Would you take advice from this man?
Who do I think I am dishing out life advice? I’m 40, not that old, special needs in school, a C in GCSE English and a load of Ds and Es, brain damaged with memory difficulties and a host of mental health issues. I’ve been the patient. I’m not the expert. Would you really listen to me? Well, you’ve read this far, and most of my readers have read other posts I’ve written, so it’s probable that you have too. If I could give generic advice to myself at 18, or maybe advice not tailored to me specifically, here’s what it would be. Here’s what I wish I’d known, in order of perceived importance. And maybe I already did.
1) Get vaccinated.
Shun anyone who won’t. Treat them like the problem that they are. If this is confusing to you, either you haven’t been watching the news for the last 2 years, or you were too stupid to understand the explanations. That, I cannot help.
2) On that note, learn to endure criticism.
A lot of the time, it will be constructive, something you can use to improve yourself. You’re always going to receive it. Don’t take it personally, but don’t tolerate spite.
3) Do not vote Tory.
You, and everyone you know, have grown up with the privilege of the National Health Service. The Conservative party is intent on destroying this, so that they can sell it off.
This is not speculation: the purchase of healthcare from independent sector providers rose from £9.69bn in 2019/20 to £12.17bn in 2020/21. Every service with in the NHS, including social care, is becoming harder and harder to access at a time when more and more people need said services. You might not need a cardiologist or a social worker, or any other specialist, but people you know will. People you interact with will, at some point recently, have fought a private battle of extensive wait lists, and attempts at leaving messages for NHS professionals, on repeat, becoming increasingly frustrated that no-one has called them back.
The reason for this? The Tories cut the budget. So they can’t pay the staff. Hence, there are fewer people dealing with larger and larger caseloads. If your relative is left in piles of their own faeces… you can blame the Tory-voting people that you know. Not the carers. Not the nurses. Not the GPs. Not the Social Workers. The Tory voters.
Good people do not vote Tory.
4) Speak up and speak clearly.
People get old. Their hearing goes. Many have spent their younger days in nightclubs, getting their eardrums battered by oversized speakers (future me will have dreadful hearing). Raise your voice and spread out your words, even in face-to-face situations. More communication, post pandemic, will be conducted on phones or in video calls. We’ve all tried to talk on the phone and suchlike: it’s harder to be heard than face-to-face. Get people’s attention before you start to speak, so you know they’re listening. That way you don’t have to repeat yourself. This will save time. Take into account background music, engines, other conversations that might be happening. Other people’s hearing ability may differ to yours.
5) On the issue of time, turn up on time.
People’s time is short, and precious. Respect people this way.
6) Be honest.
Again, a time-saving technique, if you want to do something, say so. If you don’t, also say so. It’s fine to say, ‘that’s not really my thing.’ People should appreciate your honesty, and some will always judge, as hinted earlier, so don’t worry about offending. You’ll still offend if you aren’t honest.
7) Stay out of other people’s heads.
As good as it is to get to know people, you can drive yourself up the wall trying to figure out what other people are thinking about you. I know I do. I’m trying to kick the habit. When I talk to people about anything – me, them, societal issues, little unimportant things – I’m always surprised by what people tell me. None of us know anything about other people’s thoughts until we ask. Would that organisation let me volunteer? Is that person interested in me? Could I blag my way into that exclusive launch night? Can I interview that public figure for my blog / education course?
You don’t know until you ask, and you can’t ask if you’re overanalysing people. Don’t concern yourself with what they’re thinking. Just make your move.
8) Focus on your strengths.
You are made to do certain things. What you’re good at is what you are likely to enjoy. Spend your life working in jobs that suit you. If you don’t know what your strengths are, find someone to test you. The NHS may run an assessment if you have an underlying condition that needs diagnosing. A careers advice centre may have a testing system. The Armed Forces might if you’re young enough, and you make it through the initial questioning. But if you spend your time in jobs to which you’re badly suited, the chances are, depression will hit you.
Make sure the testing is actual testing, in which you have to show your ability. Psychometric testing is just a questionnaire. Ignore these- they mean nothing.
8) Address your problems.
