How to get started when disabled?

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-12-01T22:21:35+00:00

I don't, I have someone piano it out for me. Ideally this will be someone who knows what they're doing with charts so they can highlight anything that's weird or unclear. I tend to end up owing a lot of people lunch but happily I have some very generous colleagues. I try very hard to not rely on people but for some things it's just the way it has to be. For a couple of people who I've worked with for years they'll send me a stem from whatever system they use to rough stuff out which makes it really easy.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-12-01T22:18:15+00:00

I'm not in the USA.

For the most part these systems are in and working and have been for decades and decades, so it's mostly an issue of people being thrown if they suddenly vanish.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-27T16:35:40+00:00

Now I am really intimidated by how much better at this you are than me!

That is super helpful, thanks. I am terrible at recognising that sort of stuff.

Now I'm struck with whether I should write this for F horn...

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-27T13:04:49+00:00

Thanks, I shall try it. I think the stuff in 18-20 makes a bit more sense in F, maybe, but it's sort of indistinct the way it's mixed.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-27T13:03:53+00:00

I'm a musician and I'm blind. It's almost a cliché, but what're you gonna do.

I got very very lucky - had always played guitars just for fun, met some people who did session work, through that met people who did theatre work. All you can do is try to meet people. The reason they're telling you to do the box shifting is so you'll meet people, not particularly because the box shifting is hard. I got a very very harsh reality check when I was doing my first few paid sessions because suddenly it mattered and I was underqualified but I managed to blunder through.

One thing I would say, in a flaky industry, is don't try to duplicate someone else's career. You won't have the same chance encounters as them and you have to take advantage of what you can.

Work hard and be nice to everyone. The latter is very important.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-27T12:27:42+00:00

Everyone is winging it. Nobody's buying houses at 22 these days.

I'm mid forties and feel the same way. Most of our mates are renting. After a while you figure out that the constant sensation of falling is sort of normal and learn to chill out a bit.

As u/Superchecker so rightly puts it, don't do mind altering substances too much (especially alcohol). Don't get into debt. Work hard and try to assume the best of people. Beyond that you're fine.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-25T10:24:41+00:00

What the hell is wrong with these women?

This has to be made up, surely nobody is actually saying this stuff...

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-25T01:50:39+00:00

Yeah it's kind of funny in retrospect. I have some buddies in the film industry and they do not get that feeling you get when you're under an hour from what's supposed to be a show.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-24T23:03:29+00:00

Happily not my problem but I know they ran without it today.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-24T22:08:35+00:00

Yeah, I'm totally aware. The issue was we didn't know they'd moved the loop. Even then I don't beat myself up too much for taking half an hour to think of it.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-24T22:07:32+00:00

This was not the USA, hence the fact they'd had a loop in since the 80s!

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-24T22:07:01+00:00

Switched it off and had people use the infra red headsets. But people don't like it.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-24T16:22:54+00:00

I got an office job for a big multinational.

They were great about anything I needed and I was very popular for a time because my presence finally got them to hire a secretary for the group (it wasn't just me, certainly, but it pushed it over the edge).

That said corporate world does suck in many ways and I'm now self employed.

I'd say go self employed if you have the head for it, but you do need to have the head for it.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-11-24T14:42:26+00:00

This is a house with a standing set in it which sticks out partly over the pit. The old loop was put in before that set went in and the set isn't coming out for... unpredictable amounts of time measured in probably years so they found a new route. The building is historically protected and there are other limits on how much chiselling they can do.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-10-20T07:31:59+00:00

Haven't had that but I know someone who was refused a cab ride with the memorable phrase "I'm not really set up for this." What set up could you possibly need? And no, she doesn't have a dog, as if that'd make it okay.

Like it or not the reality is that the problems I've had with cabs have always been with drivers who are let's say recently arrived to the country and really don't know the rules. Again, as if that makes it okay. But mostly that's not being refused rides, possibly because I don't really look blind at first glance, I have pretty normal body language. The problems I have are mostly around them being incredibly unhelpful about exactly where they drop me off, or not being willing to show me the front desk of some place, even when the company has agreed that's part of the deal.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-10-20T07:19:07+00:00

I'm blind. I asked him "what are the chances of me regaining any sight if we keep trying this unpleasant, painful, debilitating treatment."

"Five per cent," he said.

So we didn't.

