New Year Reflections

Happy New Year, everyone!

What can I say about 2023? It’s been a crazy year, in more ways than one, and I’ve ended the year in a very different place than where I started.

I started the year as a full-time employee in my pensions day job and playing a fair amount of gigs, but in a pretty sporadic, unfocused kind of way.

Heading into 2024, I’m now working part-time in the day job and splitting my remaining time between being a home educator for my daughter and touring the UK and beyond!

My wife Nic and I have had to seriously restructure our lives in the last year between:

• My wife being made redundant from her full-time job and deciding to start her own business as an ADHD coach (seriously, go check her out on LinkedIn, she’s incredible!),

• The both of us beginning our home education journey with our daughter,

• Both of us (but mostly Nic) helping with my mother-in-law’s struggles with Alzheimer’s and the effect this understandably has on the rest of the family, and lastly,

• My increasingly busy schedule on the road.

Yup, 2023 was definitely a year of change. Any one of those changes would be challenging on their own at the best of times, but managing all of these at once has been an extremely steep learning curve.

But…

Despite all of these challenges, I really feel like we’ve come out the other side stronger and happier for it. I distinctly remember one day towards the end of the year sitting on the sofa, looking at Nic and saying:

“I’ve just realised: I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with my life”.

It’s not like I don’t still have my share of struggles and I DEFINITELY still have bad days (I’m not sure that there’s a cure for those!). But it feels like the bad days are in SERVICE of something. Like we’re working towards the life that we actually want to live instead of just going through the motions and faithfully treading down the path of least resistance.

So I want to thank everybody who’s been a part of my journey in 2023 - the amazing people I’ve met on the road this year (FAR too many of you to name), my brilliant, hard-working tour manager, Ian Russell, the venues and people who’ve opened up their doors (and often their homes) to me to give me a place to do my thing, my incredible parents, Lynn and Peter, for all of their support (and putting in some SERIOUS overtime as grandparents!), my father-in-law, Chris, for his support and guidance and, most importantly, my beautiful family, Nic and Amelia, for keeping me grounded, loving and supporting me unconditionally and giving me something to come home to.

2024 is going to be a SUPER busy year - I’m about to start recording my debut full length album later this month and then I’m heading out for a seriously crazy list of countries on tour that will take me across two whole continents!

I’m giddy with excitement to get to work this year and see what 2024 brings - it certainly won’t be boring!

In the meantime, I’ve announced just SOME of the amazing shows I’ll be playing this year - check out the Tour section on the website for details.

Looking forward to seeing you all on the road!

Dan

Happy Neurodiversary To Me!

Evening everyone!

So, any of you who know me or have heard me talk at any length (and it is often at considerable length) are likely aware that I live with ADHD. I was diagnosed towards the end of 2022 after two years of fighting for a diagnosis. I don’t mind telling you all that I damn near wept the day I got my diagnosis confirmed over the phone. I wrote a more lengthy post about this on my Facebook page on the day, but I’ll refer back to the relevant bits as I go here.

So we come to today.

I was idly checking notifications on my phone this afternoon (instead of doing anything I was actually supposed to be doing, of course!) and saw that my Facebook memories contained the aforementioned post from last year.

It was (and currently still is) a year ago to the day that I received my diagnosis…that sure as hell crept up on me!

I have learned SO much about myself over the last year. There are more ways in which my neurological differences affect me than I ever realised and I’m constantly learning more and more. So many things that seem completely unrelated all begin to make sense once you understand how they exist under ADHD’s umbrella.

I was (partially) wrong about one thing this time last year, though. In my post, I said:

”There is a sense of grief that comes with knowing that things might have been very different had there been earlier intervention and I know from my own research that the grief will likely feel more profound once my medication starts and begins to help me”.

Whilst I do still grieve for the way my younger self was misunderstood, mislabelled and very often dismissed by other people (some of whom really should have known better), starting my medication was mostly accompanied by a sense of overwhelming joy. Like someone turned down the volume a bit and now I can hear myself think in peace.

I’ve learned a lot about how to take better care of myself now that I’m more in tune with what my needs are as someone living with ADHD - earplugs for overstimulating environments, self-compassion, a good night’s rest (tough for gigging musicians!) and above all, awareness of what my brain is up to at any one given moment. I’m also much better at communicating my struggles and needs with other people and learning to be less of a people-pleaser and to be more honest with others about when my struggles are going to affect them.

I’ve got so much more to learn and I’ll likely carry on learning until the day I drop, but I’ve found SO many amazing people in the ADHD community this last year who are doing incredible things to help others with their struggles, as well as many more who are being warriors with their own difficulties and differences who inspire me EVERY DAY.

I know I’m in good hands.