Clumsy by Design – Mixed Effects

During my introspection, I noticed something interesting about the way I interact with objects. I’m not clumsy, but I act like I’m handling precious artefacts in a museum, always aware that one wrong move could lead to disaster. I rarely drop things. But after learning about dyspraxia, I started looking deeper into my motor skills and found hundreds of examples that matched the pattern.

Dyspraxia, also known as Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD), is a neurological difference that affects motor planning, coordination, and the ability to carry out physical tasks smoothly. It doesn’t affect intelligence, but it can make everyday actions, like tying shoelaces, catching objects, or navigating a narrow space, feel unpredictable or mentally exhausting.

What really caught my attention was how much I compensate without realising it. I don’t actually avoid clumsiness, but I prevent it through constant, quiet caution. I instinctively slow down, use both hands, or adjust my grip before anything can go wrong. It’s not that I’ve never had clumsy moments, just that I’ve built systems to avoid them.

One small example confirmed it for me. After thinking about all this, the next day at the supermarket checkout, with pressure behind me and space shrinking, I rushed, and things fell everywhere. That one moment, under time pressure and social attention, revealed what I’d been masking so well: without my usual pace and control, the clumsiness I thought I’d imagined appeared in full view.

My coordination issues don’t always stand out. They rarely cause dramatic accidents or visible mishaps. But they’re always there, quietly demanding more focus than they should. What looks effortless for others often requires my full attention. I can’t casually talk, think, or monitor my surroundings while manipulating objects or moving through space. In some cases, I have to suspend everything else to get it right.

This constant effort doesn’t stop me from doing what I love. But it does feel like living with an invisible, low-level obstacle. I’ve learned to compensate with vigilance, structure, and sometimes avoidance. I’ve also become quite good at masking these struggles, which is why most people don’t notice them. Still, the experience leaves me unsure whether to call it a disability or just a strange, lifelong adaptation.

Ambidextrous… or Just Inconsistent?

I’m right-handed by habit, but not with full certainty. Some tasks feel more natural with my left hand, and oddly, that can change from one day to the next. It’s not ambidexterity in the skilled sense, more like a subtle motor inconsistency. I sometimes joke that I’m a “lousy ambidextrous,” switching strategies based on what feels doable in the moment: it feels like having two left hands.

The “Not For Me” List: An Intuitive Cost-Benefit Analysis

Over the years, I built a quiet list of things that felt “not for me.” The earliest items appeared in my early teenage years with new activities that, from the very beginning, felt inaccessible. I knew I wouldn’t improve. At the time, I couldn’t explain why. But now I see that this “intuition” was actually a mix of autistic pattern recognition (noticing my functional limits) and ADHD-style frustration sensitivity (low tolerance for unrewarding, high-effort tasks). It wasn’t about giving up; it was my brain running a silent cost-benefit analysis. I could tell when a skill would require disproportionate effort just to reach basic proficiency. This early discernment allowed me to allocate my energy to areas where I could thrive instead of constantly battling uphill battles. Things like archery, with its demand for novel motor planning and precise coordination, were fundamentally mismatched with how I’m wired.

Here are some specific challenges I face, which I tried to group by category.

Fine Motor Difficulties

Difficulties with small, precise movements, usually hands and fingers.

I always feel a bit clumsy, like I’m navigating the world with an extra layer of caution. This carefulness can make simple tasks feel like high-stakes missions. When I let my guard down, accidents are more likely to happen. I often feel one misstep away from chaos.
I’ve struggled with packaging labelled “Easy opening.” It feels like trying to understand an inside joke I was never told. Once, I spent three minutes trying to open a bottle, only to watch someone else do it in one second.

