tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50624392775923259482024-03-13T11:54:31.652+00:00Rambling In The BeWildernessThe Articulations Of An Artistic AutisticLisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comBlogger117125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-81806094041675196932019-02-10T11:17:00.000+00:002019-02-10T11:17:46.647+00:00And, Moving On...<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vqBbDAmgrUY/XGAHPwRX-iI/AAAAAAAAA5Y/rDvEhHIkGYEOkSMaLuXmj4X1KarilUlrQCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_10f.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1330" data-original-width="874" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vqBbDAmgrUY/XGAHPwRX-iI/AAAAAAAAA5Y/rDvEhHIkGYEOkSMaLuXmj4X1KarilUlrQCKgBGAs/s400/fullsizeoutput_10f.jpeg" width="262" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nightingale in watercolour, Jan 2019<br /><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yes, it’s time to say goodbye. I started this blog on the 10th February 2010, exactly nine years ago, so it’s rather fortuitous that I should end it now; though I have to say that it was someone else who suggested that it was perhaps time to bring it to a close and start afresh, given that I don’t like endings (or beginnings, both of which denote change, a concept with which I’m not at all comfortable), and would therefore have carried it on, and simply tried to re-boot and re-purpose it.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">But the fact is, it has fulfilled its purpose: which, according to the words of my first post, was <b><i>“a vague hope that perhaps I might find my own voice, and it might help to re-ignite my enthusiasm for writing. Oh, and that maybe there will be someone out there with Aspergers whom it might help. You never know.”</i></b> So, basically, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing with it, and it shows. Never was a blog more appropriately titled.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Having moved past the rambling stage (which at least denotes some form of movement), and got stuck in a circuitous holding pattern for some time now, I have decided to end this iteration of my blogging life and begin a new one, which will have a definitive, single purpose this time - to share my experience, strength, and hope as an autistic using the Twelve Step programme on everything, from my alcoholism, eating disorder, etc, to my autism and adhd. And this time, God willing, I will stick to the point. I’ll post the link here on this blog when I get it up and running.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I might also start another blog in which to post my artwork, poetry, and all the other creative and literary bits and bobs with which I sporadically littered this one. If, or when, I do, I will also post that link here for anyone who might be interested in seeing how I progress along that journey, though it will mostly be to satisfy my desire to display my work (like many of my fellow/sister autistics, I do so love to display things). But my focus will be primarily on the other new blog.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">So here’s to new adventures.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I hope you’ll come along with me. </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-40901358724185029872019-01-30T15:25:00.000+00:002019-02-10T11:18:08.841+00:00Add Moron<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RAvZ03WatME/XFG_4GtjEhI/AAAAAAAAA4s/6cNViqE89Ycf65ER7szIFCUdGN4a2eJZACKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_f1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1207" data-original-width="1600" height="301" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-RAvZ03WatME/XFG_4GtjEhI/AAAAAAAAA4s/6cNViqE89Ycf65ER7szIFCUdGN4a2eJZACKgBGAs/s400/fullsizeoutput_f1.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is a fox I painted, whose nose is too broad, making him look like a Corgi dog. Still, I like the colours.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Struggling with feeling overwhelmed? Can’t make a decision? Too many choices? Too much on your plate? Fret not, I have the solution. Add more on. Yes, that’s right - do what I do, and add more to your plate of ever-expanding options. Never mind that the more you add the less you find yourself able to choose or, ultimately, do anything at all. Instead you’ll become catatonic with chaos, paralysed by perplexity, incapacitated by information overload. Embrace it! After all, variety is the spice of life (so they say). </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">And look what fun you’ll have, spending oodles of hours (not to mention money, probably) accumulating all of this wealth of ‘stuff’, which will ultimately leave you poverty-stricken - poorer in mind, spirit, body, and bank balance. But go on, I say, throw caution to the wind. You only live once, so you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to drown in all the wealth of choices life has to offer.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">And now I would like to make an interjection, in order to clarify that I am, of course, being ironic. Please do NOT do what I’ve just suggested. On the contrary, my advice would be to ignore it completely (if you can). My point is that this is what I do, and a fat lot of good it does me. It appears to be my default mode - something to do with a fault in the wiring which leads me to confuse the words “more” with “less”, and “complicated” with “simple”. Beyond that, I cannot explain the bizarre and perplexing nature of this particular ‘quirk’.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">As a consequence of the undesirable results of this behaviour, I am now trying to make a change by doing the opposite - whilst, simultaneously, attempting not to do the other thing I do, which is to go to the polar opposite i.e. rather than lessening my options, ending up removing them completely, and deciding to become a minimalist, or go and live as a yogi on the top of a Tibetan mountain. Ah, the vagaries of being a person of extremes, with no middle ground to speak of (never mind live in).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">So here, hopefully for your edification (and my own amusement), are a few examples of where I have tried applying my version of simplification.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">ART SUPPLIES:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Compared to a lot of the artists I’ve seen on YouTube, I don’t have an excessive amount of stuff. However, for me what I did have felt overwhelming as it was (all the choices left me with barely enough time or energy for the painting itself). So I came up with the stonking good idea for how to lessen the overwhelm - I gave myself more options. Yes, I added more, and now I have double the overwhelming choice I had before. Marvellous.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">ART SOURCES:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">And still on the subject of art, which is an endless source of overwhelm… I find most of my ideas for my paintings on-line (Pixabay is a good site); but, as with everything, I can’t just have one photo at a time to use, I have to look at and download more (despite the fact I already have a collection of photos for this purpose on my computer), thus adding to my woes when it comes to trying to decide what to paint.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">BOOKS:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I couldn’t decide where to start with re-reading the books I already owned, so I decided I should try the minimalist route (having recently become obsessed with reading about the idea on the internet), and get rid of any books which weren’t my favourites, and wouldn’t be re-read. Strangely, there was a major fault in the way my brain translated this instruction because, rather than getting rid of any of my books, I ended up buying more instead, and dramatically increasing my library. I’m still quite baffled as to how this happened.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">YOGA:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Do you know how many yoga mantras, meditation techniques, mudras, gurus/teachers, and schools of thought there are? No, neither do I, but I’ve tried incorporating many of them, and then wondered why I don’t feel particularly serene. It’s because I was too busy worrying about all of the other options I thought I was missing out on, and how in the name of Shiva’s socks I was going to fit them in. I am happy (and relieved) to say that here, at least, I have managed somewhat to simplify my practice, mostly by giving up wandering about on the internet looking at yoga sites. As you may have noticed, that’s the third time the internet has been implicated. It has a lot to answer for. Speaking of which…</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">THE INTERNET:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yes, the very thing which is the source of too much information and too many choices is the first thing to which I head when I feel confused and overwhelmed by too much information and too many choices - thus adding to my ever-expanding pile of options, and my ever-increasing confusion as to what to choose. And yes, I know it’s obvious what to do when it’s written down, but not when you’re in it: and not when you have an addiction to excessive (and inappropriate) internet use. *sigh*</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">BLOGGING:</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">And finally, I have even managed to complicate the process of blogging. Not content with simply writing things and then posting them, I decided that they needed to be categorised, and also embellished with photos, the way I’ve seen other people do on theirs: you know, “proper, professional-style” blogs - the kind I can get distracted by for hours. Copying again. *sigh* I also imagined that it would inspire me to write more consistently for my blog, but it’s simply overwhelmed me, and now I can barely remember all the categories that I’ve implemented. Plus, the purpose of my blog has become rather obfuscated in amongst all these supposed ‘simplifications’.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">And there you have it - but a small selection of all of the opportunities available to me for making my life more complicated and overwhelming, to which I run at the drop of a hat.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Now I just have to learn to recognise when it’s happening (which is relatively easy to spot - it’s when I’m thinking about things, unattended by the guidance of God/a Higher Power; or another, sensible, human being who knows me well enough to recognise the signs), and then run in the opposite direction.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Screaming. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-68190079693325199522019-01-08T12:30:00.001+00:002019-01-08T12:30:54.595+00:00You Say You Want A Resolution...<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ubS39mG5SnM/XDSW4pPf_HI/AAAAAAAAA1Q/i2H-yQ2UAZ4pF9Ixgih4tbqwW5mHEm11QCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_f0.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1184" data-original-width="1600" height="295" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ubS39mG5SnM/XDSW4pPf_HI/AAAAAAAAA1Q/i2H-yQ2UAZ4pF9Ixgih4tbqwW5mHEm11QCKgBGAs/s400/fullsizeoutput_f0.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Watercolour Horse - Nov 2018</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><i>“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning, but a going on with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.” </i></b><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Hal Borland</i></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 26px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i></i></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 19px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>“To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.” </i></b><i>Mark Twain</i></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Oh look, it’s that time of year again - the start of a new year (or should that be New Year, just to denote its importance and significance?) Yes, the time when my bonkers brain tries once more to get me to sneak into my life yet another plan, under the cunning disguise of new year’s resolutions. Because, of course, a resolution is completely different to a plan (well actually, no, it’s not). And of course, it being the New Year will make all the difference to my ability to be able to follow and stick to any </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: line-through;">plan </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> *ahem* resolution I mean (not at all the same as a plan) because, you know, it’s different. I insist - this time it WILL be different!