The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

I find myself edging ever closer to being a fully functioning adult as the wheels are very much in motion to begin the process of owning my own home. It is of course hugely exciting and I keep coming up with ever more reasons why it will be fantastic- the latest being the realisation that I will be able to live in a town that actually has pizza places that will deliver to the door. There's an element of fear to it as well- whilst I know I can look after myself, I lived away from home for four years when I was a student, living with no other human beings in the home is a little daunting.  Before all that though, I've got what is essentially a sea of admin ahead of me. My mortgage offer in principle will be confirmed any day now and so I'm finding myself wading through a seemingly endless online property listings. It turns out looking at houses is complicated and I'm basically having to learn a whole new language. So far I've discovered that the word 'maisonette...

Yesterday was the day I'd been building up to for most of the year, the day I would be walking twenty-six miles around Salisbury and Stonehenge to raise money for Alzheimer's Society. When I signed up back in December I obviously hadn't anticipated that 2020 would be such an odd year and this led to the trek coming at the end of my first week back at work after six months. This had both the advantage of giving me far more time to train than I had anticipated but also the worry that I would be exhausted after adjusting back to work life.  Fortunately, I had a great first week back and the 5AM start felt surprisingly straightforward. After traveling to Salisbury and then getting a shuttle bus to the start (once the driver had gone around most of the city to find it) we were ready to go.  The first eleven miles were easy. We wandered along a long tarmac cycle path and through Salisbury city centre, passing its magnificent cathedral so beloved by members of the KGB. Eventually,...

Whilst I generally consider myself a modern millennial, in some ways I am quite old-fashioned. One such example is that I keep a long-form diary.  I've been doing it for so long that I can't remember why I started. I know that I first experimented with a diary on a holiday to Cornwall when I was ten years old. By that point, my English skills were surprisingly advanced and the week's journey reports on a variety of trips out, all of which were hugely exciting to the ten-year-old me.  I must have decided I liked it because the following year I began a proper, permanent diary. I wasn't particularly disciplined at writing in it for a few years but I wrote every now and then. Initially, it seemed to mostly focus on the minor dramas in my ten and eleven-year-old life, like who my best friend was. As my teenage years began and hormones kicked in it seemed to focus increasingly more on which girl I fancied at any given moment in time and my constant inner battle of whether to ...