I struggle with a soldering iron. It’s like trying to thread a needle while wearing mittens. The precision just doesn’t match my movements.
I almost always cut myself when shaving, as if my razor has a secret vendetta against me.
I can’t juggle — at all. It’s like the objects I’m tossing form a union and go on strike. When I see people juggling with knives or torches, it feels like seeing science fiction.
II type very fast — but with lots of typos. The most common typo occurs when one of my hands shifts slightly, leading me to type “gppd” instead of “good.” Other common examples include mixing up the keystroke order, such as typing “dairy” instead of “diary,” or missing letters entirely, like in the word “shift.” These typos have been a consistent challenge for me and have never improved over time. My solution? I slow down, and then I’m fine.
I often misalign buttons when putting on shirts, which leads to undoing and redoing everything. I’ve never tried tying a tie, and I don’t plan to, for both practical and personal reasons.

Gross Motor & Balance Issues

Involving full-body movement, stability, and coordination.

I’m afraid of losing balance, even though I rarely do. If I lean 5 degrees in one position, I feel like I’m going to fall, but I don’t.
Walking downstairs takes concentration. If a toe goes a millimetre over the edge of a step, I feel unsafe. A multitasking attempt while going downstairs has led me to an unexpected visit to the doctor.
I can walk in complete darkness, but I’ve bumped into enough furniture to know the risks.
Even when concentrating, I can’t walk on a string, plank, or kerb without losing balance. But I can stand on one foot and lean in any direction with no problem. It’s like my balance exists and doesn’t exist at the same time — a quantum paradox.
I never considered climbing a tree as a child. I instinctively knew it wasn’t for me. It’s not the height that bothers me. It’s going down. The shift from control to gravity, the idea of having to coordinate every move downward without slipping… that’s what locks me up. Even when I see someone else in a tree, my body reacts like I’m about to fall. (Yes, I could fall when someone else is up there…)
Archery? Not for me. My eyes and hands don’t coordinate well enough to justify the frustration. (It’s my second-oldest item in my “not for me” list, back from when I was a teenager.)
Bowling feels like archery with heavier equipment and public shame. I once made a lucky strike, but then never hit anything again.
Strength + precision = struggle. Anything that requires pushing and aligning at the same time (like inserting a stiff cable) demands full mental focus. I stopped counting how many screw ends I broke.
Sometimes, when I start walking, my knees feel like they’re set to the wrong resistance. Too loose? I feel like I’ll collapse. Too stiff? It’s like walking over speed bumps. It balances out after a few steps.

I’ve also noticed asymmetry in my physical development. In athletics, I could run and jump so well that teachers encouraged me to join a club. But in events like shot put, or exercises like push-ups, I performed poorly. Most sports that require the coordinated or forceful use of my arms have always felt disproportionately difficult.

Spatial and Perceptual Challenges

Difficulty judging distances, space, and visual-motor coordination.

I happen to strike door frames with my elbow at least once a day; never hard enough to hurt myself but enough to remember.
Narrow spaces stress me out. Coordinating movement through them requires intense focus, but I can easily assess the space when I’m stopped.
I struggle to assess the speed of cars when crossing rural roads without visual cues.
Riding my bike with no hands on the handle bar feels impossible. One hand feels unstable (but I can adjust to it in a few seconds).
When walking my bike, if I’m not focused, I easily hit my legs with the pedals, don’t properly turn the handlebars, and often need to readjust my lateral position. Strangely, running beside the bike causes no issues.
Even after 250,000 km of cycling recorded on Strava, I still struggle with double swing gates and narrow cycling barriers. They demand my complete focus, and I disregard everything else around me. Ironically, they didn’t even exist when I was a kid. They were introduced later, and I never got the chance to learn to navigate them when neuroplasticity was on my side.

The strange thing is, at rest, I excel at spatial reasoning. I can easily visualise geometry, or even remove and reorient dimensions in my head. But as soon as I move through space, something shifts. My brain sees the space, but my body doesn’t follow as smoothly as it should.

Planning and Execution Difficulties (Motor Planning / Praxis)

Trouble with sequencing, coordination, and executing physical tasks.

