Why am I not finishing and publishing posts?

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The stories behind Devon price’s article caused me to think of why I have trouble writing further on this blog – despite having a lot of material saved.

The organisational part is important – it’s simply not easy to sit down and get on with writing when your brain has serious trouble settling down on one topic.

The thing that was hovering behind it like a wraith was this tendency to make oneself invisible via masking – or not expressing anything “odd”.

Devon talks about being blanked when people can’t engage with some behaviour like stimming or saying something “inappropriate”. This is something that I haven’t always been aware of but have had this feeling of people going blank via awkward silences or shifting off a topic.

I can also remember the thing that comes off as a dismissive laugh when questioning some “obvious” point of human behaviour. Ah, that’s just the way the world works. An ironic statement when a lot of people have a very poor understanding of the way the world actually works – this is more about coping with the world practically based on a neuronormative experience.

Whatever does lead to becoming quiet and unremarkable has been undermining my courage to simply put things out for a few readers online – not even something I’m expecting to be seen by anyone who won’t understand on some level.

Even this sat in the drafts for weeks when it’s fine as a small thought to share.

Devon price isn’t the first prolific autistic writer I’ve come across, but something about his uncompromising directness cause me to have one of those re-realisations that I’ve fallen into patterns of hiding again – a reminder of how long it can take to dig out of masking behaviours when they keep coming back unconsciously.

Innate Autistic traits or unsurprising reactive behaviour?

I’ve wondered about what are considered “autistic” traits and whether these are really traits of a “condition” or understandable reactions to the experience of growing up different.

For much of my life I’ve ended up extremely reserved and apparently shy or passive. Apparently before I went to school I was more expressive – sang to myself and danced about – but most of my recollection is being so reserved as to be practically mute in some situations, not wanting to draw any attention.

In retrospect this looks like a reaction to being placed in an overwhelming environment, teased by other children, bullying by some teachers given that I had no idea what I did to make them so angry or single me out, ending up with bad friends more than once. Eventually it seems easier to not say anything or get involved with anyone.

Is that me “being autistic” or me being made to feel weird for being a certain way?

Getting poor reactions from others when trying to connect leads to isolation – is being isolated “autistic” or simply a reaction to regular rejection? I think I have been more unlucky than some autistic people because any friends I’ve had have been compromised and tried to be in control of the relationship somehow. It’s no wonder I’d more or less given up by the time I was 13 – at best I had a few kids I could relate to at school but nothing extended beyond school after being burned by and experience with a bad friend previously.

The lack of friends or shyness can be linked to “interpersonal communication difficulties” – but as more effort has been made to de-normalise the “typical” perspective, I think it becomes apparent that autistic people can communicate, and our natural style is foreign to people who interpret it as rude, or subversive, or self centred – when people are giving off indications that they are uncomfortable or seem to try and avoid talking to you more than once it seems like “failure” – in reality the other person can have a lack of patience and just find it irritating if they are put to some extra effort.

When I’ve been fortunate enough to speak with autistic people the “problems” disappear.

It’s frequently reported by autistic adults.

When autistic people develop repetitive behaviours, that can be interpreted as innate. Routines, rituals, needing things the same. Is that in fact a response to high levels of stress? An anchor of control when there doesn’t seem to be anything else within that person’s control. Are they more likely a result of chronic trauma so they seem to be part of the person’s behaviour?

Somewhat like an animal in a zoo with a cage that’s too small? If an autistic person has been put in an effective invisible cage (often a sensory overload induced cage) – is it surprising that repetitive behaviour should emerge?

Considering all of that, I find it easier to see many stereotypical traits are created by other people in an autistic person’s life, and painful environments people congregate in, and institutions that punish being different. The “defects” are created by pressure to fit into an impossible mould.

What’s tragic about this is that so much of the suffering is completely avoidable with some understanding and a bit of patience. So I hope the diagnostic indicators of autism can be eventually be separated from being autistic.

Attention 2 – interest disruption

I started this as an Autistic blog – yet the overlap with ADHD traits is making it veer into that area – what Autistic and ADHDer adults say are both resonating.

What occurred to me today is how attention can be easily disrupted with an important passion of mine – music – which ironically I can completely forget about.

This might be related to age and feeling increasingly weary – but I’ve heard ADHD adults say they can’t actually concentrate on a film anymore for example. I immediately think of my behaviour when I watch a film on my own. Typically I’ll pause to follow some other thought – look up why the actor I’m looking at is familiar because the thought won’t quiet down despite trying to tell myself that right now that isn’t important – or sometimes I can’t sit still – or go and get a drink. Or perhaps I’ll pause and come back and decide something else is more interesting.