</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Yes, yes, I know I’ve never yet, in all of my fifty-one years of living on this planet with this brain, been able to stick to any of the hundreds of resolutions I’ve ever made (strangely reminiscent of my inability to stick to any plans I’ve ever tried to implement, outside of the routine I have installed to keep me functioning on a daily basis). But I live in hope (or a delusional state of magical thinking, and a stubborn resistance to accepting reality). You never know, this might be the year I achieve the </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: line-through;">impossible</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: line-through;">improbable</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> highly unlikely (and, while I’m at it, I might just stumble upon the land of Narnia in the back of a wardrobe - if I could only find the right wardrobe).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Let’s face it, I love a plan; I love the idea of following a plan; I’m OBSESSED with plans; I just don’t have the genetic disposition to be able to stick to one, without tweaking, complicating, or abandoning it five minutes after I’ve made it. I’d have to have my brain genetically modified to get me to be the person I dream of being - super-efficient, rigidly structured, hyper-productive. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">You know, when I look at it like that, what I basically mean is that I want to be a robot. Or someone else. Or both - someone who is a spontaneous robot, but who doesn’t have all of those confusing and messy feelings that get in the way of me functioning efficiently. Oh, isn’t that what the scientists working on Artificial Intelligence are trying to achieve? Something that resembles a human being, but with which you can replace the inefficient, inconsistent, unpredictable human workforce? And it’s not like they haven’t already made inroads, replacing them with automated services, thereby putting people out of work, and reducing the amount of jobs available. And here am I, offering myself up on a plate. What a dodo. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">To get back to the point, then, giving a plan another name (or ‘re-branding’ it, as they say), and re-packaging it in shiny new wrapping is not going to change the results one iota.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I still won’t be able to stick to it. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">One day I’ll fully accept this, and stop living in the future.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">One day… (Oh, is that a plan I see before me, for how I plan to live in the day at some point in the future?</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Well, golly gadzooks, how on earth did that sneak in?) </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Long story short, I have no plan to make any resolutions for this or any other year to come… but I’m sure that, if I contemplated that statement for long enough, I’d find that I’d somehow managed to sneak in a plan.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Oh bum.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">*rolls eyes*</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-25743993593195247492018-10-30T16:04:00.000+00:002018-10-30T16:06:18.626+00:00Artistic Interlude<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WYmN__MEV9Q/W7TD1fctP8I/AAAAAAAAAx0/5yEB-UI5zA8x8zjAS1L-1-kUNsv1SxDzwCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_ea.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1084" data-original-width="1600" height="270" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WYmN__MEV9Q/W7TD1fctP8I/AAAAAAAAAx0/5yEB-UI5zA8x8zjAS1L-1-kUNsv1SxDzwCKgBGAs/s400/fullsizeoutput_ea.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My latest watercolour painting - September 2018</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I painted this picture at the end of September - so before my wappy paint-researching-and-buying spree, and after <a href="https://aspergerontheramble.blogspot.com/2018/09/a-pain-in-art.html">the post</a> in which I announced that perhaps I hated painting, because I certainly don't seem to get a great deal of joy out of it.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It took me five consecutive days to complete, painting for a couple of hours each morning. I set no goals, other than to simply paint. I let it take me as long as it wanted to take, and I took my time and slowed the whole process down. I also kept it simple, using only three colours - burnt umber, raw sienna, and French ultramarine blue. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Nor did I have the stress of trying to match my colour scheme to that of the original photograph, because the photo was in black and white. And, for once, I didn't confuse matters for myself, and drive myself into delirious indecisive distraction, by referring to all of the accumulated printouts I have of innumerable paint colours and possible mixing combinations.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I have to report that, remarkably, all these conditions together appear to have worked to produce a miracle, and I actually enjoyed this painting experience. It seems that giving myself the freedom to voice the disquieting thought that I might not like painting after all, allowed me to make a shift from my entrenched position - hopefully not just temporarily.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I also spent less time criticising what I was doing, or the end product. In fact, I actually really like this painting. It represents a deliberate change in the way I'm trying to paint now - more flow, less rigid control; layering and mixing paint on the paper rather than in the palette; choosing colours I like, rather than trying to replicate those of the subject; trying to paint what I see and feel, rather than the pull of photorealism, and trying to paint what I think I should be seeing.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">All of which is quite remarkable for me - the woman for whom change comes at the speed of a tortoise wearing concrete boots. It's only taken me about seven years of painting to start to break free of the rigid rules I've been confined to trying to follow. Hopefully it won't take that long for the next change! </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I guess if I stop trying to follow what other people say and do (with my dodgy autistic interpretation skills), which is what has impeded my progress, and trust in my own ability and God's guidance, then I might evolve a bit quicker. I surely can't get any slower - other than to come to a complete standstill. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-34519954066217476702018-10-27T14:45:00.000+01:002018-10-27T14:48:28.318+01:00Iceberg Ahoy!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5l_9jsn-ZdU/W9Rqjj90gCI/AAAAAAAAAzU/aEk1Kr-5JJ8VidPp7vsajYnE18-p9MnTACKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_ec.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1334" data-original-width="1600" height="332" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5l_9jsn-ZdU/W9Rqjj90gCI/AAAAAAAAAzU/aEk1Kr-5JJ8VidPp7vsajYnE18-p9MnTACKgBGAs/s400/fullsizeoutput_ec.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What I spent five hours doing with my paints instead of painting. Plus a sample selection of my new paints.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">It started with a discount voucher: which happened to be contained within a catalogue. </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Two things I have a difficult time resisting.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Add in the fact that it was the biannual art supplies catalogue from Ken Bromley’s, promising a five pound discount IF I spent fifty-five pounds, and that it happened to coincide with my recent desire to extend the range of paints which I own, and I was basically sunk - Titanic, meet iceberg: Lisa, meet paint.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">To elucidate further, this means that I have just spent at least two weeks, that’s TWO WHOLE WEEKS (even I cannot quite believe it), trying to decide which new watercolour paints to buy. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">How, in the name of Van Gogh, does a person take so long to make such a decision? I mean, we’re talking paint here, not whether or not I should have a kidney transplant. It defies belief; it defies logic; it defies the nature of time, space, and the laws of physics. But defy all those things I have done, because that’s what I do. Just don’t ask me how - I’m as baffled as you.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">It wasn’t my intention to take so long - but then, as I am slowly learning, nothing I intend ever actually translates into action. In fact, you can guarantee that the moment anything even vaguely resembling a desire or intention escapes my subconscious and manifests itself either as thought or word, it will sink without trace. Like the Titanic (I think I see a theme here).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">My actual ‘intention’ was to briefly (I obviously have no grasp on the meaning of the word brief) peruse a few art sites with which I’m familiar, in the misguided belief that they would aid me in simplifying and clarifying what to choose. Already I begin to see the flaw in my argument. Why would I need someone else to tell me how to choose paint? It’s not like I’m a complete novice anymore: I know the kind of colours that I like; I know the kind of paintings that I prefer doing. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">But no, all of that knowledge goes out the window because, you see, it’s not about the paint colour - it’s about the pigment. (Yes, that was just the tip of the iceberg. No, I couldn’t see the rest of it, hidden beneath the sea of paint waiting to sink me). And for that I needed an ‘expert’, which required more research: which translates as more time spent on the internet. Hence two weeks of “research” - more commonly known around here as another obsession.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">So, I may not have been doing a lot of painting (nothing new there then), but I now know an awful lot about paint and pigment. Of course, I can barely recall most of the details, given that I’ve saturated my brain so much that most of it seems to have dribbled out of my ears. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">But I did eventually buy some paints, and then proceeded to avoid actually using them for their intended purpose. Instead I spent two days ‘testing them out’, and boring myself into a near-catatonic stupor in the process - because, once again, I’d read a load of advice from a bunch of non-autistic artists, all saying the same things about how useful these exercises are to the improvement of one’s art: which translates in my mind as “it’s what ‘proper’ artists do”. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Oh God, when will I learn that I come from a different ‘planet’, and what works for them doesn’t work for me in quite the same way! </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Ah well, it’s done now.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> Next </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I just need a few new brushes...</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Oh lawks, I think I see another iceberg looming. *scrambles for lifeboat* </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-14087056498482307872018-09-14T12:01:00.000+01:002018-09-14T12:01:57.935+01:00LITERARY INSPIRATION #10<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 21px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 2px; text-align: center;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.4px;"><b>BOOK - DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY by Douglas Adams</b></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>“It slowly surveyed the whole field, and then decided to plan out a nice, relaxed day for itself. A little trot later on, it thought, maybe around threeish. After that a bit of a lie down over on the east side of the field where the grass was thicker. It looked like a suitable spot to think about supper in…</i></b></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>Good.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>An excellent plan.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i>And the best thing about it was that having made it the horse could now completely and utterly ignore it. It went instead for a leisurely stand under the only tree in the field.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 20px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 28px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I came across this particular quote this morning as I was reading this book (well I wouldn’t have found it had I been reading some other book, so that’s a bit of a redundant statement, but anyway…), and felt it described so perfectly and succinctly the particular way my brain works when it comes to the issue of planning that I just had to share it.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">I try to make plans. Sometimes I make them complicated, with a long series of instructions to follow. Sometimes (though, admittedly, not often) I make them simple, using a short suggestion. Whichever way I try, the inevitable result is the same - I, for some unfathomable reason, end up completely ignoring them and doing the opposite. The minute I form any word or thought which vaguely resembles some kind of plan, guideline, or even a nebulous desire as to what I’m going to do, or want to do, then I can basically kiss goodbye to seeing it come to fruition any time within my conscious present.