So for me one of the things I find really important, is to pay attention to the world around me and that means going on lots of public transport and train journeys and bus journeys and just staring out the window and taking in the view.
Which is why I take so many photographs and I use them in my work later on, to kind of put across how I feel about the world around me and my place in it I suppose, which is very small, just as a tiny, little individual.
But I love watching the intersection of tracks and things, I dont know, there is something I think, quite sexy about them which is quite weird probably, that doesnt mean I have sex with trainlines, no of course not, but there is something I find quite exciting about the travelling and the observation.
And I suppose, living in London, one of the things that is really interesting is its always changing. So there is always transition, so you might know somewhere, but then you dont know it, and in a way that is quite exciting too, that offers quite a lot of surprise when you go out and you have to be aware because otherwise, well you will get lost. Or something else, youll get confused.
And I suppose that is something that happened after the pandemic – I went out and this whole estate I knew had been knocked down and I hadnt been there.
So what am I meant to tell you about my mental health and dyslexia. Well I get very confused at train stations and get lost quite a lot, and cant find my way in, let alone my way out or redirections. I
have to be quite slow when Im in a train station or underground or overground, and I have to read very carefully, its very easy for me to misread and get the wrong end of the stick and go in the wrong direction and waste a lot of my time.
So I have to be quite careful and these things get confusing so I have to be able to ask people questions and obviously, more and more, there’s no guards on trains.
And the lack of guards on trains makes life really really difficult because you have to read more, and I cant always take instruction from someone if I cant see them, because as well as having phonic deficit, so I dont hear the whole range of sounds that most people here, Ive also gone slightly deaf through age and now that compounds that and can make it more difficult and I suppose, some thing about that that’s really important is that sometimes its really isolating, because you dont know people are talking to you and yeah, so you might appear rude, which isnt the intention of course, obviously. But such is how it is.
Ide like to be pictured on a piece of public transport because of how I deal with my anxiety, which sounds a little odd, but if Im at home sometimes, its more stressful than if I come out and just take a train ride or a bus ride, because it gives me something to concentrate on thats not me. It forces me to pay attention and to be somewhere else and not in my own head.