With TV or film I’m less disappointed that I don’t seem to hold concentration as I can be happy enough watching the first half of something up to the point I’ve figured out what will probably happen in the conclusion – I have got my enjoyment.

I just realised however, while trying to listen to some unfamiliar music, the impulse to switch my attention half way through a 5 minute song.

This tends to happen a lot if I get on a sudden exploratory urge through the vast streaming libraries available online – sampling songs to add to listen later – then forgetting I’ve added them for months.

This time I wanted to actually listen and was enjoying the flow of the song, but my mind was still asking me if I wanted to look up some information or remember to listen to some other artist I’d been reminded of while listening to a memoir audio book – and so on.

Are ADHD traits getting more obvious as I get older? This is someone who has kept their mind on classical symphonies that last from 30 minutes to an hour. Maybe this was because I started doing this on CD when I couldn’t look up ten other recordings of the same Symphony – fewer distractions may have helped. Maybe it’s because when you’re a Neurodiverse person trying to Adult reasonably well and finding that harder to manage as age increases – and burnout becomes more regular.

Regardless of whether it’s getting harder to fix my attention or not, I need to find some way of finding the focus again – it could be as simple as finding something to fidget with and remembering that helps – and because attention is a problem – putting the putty or some other thing right in front of where I will listen to music.

The focus is there – because I know I can be completely locked into playing a game on the computer and forget to blink. I can also forget I enjoy gaming for weeks and become despondent. The same happens with music.

The interest disruption is a real difficulty because it’s possible to forget what provides some of the biggest dopamine hits and end up in what I imagine must be some “dopamine desert” where nothing is providing satisfaction and the mood starts to look like depression.

Attention – keeping things visible

Carrying on a little from the last post, relating to why posts don’t get published – where there are a large number of drafts in between sporadic posting.

Attention or focus has been a tricky thing as long as I can remember. I don’t lack an ability to focus – directing the focus is slippery, like trying to catch a salmon with my hands.

Focus can consume when there’s strong interest – but where there is no interest motivation evaporates.

For example writing a blog post may have a fascinating idea in the middle – but sitting down to hash out sentences might suddenly become very dull and that is where distraction emerges, like the woodlouse near my feet that I wanted to watch as I’m sitting in the garden.

Getting a blog post out isn’t only about an attempt to express something – it’s hampered by ideas that it’s supposed to be like an article in a newspaper.

I ask myself why I’m potentially worried someone might think my thoughts are a disorganised jumble on a personal blog – even if it’s not polished someone can come by and derive something from it.

Is this about attention and focus or me just wanting the satisfaction of having rambled and pressed “publish”.

Perhaps the actual point is habits over goals and systems – a habit of writing something manageable and “letting it go” rather than thinking I need a system to enable me to get anything done.

Now I’ve realised I was going to write about keeping things visible – and because I wasn’t looking at the mind map I’ve started using again I forgot that was the point.

The drafts and blog posts are not visible at a glance because the WordPress app needs me to go in and scroll through lists.

If you can get something on a canvas on one screen it can be more obvious what is calling for attention – the task that is coloured purple with a weird font and a fluorescent border.

This colour and quirkiness is stimulating to the distracted brain – perhaps the colours can mean more than the words.

Who knows if this post is “finished”, but I can’t spend more time on it and would rather have the satisfaction of publishing.

Burnout/fatigue and not being able to write anything for this blog

Circular title about me not being able to write a post, and it seemed a good way to write something short. When I do come back to see when I last wrote something, it’s usually deflating to realise I haven’t published anything for months.

At the time of writing this, it’s actually over a year.

When it comes to my experience of Burnout I forgot that I’d already written a detailed summary of what happens in Ambition, Burnout and Frustration and I nearly started writing something similar again before remembering to look at what I’d already written.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t written anything, as there is a substantial pile of drafts – but some of these were quite challenging topics that aren’t easy to finish. The one on burnout was pretty long, and the longer a post gets and the more it tries to say, the more unlikely it will get published.

In the last year the difficulties were compounded by having to move house at a non-ideal time after being served notice, where I handled pretty much everything myself, including looking for somewhere to move to, organising the moving out stuff like cleaning and van hire, having to buy appliances – the list goes on – with the net effect that I was completely out of spoons (energy).

