Collaborations – Page 8 – Well Eye Never

Building My New Social Network With A Visual Impairment

I’ve shared overviews of this story as guest posts on Scope’s community forum and the Nystagmus Network’s newsletter. Many thanks to them both for featuring me! And if you’ve found me via one of those articles or a social media promotion, hello and welcome! 🙂

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On September 30th, I gave a talk at the Nystagmus Network’s Open Day about how I had been building a new social network for myself in London. It was my first time giving a public speech about myself, but it went really well. I spoke for about 15 minutes, then we had a group discussion for the next 15 minutes. It got a very positive response, and I got chatting to many people as a result of it, so I was very happy with it. And I’ve written blog posts about how I prepared for it and my experience at the Open Day.

So this post is a written version of that speech, and I’ve posted a video version that I filmed on the same evening. Both are longer than the actual speech I gave at the Open Day, as without constraints on time or length I’ve been able to explain things in a bit more detail. So the actual speech was a slightly more concise version of this, although 15 minutes was still quite a bit of time to fill!

Obviously my situation is unique to me, and everyone’s circumstances will be different in their own way. I’m just giving examples of the things I’ve done. The overall aim is to show that it’s important and worthwhile to try things that interest you and grasp opportunities when they arise, as you never know what will result from them. You may have to push yourself out of your comfort zone a bit, and I know that can be easier said than done. It was a challenge for me, and it still can be sometimes. But the more you try things, the more confident you’ll get, and you’ll soon start to reap the rewards of your efforts. Otherwise, you’ll always be asking yourself ‘what if’, which is never helpful.

So I hope you enjoy reading this. Thank you to Sue Ricketts and the Nystagmus Network for asking me to share my story at the Open Day, and to all those who responded to it so well.

Speaking At The Nystagmus Network Open Day

On Saturday, I attended the Nystagmus Network‘s Open Day in Birmingham, the first time I’ve ever been to an event of this nature. The only time I’ve previously met a group who share one of my eye conditions was after Sight Village last year, when I got together with a handful of people with aniridia in a coffee shop. And that was wonderful, but this weekend’s event was on a much bigger scale. This time, I was going to a big conference for people with nystagmus with hundreds of people in attendance. And I was very much looking forward to.

However, I was also nervous, because I had been invited to be one of the speakers – making this the first time I would ever give a talk in public about myself. I wrote in my last post about how this came about, and how I prepared for it. So now I want to tell you about the day itself and how it went.

Preparing For My First Public Talk

This weekend I was invited to attend the Nystagmus Network Open Day in Birmingham. Although I’ve been to things like Sight Village before, where I got to meet a handful of people with aniridia, I’ve never been to a large, dedicated conference for people with the same eye condition to network and find out information. So that in itself was going to be interesting.

But I wasn’t just a regular attendee – I was going to be one of the speakers! So that meant doing another first – publicly talking about myself and my life. This was naturally a daunting prospect, but exciting too. So I agreed to give it a go, it was worth a try.

And I wanted to write in detail about my experience, which I’m going to split over a couple of posts so it doesn’t get too long. I’m then going to publish a written article version of my speech here, and a video version on my Youtube channel, so you can see what I said, and maybe it will give you some inspiration and reassurance too. So I’ve got quite a bit to share!

August 2017 Favourites

Hi there, welcome to my next update! My birthday month has been marked by a number of special outings, including my first meeting with one of my favourite Youtubers, my first audio description experiences at a theatre and a cinema, my first visits to a few places outside London, a park outing with a visually impaired social group, a music pub quiz, some talking statues, and a couple of other walks too. So yet again there’s a lot to cover here, with lots of photos and video footage accompanying it, and I hope you enjoy!

Meeting Fashioneyesta

This Monday I finally got to meet one of my favourite Youtubers – Emily Davison from Fashioneyesta. We spent a delightful day together at Knole Park in Sevenoaks, and she’s posted a wonderful vlog about it on her second channel. So I wanted to blog about it from my own perspective as well, which I hope you enjoy!

Small Youtuber Tag

For this post and video, I’m doing the small Youtuber tag, which I decided to do after seeing Annie Elainey’s video. I don’t know if she originally created the tag but that’s where I found it. Her Youtube channel is well worth checking out as well, she’s a brilliant disability campaigner and blogger.

Anyway, on with my answers to the tag, I hope you enjoy!

June 2017 Favourites

Hi there, welcome back to the next instalment of my monthly updates. It’s hard to believe that it was the 6-month anniversary of my move to London in June, that’s certainly flown by!

Of course, I appreciate that this month is one that some people would rather forget, given the despicable attack on London Bridge and the devastating Grenfell Tower fire, and my thoughts go out to everyone affected by those terrible events.

But for me, I’ve happily continued with my explorations of London, taking advantage of the glorious weather to walk around a lot of different places, capturing lots of photos and videos along the way, as well as celebrating Aniridia Day, seeing TV shows being recorded and socialising with friends! Hence this is a very busy post, and I hope you enjoy it all!

Aniridia Day – My Shining Success Story

Happy Aniridia Day! 🙂

Today we’re celebrating people’s achievements and ambitions with Aniridia, as part of the Shining Success campaign, for which I edited a promo video I’m very proud of. There are also Facebook and Twitter pages for the day, where people are sharing their stories, photos and videos to mark the occasion, so please do check them out.

It’s already bringing people together with aniridia who have never met before, and helping to spread a positive message of positivity, support, solidarity and hope for the future. And if you want to find aniridia support groups, the links on my Sight Loss Resources page may help.

So this post, and a video to accompany it, is my contribution for the day, talking about my own achievements and ambitions, as someone living with aniridia. I hope you find it interesting!

The Liebster Award

I hadn’t heard of the Liebster Award before I started blogging, but it seems to be a fun way of promoting other bloggers. The basic idea is that you answer the questions you’ve been asked, then nominate a few other bloggers and give them some questions to answer. And I’ve been very kindly nominated by The Invisible Vision Project – thank you so much! 🙂 They’ve also nominated Nataemily and Blind Moving On, whose blogs I also recommend checking out.

So here are my answers to the questions I’ve been asked, followed by my questions for the bloggers I nominate at the end.

TMI Tag

I saw the “Too Much Information” tag yesterday, so for this post I thought it would be fun to give it a go as well. I hope you like my answers, and feel free to answer the questions yourself as well! 🙂

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