Welcome to the start of my blog where I’ll be telling a few life stories, moaning about the government and updating on projects I’m currently working on. I’ve been procrastinating starting up a blog for ages, I’ve known I should do it to document all my software development and other such projects, especially through university, but I’ve been unmedicated for ADHD for 23 years of my life (so far) so I think I can cut myself a little bit of slack on that one.
I want to make this a space I can write my thoughts out more long form about the goings on in what I’m doing, both in terms of projects I create but also to share the frustrations I experience as a disabled individual navigating the UK social care system which seems to be dying a little more every day that passes. So in summary about anything interesting I think will be enjoyable to read I’ll write up to go here.
I’ve already done a basic write up for my currently ongoing project PodTally which you can read over on my projects list or by going directly to the PodTally article.
A Little History #
Content warnings: Discussion of memory loss and autistic burnout
We’re going to cover the history of my life in a fairly rushed whistle stop tour to get you caught up, nothing deeply personal but enough to get you up to speed on roughly who I am and hopefully give you some motivation to care about what I write in future by getting you invested in my story.
Pre 18 (and a lil bit after) #
I know a lot of info about my time as a child but unfortunately I have dissociative memory loss and it most severely impacts my memories before I turned 18 so I don’t actually remember a lot of it directly.
I know I went to school at private school where I met a group of chaotic queer individuals who mean the world to me, I haven’t spoken to a lot of them in a while because I’m really bad at staying in touch (oops). School was an awful time as both an undiagnosed Autistic individual and an unmedicated, undiagnosed ADHD child. I learned to ignore my own boundaries and assume that pain was normal and I was just lazy because I couldn’t get the work done till it was an emergency. Very much in the “gifted and talented” throughout school till it all crashed and burned at A-Levels when I just couldn’t push myself any more.
Now I said “crashed and burned” but I still came away from A-Levels with decent grades, they just weren’t astounding which felt like the world ending at the time. Top tip to parents, grades are all fake, grading on a curve is deeply unethical. Do not push your kids to be outstanding or even to get a good grade, they are only useful if your kid wants them but be real with them and let them know that the system of GCSEs and A-Levels requires that thousands of kids across the UK fail, regardless of their own individual effort or aptitude. The system is broken, be honest with kids, they deserve to know how messed up it is and not to have to contend with that after attaching all their self worth to a grade and crashing out if they get unlucky.
And that’s about all the important things about me before I left school. I could talk for days about how often I hung around the computer science department (how did nobody spot I was autistic, I was obsessed with computers) or about the CCF and all the odd things that went on there but maybe another time.
Sheffield University #
After absolutely muddling my way through the university clearing process because I shot way too high with my initial picks. Thank fuck I didn’t get a lot of those though because they would have burned me out way sooner if I’d gotten into any of those. The University of Sheffield seemed like a really good option and I did enjoy what little of the first year I managed to get in, but the pandemic quickly killed my education experience, moved back home for a year or so and utterly destroyed my mental health again through the pandemic.
It’s also during the pandemic I began to become increasingly physically disabled and finally after a year and a half of the pandemic I hit autistic burnout and had to completely drop out of university half way through my 3rd year. For a little context on autistic burnout, it’s nothing like the typical burnout that allistic individuals experience and much more like a traumatic brain injury. You completely loose the ability to function, skills regress and your threshold for things going wrong absolutely plummets.
I’m still recovering from that to this day and have been unable to return to university and complete my degree, both because I’m not done with recovery years later, and because accommodations never got put in place. The University of Sheffield never even put a personal evacuation plan in place despite knowing I couldn’t consistently use stairs in an emergency. The NHS still hasn’t gotten me ADHD medication and I’m stuck using caffeine to bridge the gap.
Where I am now #
I’m now living where I can trying to hammer out stable accommodation and fighting with my local council to get them to provide housing and social support. Luckily I have my incredible partner of 2 years who is an absolute gem in my life and absolutely the reason I’m still here.
I’m incredibly tired and doing my best to rest and unlearn the idea that work is the end goal. Recovery from burnout is about me enjoying myself and living as well as I can, as authentically as possible.
There are a few more stories to tell in there that I will at some point but that covers the basics, look out for more to come.
Thank you for reading to the end :)