Even though I moved months ago now, it has taken that long to feel like I can settle a bit and regain some ability to engage in my interests – or at least back to the baseline survival loop that still contains mild burnout every few weeks.

I’m not entirely negative however, as I’ve realised it’s highly likely I’m not only Autistic, but I also “have” ADD – maybe a diagnosis might not help much but I’m so easily distracted that is fairly tiring in itself, so I feel it’s disrupting my ability to focus on what I want – even remembering what my interests are in the first place sometimes.

Whether I like ADD as a term or not, it has helped to examine more closely what ADHDers use to be able to do the thing they need or want to do.

I hope I can write a little bit on how I’ve found something that’s working a bit to keep me focused in manageable chunks, but right now I simply want to write something and publish and stop worry about it being profound or perfect (which I could also write a lot about how that stops me from actually publishing things on this blog)

An observation on returning to “normal”

In the UK the government has a timeline for relaxing restrictions up to June, and I hear talk about returning to “normal” like everyone else.

Given that I’ve always found the “normal” noisy, overly busy world draining and unwelcoming, even partial return to “normal” has actually made me feel worse, and note how much the world before lockdown was stressful and overwhelming.

I can use the example of traffic on the roads. During lockdowns the roads were clear and more relaxing to use and it was actually more of a pleasure, except that it wasn’t possible to drive very far. Even partial relaxing of restrictions has unleashed a torrent of additional vehicles, meaning that some of my least favourite roundabouts have become a bit of a nightmare to navigate again.

It’s not just affecting me as I see other drivers are impatient and rushing and it’s like the stress is transmitted from everyone’s cars and vans and looming trucks, all vying to get on to a roundabout to save a few apparently precious seconds, which means being slightly earlier to meet the next queue of cars half a mile down the road.

It’s not clear to me what this extra traffic is for. Is it all just people going to shops again? Just the additional people unnecessarily travelling to offices?

So returning any kind of “normal” is not a relief, it’s emphasising to me how broken “normal” was before.

Wife of the above

Walking around the city I live next to I wandered into a fairly large cemetery that has been there since the mid 19th century, but I didn’t realise it was there.

It was early in the morning and it struck me that it’s a good place for an Autistic person to go for some peace, because people typically won’t go there to have loud parties and even bored teenagers might avoid a cemetery.

As I tried to find some of the oldest graves and noted people buried in the 1870s, where the stones were readable due to the use of metallic lettering. The dates give me a sense of time, and I wonder what the surrounding area was like in 1870. For one thing the large “box” stores on one boundary would not have been there, or most of the surrounding suburban estates.

While I was interested in some of the patterns of lichens and weathering, I noticed something about the way in which spouses are mentioned, and here’s one example.

Emma’s lettering seems to be a different colour

The phrase stood out – “wife of the above”. My feminist sense had been sharpened this week by reading an article about ingrained sexism around touch here – perhaps something to comment on another time, but the main point is that it made me feel somewhat sickened.

Here in front of me was another baked in element of sexism. In death these women have the main distinguishing feature of having been a man’s wife. Perhaps there was a bit to say about Emma’s 13 years after George died. Even modern epitaphs keep describing women as having been a great mother or “nan” and I passed one or two of those.

Another woman called Bithiah had her own gravestone, and even then she had been described as being somebody’s wife on her death in 1911. On another stone a woman named Mary was described as the “Tenderly loved and true hearted wife of” a navy commander – with his name prominently below and it didn’t seem like this is his grave as well. I can’t help thinking how this makes her also a higher status “wife-of-navy-commander”.

Why couldn’t gravestones say something else about these women’s lives? Perhaps they loved to play the piano or grow flowers. Yet here they are – “wife of the above”.

Observations while walking

I tend to notice details – this is the first time I’ve composed a post where I share some of things I notice, where I have taken a quick picture of something to note the observation.

I walked around a place called Woolbeding common in the area where I live, just a few miles from home. It is an old heathland area where woodlands were cleared for grazing (at least according to the sign I saw in the car park). For me it looks like thinned out woodland with a carpet of heather and bracken.