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Which basically seems to mean that in order to get anything done I have to be in a state of unconscious awareness (or conscious unawareness?) of what it is I’m trying to achieve, because my brain appears to be wired to purposely contradict my instructions. It “thinks” it knows better than me. And perhaps it does? Perhaps, like the horse, I should simply go with it - enjoy myself making a plan, and accepting that at the end of what is essentially a pleasant bout of idle daydreaming I’ll simply discard it and do something else. The horse seems perfectly content with this idea, so perhaps I would be too if I simply embraced it, rather than agonising over why this happens, and trying to force it not to do so.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Lesson for today - nature has many lessons to teach us especially about going with the flow, and even horses have wisdom to impart.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">(And before anyone feels compelled to point out that horses don’t think like people, and that the horse in this book is not real but a figment of the imagination of Douglas Adams, I know.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Thanks.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I’m literal, but not quite that literal.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Well, not all the time, anyway…)</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-86839901182724072242018-09-05T15:58:00.001+01:002018-09-05T15:58:07.942+01:00A Pain In The Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VNW_xLjFn9w/W4_Vc1woKOI/AAAAAAAAAvg/8clOIkuLPRwhtOmJrfx-H8kRLMN8e32ggCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_dd.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1104" data-original-width="1600" height="275" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VNW_xLjFn9w/W4_Vc1woKOI/AAAAAAAAAvg/8clOIkuLPRwhtOmJrfx-H8kRLMN8e32ggCKgBGAs/s400/fullsizeoutput_dd.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Here's my latest painting, which I managed to knock out after a whole lot of the usual lack of self-belief, anxiety-induced executive functioning deficient dithering and inertia (a new thing about which I was recently made aware), which is produced whenever I'm faced with the prospect of needing (even wanting) to put paint to paper.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I may not be improving when it comes to how I feel about my painting, but I have got better at believing in my ability to draw - so, in order to postpone the "dreaded deed", I simply drew a number of things until I felt suitably girded in the loins to take the plunge and get out the painting gear. And here's the result.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Of course I wasn't happy with it, and gave a running criticism of it while I was doing it - it will be a miracle if the day ever comes when I am, and I don't. Nor did I particularly enjoy doing it, because I was so fucking uptight and anxious about whether I was getting it "right", and doing it "properly" (those words are the bane of my existence: I shall have them engraved on my gravestone - 'She died right, and properly: indeed, she was a right proper charlie'). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I know "great" artists are often depicted as tortured, hyper self-critical souls, being driven by the unrelenting need to improve and perfect their art, which is often seen as a sign of their greatness, but I didn't want to be one of those kinds of artists who suffered for their art. I mean, for fuck's sake, I don't know how they ever managed to get anything done if they suffered anything like the bloody insecurities and almost catatonia-inducing fear of making mistakes which I do. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Perhaps that's the point, though. Perhaps they don't feel the same. Perhaps they aren't driven by the same things. Perhaps at their core they believe that they are great, and they're driven to prove it; and what they fear is being proven to be average. Me, I have no sense of my own ability, so I constantly seek to measure it against other people - which means I end up trying to copy them, trying to follow directions which I don't fully comprehend (but think I do), and trying to adjust myself to suit another person's modus operandi. So whenever I pick up a paintbrush it's like there are two people with me at the easel - there's me, and there's whoever is the latest 'guru' artist to whom I've taken a shine, both fighting to stamp their mark on the paper.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I often find myself wondering whether I'm lying to myself when I say that I love painting. I mean, you wouldn't think this was the case given the torturous (and tortuous) process I have to go through to motivate myself to do it. It's like pulling teeth without an anaesthetic. Perhaps I should just use a bit of reverse psychology, and come out and say, "I FUCKING WELL HATE PAINTING!!!", see if that changes anything. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps, though, it's not that I hate painting, but rather that I hate painting the way I think other people paint, or the way I think that other people would tell me I should paint. After all, I am (annoyingly) also oppositionally defiant, so if I even feel as if I'm being expected to do something (yes, even if it's something I want to do) then I automatically will do the opposite. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Don't ask me why - it's one of the great, unfathomable, frustrating mysteries of my personality, which makes me want to tear my head off and stamp on it. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">So, </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">you want me to paint - I don't want to; you think my paintings are great - I think they're not good enough, probably never will be, and all I can see are the mistakes I made; you think I'm a good artist - I think I'm average, and not as good as... (insert long list of artists' names here), and never will be. It makes me wonder how I've managed to produce anything at all with a brain like mine. I should just go and eat worms.</span></span>Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-46671160128867826242018-08-06T11:48:00.001+01:002018-08-08T10:42:14.990+01:00FOOD FOR THOUGHT #4<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><b><i>"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof, and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably, and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." </i></b></span><br />
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i>Mere Christianity by C S Lewis</i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I may not be a Christian, and I may not believe in the Christian concept of God in which Lewis believed, but I do believe in the idea that we are a physical manifestation of the Creative Energy which underlies the whole universe and beyond; and that Lewis's description of the process of becoming a true expression of that Power is, for me, simple, accessible, comprehensible, and beautiful. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">God, it seems, has greater plans for me than I do for myself, and I'm okay with that because I don't have the imagination to think big - but I don't need to, because He'll do it for me. Plus, as I've often discussed, I am hopeless with plans, so if it were left up to me to do the planning for my life I'd still be a broken-down shack. I just have to get on board with following along, and doing the little things each day which keep me by Her/His side, invite Him into my 'home', and make Her feel welcome enough to want to stay. </span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-71793534917393896492018-08-03T19:24:00.000+01:002018-08-03T19:24:29.154+01:00Photo Fix It<span style="font-size: large;">This is just a brief post to say that I finally "fixed" the problem of not being able to get my photos of my artwork uploaded to my blog (as I reported in the post '<a href="https://aspergerontheramble.blogspot.com/2018/05/still-alive.html">Still Alive!</a>' in May), with a little help from my friend, who is the techno-loving polar opposite to my techno-allergenic self. It turned out to be rather simple in the end - I just had to set up a Google Photos account and post my photos in there in order to be able to upload them on here, because Google won't accept them from iCloud, where they are now saved. A bit of a faff, but there you go.</span><div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-size: large;">So here is some of the artwork I did during my three month painting period at the beginning of the year. And just to note that I was trying to experiment during this period, attempting to loosen up and play a bit, and break free of the habit of rigidly trying to reproduce what I see in the photos I use as source material: hence the less-than-realistic colour schemes on some of them. It was intentional and not an error on my part, brought about by a sudden bout of colour blindness! Suffice it to say, I haven't done any more art since that period came to an end in May/June - as is my way. As always, in this world of uncertainty, I can be depended upon to be reliably unreliable and consistently inconsistent.</span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tNz-9D3Nfn8/W2SXCAE4cjI/AAAAAAAAAtc/UVQF7qiSIIoXLJE97JCGaUOUk0I_eBXbgCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_6b.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1116" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tNz-9D3Nfn8/W2SXCAE4cjI/AAAAAAAAAtc/UVQF7qiSIIoXLJE97JCGaUOUk0I_eBXbgCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_6b.jpeg" width="223" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--83FsMQ7Hnw/W2SbhaLTlQI/AAAAAAAAAuo/DA02A_9RFPEGZOPGcwJi_HN-CmkJJnY0QCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1278" data-original-width="1600" height="255" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--83FsMQ7Hnw/W2SbhaLTlQI/AAAAAAAAAuo/DA02A_9RFPEGZOPGcwJi_HN-CmkJJnY0QCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_7.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N2D0XWDrHDI/W2Sbl7qH8-I/AAAAAAAAAus/Z00OpgsRxNoMz0m-VuD4h7ZEHgNf1d8RACKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_e.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1121" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-N2D0XWDrHDI/W2Sbl7qH8-I/AAAAAAAAAus/Z00OpgsRxNoMz0m-VuD4h7ZEHgNf1d8RACKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_e.jpeg" width="224" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6g_tO9oLeG0/W2SYQlM4ZOI/AAAAAAAAAt4/zlMxjp-QXusZMexU1JHLaLgMn4zIFQ2BACKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_29.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1094" data-original-width="1600" height="218" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6g_tO9oLeG0/W2SYQlM4ZOI/AAAAAAAAAt4/zlMxjp-QXusZMexU1JHLaLgMn4zIFQ2BACKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_29.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
<div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cELX2vq054s/W2SYe2L4tmI/AAAAAAAAAt8/F4C2y107cf4ihPmdPTC6haOZ6_lf2xcvwCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_d2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1285" data-original-width="1600" height="256" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cELX2vq054s/W2SYe2L4tmI/AAAAAAAAAt8/F4C2y107cf4ihPmdPTC6haOZ6_lf2xcvwCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_d2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zXUHybr92GE/W2SX1IMn4bI/AAAAAAAAAtw/2P9R1NGwcaQhfJXtDyRtKTomkzQIMSmYgCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_d4.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1071" data-original-width="1600" height="214" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zXUHybr92GE/W2SX1IMn4bI/AAAAAAAAAtw/2P9R1NGwcaQhfJXtDyRtKTomkzQIMSmYgCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_d4.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fUsp_XfZ-z8/W2SZDDUR0wI/AAAAAAAAAuU/ky4gvgYY1_0OXWrvOWqfWJ56QUdanj_cwCKgBGAs/s1600/DSCF2232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fUsp_XfZ-z8/W2SZDDUR0wI/AAAAAAAAAuU/ky4gvgYY1_0OXWrvOWqfWJ56QUdanj_cwCKgBGAs/s320/DSCF2232.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hVQeZWFvY4w/W2SYoTBikZI/AAAAAAAAAuA/0gU2wpsaN7Ef5QcOSU33siiO5IEvQ8iTwCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_59.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hVQeZWFvY4w/W2SYoTBikZI/AAAAAAAAAuA/0gU2wpsaN7Ef5QcOSU33siiO5IEvQ8iTwCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_59.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J5OihC416nE/W2SYviP7fSI/AAAAAAAAAuE/_dW2Ormvj70Tmnx5PIRHvWYzTyGfdHtHwCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_6.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1166" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-J5OihC416nE/W2SYviP7fSI/AAAAAAAAAuE/_dW2Ormvj70Tmnx5PIRHvWYzTyGfdHtHwCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_6.jpeg" width="233" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D5RvJ5y8zUM/W2SY1VUDfEI/AAAAAAAAAuI/kl0tqNtpxRwwx46c6mIdQcI2WT3_zw02QCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_1b.