Hello, I’m Kelvin.
I started Half a Mind To to share practical experiences of living with the long-term effects of neurological injury. My hope is that some of the ideas, strategies and observations collected here may prove useful to others facing similar challenges.
My own journey has been a long one. In 2008 I underwent treatment for a brain tumour. Many years later, in 2024, I suffered a stroke. Together they left me with a mixture of cognitive, visual and physical difficulties that continue to shape everyday life.
Some of those difficulties are obvious. Others are almost invisible. Many involve tasks that appear straightforward from the outside but require much more planning, concentration or adaptation than they once did.
I sometimes joke that I am “the man with two brains”.
The first brain was the one I lived with before illness: quick to absorb new information and able to juggle many things at once.
The second is the one I live with today. It still contains a lifetime of memories, skills and experience, but it learns more slowly and has less capacity for handling multiple demands at the same time.
Much of this blog is really an exploration of how to live well with that second brain.
My background has given me an unusual perspective on some of these subjects. In the 1980s I completed doctoral research in artificial intelligence and image processing before going on to work in medical computing. Part of that work involved developing radiotherapy planning software as part of a large European research project, including tools used in the treatment of brain tumours.
Decades later, I found myself on the receiving end of similar treatments.
Outside work, I have spent more than twenty-five years as a Scout Leader. That experience introduced me to people with a wide range of abilities, disabilities and ways of seeing the world. Living with my own neurological challenges has added a different perspective: the experience of adapting life from the inside.
More recently, advances in artificial intelligence have helped me overcome one of the barriers that delayed this project for many years. I often knew what I wanted to say but struggled to organise my thoughts into clear written form. Modern AI tools have become valuable writing companions, helping me shape and refine ideas that might otherwise have remained trapped in notebooks and unfinished drafts.
I do not claim to be an expert, clinician or therapist. The ideas described here come from lived experience rather than professional training. Most are not dramatic breakthroughs. They are small practical adaptations, observations and habits that help reduce the effort required to get through the day.
I have become increasingly convinced that recovery and adaptation often happen through the accumulation of small improvements rather than single life-changing discoveries. One useful strategy may save a few seconds, reduce a little frustration or avoid one mistake. On its own that may not seem significant. Repeated every day, however, those small gains can add up.
That is what Half a Mind To is really about: collecting and sharing those small gains in the hope that they may help someone else.
Thank you for visiting.
Half a Mind to .. 