This looks like a fairly old barn, but I may be wrong. It seems like part of walls were repaired and the roof has been replaced, but the stonework and narrow slits for light suggest it could be over a hundred years old. I thought there was something pleasing about its presence.
A low stone wall surrounding grazing land, covered in mossy growth.
An oak tree off the path had fallen over, pulling its roots out of the ground. The tree is still alive but parts are rotting an colonised by moss and lichen. Had I looked closer I may have seen a load of beetles or woodlice.
This was quite an interesting shot to capture on a mere smartphone, by forcing the auto focusing lens to sit on a close subject. It’s a matter of luck whether the focus holds when you take the shot. You can see the lichen and moss are competing – or just coexisting – on the same bit of branch.
I love reflections on water, even if it’s “just” a muddy puddle.
A long, winding path that traces across the South Downs passes through the area, named the Serpent Trail because it has the shape of a huge snake. I noticed there were two stones each side of the path with snakes lying upon oak leaves.
Perhaps these were cast in concrete using a mould? Algae and moss colonised the pores in the stone.
Long shadows over a single track road to some houses, thanks to the sun being low down in the sky.
I passed some impressive bracket fungi living in the folds of a venerable oak tree.
I tried to tweak the colour in this photo to convey how it actually seemed at the time. It was approaching 4pm and the sun’s light had started to redden, and it was highlighting all the Silver Birches. It felt warm and golden.

I can forget how details reach out to me, and even when I do take photos I can forget to look at them. Preparing some images for this post made me reflect on what I notice and how it can be a sort of “grounding” when the world of people is too much.

On giving up alcohol

I realised on the first attempt at writing this that it wouldn’t be a recommendation to give up alcohol for the obvious reasons. It’s a description of how I got to the point where I let go of it.

The risk of “advice” is that it can be devoid of the right context. When you ask people for “advice” they’ll tell you what works for them and sometimes express that as if it’s universal.

I had been drinking alcohol regularly since my early 20s, never being a seriously heavy drinker because I simply don’t have the capacity, but still with enough instances of consuming way too much and making myself ill. I resisted alcohol for a long time because I hated the taste, but eventually I think I was influence by others to start or join in. It’s actually long enough ago now that I can’t remember if I had any conscious idea of it making social situations easier to deal with, and I can’t remember if I would ever plan to use alcohol to be more sociable, or if it has ever helped particularly.

More recently alcohol has been the only thing I could see to reduce my feelings of stress at the end of a week, or that could allow me to relax and enjoy a film even. There had been a few days with no drink here and there, but rarely more than a week off. So it was essentially a habit where I tried to avoid drinking too much by only buying something for one day. There is always the risk of passing a certain stage and essentially wanting to keep the relaxed feeling going and simply drink more.

Eventually I’d had enough of these times of going too far and giving myself a hangover the next day, overshadowing the weekend which should be a time to regenerate, not recover from self-inflicted alcohol poisoning. Something clicked in me and I didn’t want it anymore, decided to let it go and I haven’t had a drink for two months. And for me, where I’m often struggling with energy levels and burnout, it was essentially dragging down my life overall for the sake of some temporary and non-sustainable relief.

After a week or two off alcohol I realised it had been causing me extra low level energy drains, even when I just had one beer. I hadn’t made myself significantly worse for that day, but I had no alcohol-free reference because I had never stayed off it for that long. After a month my moods were more likely to be positive and what anxiety or stress I was dealing with was easier to manage.

It has tipped me over the edge from “surviving” to “living”.

It would be misleading to say that giving up alcohol is what I should have done years ago to get me to this point faster. Many autistic people have been habitually using alcohol as stress relief when they have objectively difficult situations to deal with and are struggling to find any hope, and when they are finding it difficult to change ingrained coping behaviour that holds up a “fake” life.

This post would keep going for a long time if I described all the supporting changes that happened over time, but I’ll try and get over my detail distraction and summarise:

  • Self-kindness – something that I’ve seen regularly mentioned by other Autistic writers, but incredibly important and hard to learn. You drink when you are brought low and think you aren’t worth more. The self kindness aspect leads to the ability to forgive yourself for not living up to arbitrary and unrealistic standards. Depression is diverted as you can stop saying “I’ll never be good enough” or “nobody wants me” and start internalising the realisation that the world of humans expects you to be something you aren’t so others can be more comfortable and avoid challenging themselves. The burnout and frustration isn’t all your fault.
  • Eliminating things in your life that are burning you out but adding no value. I’ve had to accept that while I like a tidy environment, it doesn’t mean enough to me to use the energy required to maintain it. I stopped wasting time on people who attach themselves to me even if get a bit starved of human interaction. I stopped trying to engage in social occasions that drain me and don’t actually improve any personal relationship.
  • Focusing on creative ambitions or interests without guilt – which means prioritising them in a way that others might see as “self-indulgent”. For me music comes before cleaning up the kitchen. Some time gaming comes before vacuuming the carpets. I don’t keep things immaculate but I do the chores enough so it doesn’t get too out of hand for me – I don’t care if someone might think I was lazy or slovenly – they have different priorities that I may see as shallow. Unless an autistic person enjoys tidying and cleaning in itself, there simply isn’t any satisfaction in taking care of chores in advance, and probably more resentment about having to do them. I may be generalising a bit but it is a strong tendency with people like me.
  • Getting some help – I’ve had therapy a couple of times to help me get over difficult periods I couldn’t have dealt with alone. I was lucky in being able to afford to pay for something more suitable to the way my mind works. It’s also important to get help from someone who has the right approach, and to be able to say when something isn’t working. Unfortunately I don’t think decent mental health support is readily available to everyone, and there are a lot of vulnerable Autistic people trying to get “support” from people who can’t provide it, even if they seem to be friends.