I couldn’t tie my shoes for most of my childhood. I remember being ashamed of asking for help when other kids could already do it. Velcro shoes changed my life. Interestingly, at age 8, I was able to tie them on my own without any help overnight. Today, I still need to re-tie laces a few times to get the pressure just right (too soft = too loose, too tight = extremely uncomfortable), or even occasionally fail.
I love DIY in theory, but in practice? Two left hands.
At the supermarket, I almost always drop items while packing groceries if someone is waiting behind me.
If I’m excited while eating, I sometimes bite my cheek or lips. It’s like my mouth forgets where the edges are.

The Reflex Paradox

Ironically, some of my reflexes are lightning-fast. Just this morning, I dropped a metal tea filter — and caught it mid-air before it hit the ground. That’s not unusual. I have moments of unexpected physical brilliance — tiny acrobatics I didn’t plan and couldn’t repeat on demand.

But that’s the problem: dyspraxia isn’t about lacking coordination — it’s about lacking reliability. I can react instinctively one moment, and then struggle to button a shirt the next. I can cycle 200 km, then agonise with a jar lid.

And that unpredictability isn’t just frustrating. It’s tiring. Because I can’t ever be fully sure which version of my motor system will show up.

Early Independence, Delayed Realisation

Growing up with a busy single mother meant I had to become independent at an early age. I learned to use tools, prepare food, carry things… though shoelaces were another story. That one task felt almost impossible for years, and I often needed help (it involves bilateral coordination, sequencing, and fine motor dexterity). At the time, other tasks just felt normal. But looking back, I now believe that early independence gave me an unexpected advantage: I was using my hands and body during a period of high neuroplasticity, building motor patterns before I even knew they were hard for me.

This may be why I only remember issues with tightening my shoelaces in childhood. I didn’t notice other major coordination problems because I was working around them instinctively. And that might also explain why I rarely break things, or why my traits seem mild compared to the experiences of others.

The first real signs emerged in my teenage years, when the physical and social complexity of tasks increased. That’s when my internal list of “not for me” items started forming: archery, juggling, skating, driving, and so many other things that seemed like they belonged to other people’s bodies.

Cycling could have easily ended up on that list. If I hadn’t learned it early — before coordination became an obstacle — I might have missed out on something that would become a passion, a regulator, and a form of freedom. I understand that now more than ever. (More on that in the story titled The Crash I Almost Avoided.)

The only time someone hinted at what I now recognise as dyspraxia was when I was a teenager. My mother — busy, honest, and trying to prepare me for life — once said: “If you’d get a job in a restaurant, you’re so slow you’d be fired on the first day.” I took it as a mixed message: part criticism, part confirmation that this kind of job wasn’t for me. At the time, I thought I was just “bad at rushing.” But now I see it more clearly. I was already compensating for something I couldn’t name. I wasn’t lazy or slow; I was cautious and deliberate, managing invisible limits. That moment revealed how my difference showed through, even behind the mask.

For more on the relationship between dyspraxia and childhood neuroplasticity, see resources like:

When Quirks Became a Wall

For years, I thought of my coordination issues as quirks, but was manageable. I worked around them. I slowed down, focused harder, and found alternatives. These weren’t limitations; they were just part of how I moved through the world.

But trying to learn to drive changed that. (In fact, it’s the analysis of the why I failed that changed that.)

No matter how determined I was, no matter how methodical I tried to be, the demands of driving — a constant stream of decisions, spatial judgement, reaction timing, and motor planning — proved too much. I wasn’t unsafe only because I was anxious or unmotivated, but also because my brain couldn’t process everything fast enough to act with confidence.

That’s when I stopped trying to fit the experience into a framework of “personal difficulty” or “not for me.” It wasn’t a bad match. It was an unworkable one. That was the moment I understood: this isn’t just a string of eccentricities. It’s a mismatch serious enough to define my capabilities in certain systems. And that’s what moved it from quirk to handicap.

Quirk vs. Handicap

I hesitated to use the word disabled. It felt too big, too official, too far from how I’ve always viewed myself. I also worried it might be disrespectful to people facing permanent or visible disabilities, like wheelchair users or those with profound cognitive impairments. My own struggles often feel subtle, scattered, and “mild” by comparison.