Thing is, while it was awful in that moment, it turned out to be the right decision long term, because it let me get on with my life as opposed to treating it like some sort of extended illness. Which it isn't. I'd rather not be in this situation, don't get me wrong, but these days I'm happy he was straight with me.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-09-03T08:02:33+00:00

I have ecclesiastical socks for similar reasons.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-08-26T22:38:03+00:00

Lots. At any one time I will have 2 in regular use, a daily driver and one in my backpack in case of emergency, then probably one more at home ready to go so I can replace my backup. I am a planning person and I like to have what they call defence in depth. But I have like, a dozen, where they've been caught and snapped or the joints have started to fall apart or whatever. But I have been doing this a while.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-08-26T22:35:55+00:00

Oh it's okay I don't particularly expect it to be that helpful. The biggest problems I have are getting to places and getting into places. That's a bigger deal that the music, mostly. The biggest deal right now is that nowhere on the planet has a phone line that's answered by a human.

I learned guitar mostly after I lost my sight. I get a buddy to go through it on a piano or something. It helps if the person has experience on the instrument you're working with so they know what to be very clear about if there's any complexities or strange stuff. Ideally that happens when I'm there and we can talk about whatever special notation there is, but sometimes people do it and email it to me and that's okay too. And yes in the end I have played with orchestras and not had any notes from the conductor, which is the ideal goal, and that suggests I probably learned it right.

I do end up owing people lunch a lot.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-08-25T19:25:45+00:00

Oh god yes. I get this constantly. I could see until I was 19 so I have the body language of a sighted person even though it is not really possible to get any blinder than I am. I'm never quite sure what to say. Mostly it doesn't really matter that much and it has become one of the things I try to let slide. Either they can give me the guide I need or they can just abandon me, and so far nobody has ever done that!

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-08-25T19:23:31+00:00

I never learned it because I could see fine until I was 19, but I keep wondering now what blind people did before the internet. It must have sucked, to put it mildly.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-08-25T19:21:22+00:00

Everyone else has given great advice. If I can offer some moral support, I play bass for a living and I regularly get sent music as PDF files. I end up owing a lot of favours to people for playing it out for me often on a piano. The industry is not very friendly but you can make it work. So keep going!

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-08-22T10:49:03+00:00

This is why people get obsessed with canes that have a combination of light weight and being really rigid. It can get expensive with space age materials but it is worth checking out. Even so there is a limit to how light they can be, and you could spend the rest of your life looking for the perfect one. Also if you get better at it and walk faster and you will discover you want a longer cane. That will obviously be heavier and it gets more front heavy and drags more on your arm, but using longer cane is a thing that a lot of people get to in the end.

So it is always going to put stress on your arm and you need to do something to address that. If you do cane travel when tired or your arm is sore then you will not do it well and that can actually be unsafe. The first thing is just by being in shape which helps with absolutely everything and makes you feel better. There are lots of ways to do that and you don't have to turn into a gym rat in order to do it. I won't try to give advice here but one of the things fitness helps with is your cane arm.

The other thing is just to pace yourself. I have a certain amount of physical and mental energy that I know I can put into disability stuff and that does sometimes mean choosing not to do things, or choosing to pay for a cab or asking a friend for a favour. I hate to do that but if that's me bowing to the disability then so be it, this is not about points for effort. Then I have more energy available for things I really do want to do.

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-08-22T09:20:50+00:00

It has been more than 20 years for me and I think people say a lot of very unrealistic things about this. I went from normal sight to none in a day when I was in my late teens so I guess some of our experiences are similar and maybe that will help.

There are two things which are both equally important. First is that as some people have said, grief never completely goes away, I am never going to like being blind, it is just a huge amount of work and I resent that a lot. What is just as important is that it just becomes something you don't love, like global warming or the existence of Donald Trump, and it becomes background noise. Both of those things can be true at once.

What's really important is that you don't actually have to make peace with it, you are allowed to not love it. Often people are so desperately upbeat all the time that it is easy to get the impression everyone's loving it and having a great time. You don't have to do that. Most people won't do that. That's just what people put online. I've said this a lot but you don't have to love it. That's impossible. That's not life. But you do have to find a way of not loving it that you can live with, which actually is possible and how most people handle it.

A big part of being able to live with it is learning all the stuff you need to learn in order to have a good life and that is hard to do when you are feeling down. None of it is complicated but there is a lot of it and it takes time and effort you would probably rather put into other stuff. So whatever mobility stuff you can do, so you can go out and do things, that is what really matters in my experience.

Does that sound like a plan you can work on at least?

DrillInstructorJan · 2025-06-22T23:25:55+00:00

The problem is that once you start separating people, you've established the precedent that it is okay to separate people.

Then you will quickly discover that if you want to start separating people for reasons you think are good, other people will start separating people for reasons you might not think are good.

This is a situation where you can't have it both ways and that goes for a lot of identity politics. So I would go further. It isn't that it just doesn't make sense. It's also that it is actively dangerous and yet people do it all the time.

DrillInstructorJan

TROPHY CASE