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1124" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-D5RvJ5y8zUM/W2SY1VUDfEI/AAAAAAAAAuI/kl0tqNtpxRwwx46c6mIdQcI2WT3_zw02QCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_1b.jpeg" width="224" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T_yphUOJ_H8/W2SY6LHXhII/AAAAAAAAAuM/HSwzjPr-4rM2JnasnuAqRnl20Lr1VJVFACKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_58.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1166" data-original-width="1600" height="233" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-T_yphUOJ_H8/W2SY6LHXhII/AAAAAAAAAuM/HSwzjPr-4rM2JnasnuAqRnl20Lr1VJVFACKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_58.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hopUGTKXF74/W2SY9680FpI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/WuPF2OElANQ4cdMcluQNf6FEYHVePahhQCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_3b.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1186" data-original-width="1600" height="237" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hopUGTKXF74/W2SY9680FpI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/WuPF2OElANQ4cdMcluQNf6FEYHVePahhQCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_3b.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k2AZxuYCziw/W2SZShe6QII/AAAAAAAAAuY/CJzpJolq1xQi1ZQrmSXFMudAnAh0wDjtwCKgBGAs/s1600/fullsizeoutput_51.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1522" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-k2AZxuYCziw/W2SZShe6QII/AAAAAAAAAuY/CJzpJolq1xQi1ZQrmSXFMudAnAh0wDjtwCKgBGAs/s320/fullsizeoutput_51.jpeg" width="304" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-43975153616964238282018-07-21T20:10:00.000+01:002018-08-09T14:57:46.789+01:00Weebling To Thirty<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Hoefler Text"; font-size: 17px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Do you remember those toys called Weebles, which first appeared in the 1970s, and had the tag-line “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down”? (I just googled them, and it turns out you can still get them.) They were great fun, and I especially loved the tree house, in which they lived. I really wanted to live in that tree house.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Anyway, this is not a post about Weebles, per se. This is about the fact that today is my AA birthday, and I have somehow managed to cobble together thirty years of consistent sobriety (that’s 30 years, in case anyone out there has problems with discerning the letters in words - though my internal grammarian baulks at the informal and technically grammatically incorrect use of numbers within a piece of text).</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">But enough of that pedantry. So where do Weebles come into this miracle of recovery, you may be asking? Simply in the fact that I’ve decided that the Weebles’ means of locomotion is one I share when it comes to describing the way I’ve done my recovery (and can be extended to encompass the way I “do” life in general) - namely, I’ve wobbled a lot but I haven’t fallen down. Sometimes I go from side to side whilst remaining stationary; frequently, it seems I’ve gone backwards; oftentimes I’ve gone round in circles; but ultimately I have managed to make slow, tentative, frequently tortuous, forward progress. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">This is how come I happen to be sitting here now, the bemused (but grateful) recipient of the gift of thirty years of sobriety, which I have to tell you I was never really sure I wanted in the first place, didn’t ever really make a conscious decision to go after, but rather (in the classic autistic way, I can now see with hindsight) simply copied my way into; and for the first ten years wished I could give back, and return to the ignorance of not knowing that alcohol was not the solution to anything in life but simply one more problem to add to the pile.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Briefly, my journey of sobriety began with my second, and last, visit in 1988 to the psychiatric ward of my local hospital, after I’d been arrested for criminal damage, and had then tried to kill myself with an overdose. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">After this I was given the choice of either going home (where I was extremely miserable), or going to the local rehab unit for alcoholics/addicts, which conveniently happened to be next door to the hospital. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Even though my initial visit to psychiatric had been for a two week detox from alcohol, which I’d voluntarily kept extending until I’d outstayed my welcome at the seven week mark (I felt strangely safe and at home there, after the initial terror on being admitted), I don’t recall any of the staff ever using the word ‘alcoholic’ to describe my drinking. I believe I was initially considered to be possibly suffering from manic-depression (bipolar disorder), because I suffered extreme mood swings (due to both the effects of coming off alcohol, and what I now know is a combination of autistic meltdown, and ADHD). </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">What is most remarkable is that, despite the fact that medication seemed to be freely and routinely prescribed to patients willy-nilly, I escaped the psychiatric system without ever being given anything other than the standard sleeping tablet, which I only took during my stay there. It was years later, when discussing it with my best friend, that I realised just how blessed I had been, given that I had so many things for which I could easily have been medicated, especially given that, due to complete ignorance on the part of the staff, I was being misdiagnosed (autism not being widely recognised, especially in females, back in1988). </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">And, distressingly and painfully uncomfortable as my life has frequently been since then (living without anything chemical to replace the alcohol and mute the chronic anxiety, and general sensitivity to everything around me), I am extremely grateful for being kept safe from what could have been a disastrous transference of my addiction to alcohol to an addiction to prescribed medication, as has happened to so many other people I know of.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">To continue (before I weeble myself into a standstill), I chose to go to the rehab unit as the lesser of two evils. And, as with my stay in the hospital, once I got over the shock of moving into an unfamiliar environment, I settled in and duly repeated the same pattern of becoming dependent - duly becoming the longest-serving resident, clocking in at a year and a half. Yet again, I had to be almost forced to leave.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">After I left and moved into my own home, at the age of twenty-three, things proceeded downhill from there. Despite having been taught all things domestic by my dad starting at the age of seven (and then being expected to take care of him), I was hopeless at looking after myself. And, whilst I’d come away from rehab with the knowledge that I couldn’t ever drink safely (‘one drink is too many, and a thousand is never enough’), there wasn’t a great deal else that was keeping me sober. Essentially nothing had changed. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Add to that an escalation in my undiagnosed anxiety, and a full resurgence of my also undiagnosed and raging eating disorder (compulsive overeater/under-eater/bulimic - in remission for a number of years now). Plus I’d discovered that I could get mildly stoned on certain over-the-counter medications, which I used whenever I had to leave my flat. A joyous existence, what ho!</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s not surprising that, after nearly ten years of this, I descended into a state of hopelessness and depression, in which I wished daily that I could die, and finally progressed to the planning stage.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">And at that point God stepped in and, in a remarkable act of Providence, reunited me with someone I’d met at the end of my time in rehab, for whom I’d briefly worked as a voluntary alcohol services counsellor (yes, me, counselling people - it doesn’t bear thinking about, I know), and who was now firmly steeped in the AA Twelve Step programme. Through her, God saved my life. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">She became my AA sponsor; introduced me to the real recovery programme (it’s in the Big Book, not the meetings); helped me find a God of my own understanding (a Friend who loved me, rather than the critical and punishing father figure in which I’d come to believe); was the first person to recognise that I suffered from chronic anxiety, and the first person who identified me as being autistic; and she has been with me on this journey for the last twenty-one years. Having just one person who truly knows me, and accepts me for who I am, has made all the difference - and for that I am extremely grateful.</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
What’s also remarkable is that, despite the struggles, I have never had the desire to drink alcohol again since sometime in the first year of my stay in rehab - the obsession to drink was removed (as it says in the Big Book) without me even realising it. I have also never wished I were dead, and thought about killing myself, since reuniting in 1997 with the aforementioned person who is now my best friend and who, ironically, has also turned out to be a fellow autistic; and thoughts of wanting to die plagued me daily from the age of about seven, after my mum left us.<br />
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-kerning: none;">So, here endeth this brief overview of my time in recovery. I can’t say it’s been easy (I’ve never been known to do anything easily), and there have been frequent set-backs, but I have to say it is ultimately worth it; and I will, no doubt, continue to wobble my way in Weebly fashion through the rest of my life. </span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
Therefore, I guess all that’s left to say is:-</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR LISA WEEBLE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!</div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Iowan Old Style"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-82100888068160825312018-06-05T11:27:00.000+01:002018-06-05T11:28:12.079+01:00POETIC INTERLUDE<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Procrastination.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">I think I'll write about it -</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">but maybe later.</span>Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-45581357769921175892018-05-30T20:55:00.000+01:002018-08-03T19:25:29.600+01:00Still Alive!!!!<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">This is just a quick note to say I am still here, I just haven't been doing any writing (well obviously). I haven't abandoned my blog, I've just been caught up in doing art instead - every day for nearly the last three months. Don't know what came over me!</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Of course, this means that my writing has suffered because, as my best friend just pointed out, I cannot maintain focus on, and do, two things at the same time, much as I hate to admit it. So I'm now going to have to let go of the idea that I can somehow fit both writing and art into every day, and instead do one or the other, as the inspiration flows between them.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">And, in order to maintain this blog, I shall be trying to post both writing and my art in blog posts, instead of sticking to what has (inevitably) become a concretised idea that blogging requires me to always have to write stuff.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">(I've just tried adding some of my recent artwork to this post, and there seems to be a problem, which I'm having trouble figuring out. So I'll leave it for now, and hope that it isn't a permanent state of affairs. *the Voice of Doom, commonly known as Eeyore*).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span id="goog_442114087"></span><span id="goog_442114088"></span><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-77724417503055405752017-12-03T19:56:00.000+00:002017-12-04T11:19:08.975+00:00PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS - Conflict With People<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve been meaning to write some posts like this for, oh I don’t know, maybe two or three years? Don’t know where the time (and the inspiration) went… </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I had intended starting with how I deal with my sensitivity to noise (I’d made notes and EVERYTHING for it), but then something happened last week which has shifted my focus, so I’m going with that first instead, in case I lose momentum.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I don’t know what it’s like for you, but I have a real struggle having to stand up for myself, no matter how minor the issue might be. The anxiety I feel makes me want to curl into a ball and hide. And last week I was confronted with just such an incident. