Introductions

[Xenavire]

Hi, it's a pleasure to meet you all.

I always find it awkward to introduce myself. I'm not great in social situations, and worse, since I have started writing full time in hopes of being an author, I second guess myself and tend to get stuck in my own head instead of just saying what I mean.

I struggled as a kid, I wasn't diagnosed until I was eleven or twelve (and it was an informal diagnosis that the school system failed to follow up on, so I never got it in writing.) I have never doubted the diagnosis, it explained everything perfectly.

I was always good at hiding it, so even though I was clumsy, people never thought I was anything but a normal kid. After all, kids fall over now and then, nothing unusual about that. I couldn't disguise my difficulty keeping up with the rest of my class however - I was called lazy, claims were made that I refused to apply myself.

It took far too long for someone to call in a specialist, and the problem was almost immediately diagnosed once they did. (I was the eldest child, so my mother had no idea it wasn't "normal" for a long time, or it would have been diagnosed sooner.)

They organised some kind of small electronic workstation - like an oversized calculator, I've never seen anything else like it. These days I'm sure I would have been given be a tablet or laptop instead. My ability to keep up in class changed so drastically with that wonderful machine, that I went from last to complete (or just incomplete), to being one of the first done for every task that I could perform on that workstation (and beyond allowing me to type instead of write, it didn't actually do anything else to speed things up.)

Suffice it to say, that was the point in my life where I finally understood that I wasn't just an idiot savant that was crazy good at taking tests, I had a kind of disability, and I could overcome it.


Fast forward to now, I'm 30, and I hope I can earn a living doing what I love - writing fiction. I still have to deal with being forgetful and clumsy beyond what is normal, not to mention the sensory overloads (I managed to get all five senses to differing degrees, sound and smell being the hardest to deal with), but otherwise I'm a fully functioning adult. Or as fully functioning as one can be with Dyspraxia hiding in the shadows.

I'm perfectly happy to join in any discussions or answer questions people might have, I may introduce myself like a stiff old professor, but I'm actually quite laid back once I get a chance to relax.

Happy to be here!

[Tom fod]

Hi and welcome to our corner of the web. Glad you've found us.

Was your electronic device a some sort of a PDA like a handspring (sp?)?

Was thinking speak and spell but they daye back to early 80s and one was famously featured in Spielbergs ET.

[Xenavire]

I don't have a clear memory of how it looked, but I'm fairly sure it looked very similar to this: https://live.staticflickr.com/3040/2963 ... ef81_b.jpg

Took a few minutes to find that on Google, and I don't know if the brand/model are the same, but it's certainly very close.

It took a little getting used to, but after I had a handle on it, I was getting so much done that I had significant amounts of free time after each new task we got. It was like night and day to me.

[Tom fod]

They tried to teach me to touch type after my GCSE so hand wrote and had extra time. Wasn't a great success .
I think these type of word processors emerged around same time or shortly afterwards. Did you have to connect to a dot matrix printer or had inkjets appeared by then?

I don't think Dyspraxia was ever explained to me (or I wasn't listening if they tried)

I did have an electronic typewriter with a one line LCD Display for a while.

[Xenavire]

As far as I can remember, I had to have the teacher check the work I'd done, and everything I did for the day was stored on it.

I don't remember if it had enough memory for multiple days, but I suspect it wasn't capable of much.

As for the year, it was 2001 or 2002. I have no idea if it was considered modern at that point, but I am sure I wasn't the first person to use it.

[RenegadeDyspraxic]

Hello and welcome to the group from a fellow newbie to this forum as well.
I read your post with interest as in many ways it is similar to my story. Though I received my diagnosis when I was 4, I did have difficulties with speech and movement when growing up.
I look forward as well to answering any questions which you have; and perhaps answering questions which I may have.