There is more to say, but it gets over the point that it was a lot easier to stop drinking once I’d worked on the above for a long time, and it’s asking too much to get yourself to give up a substance that gives you a temporary relief – because the attempt to give up and then fail at a particular point only feeds into the hopelessness that you can’t change – my phase of using partially successful limiting measures for consumption was needed first. And before that I had to develop the ability to avoid the kinds of thoughts that lead to depressed and hopeless moods.

I should reiterate that stopping drinking hasn’t immediately made me able to reach all possible goals, it has just made things like improving energy levels by changing diet, and improving physical fitness seem closer and I can achieve some cautious optimism after a long time of having a fairly bleak outlook.

Ambition, Burnout and Frustration

The writing of this is related to its subject. As can be seen on this blog, nothing has been published since April 25th. Also, so far this is the most prolific I have ever managed to be up to this point. I have attempted to create a site or keep a blog going since 2000 – when you could set up a site on Yahoo GeoCities for free. These were just static pages, and now you can sign up for a free blog somewhere in five minutes, assuming you aren’t bothered by the ads.

In my case I’ve owned domains for years, and paid for web hosting for various sites that only a few online friends might have seen. Every time the intention was there to make something of it, but overall I have spent more time setting up sites than writing for them, so it feels like hundreds of pounds have been slowly leaked over the last several years for an intermittent hobby. I keep wondering about giving up and saving the money which only gets me and ad-free blog that people rarely see.

However I’m back again for another go after a few months, because I’m literally fed up of knowing this site exists with nothing appearing on it.

Autistic Burnout is an idea I came across from other autistic writers, and just dipping into social media when I can cope with it. A particularly good overview was written by the Autistic Advocate (An Autistic Burnout) a couple of years ago, and I’m referring to that because I don’t want to offer another basic description – this is a personal expression of it. One of the most important points from that article is that Burnout is distinct from depression, which can be a powerful mental tool in avoiding depression.

My experience is of a chronic, low level burnout, rather than regular and potentially explosive meltdowns. I don’t have very long lived manic phases because the creeping feeling of weariness kicks in before I can have a serious crash. This may mean that I have learned a better cycle of regulation where I don’t push myself past the point of no return. My life now enables me to drop certain pressures that I have had in the past, such as those from a relationship, or internalised feelings that I “need” to be organised or tidy, or have houses like other people with rooms used in the traditional ways.

Burnout is usually related to having to work full time as a single parent, and this is kept going by giving myself a break from expectations that I “should” keep things clean and tidy all the time. I have seen a number of times when I’ve had longer breaks from work, that after several days motivation comes back to tackle some of the basic jobs that have been left for months.

Before knowing about burnout, I was usually burned out and depressed and highly anxious from feeling inadequate all at the same time. When you can realise that burnout isn’t your fault and comes from a cumulation of mental demands (including chronic sensory overload), you can gradually move away from blaming yourself for not doing more. It took me a lot of introspection time over a few years but I can avoid serious depressive phases reliably now. It’s just a shame that I am not sure I could show anyone how it works.

The application of self-kindness is essential to managing times when you can’t do much of anything and you need to not attack yourself for something you can’t just get past by “pulling yourself together” or some other trite piece of advice that is no use.

It is invaluable to be able to avoid serious depression, but it can’t necessarily remove feelings of frustration, disappointment and even hopelessness about being able to do more than merely survive, often at a lower quality of life to the general population. This is compounded by having an ambition – where one of those intense interests we are known for leads to wanting to make more of it. This will happen with any human I assume, but autistic people are usually working with a large additional handicap from struggling from the basic demands of life to a greater degree.