But the longer I resisted the word, the more it tugged at something deeper. Because disability doesn’t mean brokenness, and it’s not a competition. It means there are contexts, systems, or expectations where I can’t function effectively, no matter how much effort I apply.

It’s not about lacking motivation. It’s about hitting an invisible threshold and realising that I’ve been quietly managing around it for most of my life.

Seeing that limit brought relief. It explained why certain things never got easier, why my efforts plateaued while others flew past. And more than anything, it gave me permission to stop blaming myself for not succeeding in environments that weren’t built for how I’m wired.

When Everything Collides

Most of the time, I manage my dyspraxic traits by combining focus, anticipation, and slow pacing. But when several challenges stack up in a single moment, things can come to a halt.

My latest experience was about walking down a damp, narrow path flanked by nettles. I have a hypersensitivity to their sting (touching one feels like putting my skin in a flame). So I walk with extreme care. I keep shifting my attention between each element, and it becomes: step → pause → reassess nettle distance → test surface stability (twice) → adjust angle → check my balance → verify again feet positions → next step. My body can’t sort the signals. I freeze. (Remove only one element from this environment, and I’m just cautious instead of frozen.)

In those moments, I can take minutes to cover just a few metres because moving safely becomes a full-body, full-mind effort.

When Motor Load Meets Monotropism

I now understand that what seems like freezing is not just a motor issue. It results from the interplay of autistic monotropism and dyspraxia. My brain doesn’t multitask well. It tunnels into one of three channels: the nettle, the slope, or the ground, and struggles to switch rapidly between all three.

Each shift in attention comes with cognitive overhead. And when the terrain demands constant switching, I lock up. It’s not fear. It’s not indecision. It’s overload from context juggling. A non-autistic person with dyspraxia might struggle too, but they may also adapt through impulsive movement or kinetic trial and error. I don’t have that buffer. For me, each shift must be deliberate, and too many at once cause a bottleneck.

Ironically, running often works better. It simplifies the task to one momentum stream. But choosing to run feels like mentally stepping off a cliff, which leads to a different kind of paralysis.

What I Know Now

I didn’t recognise my dyspraxia earlier because I had always found ways to cope without realising they were compensations. I just thought I was being careful, precise, or methodical. I began having moments where my usual strategies didn’t work: I fumbled, froze, or got overwhelmed. I didn’t “develop” dyspraxia, but I unmasked it to myself.

One of the signs that led me to uncover my neurodivergence was how many times I gave the same vague answer: “It’s not for me.” Bowling? Not for me. Archery? Not for me. Driving? Not for me. For years, I assumed these were personal preferences. But over time, the list grew suspiciously long and strangely specific. These weren’t just hobbies I didn’t enjoy. I had no language for what made them hard. “Not for me” became the script.

I used to think my “not for me” list was just about effort or confidence. But now I see it was an intelligent refusal; a neurological verdict on activities that didn’t match how I was built, where my brain triangulates the challenges:

Autism notices the pattern isn’t right, ADHD declares it’s not worth the effort, and my conclusion says “This is a poor return on cognitive investment”.

Understanding dyspraxia hasn’t erased the friction, but it has given me context, language, and a sense of self-respect. What used to feel like unrelated annoyances now fall into place as parts of a larger, logical pattern. It’s not that I’m careless, slow, or uncoordinated, but it’s that my brain takes the scenic route from intention to action.

And now that I understand the route, I no longer feel ashamed of the terrain.

Writing this has helped me see not just the patterns (and why so many things ended up on my “not for me” list), but also the strengths in how I respond to them: the systems I’ve built, the awareness I’ve cultivated, the humour that helps me adapt. I didn’t just survive clumsiness — I designed around it.

Understanding doesn’t erase the challenges—but it transforms them.
I’m not broken.
I’m clumsy by design.
And that design finally makes sense.

Dyspraxia doesn’t feel like a superpower, but it has given me skills that matter: persistence, creative problem-solving, environmental awareness, and empathy for others who struggle invisibly. It has also made me more aware of barriers others might miss, and I see now how I can use that awareness to contribute to accessibility and inclusion.