The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

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 ...

My first real experience of anxiety is one of my earliest clear memories. I was about five and in my first year at school. When you're five school is a lot of fun and I adored being there. Except for one afternoon when the teacher told us we were going to draw the parts of a bicycle. I would actually find this is a difficult task as an adult but aged five I had just as much chance of flapping my wings and learning how to fly. I remember the feeling in the pit of my stomach as my entire being tried to resist. In the end, I projectile vomited across the classroom and was sent home and never had to complete the task.  As we grow up we have more experiences and are much better able to cope with new experiences. I did tend to feel anxious about things I considered important though. I regularly had a nosebleed when taking exams from year two SATs to at least one GSCE paper. It didn't really take much for me to have a nosebleed throughout my childhood anyway but anxiety seemed to b...