The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

We're approaching the end of 2019 and so it is time for the annual tradition where I share some of the things I've enjoyed the most this year. I say "annual tradition" but this is only the second time I've done this. I suppose the act of writing this is making it an annual tradition. TV It occurs to be that I haven't loved much TV this year. I've never watched Game of Thrones  which is probably just as well because it seems most people were disappointed in it's final season. The second series of Killing Eve was enjoyable but no-where near the heights of it's first series and the first version of The War of the Worlds  that actually set the story in the 19th century was a bit of a mess.  Still, there have been some good things. One of them is the BBC's His Dark Materials  which has turned Philip Pullman's excellent novels into something really special. There's a wonderful cast with Dafne Keen as Lyra and the CGI in it is stun...

I sit behind the keyboard waiting for inspiration for a blog post. Suddenly a figure appears before me. A bright lights shines from it's head, almost blinding me. As my eyes adjust to the light, I realise the figure keeps shifting form. One moment it's a young girl, then suddenly an old man, then a head without a body, constantly shifting and never settling as one thing. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past" the figure announces and if I didn't know better I'd say it had delivered the line with a sense of pride. "Long past?" I inquired. "No. Your past" "But I like Christmas, I don't need saving." I tell the spirit. "True. But you do need content so let us travel back to your past". The room fills with bright light and then fades again but I'm no longer in the same place. I'm now in a crowded dining room and a group of people are sat around the table eating Christmas dinner. I instantly recognise my p...

Next week the UK return to the polls for yet another general election. I remember turning eighteen and looking forward to being able to go and vote. The political trauma of the intervening years quickly turned voting as less of a privilege and more of a chore. Once again I shall be heading to the polling station to try to have my say on who should sort the mess out. We're not exactly spoiled for choice right now. Current Prime Minister Boris Johnson is an arsehole and I have honestly not heard anyone disagree with that. This is a man who is extremely untrustworthy who at worst lies and at best misleads. Take the run up to the Brexit referendum when he stated that leaving the EU would give an extra £350 million to the NHS on the side of a bus. It's just one example of many where Johnson deliberately manipulates the facts to grab power. Even his personal life gives cause for concern given he is famous for being a womanizer and won't even admit to how many children he has,...

I was recently asked whether I prefer Superman or Spider-Man. The question was randomly pulled from a set of questions designed to elicit some talk from children and as an adult in the classroom I too had to answer the question. Being a huge superhero fan I had no trouble formulating a rely and could have probably written a lecture on the question had I been required. The answer is clearly Spider-Man. The definition of "hero" is usually something along the lines of "a person who is admired for having done something very brave". The big issue with Superman is that he is basically a god and unless you happen to have some kryptonite around is pretty much indestructible. It therefore means Superman doesn't need to have any courage to save people. Spider-Man on the other hand is basically just strong and sticky and is outgunned in virtually every conflict he finds himself in. Spidey needs real courage to put on his mask and take on impossible odds and that's...

Being in your mid to late twenties can be hard. There's a nagging feeling at the back of your mind that you really ought to have got your shit together by now. I think it's probably human nature that you look to those around you and you find yourselves surrounded by people in long-term relationships and marriages, people who have young children and have very much settled down and found their place in life. I suspect that's always been the case but in the twenty-first century this is amplified by social media. Don't get me wrong, there are lots of good things about social media. But it can be soul destroying as you see a constant stream of how wonderful other people's lives are. Of course that's curated by them and it doesn't necessarily mean they are happy. From the other side though it's easy to sit there and believe you are worth less than other people. My mental health has proved challenging for much of my twenties. I find myself deeply uncomfo...

Last week I had the daunting prospect of attending a wedding. I had a week of trying to put it to the back of my mind because I was anxious about it. Just the prospect that it would involve a journey along the motorway in the dark at the end would probably be enough to make me anxious but that wasn't even my main concern. The biggest issue for me was the fact that I would hardly know anyone attending. There were two people I knew from university and though I generally like both of them I didn't know them well enough to call them more than acquaintances and besides, I hadn't seen either of them for some years. I had met a few of the bride's family but again barely knew them. The only person I really knew was the bride who is my best friend. On any other occasion I would have not turned up but this wasn't about me. Whilst I am probably just one of many friends to the bride, she is my best friend and in the nearly ten years I've known her she's been loyal...

Strap in folks, it's time for some science! Specifically, psychology. It's been understood in the scientific world for some time that a general factor of intelligence, or "g-factor", exists. Put simply, people who score highly on one test of intelligence also tend to score high on other tests of intelligence. This means that you can reliably test intelligence using any kind of intelligence test as long as it is complex enough. This week I read about a 2018 paper which uses the same principle but for a different area of the human personality: malevolence. The researched have come up with the idea of a general dark factor of personality or "D-factor". The use of the word 'dark' comes from personality psychologists who use "dark traits" to mean to describe characteristics of people who display behavior which is ethically or morally questionable. It can be quite complicated when you delve into the details of the paper but the idea is that p...

In recent months, I've seen this blog bleed into the real world. Real life people have come up to me and commented on something I've written. I find it more than a little perplexing that people have any interest in my witterings. Don't get me wrong, I'm always happy to be given a compliment. Indeed, in the last week or so I've been complimented on all sorts of things. This is of course lovely but I never know how to respond to a compliment. I mean, obviously I should just say "thank you" yet somehow that rarely ends up happening and I end up just saying "yes". I worry this makes me come across as big-headed as if I think that said compliment is a given, when in actual fact I'm not saying thank you mainly because I'm so baffled by the concept of anyone thinking something that I'm doing is any good. If you are one of the complimenters, I apologise for my awkwardness and am profoundly grateful. It's not the first time my online l...