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I looked out of my living room window and saw christmas lights hanging from my trellis-fence, fencing which I paid for, so there is no dispute about ownership - it’s mine. And on going outside and checking, I found that the lights were draped on both sides - which meant that my neighbour had come into my garden to hang them, and had never bothered to come and ask me first. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My initial reaction was confused and diffused by the voice in my head that tells me that whatever I feel is bound to be ‘wrong’ or over-reactionary due to my being autistically over-sensitive, anxious, and paranoid. So when I spoke to my friend that evening and told her about the lights, I described how I felt as being “a bit miffed”. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Imagine my surprise when she said that she’d be steaming angry if it happened to her, and that she wanted to come down here, remove the lights, and return them to my neighbour, along with a few choice words. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As we spoke, I was able to begin to process what I really felt and thought: and imagine my horror when she then said that I was going to have to go round to my neighbour’s and tell her that what she’d done wasn’t okay, and to ask her to take them down, otherwise she was going to continue to take advantage if I didn’t put a stop to it now. She only moved in about a month ago, and already she has shown herself to be a bit of a bully - not threatening, but the kind of person who expects to get her own way, and rides roughshod over everyone else in order to do so.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">At that point my real reaction kicked in - gut-clenching fear at the idea of having to go and deal with her, and possibly start a conflict. That’s what I’d felt earlier when I first saw the lights, but part of my instinct for survival is to avoid anything which has the potential to explode into an argument or disagreement by minimising what I feel about it. Plus I’m just plain slow at processing information, so it took me until the next day to fully realise just how far beyond ‘miffed’ and into ‘piffed’ (with a double ’s’) I really was. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And then I remembered that I’d got another option to the dreaded talking - writing. I could write her a note (or, in my case, a letter). I’d done it before, with another neighbour, and it had helped tremendously, giving me a way of alleviating the feeling of being powerless to do anything because of my anxiety.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This way I could relieve some of the stress and fear about not being in control - not knowing how she would react, but possibly even worse not knowing what my own reaction would be: would I babble incoherently?; become mute with fright and brain-freeze?; or bolshy with impulsive anger? And, knowing myself, would I forget who was actually in the wrong, feel guilty and end up almost apologetically grovelling for forgiveness, and for her to do me the favour of taking them down, if it wasn’t too much trouble… All in an attempt to try to control her, and hopefully stop her from being angry with me (which is how I assume she’s going to react, because it’s what I assume about everyone, given that I cannot for the life of me ‘read’ people. And I am a depressed donkey whose default position is to expect the worst…*big sigh*). But then I would hate myself. And then I would blame her, and then I would hate her. Not a happy place to be. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So yes, writing. A way to have some control over my part - what comes out of my ‘mouth’, as it were. I also use writing for when I have to phone people (eg to report repairs). I write scripts for myself to help me remember what it is I need to say, otherwise I’m likely to forget the words, or lose focus and babble. These are as specific or as loose as I need them to be - so sometimes I literally write whole sentences to say, or I’ll just need to make a note of key words or phrases as prompts.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I know this suggestion won’t be useful to everyone (for those of you for whom writing in itself produces stress and anxiety), but I hope it might help someone who might not have thought of it, and who is labouring under the illusion (as I was) that there is only one way, and that I HAD to learn to be able to confront/challenge/tackle/communicate with people verbally, and in person. As my friend frequently reminds me, “There are many ways up the mountain.” </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Therefore why would I keep persisting in trying to follow the hardest route, which keeps me stumbling about at the bottom making no progress, without the necessary means to overcome the obstacles in my way? As I’ve remembered just recently, trying to use force will always create resistance. Better to make use of the tools that God has given me to move into His flow, and find an easier way, one that relieves some of the stress. Life’s difficult enough as it is for autistics without adding to it by trying to follow a neurotypical route.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, I wrote my letter, read it to my friend to check that it was okay, and posted it (eventually). It took me a couple of days to find the courage to go out and stick it through her letter box (under cover of darkness at the crack of dawn, I kid you not!), and of course I had the anxiety of wondering how she would react. But it achieved what it was meant to - the lights were taken down that day, and I haven’t seen her to know how she reacted to the letter. I just have to keep reminding myself that she was in the wrong. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And I thought it might be helpful to add the letter here, in case anyone needed some kind of guidance. So here it is:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></b></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Hi (I’m sorry but I don’t know your name),</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">I noticed on Friday evening that there are christmas lights on my trellis, and, given that they’ve never been there before, I’m assuming that they are yours (if I’m wrong, and they’re not, apologies, and please ignore this letter).</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">I am autistic, and I also suffer from social anxiety, and I found it extremely disturbing to see not only that they had been put on there without my permission, but that they are also on my side as well as yours - which I can only assume means that whoever did that for you either came into my garden, or leaned over the trellis into my garden. </span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">I was in all day on Friday, and I didn’t hear anyone knock on my door to ask me if it was okay for them to do that; but if they did knock, and I didn’t hear them (which is a possibility), the fact that they went ahead anyway, rather than wait until they caught me in, I find equally disturbing, discourteous, and inconsiderate.</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">I would never dream of doing any such thing to anyone else, especially knowing how anxious and distressed the idea of other people encroaching on my space and privacy makes me feel, and how difficult I find it having to challenge them about it. I would appreciate it if, in future, you would respect my privacy and my boundaries, and ask before you decide to do anything that might affect me. </span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">So, having had time to think about it, I would like you to take down the lights: you do have your own trellis in the back, so it isn’t that you don’t have anywhere to put them. I’ve also decided that I would prefer it if you did not put anything at all up against my trellis, having also had time to think about your question about planting a climber there. I already have a honeysuckle growing up there.</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">As I said, I am autistic, so I struggle to communicate clearly with people to make myself understood, and the anxiety makes this worse. This is why I have written this letter rather than talk to you directly, as I find it easier to express myself in writing - it allows me time to think about what I want to say, which talking to people does not.</span></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br /></span></i></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Kind regards</span></i></b></span></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b><i><span style="font-size: large;">Lisa</span></i></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-27088631569803062902017-11-09T16:01:00.000+00:002017-11-09T18:04:45.173+00:00Love's Labours Lost The Plot<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Crikey! That last post was rather laboured, wasn’t it? I know my blog name includes the word Rambling in the title, but that felt more like a trek through untamed jungle, with only a butter knife to hack back the overgrowth. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And, my God, was there a lot of overgrowth. I know I said that I’d done a lot of editing to get it down to that size (four and a half pages… FOUR AND A HALF A4-SIZE PAGES!!! I usually manage to stick to two), but obviously not enough: that was minor pruning, rather than the lopping with a machete which was really needed. And perhaps a blowtorch.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I spoke with my friend about it after she’d read it, and she confirmed that it was as laborious to read as it had been to write. I like that about her (among other things). She always tells me the truth, without sugar-coating it; but it never feels like criticism (except when I’m having a really bad day, in which case saying hello to me could be misconstrued as a criticism).</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">We agreed it was not one of my better pieces, being somewhat lacking in the humour department (though I had intended for it to be funny; the initial idea was humorous, but the long, drawn-out execution kind of squeezed all the fun out of it, so it did end up feeling that way - like an execution). And the length… </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I was thinking about going back and editing it some more, but she said to leave it: it would be a reminder of what I’d done ‘wrong’, and what not to do next time.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Because, you see, I have actually developed a set of principles or guidelines for writing my blog posts, despite the fact that it may all seem rather random at times. And they actually fit into an alliterative list, which pleases the little linguist in me immensely. So, they are:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Keep It Simple - basically stick to one main topic or theme within each post. This helps me to stay focused, and there’s the possibility that I might get the thing completed within a week of starting it if I can stay on the path, and out of the forest of my distractions…</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Keep It Short - I have found, through trial and error, that approximately two A4 pages is enough for me to say what I need to say: any more and I start repeating myself (just with different words, so I don’t notice it). Plus, the long ones are usually a sign that I’ve shifted into lecture mode, where I’m now trying to teach something or make a point; I’ve grown attached to the sound of my own thoughts; and I feel the weight of their importance and the need to share them. God, are those boring posts to write, and read…</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Keep It Sweet - by this I mean funny, but the only alliteration I could come up with was either Sweetly Funny or Seriously Funny, and it spoilt the poetic metre I’ve got going on… So, sweet it is. Being rather a depressed donkey by nature, I didn’t want this to be a place where I got to cement my woes ‘on paper’, as it were, and share the gloom and despondency of life. This was meant to be a place where I could share the hope, strength, and experience of having initially survived life as an undiagnosed autistic with adhd </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">(now moving into thriving), and the sense of humour which is so intrinsically a part of that shift, and necessary to keep cultivating in order to keep that donkey at bay.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So the minute I feel myself labouring on a post, being driven rather than guided to write, and having lost interest in the topic, then the humour has gone, and it’s time to either reassess, or abandon post.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">As my friend would say, “how important is it really, in the scheme of things, if you don’t finish it?”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This helps to put things into perspective, which is also what humour does.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And so, before I break one or more of my guidelines, here endeth the deconstruction of my last post. May it rest in peace.