Thursday 17 May 2018

5 Deaf Girly Life Hacks for Deaf Awareness Week

Deafness throws many things at me but one of the most noticable things is the ability to make me feel ALL the emotions possible in the space of about a minute.

Happy, Sad, Frustrated, Angry, Embarrassed, Shy, Empowered, Upset, Hysterical, Exhausted, Inspired, Creative

But how do I deal with them all? Aside from medicating with copious amounts of chocolate?

Here are my deaf life hacks:

1. Streamline your shopping 
I am not a massive fan of trying to interact in shops. There was the time I replied no to the 'Would you like a bag' question four times only to discover the shop assistant had been asking me to 'Enter my pin'. It was not a fun experience.

So now, when I go shopping, I use contactless, I take my own bags, and I use the self-service checkouts whenever possible. For things like shoes, where you have to try on things while looking at your feet, often with a hovering shop assistant, I buy them online.

2. Streamline your correspondence
I never, ever, ever, ever answer my phone. FACT. Every single place I am registered at - from banking to healthcare to education to work - has my email address. Also, I have voicemail so if it really is important - like the time I won a competition and they rang to let me know - they can tell me there. 

And did you know, that you can text voicemail files to other people so they can listen. Something I do when on the rare occasion I actually get one. FJM is an excellent secretary! *beams

3. Streamline your life admin
I am a bit of a tech geek, but it's mainly because technology makes my life so much easier as a deaf person. I have all the various table booking apps for restaurants, not just in London but wherever I am in the world. I have Uber for taxis. 

I have online booking set up for GP surgery, my bank manager has me on his email contact list, my hairdresser - well haha, actually I once tried to call him using the NGT Lite typetalk app and he hung up. He doesn't really do alternative technology. And so FJM calls him for me! But gradually, over the years, fewer and fewer things need me to use the phone, or hear. It's awesome. And the NGT Lite typetalk app - it really is very useful. If you haven't tried it already, do.

4. Streamline your social life
No, I don't mean cancel your plans and cut people out of your life. But consider what really makes you happy. I spent a lot of my twenties in clubs not hearing anyone and having a largely terrible time. There were amazing nights out in among those moments, but a lot of the time I found it really tough. Until I sat down and worked out what made those nights amazing and started to focus on that. For me, that's smaller groups, quieter restaurants and bars, one-to-one dinners, captioned theatre or movies. 

Also, I accepted that being deaf is bloody tiring. Proper lie-down-on-the-floor tiring. And so I started to edit the amount of socialising I did in order to make time to get my energy levels back up. And there's nowt wrong with that. I learnt to let go of FOMO and focussed on things that made me happy, rather than the things I thought I should be doing.

5. Streamline your sound
Earlier this week, I tweeted about the fact that I can hear next door's Nutribullet but I can't hear a fire engine that is about to run me over. So many of you came back with 'I knowwwww....' and your own tales of what makes your hearing random or unique. 

One of the best things I've learnt to do is say, 'I am having a quiet day' and taking my hearing aids out. Sometimes it's nice to slip back into that 2D world where everything is just muted and well, quiet. Other days, I whack on my hearing aids and crank up the volume and go out there and explore my 3D world in all its glory. 

And then, there's the different settings on my aids - the sound recover for cats meowing in low voices, the T-loop for focussed sound on one thing without background noise, the music setting with sound recover off in order to safeguard the pitch of the instruments I can hear. Of course, I will never hear sirens or birds singing but it's my world. And I love it. But for me, the empowering thing is choosing when I have each world. 

What life hacks have you discovered to make your deaf life easier?

DG
x

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