Address any physical, neurological or mental health problems. Do something about them. Talk to your doctor. If your doctor doesn’t help you, try another doctor. The pain of rejection, and not getting the help you need, of dead ends, is nowhere near as bad as the gradual increase in severity of the problem because you didn’t act on it.
Again, forget other people’s judgements or criticisms: they’re happening already, whether you’re worrying about it or not. Also, store your medical information carefully, in chronological order, and pass it onto the necessary people- other medical staff, educational staff like tutors, employers – whoever needs to know.
If you ask for help and you don’t get it, speak up. If a medical professional isn’t doing their job and you’re impacted, go public. Call out medical gaslighting if you need to. We have social media for this.
9) Don’t smoke.
It’s a disgusting habit and it affects other people, that’s why it was (belatedly) banned in indoor places in 2007. Plus, I don’t want to kiss an ashtray. If you have an addiction to nicotine, go to your doctor. While it’s still free to do so.
10) Be inquisitive.
Have your eyes open. There are opportunities in abundance – employment, dating, social, fitness and more – if you walk around with your chin up, observing things. Don’t blinker yourself. Ask questions.
For example, in January 2019 I got 2 weeks work experience at a PR company that I found out about at a social event in Oldham – ran by weekly Twitter chat #oldhamhour. I mentioned that Public Relations was a field I was interested in, and a friend I know had done business mentoring for a company whose PR was handled by said PR company. He put me in touch, I visited, then got the experience.
I may not have got into PR, but I sure learned a lot about it, and that knowledge helped my blog a lot. I now get people sending me articles after I got listed on a publication database, and occasionally get invited to events this way.
I have a weekly meeting in Manchester on Monday nights. Before the meeting, I like to vary what I eat by looking around at different food places, not just visiting the same one. I give myself variety. I’ve been able to cover a number of events on this blog because I’ve looked at buildings around the city that are being renovated, and I look into what business is going to occupy the unit. Then I’ll look them up online and drop them a message.
All of this is possible because I’m inquisitive. I’m always looking into things, seeing what I might be able to blog about. I may not always cover what I find, but without my eyes open, I wouldn’t have the content. These events are always challenges to my confidence, which is a huge deal to me, and confidence is like a muscle- it needs to be regularly worked.
Being observant allows for that practice.
11) Learn metric.
I’m 40. I was taught metric in school. I weigh 73kg (Or I did before Christmas when I wrote the first draft of this). Sadly, I know it’s 11’9’4 because the scales at my gym are set to imperial, for some reason. The weights in the gym, however, are metric. Parkrun is a 5km route. Supermarket meat is in grams. Drinks cans are in mls. Olympic / Commonwealth races are in metres. This is what I was taught, and what I know. It’s simple to learn. It’s units of 100. It’s easy, logical and uniform.
What the fuck is imperial? A pound, to me, is money (also metric). A yard is a garden. A foot is a body part. How does imperial all break down? Why do we use it? And more to the point, why do these BASTARD Tories think it’s acceptable to reintroduce it to a population who either understands it but are dying of old age, or don’t because they were never taught it?
If you’re young enough to have been taught metric but you for whatever reason use imperial, there’s something wrong with you. It’s pathetic. LEARN METRIC.
12) Learn spelling and grammar.
As more people communicate by phone rather than face-to-face, people are also communicating more via social media and email. This involves typing. I understand that some people are genuinely dyslexic. Despite being wrongly diagnosed with it at one point, I don’t honestly don’t know much about dyslexia, so I can’t comment on that situation. I gather there are groups like British Dyslexia Association that support people, but these are not the people I’m referring to.
I mean people who, for whatever reason, just can’t spell or punctuate and make no effort to improve. Then they seem surprised that people judge them on social media. This will never not happen. Phones and word processors literally give you the correct spelling with predictive text. There’s no excuse. You are never not being judged over this.
If you want to learn, read – whatever takes your fancy – for 30 minutes every night.
13) Learn to touch-type.