</span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-88771691769779065412017-11-06T16:06:00.000+00:002017-11-06T16:06:42.497+00:00My Imaginary Self<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">You know, I often feel as if there are two of me, and now I know why - there are. I’d like you to meet my Imaginary Self. She’s the one who convinces me that I am who I’m not, that I can do what I can’t, and, as a result, leads me off down rabbit holes which result in frustrating dead ends - not to mention time wasted on yet another distraction, of which my life seems to be one long series.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">She’s been with me throughout most of my life, and has become so interchangeable with my true self that I often can’t tell which of us is real, and which the fantasy. Even as I’m writing about ‘her’ now, I’m not quite sure whether I should be referring to her as being the one who has created, and believes, all of this false stuff about myself, and therefore convinces me of it; or whether it’s that I have created her, through the combination of ignorance, confusion, the influence of the neurotypical world, and (in recent times) resistance to accepting being an autistic with adhd, and what that really means. As you can see, she has almost literally taken on a life of her own. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">However, this life she imagines is real doesn’t bear much resemblance to the one I inhabit, which is part of the problem - we are frequently in conflict because I cannot live up to her expectations, and she refuses to accept that I can’t do what she wants me to do, rather choosing to believe it’s because I’m refusing to try (that way she retains the illusion of being in control). </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve been trying to write this post for weeks, now, and I’ve floundered around in the introduction, attempting to explain what I mean by her, instead of allowing the rest of the post to do that. So I’m going to cut this (relatively) short, and try to be brief and succinct - though that, too, is an example of something my imaginary self can do, and I can’t. Brevity is not my strong point: everything I write requires extensive editing. You should see the draft notes for this post.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">1 My Imaginary Self has both autistic and neurotypical wiring, which means that she thinks both autistically and neurotypically. She isn’t clear on the exact details of how this works (details and logic not being her forté, unless it involves getting lost in the minutiae of the English language), just that she believes it does. As such, she thinks she can suppress/control/manage some of her autistic/adhd symptoms by applying some of the neurotypical techniques she has learnt in her extensive research. My real self has been trying to do this for fifty years (unconsciously for the most part): it hasn’t worked yet. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">2 As I mentioned above, details and logic are not my forté, but she harbours the illusion that she is a logical, linear, concise, analytical, academic thinker. She’s not. She couldn’t think in a straight line even if she had a ruler, and she cannot get from A to B without having to detour through the rest of the alphabet - usually more than once, and often encompassing the alphabets of any other random languages which might happen to be lying around to distract her (hello Sanskrit).</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This illusion is compounded by the fact that she loves writing and everything about the English language, which she mistakenly believes means that she must be academic. It doesn’t, and she’s not. She’s a creative thinker - it’s just taking her a long time to figure this out, because she thinks in words not pictures (though she does paint pictures with words, which confuses her further). Plus, she harboured a dream to go to Oxford University and be a scholar (like her hero, C S Lewis), even though she found school and college incompatible with her personality and mode of learning. In her classically rigid autistic way, she thinks there’s only one way of learning in order to prove your intelligence, which requires the acquisition of a lot of information on a wide range of subjects, most of which actually bore the arse off her.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3 My Imaginary Self is a frustrated musical prodigy. My real self has no musical talent whatsoever. Based on this delusion, I spent one hundred and fifty pounds on a music keyboard to fulfil this supposed lifelong ambition to learn to play the piano, only to find it tedious beyond measure. After hardly using it, I gave it away.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">4 This same musical genius also believes that she’s a stifled seamstress waiting to burst forth and make her own clothes, because she thinks this would be easier than having to shop for them. Unfortunately, the real me happens to be as interested in, and adept at, dressmaking as I am spot-welding, and my talent extends only as far as basic repairs, which I procrastinate over doing - a fact I should have taken notice of before I decided to fork out another hundred and fifty quid on a brand new sewing machine, which has now sat, hardly used, in a cupboard for about three years. Another item to be donated. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">5 My Imaginary Self believes that putting off doing things will not only be temporary, but also make them easier to do later, when she feels better able to face them. My real self is a chronic procrastinator who just defers action automatically, no reason required. And it never makes it easier, but we always forget that.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">6 My Imaginary Self thinks she’s tidy at heart, that being a minimalist would suit her, and this way she would get more writing and art done because this, she has read, is the way to combat clutter, and eliminate distractions. My real self is chaotic, loves collecting and displaying things (like books), but also hoards things which she often doesn’t want to do, but can’t seem to let go of easily (paper, boxes, and containers in particular). She’s attached to things more than people, and she’d panic if she had to live in a home with very little on display to stimulate her senses. And it wouldn’t matter how clinically organised her environment was, something would still distract her - most probably the fact that her environment was too clinically organised.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">7 My Imaginary Self thinks she’ll get bored if her choices are limited, so she needs lot of options to assuage my adhd; plus, she thinks this way she can overcome the narrow-focused obsessiveness of my autism, and become a more interesting, fully-rounded person. My real self gets overwhelmed and in a flap if she’s faced with more than one alternative, and will often end up doing nothing at all because her brain has had a mini-meltdown and temporarily stopped functioning. Or she won’t be able to focus on the thing she is doing, because she’ll be wondering whether she should have chosen one of the other options.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">8 My Imaginary Self is erudite, and able to express this in a calm, relaxed, thoughtful, measured way when speaking in person to people. My real self either clams up entirely because her mind goes blank when faced with another human being (or is reduced to repeating the few inane bits of small-talk she has learnt to express in such situations), or explodes into full-on twitter like a demented sparrow, where she just cannot shut up, and everything that comes into her head leaks out of her mouth. This is often mistaken for garrulous sociability, when in fact it’s a sign of overstimulation and social anxiety. Her erudition is confined to the written word, and she’s always relieved when she can escape back into blessed solitude.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">9 My Imaginary Self chooses the ideas which are useful to her that she allows into her mind, and discards the rest. She can distinguish between what’s meant to be taken literally (not to mention seriously, and personally), and what isn’t. My real self is a sponge - a literal-minded, gullible, easily influenced, sheep-like sponge. And, contrary to what my Imaginary Self believes, she hasn’t got a clue half the time what’s in her own mind, or why she does what she does - except that it’s usually as the result of something she read or heard somewhere… </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, there she is - my Imaginary Self. It took a while to wrangle her onto the page, but she’s there now - in the only place where she does exist, other than my own mind. Now to try to leave her here… </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal; min-height: 22px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Namaste - I bow to the real you</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-31702378547279874232017-08-06T11:54:00.000+01:002017-08-06T14:45:45.299+01:00LITERARY INSPIRATION #9<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>BOOK - MOON OVER MANIFEST by Clare Vanderpool</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mvTQIDvyeZw/WYbzJuF4f-I/AAAAAAAAAnA/syKthIxpN_EdDef9s957loFEcfWiFqHmQCEwYBhgL/s1600/DSCF2135.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1320" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mvTQIDvyeZw/WYbzJuF4f-I/AAAAAAAAAnA/syKthIxpN_EdDef9s957loFEcfWiFqHmQCEwYBhgL/s400/DSCF2135.JPG" width="330" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal; min-height: 28px;">
<b style="font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>‘I thought I knew a thing or two about people. Even had my list of universals. But I wondered. Maybe the world wasn’t made of universals that could be summed up in neat little packages. Maybe there were just people. People who were tired and hurt and lonely and kind in their own way and their own time.</i></b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>Once again, I felt off balance, as if I was playing tug-of-war and the person I was tugging against let go.’</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>‘They talked of their common experiences of travelling to America on ships filled with immigrants, tears of emotion welling up as they recounted their first sightings of the Statue of Liberty, and the joy and fear of arriving at Ellis Island.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“I was so afraid I would be turned back,” said Mrs Cybulskis, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “The way they examined everyone for disease and malady.” The women nodded in agreement. They had all experienced the fear of being labelled unfit to enter America. A simple chalk mark drawn by the medical examiner on one’s clothes could have a person barred from entering his newly adopted country. An E for eye problems, an L for lameness, an H for heart problems. They would have to board another boat and go back to wherever they’d come from no matter how long a journey they had just travelled.’</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ILpPqR6sRVc/WYbzOeV7yvI/AAAAAAAAAnI/AsZhWZDLYVQDFSWtrF6WwWYKW5zk26csQCEwYBhgL/s1600/DSCF2138.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1522" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ILpPqR6sRVc/WYbzOeV7yvI/AAAAAAAAAnI/AsZhWZDLYVQDFSWtrF6WwWYKW5zk26csQCEwYBhgL/s400/DSCF2138.JPG" width="380" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">My experience with buying and reading recently published children’s books has been a bit hit and miss - I prefer older books, which I have found are generally (though not always) much better written.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But occasionally I’ve stumbled upon some good newer ones, this being one of those. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I really loved this book, and it made me cry (though that isn’t to say that it is one of those awful, gloomy books, designed to manipulate your emotions - I read one of those a few months back, and I was so angry with it I gave it away: I couldn’t bear to have it in my home, it pissed me off so much). It’s bitter-sweet, and so beautiful.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As you can see from the second quote above, it is also extremely relevant to what is going on in the world today, with the “immigrant crisis”. And yet the book, published in 2010, switches between a dual timeline of 1917/18, and 1936, and is describing how immigrants were treated back when they were fleeing Europe and the devastation of the First World War. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So nothing much has changed, then.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Immigrants are still as unwelcome as they’ve always been, it seems.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And yet the irony in this is the fact that most of us are either immigrants, or the descendants of immigrants (whether in the recent or long distant past), but so many people don’t realise, or choose to forget, that fact.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">No matter how you try to look at it, “All is One” and, therefore, we are all part of the whole.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Peace to all.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> Namaste.