Who I Am

Well, I’m Dan Williams, born Daniel Richard Williams, on Saturday, the 7th of May, 1983, the day before Mother’s Day.

I grew up in the Baptist Christian faith, and it still holds as my foundation, though I have stretched beyond that, and opened my mind to other possibilities and a larger extent of the meaning of the claims of the God of the Bible…God is infinite, creator of all that is, was, and will be. God must be more than just the one collection of writings we call The Bible.

Growing up, I was the awkward kid, who didn’t quite understand social interactions, or how to do what other people expected me to do. School was a great struggle for me. I felt as if I wasn’t learning anything, or at least not what to do with the information they were trying to give me. I kept trying, but couldn’t keep focused. I was diagnosed ADD (non-hyperactive) in 1992, but that of course didn’t mean a thing to any teacher other than an “excuse to misbehave,” which was not what I wanted, I wanted to learn, but I needed more interaction in order to learn, or an ability to switch between topics more frequently. I needed to be engaged with, not just force fed information.

However, between high school and college I began having panic attack seizure-like episodes. Through the attempts at figuring out what was going on, I was put on various medications. The side effects to some of them caused me to sleep during classes, and not at night, and I was not able to comprehend pre-calc due to the poorly timed sleep. When I started college, I was planning on majoring in Physics with the hope of teaching high school physics in a manor similar to the teacher I had in 9 grade–no homework, no tests, graded on enthusiasm and what the students physically showed that we learned, by doing.

I struggled with depression through the struggles of school, social interactions, and disappointing my parents by not being able to function quite right. But with my faith foundation, I was able to find the strength to continue and not commit suicide; though I still get PSTD attacks from the flashbacks… so I changed from a physics major to a photography major. And the rest is history.

I’ve been unemployed since June 2005, when the pastor of the church I was working at decided I was having too many seizures to continue working 3-4 hours a day, three days a week, with my mom supervising me in the office. So I began my Disability application in March 2006, and am on my third attempt–they’ve denied me because my seizures are not epilepsy, and my psychological conditions haven’t been currently documented to their satisfaction.

I finally got approved for Disability after 12 years, and used the three years of backpay to buy new camera equipment and an RV. I used my Disability money to change my life for the better, in hopes of being able to eventually accomplish something productive/profitable.

But still, anxiety is a constant battle, and maintaining focus on one topic at a time for more than a few seconds usually drives me bonkers. Though every once in a while things flow nicely, such as while I’m writing this: here I am, talking about myself, and copying what I wrote several years ago and updating this with a bit more current data. But yeah, most of this page I wrote over the past 15 years with occasional updates...