Adventures of Pom

Since 2020 and the horrors of the Covid-19 lockdowns and shielding (when people were dying and terrified but no.10 was a party zone), there has been a rise in remote working. This was initially an inconvenience but for some people who cannot leave the house or find it difficult for reasons such as transport or physical condition, the rise of remote working was ideal. So, I thought, what if I could? What if I could, once again, be one of the working masses? The short answer is unfortunately, no I cannot do it but I am, however, very proud of what I did achieve as a result. For more detail, read on. I finished paid employment 11 years ago and this was due to the negative advancement of my physical status. I could not no longer keep up with my responsibilities. Now I do voluntary work a few times a week and I began to wonder whether I would be able to take on paid employment remotely. I joined LinkedIn and had a look at some of the available positions. There seemed to be plenty of remote...

 I don't like being called an inspiration.  I am not.  I get called that for simply living my life with my disability. I'm not doing anything special, I'm just kind of getting on with things, like most people. Just because some things are harder for me than they are for the average individual does not make me inspirational.   Not one single person on the planet does not have some problem to deal with, emotional, mental or physical. Going through life does not make you in anyway an inspiration.  I have written a lot about the importance of having a goal, a dream. Something to aim for, aspire to. Build your own future.  My nephew, Angus, inspires me to do this. He is not an inspiration just for living everyday with his disability, he is inspiring because he uses his situation to the absolute best of his ability. He aims to show everybody not to accept their own limitations without putting up a fight. This is a valuable lesson that we can all learn from. ...

  It is difficult to not just withdraw from life.  A pandemic still ravishes the Earth and I am still just going day to day!  I am certainly no expert on how to cope post lockdown, my mental health can be dire at best, but here are my 5 suggestions how to move forward with:      Socialise. Unfortunately fairy tales do not always happen. Neither a relationship, nor your true love, is just going to appear on your sofa whilst you binge watch Netflix. You are going to actually have to get your hands dirty and interact with people. I know that the idea of this sounds horrific to the people with social anxiety and the first step will always be down to you. Even this may sound scary believe me the benefits will be major. Not only will socialising raise your confidence, you will also be able to make new friends and meet people you would never usually have met.  Although there is no substitute for real face-to-face contact, social media and video chat allows ...

 Last year I spent some time making a video for  Ataxia UK  detailing most of the manky things I have to do everyday and how I cope with my disability.  Watch it here:  It Works For Me I have no intention of becoming a vlogger (I am certainly no where near as good as Joe Tracini !), the effort was a lot even though I did enjoy it. Through the praise and thank yous' I received through honestly portraying my daily life I learnt that your own actions, however small, can have unexpected side effects. Good ones. Always be kind. Pass on the positive. A mention in a blog by one of the strongest men I have met: Not Ashamed Anymore by Richard C Brown MBE

Even after shielding for almost a year from a potentially deadly virus that is threatening mankind, I was unsure whether I wanted to be injected with, what is hopefully, a vaccine. The world is in the grip of a viral pandemic, covid-19, and I am considered clinically extremely vulnerable because catching it would likely make me more ill than most people. Life threateningly so. Fear is my new normal. I have a few disabilities that affect my immune system and physical functions. I also have stage two heart failure. My reluctance to have the vaccine was due to my own reluctance to have foreign things injected into my body and of the alternative media coverage coupled with my own distrust of the Government. When I received the text from my local surgery asking me to book in for the vaccination I was literally in two minds about whether to do so. After much thought I decided to trust my primary instinct and have the vaccine, with the idea that maybe in the future, at some point, I...

2020 has been very difficult for everybody in many different ways. Unfortunately 2021 will not get a lot better for quite a long time so it is safe to say that despite the new year, the hard times are not over yet. How can you cope?  I wish there was an answer. Perhaps if I share my coping mechanism it might help you. Early last year, before all the Corona stuff happened, I read a book by Matt Haig called Reasons to Stay Alive and this tells his story about learning to to live again following his mental breakdown. He tries to focus on and remember to be thankful for what he has in his life, not on the bad stuff. At the end of The Hunger Games Katniss tells her young infant how she copes with the Post Traumatic Stress caused by competing, by saying that she lists everything she is thankful for. She describes this as 'getting a little bit tedious when you do it all the time but there are worst games to play'. I think that is how we all continue forward from this point, by ...

The first lockdown was particularly difficult for me to get my head around but I managed to find different things that helped me slowly move forward. As a result I now have/use a few different activities, online shops and services that ordinarily I would not have tried. One thing that really helped me is the activity group provided every Friday by Ataxia UK. It gave me purpose every week by watching the film or reading the book that they were going to discuss and it allowed me to meet new people, even if it is not in person. Volunteers and the service that they provide may be small but it is invaluable tome and I cannot praise them enough. When I was approached by a member of their team who explained that they were still going to have an Ataxia UK conference this year but entirely virtually using zoom and would I be involved, I was happy. Having a virtual conference meant that I could attend. They asked me if I would produce a video for them to show at the conference of how I cope with...