Damien Mulley

I know the woman who wrote this letter to Dermot Ahern about her sons. She’s brilliant. It won’t be self-serving, cliquey, rainbow waving gay groups or “pride” parades that’ll bring about equality, it’ll be people like Helen Doody talking about her gay sons, it’ll be Conor Pendergrast talking about his two mums and it’ll be friends of gay people who are sharing their experience about their gay friends with greater society. If gay people are hiding themselves away at work and skulking in gay bars on weekends and only coming out in daylight for a single annual pride parade, exactly how can society understand and identify why we want to be treated as equals? It’s easy for a society to be ignorant and even hateful of a vacuum. Who’s creating that now though?

Thank you.

From the suckiest 2007 to the best year of my life. Some move! 2008 saw me finishing up in my day job and working for myself and being diagnosed with MS. No no, this was good. I got a tattoo with the word “Free” inked on my chest a few months ago just to remind myself of this year and what happened. MS was the best wake-up call ever. It made me realise life is short, most people are worth loving while a few aren’t worth your time at all. I’m caring more and I’m caring less. I’m working harder than ever and loving every single second of it. Work for me now is 7 days a week, 16 hours a day at times and it’s totally fun. Money and tangibles became even less important for me in 2008 than previously. I’m saying “ah well” more than ever before too because I’m taking risks and that’s a phrase you’ll say now and then after you take that risk.

I’ve lost some friends but I’ve gained tonnes more and am now not just surrounded but mobbed by amazing and inspiring people, many of them read and contribute to this blog. You all rock! I’ve got some plans for 2009 and 2010 and 2011 and 2012 as it happens but I don’t care too much if they work out or not. If they don’t: Ah well. The journey is the real fun and interesting bit.

I’ll enjoy being free next year too and whatever number of years after that. Thanks 2008. Thanks to everyone that took time out of their lives to read Mulley.net, to leave a comment (even if calling me an asshole) and to share their thoughts and opinions with me offline too. See you on the other side.

I contributed to a piece that Markham Nolan helped put together on Multiple Sclerosis for the Sunday Business Post. My scowl is on the cover of the Agenda section and Mulley on the rocks is on pages 6 and 7 too. Oh how that photo will be reused for a future public upset…

Picture of the front cover taken by Bernie.

Markham covers his mother and the tough experience his whole family had with her MS and I give my experiences of being diagnosed with it earlier this year.

The piece I contributed is much longer than what’s in the Business Post and they added in my age to the piece too. I’m 31, not 27 as the article states. 31 and 3/4s at that. Overall the edited version reads very well. However the last two paragraphs which I thought the most important were edited out too, which is fair enough. They’re the pros. I’m including them here as I think it’s worth covering as if it wasn’t for this blog I wouldn’t have encountered other people that have MS experiences:

There are many like me who have MS, perhaps the majority but I only thought of wheelchairs and crutches before my own experience with MS. I might never get another attack and all I have is a slightly moany left side that I can easily deal with. I knew some of the history of Markham’s Mum and I was thinking would that be me in a few years. A few hours after I got out of hospital it was Markham I contacted to ask for his experience. Since I “came out” with MS a good deal of acquaintances and friends have told me privately of their MS or that of their spouse or parents. I was shocked at all these people close enough to me who have experience of MS and I never knew.

My blog has a phrase “invisible people have invisible” rights. When people with MS came to me, telling me their story it helped a lot. I wouldn’t have heard 80% of these uplifting stories had I not disclosed my MS on my blog and to friends and family. It is a personal choice though and being open about my MS has been of immense benefit to me. This was my story, why not tell yours.

Update: A post on this from Markham.

It seems that IrishRail is actively watching out for gay and lesbian couples who might be getting the train. Minister for Setting things back 30 years Mary Coughlan, when she was in charge of social welfare put a law in place that denied samesex couples the ability to travel on a companion travel pass and IrishRail started enforcing it this year. They now have public notices in train stations that state:

Only named persons that have signed the rear of the pass and that are of a different gender are entitled to use the pass.

The “rules” mean that you can claim a companion pass even if you are unmarried, once the person is of the opposite sex. You can blab on about the Constitution and the protection of marriage and such but if unmarried couples who are not gay or lesbian can get the pass then that’s some serious inequality there. Or an old person with a non-loving, non-sexual partner. Up to the rule change by Coughlan, samesex couples could claim the pass if they passed the same eligibility tests as heterosexual couples. Of course if an elderly gay couple(I hear there’s at least 4 in the country) and an elderly lesbian couple went training around the country they would be allowed if they put a person from the other couple on their pass and vice-versa.

IrishRail’s spokesperson confirmed in an email to Suzy Byrne that they have been stopping gay couples from availing of this.

Maybe they should those World War II propganda posters too?

Photo owned by Ligadier Truffaut (cc)

There’s a lot of thinking going on this week on this here blog. After today it stops. Right?

Well anyway. I was thinking about thinking last week and specifically how we think and remember things. When I do the odd bit of study for my Law degree and attend lectures, the only way I recall things is visualising the “story” I’ve read and heard about. Writing it down is all well and good but the text is only the crib notes for the visual masterpiece that I see in my brain when I commit it to memory.

I’d never put much thought into how I thought about things and how I remembered things but when i did some research (yeah I Googled) I found that visual thinking isn’t very common. So I asked people on Twitter how people thought. The answers varied wildly. How interesting.

Today is Leaving Cert results day with people doing really well and not so well and breaking down after years in the grind of trying to commit things to memory and then bringing them back and putting them down on paper. What ways did they do this? How do they put that information in and take it back out?

Photo owned by gbSk (cc)

Do you see images? I see full in-depth movies with colour and wonderful layers if I have to recall facts about legal cases, I see the colour of uniforms, wonderful diamond encrusted rings and dark wooden floored barren houses when it comes to cases about the Law of Property. I see ginger beer and taste it and my stomach slightly turns at seeing a snail inside the bottle when I think about the Law of Tort.

As I mentioned in this blog post, I look like I’m daydreaming or switched off when I’m paying full attention. I guess I am daydreaming in a way.

What works for you? How does your brain work?

Blogging is going to be pretty slow the next week as I take some time off and disconnect from the digital world and maybe try and read a book like those normal folk do. I’m hoping to start and finish Twenty Major’s book too. Everyone should buy it and get a blogger to number 1 in the charts. See you all in a while.