at all. The stomach pains shrunk my appetite so I can get away with eating one regular meal a day at best. Don’t get me wrong, I love food. It’s just difficult to finish when it feels like someone is punching you.

Nothing really much happens for the rest of the day until after I take my medication. I take supplements, medication to combat the effect of Crohn’s and  anti-depressants. Sometimes I don’t feel like the medication works, other times I feel great. I’ve been trying to book an appointment with a psychologist but I can never get a 100% on a date. I really want to get better but it’s just another obstacle in the road. I just gotta learn how to overcome them and get back on track.

I’m unsure on the next topic, so I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Thanks again and I hope you stick around.

[jamievoiceover-blog]

How Life is Strange has affected me - Who am I?

I’m Jamie and I love Life is Strange. It’s a bit complicated on how to explain how I found out about it, and what has happened since then but I’m going to try my best to fit it into this post. I found out about Life is Strange 3 years ago in January 2015. My friend Vince recommended it to me after I played through Telltale’s The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. I played the demo of it one afternoon after college. I was pretty tired and didn’t feel too great (which will come into play later). I remember liking the demo enough to buy the season pass and finishing the episode that night. I felt a connection towards Max and liked the inclusion of a rewind mechanic towards a choice based game.

Between episode one and two, I skipped class due to illness. I felt unmotivated all the time and every now and again I was getting stomach pains, so I decided to stack episodes two, three and play four whenever it drops at midnight. That was a mistake because I had no idea that it would emotionally destroy me at 5 in the morning. I had so many questions that I wanted answers to, and mainly find people to discuss the game with, so I went to Reddit.

I posted about an idea that I had for a podcast, the name and what would be an ideal number of hosts for an episode. That’s how I met Joey and the Blackwell Podcast was published on August 30th 2015. However, the following Monday was just a bad experience.

I woke up and I was in unimaginable pain. I could hardly move, and I could not keep any food in my system. I was living on water for 3 days. The Thursday was when blood was coming up.I was rushed to the hospital at 1 am and after one x-ray the on call doctor knew what it was; Crohn’s Disease. 

Crohn’s is a chronic form of IBD which is mainly to do with your intestines and can cause inflammation from anywhere in your digestive system. Symptoms can be weight loss, fatigue, vomiting and stomach pain. There is no known cause for why people contract it, but I feel like stress is why I got it. 2014 fucking sucked.

(I currently live in Northern Ireland, but that wasn’t always the case. I lived in England for about 4 years with my dad’s side of the family. Every Friday morning before school, I was dropped off at my grandparent’s house to have breakfast and my Granddad would walk me to school. He is the reason why I am so passionate about video games. He introduced me to games which he played on his Xbox. After I moved I visited him twice. Once was to visit friends from my old school, and the other was for a party. I hugged him before I left for home. I still don’t know why I did. He isn’t an affectionate guy. 

Flash forward to November 2013. My parents sit me down and tell me he had lung cancer. He had until August. My dad and I said as soon as I finished that year of school, I’d fly over and say my goodbyes. February came. I was sitting in the study hall, where I was called to reception. I had no idea what was going on. Then my dad walked in. His eyes were red and he hardly spoke. We got into the car and he told me what happened. My Granddad died that morning. I was in tears, I had no idea how to cope so I did the only thing I was comfortable with. Cry and keep to myself. Unfortunately that led me to getting kicked out of school because I never saw help for my classes and my grades were too low.

I met someone around that time, and I was an emotional wreck that I kind of opened my doors to them. Let’s call them Lee. Lee was a decent enough person who was funny and kind. We bonded over the next few months. I was even going to go visit them. However, they just left me 4 months later. They accused me of loving them, but I was trying not to lose someone in my life that I had considered family. They just left. It hurt and I still haven’t recovered from it. This is why I blame myself for being too stressed that year and why I think I got Crohn’s)

I spent a month in that hospital trying to get a somewhat decent life back but I was too bad for medication so I had to have surgery. I had quite a bit of my small intestine removed and a part of my large intestine. The recovery was a pain because I felt in pain from the surgery, and then you got the pressure of trying to walk, do tasks by yourself and just try and eat again. I was out within 4 days of the surgery. I don’t like thinking about the recovery process so let’s get back to Life is Strange.

I got a new computer because I wanted to do more with the podcast and play Episode 5 on it so I could try and make this a fun distraction of getting back to health. It was. I kept making the podcast and I loved every moment. We even started doing interviews and I started to get a feeling of pride in something that myself and Joey made together in such a short time. 

However, the main focus was to get my health increased physically, which meant I totally neglected my mental health. Currently I am on 45mg of anti-depressants which do either one of two things for me: make me very tired or seem spaced out. This is why the episodes I’ve recorded the past year or so I’ve seemed a tad distant on interviews or episode discussions. 

Today was the podcast’s interview with Ashly Burch and mental health came up. Ashly opened up about being in therapy and I expressed that no matter what happens, that you got to take life at its own pace. It made me want to write this post. I briefly talked about how I kind of relate to Chloe in a sense, and want to expand on it here.

Have there been negatives in my life? Yes. But I learn from them. I’ve had so many cancelled and delayed plans but I try my best to learn from them. It’s why I keep Life is Strange so close to my heart. It gives me a sense of strength that I never thought was possible. I don’t know what I’d be without this game. It really has made me a better person. 

I have made so many friends, met so many people who worked on this amazing franchise.

This post is to people who are involved with Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before The Storm. It’s a thank you. Thank you for making something that connected to me so deeply and gave me a reason to fight. 

I know some of you know of that I have Crohn’s, but my mental health is as important as my physical.

[jamievoiceover-blog]

Hey everyone.

I wanted to announce that I’m going to be turning this account into a blog about my mental health, and things that help me through the day, or small things that annoy me.

I’ll be starting a big introductory post about it tomorrow.