The last post here was about conflicts of hobbies and interests, but here I’m focusing more on my interest in music, which has ambition attached to it. Secondary interests are like interruptions to this one. The ambition means that I would like to be releasing music that gets finished, and maybe derive a small additional income from it. It isn’t something ridiculous like wanting to become a multi-platinum selling artist, giving myself something most likely unattainable so I can get really disappointed about not achieving it.

It won’t be uncommon that people will have dabbled in something for 20 years and not have a great deal to show for it. Sometimes a hobby is fine and the process of doing something creative for a bit is enough. When you throw in the intense longing to actually be finishing works this will hover around at the back of your mind.

When you deal with burnout cycles there is often a very big barrier to engaging with the interest that has an ambition attached to it. It seems that I often have ideas of planning to engage in music after work, say, and after taking care of children, but by the time there is an opportunity I’ll be struggling against a fog of Resistance that is more than procrastination or typical levels of tiredness.

I’m using Resistance in the sense that author Stephen Pressfield describes in The War of Art, which will probably come up a lot when people talk about creative blocks. Usually the problem is failing to take any time for your interest because you “don’t feel like it” or you think you’ll do it another day when you feel better, or getting distracted by watching a video about your interest instead of doing anything. This is all general procrastination that affects all people.

So an Autistic person is likely to have typical levels of Resistance, plus a large helping of burnout if other demands are sapping a great deal of energy. I haven’t even covered the difficulties presented by ADD traits or Inertia – which autistic people can report as a complete barrier to doing anything, even if you can visualise what you need to do. I’ve often wished I could telepathically make things happen because I’m sitting unable, apparently, to take a small action to do the first thing. There is also the perception that because the organisation and focus problems affect life in general, the drain from having a job and everything else becomes more than it should be.

Although I can keep depression from developing, all of this creates a chronic feeling of frustration and disappointment, and when I have to give up and crash in front of something passive, I feel like I’m letting myself off too much – even if I am concerned that pushing too much will result in dropping to even lower motivation – the state of feeling there is no way beyond trying to get through the next day.

Nothing I’ve written so far is going to be unfamiliar to an Autistic person with a strong creative ambition that never seems to go anywhere. Incidentally if you’re reading this and you’re an Autistic person who is successful at their creative ambition you can tell me how you managed it…

At the point I am now, I have only got as far as recognising that self-kindness has to be balanced with some harder internal “get on with it” exhortations. There is a kindness where you treat yourself too much like a small child and remove all demands. Where I’ve done that too much and taken it easy every day in the hope of recovering energy, I have ended up with that guilty feeling of disappointment and frustration with myself.

Over time I have also realised that I won’t likely achieve some goal of “feeling great” every day where everything is totally clear and I feel completely unimpeded. There is an element of consistent stubbornness involved, which is in fact an autistic trait at the same time – often misdirected at the wrong goals – stubbornly trying to get approval from the wrong people for example – when that stubbornness could be applied to a genuine ambition. An analogy I’ve heard is with the athlete continuing despite experiencing pain – something I came across years ago from Pressfield again in Playing Hurt. Annoyingly I notice that it’s from nine years ago.

The act of creation, particularly self-creation, is messy. It hurts. It’s terrifying.

But panic, self-doubt, claustrophobia, morbid dread, and all the classic “all is lost” symptoms are good, even if they scare the bejesus out of us while we’re experiencing them. They’re good because they are the product of being in over our heads—and being in over our heads makes us stretch and grow.

That phrase “in over our heads” – for Autistic people this can be a permanent state before even getting to creativity. I can be struggling with remembering to eat, or wash, or thinking about what to eat for dinner or having to call someone to fix a problem with my utility bill because the website that is supposed to work doesn’t.

But the overall idea holds – and it means that when an Autistic person has got over all the additional challenges and drains of the world, the achievement is arguably greater even if the results on any particular day are disappointing.

Perhaps the trick is to remember through the burnout fog that there is greater satisfaction on the other side of engaging in that creative interest, even if I can’t say I’m excited to get on with it or overflowing with inspiration. It may be emotional confusion (Alexithymia) meaning I can’t detect that I am enthusiastic because it’s masked by unusually high anxiety.

There isn’t an easy answer. I still don’t know how to keep a sustainable routine of activity. What these ideas do up to this point is allow me to consider the low level challenges to be important – not the details of technique and how to create, but finding a way to do something without pressuring myself into burnout or letting myself off entirely because neither of these options will work for me.