First thing’s first, who am I?
Simply put, I am Haily Merry. I am many things, but clear and easily understood are neither of them. Rest assured that confusion, exhaustion, violent rage, and projectile vomiting are all perfectly normal reactions which can befall anybody unfortunate enough to come into contact with me, and my few friends all have their fair share of horror stories, more on that another time. I shall, however, endeavour to keep your symptoms within manageable extremes by being ever so slightly less annoying than usual. You’re welcome.
I am, as the about page now says, totally blind. This means that I have, literally, no sight. No light, no colour, no nothing. I often find that this concept can be difficult if not impossible to get across to even my fellow blind friends, most of whom have at least a little bit of light perception. I do have eyes, however they are purely ornamental, and they can actually cause me quite a bit of grief due to their susceptibility to all manner of infections. It’s not all bad though because, in the words of Lady Gaga, I was born this way. I, quite literally, no nothing else. My problems, at least as far as access and living a full and happy life are concerned, are caused exclusively by society.
I’m sure there will at some point come the inevitable questions regarding how I do literally everything, and I’ll be more than happy to do a megapost answering as many of those as I feel comfortable answering if there is sufficient demand for it.
I am 21 at time of writing, and I have been out of education for several years. There are many reasons for this, and to a large extent my problems have been of my own making, but the long and short of it is that despite being a nerd, I am terrible at maths, and my coding abilities, whilst certainly above average, are definitely nowhere near good enough for a career in computer science. Various mental health related problems and the death of my father in November 2022 have certainly not helped, either. I sort of flirted with the idea of pursuing a psychology degree for awhile, the Open University here in the UK is an amazing resource BTW, but now I’m thinking I’ll probably switch to something politics related, like PPE, which will hopefully be more up my alley. I’ll also be moving into my own place very soon, which will be enormously beneficial from a mental health perspective, and that’s actually the main reason why I’m starting this blog now. This seems like as good a time as any to start seriously writing my thoughts down, and the community aspect of Substack may well help keep me motivated to stick with it this time, particularly as things grow increasingly hectic. I will, it turns out, have to get all of my own furnature, and a lot of things, like my bed, are too old / broken to be moved from my parents place, so there’ll be a lot of shopping at Ikea and a *lot* of heavy lifting on my account. I’m not even sure if I’ll have a washing machine or not. Frankly I’d like nothing beter than to get it over and done with as soon as possible, but the building I’ll be moving into is brand new and they’ve been all tied up with fire safety stuff for months now, it’s not a high rise building thank god, but it’s still pretty huge and I guess they’ve got to be twice as vigilant across the board now, what with Grenfell and all. I’m getting encouraging noises that it may finally be ready within the next few weeks, however, so I’ve definitely got reason enough to be chearful at the moment.
Regarding subscriptions, what you can expect here, ETC.
I am tentatively aiming to do at least one post per week, perhaps two. I may perhaps be allowing hope to be the enemy of experience when it comes to my track record in this arena, but beter to aim high and fall short, I suppose. I have enabled subscription pledges, which means that if you are financially able / willing, you can pledge a subscription, and you will only be charged if payments are enabled. I will not be doing paywalls any time soon, this is just to gage interest, and it is 100% optional. You can always subscribe for free, and I would very much encourage you to do that.
That’s about all for today, I think. I spent far, far too long geting this configured and it is now horrifyingly late here. Thank you for reading.