So to answer my totally arbitrary question to myself – “name five problems dyslexia causes you or me?” –

Just to get going my answers were off the top of my head, some need more thought others their own video!

Number One – awful spelling, but not only awful spelling, awful and erratic spelling. That means you can spell a word correctly but then three or four paragraphs later you’ve have no idea how to spell it, in fact it is as if you’ve never seen the word in your life before!

The real problem here is that bad spelling affects written work: examinations, forms, text messages, etc, etc etc! So pressurised written work no thank you!

“But you’ve written books I hear you say!” Yes I have – but my system doesn’t carry over – which really sucks. I used to think this made me look stupid, but it doesn’t, it makes me look completely disinterested – which is actually worse! There’s a big difference between being unable and being unwilling. To look unable is humbling. To look unwilling is arrogant.

Number Two – I always assume what I’ve written is wrong. Now that’s great for self-belief or self-confidence. Hands up (my dyslexic friend) if you’ve written something on a computer, I believe the contemporary expression is a device, and there’s no red lines so you change the spelling to make it wrong to make sure the red line will appear just in case this electronic entity has missed a mistake! I think of this as a dyslexic burden – something that you always have to carry, something that always weighs you down, and something you get no benefit from! That constant feeling that you’re probably wrong!

Number Three – reading is normally slow and mentally draining. But the odd time your brain very kindly and in a totally random manner, decides you can read perfectly for ages, so when it happens you know just how bad your reading is the rest of the time! I can listen to audio books or text-to-speech via Kindle for hours. But reading for anything more than half an hour is a total wipe out – this means you do everything you can to avoid such circumstances! Or – more likely you avoid anything that could led to these circumstances. That’s called avoidance – and it’s not good, or helpful.

Number Four – people don’t know, this is a double edged sword! People not knowing is a good thing because I don’t want to be unnecessarily judge by a) someone I don’t know b) someone whose opinion I’m not interested in c) someone when judged by there own standard would come a cropper, and all this about something that doesn’t define me as a person. But on the other hand people don’t know and therefore cannot cut me (or you) a bit of slack!

Number Five – always grasping the negative consequences of dyslexia, but being unable to see the positives of ‘dyslexic thinking’ – good job to ‘Made by Dyslexia’ for making this a thing.

Failed exams and none existent qualifications are easy to see, well its actually easy to see that you can’t see them! But the intrinsic benefits of dyslexic thinking are harder to perceive..

I got an F in English, but I’ve also written books. I know my dyslexia played a huge roll in me getting an F. But my dyslexic thinking also played a huge roll in me being able to write my books (having a vivid / silly imagination, easily seeing connections, the ability to bounce ideas around in bizarre ways in my mind). But when you’ve always done this its hard to see this as a unique talent.

Think of how many neurodiverse creators, inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs there are. These are people who are meant to be handicapped by a huge hindrance but they aren’t and in fact it seems to be the total opposite!

So there’s my non-exhaustive list of five – what are yours? Why not add then to the comment section – and until the next time thank you for watching

*** Before you go I wrote a book about a little boy with dyslexia called ‘George and the Elephant’ you can check it out here! ***

NB this was a script for a video hence the references to videos!