On the 17th March 2025, I was unfortunate enough to fall within my tiny-house.

It was around 11pm at night, I could hear the rain getting heavier, and I realised I’d left the outside doors open to the power shed. After a while I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep with this in mind (despite waking up around 4am that day, and so feeling very tired).

Coming down the stairs in my tiny-house, and still in the dark so as ‘not to wake myself too much’, I mis-counted how many I’d been down, and instead of side-stepping where I should lower down, I side-stepped into nothing 1.35m up. Fortunately somehow avoiding most other things in the small area, but landing mostly on my back (so probably falling centre of mass around 2.5m) and straining my lumbar region.

I saw stars, wanted to vomit, writhed on the floor in mostly a featal postion for about half an hour, and then dragged myself onto the nearby sofa to try and work through the pain.

After about half an hour more of this I thought I had enough energy to actually go and shut the door, but ollapsed onto the grass about half way there as my body gave out. I eventually got to shut the door anyway, and returned to my cabin to try and work through the pain further.

Around 1am I knew the back pain wasn’t abating, and so I started looking up symptoms and treatments for a fall like this. Then discovering that seeing stars and wanting to vomit was indications of a concussion (even though as far as I could tell I hadn’t hit my head directly), the recommendations were to get myself to emergency medical care as quickly as possible.

I knew the risks of getting Covid at hospital were high. But I also knew that not getting checked or treated for a concussion could be very significant.

So grabbing masks, goggles, a water bottle, extra layers of clothes, etc. I slowly walked my way over to my neighbour, to wake them up and ask them to drive me to the nearest hospital.

We got there around 2am. Fortunately it was pretty quiet (only two other people in the waiting room), and at around 3:30am I was able to see a triage nurse. My blood pressure was a healthy 120 / 80. Pulse was good. But pain was bad, so I was given 30mg of Codine, whilst waiting to see a Doctor.

5:30am, and the pain was still bad (unable to sit or stand in any postion for more than 3 minutes), so I was lead through to an exaination room, and given some more Codine whilst waiting to see the Doctor.

About 30 minutes later, just as the second dose was finally kicking in, and also as I was finally able to start relaxing a litlte (having also been awake for more than 25 hours at this point), another nurse came in to recheck my blood pressure whilst sitting. They then asked me to stand for two minutes so they could check it again. Just as we were about to reach the 2 minute point, my blood pressure dropped to 66 / 33 as my body started collapsing, so I directed myself to sit back down again rather than falling forward.

Soon after, I was able to see a doctor, who checked my reflexes and sensations in my feet and legs, asked a bunch of questions, and was told to wait for the radiology ward to open to get a CT scan of my head to check for signs of fractures or similar.

Fortunately the CT scan came back clear enough for me to be discharged. I was given some paperwork, and then headed home to rest.

The first two weeks particularly were swapping between laying out flat on my sofa, and laying on my bed to sleep. Ocassionally getting up to reheat some food (thanks to former food prep).

I was mistakingly watching kids cartoons as a way to try and relax and distract my AuDHD brain, but it was still taking me six hours to watch a 90 minute kids movie.

After about two weeks I thought the concussion symptoms were largely gone, and so my tiredness was now just primarily down to my back pain and healing. So I arranged to meet with a physiotherapist via telehealth, to try and get some exercises to start rehabilitating my lumbar region.

The day after, I felt I had enough energy to make a start on those exercises. But doing just one rep of the most gentle lumbar stretches (two of the five exercises given) caused some sort of trauma response and my concussion symptoms were pushed back to about a week earlier.

It’s now around 15 months on, and I’ve still not fully recovered. What I used to be able to do in ‘a day’ now takes me more than a week. I’m getting more and more of my former brain function and physical energy back, but it’s incredibly slow.

I’ve come to accept my new normal for the time being. I’m far better off than so many others in a similar position, So I’m grateful.

25 years ago, I was working for my local council on what was supposed to be a brief two week contract.

For whatever reason, council bosses had been convinced a particular department could be run more efficiently if privatised.

The existing database management system was being upgraded to new system via this third party, of which they were paying about £8million (about $15million) just for the custom database software alone, plus ongoing support contracts, training, etc.

Further, the entire department was now suddenly no longer employed by the council (after 20+ years in some cases), and now all staff had new private contracts with this third party company, who also charged the council agency fees for ’employing the specialists’, on top of the regular wages of the staff, all of whom still sat at their same desks, and were still paid the same salary, with the same job roles.

The new database system was supposed to be rolled out in three phases over just two weeks, and so they employed me and someone else, both at just over minimum wage, to manually manage client applications, filing, etc. for the ‘brief period’ of the new database installation during the ‘two week rollover’.

6 months later, I quit. They hadn’t even installed phase one of the new database system.

So for my ‘just over minimum wage’ job, on the fly I’d had to build and maintain my own custom client records database for 15,000 clients, to track the dozen or so stages of their respective benefit applications, with codes, filters, keys for other staff to understand, and to generate reports to chase missing application parts, share records with the respective staff at various stages of their process, and make it remotely accessible whilst also being secure, etc.

So yeah, when someone tries to claim privatisation is better, it’s only better for the profit of the shareholders, not for anyone else.

I’ve seen first hand what a complete waste of money privatisation can be.

There are many things I just assumed were ‘normal’ in my brain, but a few are not so much.

So recently I’ve been thinking about the way my brain often processes a bunch of things to solve problems. And to me, it makes sense when represented by a magical cartoon cauldron.  

So into the pot, I throw in a bunch of ideas, problems, challenges, thoughts, or whatever it is I’m currently dealing with, give it a stir, and generally leave that bubbling away for a while (hours, days, weeks, or occasionally years).

Typically my brain is chanting up to four bars of a random song recently stuck in my head, whilst other thoughts are twisting and dancing around the pot in weird movements.

I’ll stir it with a giant spoon every now and then if I can find one, and try to breakdown the lumps of some ideas stuck unhelpfully together.  I’ll also be trying to fish out the long stray random hairs, plant matter, and random bits of plastic that somehow got blown into the pot from who knows where. 

I might occasionally be able to let it simmer and/or forget about it whilst getting distracted by something else. Other times the cauldron feels like some thoughts have combined exothermically and it’s now boiling out of control with no way to turn it down : I’m just doing my best to stop it sticking to the base, whilst trying not to get too scalded by hot splashes of the bubbling mess throwing thoughts around everywhere right in front of me.

Often there will be flavours and burnt on concepts left behind, that want to taint the whole pot.

Sometimes a single magical ingredient of an idea, instantly brings it all together. 

Other times it’ll take a few weird combinations of things to make it work. 

Sometimes the sludge needs to be left to cool a while, reheated, and cooled again a few more times before a solution is found.

There’s no rhyme nor reason why it does or doesn’t work on any given day. If it’s something similar to what I may have dealt with before, I might have a better idea of how to get there a little bit faster. But generally every pot is a unique set of available ingredients and intended outcomes. I can try to guide it all in the right direction by throwing in a bunch of things that may have helped in the past, and by trying to make the kitchen a good enough place to work without tripping over things in the process, and by hopefully remembering to put the lid on as it simmers.

But finally, when I’m lucky, often with what feels like a poof of smoke, a flood of light, and the sound of an angelic harmony, (and my body suddenly feels lighter), all the thoughts seem to suddenly merge and vanish in the pot, and out the gloop appears the often simple vial of a potion, that’s the solution I’ve been trying to find or make sense of : I get a full 3D moving render overlaying the physical space, of whatever physical thing it might be accordingly.

Those are the very good times.