As more communication is done by email, you’ll be spending a little more time sat in front of a laptop or desktop. These moments of emails and social media communication will all add up and cut into the rest of your time of day. A little bit of touch type training now will pay off for the rest of your life. You’ll reduce the risk of Repetitive Strain Injury and increase your typing speed with just a few short lessons. I did. The BBC site has this Dance Mat programme - it’s for kids, but it’s free, and it worked for me.
14) Talk, but also listen.
Most social events include groups of people. Conversations might not be particularly hard work for a lot of people, but for some, they are, and when people can’t seem to hold them, it’s a strain for both them, and others around them. Don’t talk too much. Don’t rabbit and dominate the conversation, but don’t sit in silence and fade into the background either. If you’re out with one other person, talk 50%. 2 others? 33%. You won’t be able to gauge this exactly, but be conscious of your contribution.
Many aren’t conscious and develop a bad habit of lecturing, waffling and invading other people’s time with phone calls that could have been text messages. Read the room. Talk your share. Only talk notably more than others if you’re being asked questions and encouraged to do so.
15) Bring photo ID on all nights out.
In fact, bring photo ID everywhere. If you haven’t got one, get one. Get a provisional driver’s license.
Why? A growing number of bars and clubs are now using an ID scanning system that check your details to make sure you are who you say you are. It also allows clubs to bar people and share info of who has been barred, meaning genuine troublemakers will find it much harder to bother people with much fewer places available to them on a night out. This info also is shared with the police, so if anyone is wanted by them… the club is one place they’d be wise to stay away from.
This article about the use of scanners is nearly a decade old, but it seems these systems are much more popular and widespread today. They keep you safe. They aren’t about age, although you won’t get in if you’re under age. Everyone gets ID’d. It’s not because you’re white, black, Asian, old, young, gay, straight, disabled, or anything else. Everyone is treated with equal suspicion. Don’t take it personally.
More and more places use them. I used to run nights out through the Meetup website, and we had endless problems with people not bringing photo ID. I still have this issue on nights out these days. Always bring photo ID, or you’ll botch up the night out for everyone else. It is not 2003 any more. I hate to devastate you with that revelation.
16) Unsubscribe on Facebook.
We are all nothing but overcerebral cave people. We might, to a degree more than any other animal, understand the universe, but we are still human. Just a few thousand years ago, we were banging flints together to make fire and providing for our communities, which would have been no larger than 30 people strong. This includes family. This is the limit our brains are made to handle: 30 meaningful connections.
I grew up in the 1990s, and went to a school with maybe 1200 other people, as did most. Contemporary society thrusts us into situations that our brains just aren’t developed to deal with. Hence, you can imagine the stress we unwittingly put our brains under when social media is developed and we sign up, adding hundreds of people from every former and present spheres of our lives. New platforms emerge, like Instagram, where we find the opportunity to see feeds from literally millions of total strangers, and the odd celebrity.
The effect of this mental supersaturation is still largely unknown, but one can guess it takes up space in the brain that should be given to our close ones. I’ve got accounts on a handful of social media sites. I have a little over 600 Facebook friends, but the vast, vast majority of them I’ve unsubscribed from long ago.
The above analogy, and decision to limit my newsfeed to my core friends, was explained to me by an NHS therapist years ago. Now excuse me while I go unfollow thousands of people on Instagram...
17) Plan formal calls.
If you need to phone an organisation, have a pen and paper ready. They might give you another number to ring, or an email. They might give you a lot of information that you’ll need to know later, so whether you’ve got memory issues or not, it’s best to have something to write with.
Also, don’t tell a lengthy story to the first person who picks up. They’re probably a receptionist or Business Support Officer. You probably want to talk to someone who does the actual profession you need.
If you’re asked to leave a message, give some details. ‘Call me back please’ isn’t enough. Why you? Why not any of the other numerous people who’ve left similar messages? Give people something to work with, and you might hear back from them.
18) Just because the escalator moves, doesn’t mean you don’t have to.
In London, it’s considered etiquette to keep to the right on escalators. It’s also health and safety advice, unless you want to get flattened by some yuppie legging it to his meeting. But why are you standing still in the first place? Why elongate your journey by not moving?
What am I missing? What would be your most important advice to anyone else? And how old are you?
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