The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

In which I discuss by ongoing self-confidence struggles... Self-confidence. Confidence comes from the Latin  fidere  which means 'to trust' so self-confidence is to trust yourself. Some people seem to find this really easy but it's not something that comes easily to me.  I was getting ready for a party recently when I had a complete crisis in body image. For a moment I looked at the person in the mirror and thought that there was no way I could make it presentable and considered whether I should just give up and stay home.  Fortunately I managed to force myself past this moment but it's occurred to me since then that barely a day goes by where I don't despair at some aspect of my appearance. Body image in women is a subject that is rightly discussed quite a lot but it's not something that is discussed anywhere near as much for men. Research by the Mental Health Foundation found that 28% of men over the age of 18 have felt anxious because of body image issues. I ...

Previously on The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan : I began taking part in The Wildlife Trusts 30 Days Wild event, doing one wild thing every day for the month of June. (See  Part I ) Before I reflect on my wild month, here's what I got up to in the second half of June.  Day 16: I needed to pop to the local shop and decided to sit for a while in the churchyard along the way. My local churchyard is a really spot, full of flowers in the spring and home to several sizeable oak trees which provide a home for so much wildlife.  Day 17: I happened to look about of my kitchen window to see a squirrel running along the back fence. Whilst I have seen the occasional squirrel on my street despite the lack of any trees of note, I've never seen one at the back and I hope my attempts to make my yard more wildlife friendly as well as the growth of some plants along the row of gardens is beginning to attract more wildlife.  Day 18: A lovely walk along the River Stour today. It'...

In which I meet a man on a cliff... (Admittedly Bournemouth does not look like this) It was a sunny June day and I was walking along Bournemouth's East Cliff. Suddenly a man appeared in front of me and asked if anyone had already stopped me. "No" I replied and inexplicably I still found myself stood there. I have a blanket policy of not stopping for people on the street. They usually want to sell you something or more often give money to charity and I am not going to part with my hard-earned money to some person who is interrupting my day.  For some reason I didn't immediately dismiss the man. Perhaps it was because he seemed genuinely friendly, perhaps I was in an unusually tolerant mood due to the sun or perhaps I'd already walked five miles and my oxygen level was depleted. I had stopped and despite myself I now was now committed to the conversation.  "Do you agree that the bible is the word of God?" asked the man. Ah. This man didn't want my mone...

In which I do one wild thing a day... The Wildlife Trusts run an event called  30 Days Wild  in June. The idea is to do one wild thing every day in the month and if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you may have seen that I am taking part this year. In this blog post I'm going to share what I did for the first fifteen days, going into a bit more detail about some things than I have done in my social media stories.  Day 1: I did a few jobs in my backyard, the most significant being building a new planter designed for climbing plants. Since I've moved in I've wanted to get some greenery on the large fence panel at the back of the yard and now I've finally got a new fence I've been able to do it. I'm on year two of my gradual mission to add some greenery and life to my small yard and have managed to add loads of flowers this year.  Day 2: I had arranged to visit my friend, her husband and their kids at a local country park. Before they arrived I spent some tim...

Previously on The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan: I began an odyssey through film history ( See the 1920s post here ) I'm deep into a big project to watch my way through the book  1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die . I'm pleased to say I've now watched every film in the book that was released in the 1930s! It's been a fascinating journey so far, watching cinema develop in front of my very eyes and observing the world itself change too. Whilst Charlie Chaplin was still making silent films throughout the 1930s, everyone else was now making sound films. Chaplin remained famous but the decade saw the rise of the comedy group. The Marx Brothers have both Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera  on the list and I struggled with them. I enjoyed Laurel and Hardy in Sons of the Desert a lot more and the pair exist as a middle ground between the verbal gags of the Marx Brothers and the pratfalls of the silent era. Many of the genres of film we know and love today were refined in...

In which I recall a celebrity experience... I've previously written here about my celebrity encounters including accidentally giving celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh a pen and bumping elbows with the Archbishop of Canterbury. But there was one celebrity encounter which wasn't awkward at all and turned out to be really inspiring.  I was about eleven or twelve I think and most weeks a magazine or newsletter would arrive in the post for me from one environmental organisation or another, be it from the RSPB or in this case the local Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. Their quarterly newsletter for kids included a writing competition where you had to write a five hundred word short story on about the environment.  This was very much in my wheelhouse and I barely had to think about it before an idea developed in my head. A quick bit of research later- well not that quick because this was still the days of dial-up internet- and I'd identified the star of my story. Withi...

In which I discuss loneliness for Mental Health Awareness Week... It's been a good few weeks since I last wrote here and the main reason for that is I was feeling a bit down for in the last few weeks of April. It's perhaps appropriate then that this week is Mental Health Awareness Week and the theme this year is loneliness.  Loneliness feels like a really important theme as the pandemic has reduced our contact with each other. Due to isolation periods, not being allowed to cross bubbles and only meeting on Zoom, I have regularly felt cut off from the world over the last few years.  I have never considered myself a particularly outgoing or sociable person, indeed I am generally something of an introvert, but I've come to recognise the value of interacting with other people. Humans have evolved to be together and every human brain needs interaction with other human brains to really function properly. If I spend a day on my own I start to feel an emptiness, a sense that my bra...