why so dislexik?

Excuse the cliché pun, but why make dyslexic such a difficult word to spell?

Having dyslexia has its challenges, it doesn’t stop me from being happy, but it can be very frustrating at times. It’s something which I was insecure with growing up and especially throughout school, I started falling behind in class from quite a young age, so I was moved to special education classes in mainstream school, special education is a program where you get extra mentorship and support. Now, looking back, of course there is nothing wrong, or embarrassing about the extra help, but in an environment that drives hate towards anyone slightly out of the ‘norm’, it felt like a big deal at the time.

Exams were horrific. Being stuck in a tense room with a limited amount of time to complete an entire essay stressed me the fuck out. I’d typically spend the first 10-minutes writing my name and my Scottish Candidate Number and then spend the rest of the time trying to read the questions on the page, I would reread the questions multiple times, not just to understand what the words are, but to understand what the sentence was, once I would manage that, I wouldn’t retain the information from the text, so the process would start all over again until it would ‘click’.

One thing I do find very strange is that I am unusually good at word search puzzles, so if someone can explain that one to me?

I don’t complain because I have managed to create coping mechanisms. I love reading books, but it can take me months to finish one. I love watching foreign movies, but with subtitles on I find it hard to keep up. When I receive a text from a friend, I break it up sentence by sentence and construct a response. Now, I’m not one to complain, and there are far worse things people are dealing with in the world, I know that there is no rush to finish a book, I can rewind a film, and if I spell words wrong in a response, well, it isn’t me having to read it. So, in everyday life, I manage, I’m used to it. But with my business, NIGHTMARE…

Ok so that might be a little dramatic, but I never realised how much writing would go into being an Artist. Again, I don’t want to come across as complaining, but I’m just being honest. I love writing in the blog, I don’t like to talk about myself in everyday life, but I thoroughly enjoy sharing stories like this, just call me the Carrie Bradshaw of Ayrshire.

Honestly though, everything about my career is great. I love it, but I’m trying to build independence for myself and for my business and at times I feel like I can’t do it. I’m very insecure about posting on social media without having my spell checker, AKA, Lewis. Posting anything with spelling errors can come across as unprofessional, which is understandable, but when I’m sharing my art, it should be that that is being looked at, not my grammar. I think that is part of the reason I hide so much detail and ‘easter eggs’ in my work, I like to leave my work open to interpretation, as this tells the story rather than my poor ass descriptions.

My partner in both life and business is a huge help. All the information that is displayed on the website and social media is my own words, I take the words and scramble them across the page and Lewis will come in and put all the pieces together so that they make sense for you to read.

Lewis is now starting his own business as an Estate Agent which is exciting, so I’m trying to relieve some of his workload and start taking more ownership of all the writing parts. I’m not ready to let him go completely from the business, so he’ll still be here to help me with the website maintenance, but I want him to follow his dream, as he has let me follow mine.

So, in summary, this blog post is a warning to all of you that the spelling and grammar might go drastically downhill, so don’t judge, I’m trying my bset.