It's the final day of Dyspraxia Awareness Week and today I thought I'd talk about dyspraxia in a different way. It's very easy to consider the many ways dyspraxia negatively affects my life from clumsiness to awkwardness and manifold other ways. But dyspraxia doesn't just help to define the worst parts of who I am, it also contributes to the best bits. One recognised trait of dyspraxia is empathy, the ability to interpret and understand other people's emotions. I'm not always the best at actually dealing with them because I often lack the confidence to do so but I can sympathize and adapt my approach to people in a way many people struggle to do. I always think it's a really important quality to have when working in education too because understanding how pupils are feeling can have such a huge impact on student's learning. Working with children with autism adds another layer to this- many students struggle to communicate how they are feeling and so be...

Today marks the beginning of Dyspraxia Awareness Week and in honour of that I thought the best way I can spread awareness of dyspraxia is to share my own experience. To that end I've been noting down dyspraxia moments I've had over the last week, moments which people without dyspraxia don't generally have... Monday, 7AM I'm in the midst of a nasty cold, an occupational hazard when you work in a school. This causes issues for me because I've never really learnt how to effectively blow my nose. It's one of those things that you are told to do from a young age but no-one ever explains how  to do it. Obviously I understand the principle and I can manage to eject some phlegm from my nose but it's never very effective. It's really unpleasant when you're not feeling well and try as you might you can't blow your nose and have at least a few minutes relief. Monday, 2:30PM I'm in the school's swimming pool attempting to support the stud...

I've had a tough few weeks. Just when I thought I had finally got my shit together a new wave of self-doubt flooded over me like a tsunami. I wonder if I will ever reach a stage where I feel like I actually work like something resembling a normal human being. This week I saw Ad Astra , an excellent sci-fi film starring Brad Pitt. In it his character says "I've been trained to compartmentalize. It seems to me that's how I approach my life." For some reason this quote stuck with me. I'm about a million miles away from his astronaut whose heart rate never goes above 80 beats per minute and I certainly haven't been trained to compartmentalise but I have begun to realise that when I'm working at my best that's exactly what I do. To compartmentalise means to divide your life into discrete sections. With practically no thinking I can neatly divide myself into three categories. This is the perfect opportunity to use an image from 'The Numskulls...

It's well recognized by psychologists that the older you become, the faster you perceive time passing. There are various explanations to why this is with the knowledge that from the age of 20 dopamine levels begin to drop being one. All I know is that I find it incredible to think that I began my time at university nine years ago. Like most other new students, I found the prospect of leaving home to go to uni both exciting and daunting. I think a lot of people put that down to the idea of having to look after yourself and do your own cooking, washing and cleaning. I think thought that the vast majority of people are more than ready by 18 to do that stuff. The thing that was most daunting for me was to be forced into a situation where you must make friends or face complete solitude for several years of your life. One weekend in September 2010 I was dropped off at my uni halls. My stuff was unloaded, goodbyes were said and my parents drove off leaving me along in an empty buil...

With no obvious topic coming to mind this week I thought I'd attempt something different: go for a walk and record my stream of thought. Right now I'm walking across the field near my house and realising it's quite chilly despite it being sunny. It's about 11 degrees which is really a sign that Autumn has arrived. The weather might be reasonable during the day but temperatures are dipping at night- the heating actually came on in my house last night and woke me up. Artist's Impression of the walk (OK, it wasn't that cold) I'm not sleeping very well since going back to work. It's due to my dyspraxic mind. My brain processes information slowly and come bedtime it's analyzing the day that's ending and planning for the one ahead. This is not conducive to falling asleep. I had started to develop the ability to reign it in but with my new job role starting this week I've suddenly got a lot to think about and my sleep is the first victim of th...

Shy: adjective- nervous or timid in the company of other people. It's a part of my personality that I really hate. I can write endless monologues online yet few people I know in real life have experienced me talking for any length of time. Shy Guy from Super Mario Dyspraxia can make conversations more difficult because my brain takes longer than most people to process what has been said. This means there can be awkwardly long gaps as my brain processes and then formulates a response. Regularly someone will say something to me and I'll laugh or say "yeah" and it takes me a good five minutes to realise what they were referring to and then realise my response was inadequate. Ultimately though, dyspraxia is not the cause of my shyness. I don't think anything is really the cause, it's just part of who I am. It takes me a while to become comfortable around new people and to come out of my shell. It's different with every person and for no tangible reason...

I discovered this week that you can download all the information Facebook keeps on you. Given what we know about the social network these days, it seems likely plenty of other people have this information too. Through this data you can see everything you've ever shared on Facebook as well as every comment, every like and every message. This is not really too surprising seeing as though we can scroll through and see this most of this stuff for ourselves. Some of the Facebook history seems a bit weird. One page gives you what you've answered to polls. I can't resist answering a poll when I see one and you can see every answer you've given. What's a little weird is it doesn't give you the question or the other options, it just lists who posed the question and what you answered. This makes for strange reading with some of my answers being '7th Doctor's umbrella', '36 metres (118 feet), 'I switch mine off every night' and the really quite di...

The 'About' page on this blog has been sitting there forlornly for the past few months awaiting an update. Today I am finally getting around to writing it and I thought I'd share it as a proper post too. In the 19th century the poorest members of society were sent to the workhouse, a place where they suffered terribly, often living in squalid conditions, forced to work menial jobs with minimal food. By the late 20th century one of these workhouses had become a hospital but the building had not yet finished unleashing suffering on the local population- for that was where I entered the world. My entry to the world was about as awkward as the rest of my life. I got tangled in the umbilical chord and required a Ventouse machine, essentially a vacuum for foetuses, in order to be extracted. For several days my head was pointed and this complicated arrival in the world is the most likely reason I have dyspraxia. Dyspraxia is a mild learning difficulty that used be known as ...