Hi! I’m Dan, 20 years old and wanting to express my thoughts, feelings, ideas, and more about the world. A lot of these will be impacted by my ADHD which is why I decided to make it the focus of my writing. Since being diagnosed, I find that my ADHD has effected every aspect of my life and I want to help people see things from a neurodivergent point of view.
Having said that, I don’t want to limit my writing to JUST my neurology. I am interested in many things and have many ideas and topics I want to talk about. These may or may not involve ADHD, so I hope that you can find something interesting to read.
More about myself to give a more detailed concept of a real person writing this; I was born in South Africa, and am half English, a quarter Welsh, and a quarter Finnish. These are facts I enjoy telling people any chance I get. I’m not too sure why. Potentially because I didn’t have a huge connection to South Africa, Finland, or Wales growing up. Or potentially because I am incredibly interested in language and culture. I have three completely different cultures and languages to choose from that I haven’t grown up with so I am infinitely interested in them, particularly the Finnish side of my heritage. I vaguely remember my grandmother speaking to me in Finnish but my mum says she doesn’t think that’s true. Who knows, maybe I dreamt it? It doesn’t really matter though, what does is that I am interested in language and culture and I have a unique background that I can learn about and have a connection to through my family.
Language is a subject I love to learn about and talk about. Linguistics, the history of language, writing systems, conlangs (constructed languages), modern foreign languages, all topics that may be able to be placed under the nebulous concept of “language” interest me. As such, I loved French at school, and by 6th form had developed an actual competency and skill for the language. Which, as is common, has slipped away from me and now my French is about a good as any other person who went through the English education system. Finnish is my 3rd best language, I suck at it. I do love it though.
I have been self studying Finnish on and off for around 6 years now, I think. It began when I discovered the Finnish rock band Haloo Helsinki! on Youtube. The first song I listened to was titled “Huuda!” (shout! in English) and it’s such a good song. It’s still one of my favourite songs and I absolutely fell in love with the band. Haloo Helsinki! have an incredible discography and are a huge inspiration not only to my interest in language but also to my interest in music. I think everyone should check out Haloo Helsinki! They’re amazing. Here’s a list of some of my favourite songs by them (I’ve put the English translation in brackets): Pulp Fiction; Perjantaina (On Friday); Beibi (Baby); Seitsemän Miljardii (7 Billion); Rakkauden Jälkeen (After Love). All of these songs are amazing and if I’m being honest, there is not one song in the entirety of their discography that I dislike. I really love them they’re my favourite rock band and in my top 5 artists of all time.
If we’re going to talk about music, I need to mention Red Velvet. Red Velvet is a Kpop group and their music is so…. it’s just so good. Their dances, and the concepts of the music. It’s so captivating and I’m pretty sure I’m going to destroy my hearing because I listen to their music so loudly. Some songs I really think you should listen to are: Red Flavor, Bad Boy (imo the English version is better but the Korean version is also a really good song too, it’s the same song just sung in different languages); Happiness; Mojito; Psycho; Zimzalabim; and Umpah Umpah. All of these are fantastic and their entire discography, again, is immaculate.
Those are a few of the things that interest me. However, my brain is getting to the point where I might spend then next 50 hours typing up in excruciating detail every facet of my interests. I’ll end my post here to save my hands from typing that out.
Thanks for reading!
