Posts

A Community of Burnout

A Community of Burnout   It’s becoming a struggle to know which aspects of my life to write about. There are so many and so few things going on that it seems like such a blur before the next day hits. I’m meeting new people every day and honestly mostly hitting it off with people from my generation. I don’t know if the generation after me thinks they hold too much wisdom or are too far ahead in their careers to help someone just starting out in theirs. Either way, the online community that I’m a part of is quickly becoming a lifeline for me. We are all going through some of the same core struggles. The Zoom meetings are filled with heart emojis, Amens, and resounding affirmations of struggles and proud wins, no matter how big or small. We’ve been there. We know that. One thing we all know is the toll of burnout. It’s the place where we think we hit rock bottom and then our mind and body drop us a whole new level downwards. Regular burnout is the worst! It leaves people with...
Post a Comment
Read more

Autism in My Own Words Part 2

Autism in My Own Words Part 2   I can’t believe it’s been exactly three months since Part 1, and I had absolutely no idea when I was going to do this the time frame. I looked up to see what I had written to remember, and it said June 3. That’s three months, right? I talked about how exhausting a half-hour conversation was and to mask for that long, even though I wasn’t trying to mask in front of my friend but “in public.” I talked about how each individual THING was broken down into step-by-step instruction manuals, and that there weren’t really muscle memories for some autistic people. Parties were overstimulating because I was trying to filter out one sound in a sea of sounds of the same volume and no, my brain couldn’t filter out the background noises. Today’s life looks much, much different. I’m part of several online Facebook groups, one community that has some of my favorite people in it, and have accidentally found a few people where I live who are autistic, just by be...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Can't We Be Friends

Why Can’t We Be Friends   I spent so much time trying to be friends with people that for the first time last night, I called myself an extrovert, and it seemed true in the moment. I want to connect with people, yes on a deeper level, but also on a positive note, whether that be a smile and a good morning or whatever. I may not be the life of the party, but my facial expressions always seemed to make me one of the most dramatic when I had something to say. What I wanted to say was this morning I happened to stop chasing friendship, and it found me. I started a few conversations with guys from the men’s chat from the NeuroSpicy Community group last night, and one lives in Australia, so of course the conversation ran a little later because he’s 14 hours ahead of me. 9pm my time was 11am the next morning for him. Then the next morning for me was the evening for him. We talked about autism and how it affects our health. He has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and a lot of our symptoms ov...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Big Questions

The Big Questions   In search of my identity, I’ve run across some of The Big Questions in my last couple posts. Life-changing questions that have made me pause writing and really think are rare. I know you can’t tell from reading, but there are autistic pauses where my mind goes blank for a second, and then there are these pauses. My whole paradigm shifts, and I can’t make sense of the world anymore. I can’t expect to run into them all the time, but having a glimpse into the depth of reality and asking the hard questions of the truth of why I’m doing what I am doing… I thought I could answer them with some thought and journaling in a day. Hahahahaha. Ha. Ha.     Ha. Ahem. My ego grows large, and I am appropriately cut down to size hopefully quickly for it. Sure, it smarts in the moment, but I have been cut down for much smaller things, so I am grateful for someone looking out for me when my ego grows too big. Or when there’s something I haven’t realized my ent...
Post a Comment
Read more

Rewriting the Story

Rewriting the Story   I’ve started making a couple new friendships, and with these friendships I’ve started something new. With the first friendship, instead of deep-diving into my story of pain and suffering and suddenly becoming “that guy,” I let him talk. Two hours of him talking about whatever he wanted to talk about. No, it wasn’t a monologue; it was a conversation infodump with him at the helm, and I was so glad to listen to his passion about work and his family and comics and books! Those two hours flew by! For once, I got out of my head and into someone else’s. I got out of “feelings” and into something new… excitement! The second one happened recently. I know I need work with boundaries, and this was a fellow who knew he was on the spectrum also, so I felt comfortable shooting straight with him: these are the boundaries. We aren’t going to make it about pain and suffering. It’s not going to be about tragedy. We are going to keep it lighthearted! You cool with that? I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Finding Passion

Finding Passion   Passion is something you usually don’t think about until you see it or experience it. It’s talking about that first sip of coffee in the morning that makes your soul just feel alive on a good day. It’s your “hobby” that’s actually your obsession that other people have told you to shut up about, but you don’t want to because it is just SO INTERESTING and you want the world to know how cute baby sloths are and that sloths poop only once a week and sleep curled up hanging under branches and awwwwww…. Ummm… Yeah. It’s when your friend’s face lights up and fifteen minutes have passed and they apologize for five more minutes for rambling, but you don’t care because you were so caught up in what they were talking about, whether or not you were interested in paranormal gay fantasy comics before, you sure are now for twenty minutes because gosh darn it, someone you care about has a heart for it, and it’s important to them, and you can see their heart pouring out over...
Post a Comment
Read more

Proud of Myself Again

Proud of Myself Again   I’m super nervous and fidgety, yet I don’t know what to do and run out of energy and get overstimulated often, so I will do what I do best besides eat (since I fail at sleeping now). I will write. I don’t know what I’m going to write about. I was going to go ahead about my love of writing, but that seems so trivial. How does one put into words the overflowing of cursive on a page when a story comes to life and a “two-page assignment” turns into a ten-page story about Thanksgiving, or a haiku turns into a twelve-verse haiku about Jesus healing the sick in a nursing home? I used to love a challenge. I challenged myself all the time. I want to cry thinking about how passionately motivated I was, because all I can think about is all the extra work that took and for what? Was it really for myself? I think part of it was. I was proud of myself. When did others being proud of me become so stupidly important? I want to be proud of myself again. I want to be ...
Post a Comment
Read more