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dhG0g-dIs4A/WYby8l4JDyI/AAAAAAAAAnI/Q_ZQ8vZVbQ0P-hKlB0NClwgf0vW6jWmpgCEwYBhgL/s1600/DSCF2132.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1408" data-original-width="1600" height="281" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dhG0g-dIs4A/WYby8l4JDyI/AAAAAAAAAnI/Q_ZQ8vZVbQ0P-hKlB0NClwgf0vW6jWmpgCEwYBhgL/s320/DSCF2132.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-31333396456629858392017-08-05T15:38:00.000+01:002017-08-05T15:38:32.002+01:00FOOD FOR THOUGHT #3<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i><b>"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?" </b>C S Lewis</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I do love Lewis, despite not being a Christian myself. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As to his quote, I do this all the time (mostly now in other areas of my life), and it always leaves me feeling frustrated, conflicted, and out of synch with myself and God. And where do I get my ideas? From other people: and not just non-autistic people (who are my default guides to how to live a 'better' life), but also from people who are as out of step with God (or even more so) as I am. The blind leading the blind, indeed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I compare my "universe" with other peoples', which only serves to confirm my beliefs about myself - that I'm not doing well enough; that I should try harder; that I'd be happy if I did it someone else's way, blah blah blah.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Take, for example, my obsession with the idea of the need for discipline, and more productivity. My personality, my wiring, does not lend itself to consistency - I am, by nature, erratic. I get enthusiastic about something, and want to do it all the time (right now I'm really into posting these quotes - it'll pass, unfortunately). But then, after a while, I lose interest and move on to the next thing (told you it'll pass). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">But rather than accepting this about myself, going with the ebb and flow (no-one ever mentions the ebb), trusting that I'll always return to the things which really are my special interests (like writing, and art), and that this is God directing me, instead I compare myself to those people who propagate the idea of self-determination (some of them even talk about "setting an intention" to do something, which makes it sound quite spiritual, but which, on careful examination, often looks suspiciously like self-will to me); who elevate and seem almost to worship the ideas of daily discipline, productivity, and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">consistency. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Yet I fail, every time, to live up to these expectations and ideas - ideas which seem to be universally accepted as being the blueprint for a happy, successful, and fulfilling life. So, of course, for those of us who fail to follow these guidelines, the natural assumption is that our unhappiness, etc is because we aren't following them, and trying harder to walk this path is the only way to to achieve these goals, and get what we want.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">And therein lies my other source of conflict - my relationship with God. As I understand it, I get a choice to either follow God's guidance, or my own; to ask Him/Her/It to direct my life and my thinking (this is where inspiration comes from), or to think for myself (which basically means following other people, because I'm relying on my limited stock of acquired information, nearly all of which originates from them; and which also incorporates my wobbly autistic interpretation of said ideas). So what I want, or think I want (if I even have half an inkling, which I mostly don't), is not necessarily what I need, or what God wants for me. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">To me, therefore, if I'm following God, then me deciding what I want to do is in direct opposition to this. The minute I decide I want to be more productive, or more organised, I fall back on my default, narrow-minded understanding of what this means (the one that I have picked up from other people, and which always involves a plan of some sort, even if it's just a mental decision to write or paint every day, for example), and therefore take back control of directing my own life again, rather than turning it over to God to guide me throughout the day. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Being rigid in nature makes it impossible for me to shift focus between any plan for the day that I've made, and trying to let God direct me. Following the plan becomes my obsession.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Along with that, my black or white viewpoint also impedes my ability to see that there might be any alternative interpretations - that there isn't just one way to manifest organisation, productivity, consistency, etc. As my friend Dee frequently jokes, I am actually consistent - consistently inconsistent; I'm also reliably unreliable; and even chaotically organised. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Yet I laugh these things off, and view them as qualities which need to be overcome, because the bar against which I am measuring them is one created by a society which is primarily obsessed with efficiency, productivity, and keeping people under control, and doesn't really allow for creative alternatives. Things which God isn't interested in at all. S/He doesn't want to control me; S/He doesn't want me to follow the crowd. S/He wants me to be free.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">So the assumption that the reason I can't find happiness, peace, and fulfilment is because I'm failing to try harder to follow the path laid out by other people, is wrong. The reason I can't find those things is because their path is the wrong one for me: it's too narrow, and it literally leads to unhappiness. Yet I keep insisting on trying to walk down it. And God won't walk down it with me. So there goes my peace, happiness, freedom, and fulfilment, waving to me as I walk away from Him, once again. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span>Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-34401969187136561232017-08-03T08:39:00.000+01:002017-08-04T11:15:19.648+01:00FOOD FOR THOUGHT #2<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i style="font-weight: bold;">"God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion (</i>spirituality<i><b>). God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself because it is not there." </b>C S Lewis</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Having tried numerous other options to achieve happiness and peace, I know this to be true for myself. Finding this connection with God (as I understand Her/Him/It) is the greatest gift I received from following the AA 12 Step Programme. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">It even says in the Basic Text (which is nicknamed the AA Big Book) that the solution to our problem is a Power greater than ourselves, which we choose to call God; that the purpose of doing the Steps is to find that Power; and that the Power will solve our problem - NOT that S/He/It will help us to solve our problem. We've proven that we can't sort it out, which is manifested in our various addictions, unhealthy behaviours, and the variety and variance in degrees of emotional and mental turmoil and/or illness which we suffer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">And this problem of which we speak? Life. That conundrum which causes so many of us such problems in our attempts to navigate our way through it; especially because we believe we have to go it alone, relying only, or primarily, on our own resources, our own thinking. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">All of which turn out to be limited, and temporary, in their ability to bring about a state of happiness or peace (if they even manage to achieve that at all - I thought that writing, and art, would do that for me: turns out that a lot of the time they make me feel worse, not better!) </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-41990060083650187792017-08-02T15:30:00.003+01:002017-08-05T19:29:04.810+01:00FOOD FOR THOUGHT #1<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><b>"We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship." </b>C S Lewis</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">Isn't it amazing that C S Lewis died in 1963, well before the age of the internet and social media, and yet his words are so prescient? It proves to me, yet again, that nothing we encounter or experience in this world is ever truly original. The material world may change, and therefore the nature of our current distractions: but human beings don't. I find this continuity comforting.</span>Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-66260427548865285052017-07-01T14:30:00.000+01:002017-07-01T14:30:51.560+01:00Confounding Co-Factors<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here’s a conundrum - what sometimes looks like addiction, feels like addiction, sounds like addiction, but isn’t? Answer - autism.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">How so? Well, take, for example, my perennial problem with the internet. Regular readers might already be aware of my on-going struggle to reign in my obsession with it, and may be bored out of their brains with my seemingly constant references to it - as I am myself. But bear with me: this time I may actually have had a genuine epiphany.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As usual, I have not posted for so long because I’ve been stuck on the web. In between bouts of trawling, I’ve been tying myself in knots trying to work out why I can’t seem to stay away from it, and how to manage my use of it (which, ironically, is all part of the obsession - so even when I’m not on there, I’m worrying about how to stay off there, etc). </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This time around, I finally determined that it’s an addiction - that I’d been “in denial”, minimising and rationalising my behaviour (for example, by blaming it on my ADHD). After all, did it not fit within the simple AA definition of addiction in the Big Book:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>‘If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Substitute internet use for drinking, and it described perfectly what seemed to be the problem - inability to choose to stay off there (away from my compulsive web-trawling, as opposed to my “responsible” use of the internet for things like communication, or blogging) for any decent length of time even when I wanted to, or needed to in order to get anything else done; and lack of control over what I would do once I got on there, which not even extreme tiredness, or physical pain, could induce me to stop.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And, also as described in the Big Book, I have tried all ways to control it (egs setting up rules, using a timer, hiding the router AND the computer at times) - and failed. All that’s done is driven me round the bloody bend, obsessing about how to stop being so bloody obsessed with the bloody thing!</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve tried fear, I’ve tried guilt, I’ve tried coaxing; and I’ve done what I do with everything, which is to compartmentalise it into two distinct and extreme camps (because I really don’t do middle ground) - those being my responsible, sensible, creative, productive use of it; and my unproductive, wasteful, negative use. They haven’t worked. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The unfortunate effect of categorisation is that, by extension, whenever I ‘give in’ to my compulsion, I judge myself to be choosing to be irresponsible, unproductive, and slothful; that I could stop myself if I really wanted to; that I just need to ‘pull myself together” (like a pair of curtains), and pull my socks up (as if having droopy socks are responsible for me not applying myself, or trying hard enough?!) </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Yet Step One of the AA programme says that, when it comes to addiction, we are unable to exercise free choice when we are in the grip of an overpowering mental obsession and physical compulsion to use whatever substance or behaviour it is to which we find ourselves enslaved, no matter the damage it may be causing. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, having arrived at what I thought was the right conclusion, I set about applying the solution: part of which involved the practical first step of trying to ‘detox’ (AGAIN) from my compulsive use of the internet. Only this time (I thought) it was going to be different, because I believed I’d got to the root of my dilemma - finally identifying what the problem actually was.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then I had a conversation with my sponsor/best friend, who mentioned that we’d been here before (with alarmingly frequent regularity) - having an obsessive conversation about my obsessive use of the internet; and that perhaps it wasn’t an addiction after all. Did I not recall that being obsessed is part of being autistic, she asked (for probably the ten thousandth time since I’d been diagnosed back in 2010)?