The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

Lockdown here in the UK is gradually being eased, though it appears to be a political decision rather than a scientific one. Though few governments can sail through a pandemic, it feels like our own leader's have been shockingly awful at managing the situation. Years of not following long established pandemic preparations, an initial stubborn reluctance to consider that the virus might arrive in the UK and unclear advice, it's been a shit show eclipsed globally only by the ineptitude of a certain orange-faced president. When we thought they couldn't really be any more awful, out comes the news that the prime minister's chief advisor casually broke lockdown rules. Whilst millions of people struggled with not seeing their families, even many with symptoms doing the correct thing, Dominic Cummings drove from London to Durham. The cherry on top of the shit cake was when he drove to Barnard Castle because he was worried about his eyesight. It's the most absurd excuse...

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week so I thought I'd write about my own experiences. I'm always a little uncertain talking about my mental health. The thought of seeing someone professional about it brings an enormous fear to me and I'm aware that in all likelihood the best they'd offer would be a link to a website that I could just Google. It's also difficult to work out how normal what I'm feeling is. Everyone goes through highs and lows and that's perfectly normal. I suspect though that when I've experienced extreme lows that is less normal, though far from unique.  That's one of the big problems with discussing mental health and why initiatives like awareness week exist. As much as we're regularly reminded that it's healthy to discuss our mental health, it's not something most of us do very much. There are very few people in the world I would feel genuinely comfortable discussing mine with. Mind you, there are a very ...

It's been a few weeks since I last wrote and that's because life continues to roll monotonously on as lockdown continues. It's difficult to write about life when it's been put on hold. Mentally, I'm finding lockdown something of a rollercoaster. I really thrived in the first month or so as all the everyday pressures of life were taken away and I could do whatever the hell I liked- well, within the confines of my own home. As the weeks rolled by I began to get a bit down and felt a bit useless. There's only so much time you can spend doing nothing before you start to feel like you really ought to be doing something. I keep imagining being asked by a grandchild one day what I did during the pandemic and the answer will be 'fuck all'. The feeling of uselessness is not a new one to me but it rarely seeps to the forefront quite so strongly as it has recently. That phase seems to have been put behind me, for now at least. One thing which really helped ...