</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And something clicked. Perhaps she was right? And perhaps it was time to try to make a wholesale shift in the way I think about myself, because I still seem to have some vague, unconscious idea that there are still parts of me - like my alcoholism, for instance - which are the same as the neurotypical version, and aren’t influenced by my autism: as if I have a brain that is separated into two halves (one being the autistic part, and the other the neurotypical), and they operate in tandem; and I just need to find a way to tap into the NT side in order to overcome the influence of the autism/adhd. Fuck’s sake! I thought I’d got over this ‘split personality’ business already!</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I realise I haven’t gone into any specific details about the confusing similarities between autism and addiction, which I intended to include here, but this post is already long enough, so I’ve decided to split it up, and (hopefully!) I’ll write a second one about that stuff, soon. I’m just relieved to have finally got something written.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">May you find clarity and truth about your own life. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-61896110542647433722017-04-28T11:39:00.000+01:002017-04-28T11:39:48.402+01:00A Pile Of Pooh!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KruKmOcC28w/WQMa5vNygbI/AAAAAAAAAmo/xIrUl1uXdu0WexgCyEkZ1yXI5b678XgMACLcB/s1600/DSCF1821.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KruKmOcC28w/WQMa5vNygbI/AAAAAAAAAmo/xIrUl1uXdu0WexgCyEkZ1yXI5b678XgMACLcB/s400/DSCF1821.JPG" width="321" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The REAL Pooh!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Okay, I have to do this: it just cannot be borne any longer. *clasps hand to heart, and sighs deeply*</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">There is something I’ve been needing to get off my chest for a while now (and I don’t mean my bra. It’s a saying we have here in England - not sure if it’s used in the rest of the UK because I don’t live there. But it’s rather apt, given that your heart is situated in the chest area. But I digress). I know it’s not earth-shatteringly important in the scheme of things, but to me it is a major bugbear (bear - Pooh bear - ha ha ha *rolls eyes at own wit*), and the time has come to put people right.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Winnie the Pooh was written by AA Milne, who was English. He wrote two books of stories about those characters, which were published in 1926 and 1928. That’s all. TWO BOOKS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT POOH. He died in 1956. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Since then, the character of Pooh has been appropriated by Disney, and therein lies the problem. More books have been written about the Pooh characters, and people quote from them, and attribute said quotes to the REAL Pooh, and AA Milne. Except that they have nothing to do with the real Pooh at all. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They are the Disneyfied, homogenised (and I have to say it, so please don’t be offended because I know it’s not all of you), Americanised versions - which means they now churn out sentimental stories about Pooh and friends that are saccharine-sweet, sugar-coated, sappy clap-trap, full of dumbed-down ‘life lessons’, and rousing motivational speeches about how “you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” Yuck!!! Makes me want to tear my hair out, and vomit.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">(As a side note, I just checked on Google the date of AA Milne’s death, and the first two of three Pooh quotes listed were Disney ones, the first being the awful one that I’ve just quoted above! AAAAAaaaaaahhhhh!!!! *runs screaming around the room in circles, like a demented duck*)</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">STOP IT!!! Just STOP IT, would you?! If you’re going to quote AA Milne, and Pooh, at least make sure you’re bloody well quoting the REAL thing, and not the bloody fake shite that Disney churns out. These characters are not sweet, or cute, and one-dimensional - they are nuanced, and have depth. The humour is subtle - it’s dry, ironic, sardonic, laconic, droll, deadpan, sarcastic, wry, and even (God forbid!) anarchic. The man was English, for God’s sake: his humour is quintessentially English (or British). And here’s the proof:</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Owl,” said Rabbit shortly, “you and I have brains. The others have fluff. If there is any thinking to be done in this Forest - and when I say thinking I mean </i>thinking <i>- you and I must do it.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Yes,” said Owl. “I was.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Read that.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>Owl took Christopher Robin’s notice from Rabbit and looked at it nervously. He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn’t Wednesday, and he could read quite comfortably when you weren’t looking over his shoulder and saying “Well?” all the time, and he could…</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Well?” said Rabbit.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Yes,” said Owl, looking Wise and Thoughtful. “I see what you mean. Undoubtedly.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Well?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Exactly,” said Owl. “Precisely.” And he added, after a little thought, “If you had not come to me, I should have come to you.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Why?” asked Rabbit.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“For that very reason,” said Owl, hoping that something helpful would happen soon.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Yesterday morning,” said Rabbit solemnly, “I went to see Christopher Robin. He was out. Pinned on his door was a notice!”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“The same notice?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“A different one. But the meaning was the same. It’s very odd.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Amazing,” said Owl, looking at the notice again, and getting, just for a moment, a curious sort of feeling that something had happened to Christopher Robin’s back. “What did you do?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Nothing.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“The best thing,” said Owl wisely.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Well?” said Rabbit again, as Owl knew he was going to.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Exactly,” said Owl.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>For a little while he couldn’t think of anything more; and then, all of a sudden, he had an idea.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Tell me, Rabbit,” he said, “the </i>exact<i> words of the first notice. This is very important. Everything depends on this. The </i>exact<i> words of the </i>first<i> notice.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“It was just the same as that one really.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>Owl looked at him, and wondered whether to push him off the tree; but, feeling that he could always do it afterwards, he tried once more to find out what they were talking about.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I rest my case.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And here endeth the rant.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">‘Normal’ programming will now be resumed.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-72646124912615770062017-04-26T15:50:00.000+01:002017-04-26T15:56:51.349+01:00LITERARY INSPIRATION #8<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal;">
<div style="line-height: normal;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>BOOK - THE VELVETEEN RABBIT </b></span><span style="font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: normal;"><b>OR HOW TOYS BECOME REAL</b></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b> by Margery Williams</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; line-height: normal; min-height: 28px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b></b></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FQsyzslyyWg/WQCxb-sI-AI/AAAAAAAAAmI/2-yWjCL1ISU9jid4oggqdxtLnGuTDdPWgCEw/s1600/DSCF2006.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FQsyzslyyWg/WQCxb-sI-AI/AAAAAAAAAmI/2-yWjCL1ISU9jid4oggqdxtLnGuTDdPWgCEw/s400/DSCF2006.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An explosion of rabbits!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b style="font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i><br /></i></b>
<b style="font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”</i></b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJuq8tUwr1Y/WQCx_ch0NBI/AAAAAAAAAmM/MaRwU1aZzzogwucKRaiuUPtekctBOyuhQCLcB/s1600/DSCF2010.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OJuq8tUwr1Y/WQCx_ch0NBI/AAAAAAAAAmM/MaRwU1aZzzogwucKRaiuUPtekctBOyuhQCLcB/s400/DSCF2010.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Love this book.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It’s only forty-four pages long, but the message is beautiful, and I always cry when I read about the little rabbit becoming fully real at the end.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And, hopefully, without getting tangled up in abstract language and waffle about feelings (which I have, but have a hard time identifying or expressing “appropriately”), and being emotionally available, and authentic (come again?), here’s what being real means to me, as an autistic.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Stop denying my autism (and adhd) in an attempt to fit into the neurotypical world, which is presented as the primary blueprint for how to live a happy and successful life. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In practical terms, this means not searching for answers on the internet, or in books and other literature written by non-autistics, for how to manage my life as an autistic. This encompasses everything, from sites dedicated to autism (telling me what’s wrong with me, how to deal with it, and manage my life as an autistic more effectively), to all those non-autistically-related sites that want to tell me how to do everything more effectively and productively, from writing and art, to how to organise everything in my life, from my shelves to my time. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Simple but not easy, given that I have an in-built, arbitrary drive to copy; a rigid viewpoint about there being a right and wrong answer; and a fear of making mistakes. Hence constantly checking to see whether I’m doing things right, or whether anyone else has a better answer that I just haven’t thought of because of my limited imagination. Plus, I just seem to have a peculiar obsession with all things neurotypical, even when I don’t agree with anything they say!</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course, this is not very useful in helping me to become more consciously aware of, and comfortable with, who I am, if I’m trying to look at myself through the eyes of someone who has no comprehension or experience of what it’s like to be autistic.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Ultimately, though, I think the message of this book is that becoming real is a gradual process which happens over time.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So, even though I do still get lost at times comparing myself to non-autistics, and temporarily forget myself (but who has someone to remind me of the truth of who I am), I have turned into a real person - one who, right now, happens to be really obsessed with the internet!</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PLxFnGrbA4Q/WQCy25C5EYI/AAAAAAAAAmY/WUi4Nk4GiUMesAQHc2WP49sJcwfOpl_NQCLcB/s1600/DSCF2012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PLxFnGrbA4Q/WQCy25C5EYI/AAAAAAAAAmY/WUi4Nk4GiUMesAQHc2WP49sJcwfOpl_NQCLcB/s400/DSCF2012.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-27571490972645727532017-04-04T17:07:00.000+01:002017-04-04T17:39:46.073+01:00Blunting The Edge<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HU7pd1bWINc/WOPBiDnItwI/AAAAAAAAAlw/TH7fRGyiCQcPJ5b5bOD_qFKGgYDh-xGuwCLcB/s1600/Wren.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HU7pd1bWINc/WOPBiDnItwI/AAAAAAAAAlw/TH7fRGyiCQcPJ5b5bOD_qFKGgYDh-xGuwCLcB/s400/Wren.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My Lady Wren</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Hi. It’s been a little while since I’ve been able to sit and focus on something longer than a Literary Inspiration post (hence three in a row!). Not that I’ve lacked ideas - just the ability to develop them beyond the initial draft. Ironically, it wasn’t even as if I could claim that it was the internet that was distracting me, because it wasn’t. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I’ve just had two weeks free from my compulsive internet trawling, using it only for essentials, like Sype. But then I seem to remember the same thing occurring the last time I stayed abstinent - I gradually felt better, my brain calmed down, my mind got clearer, and my attention and focus improved, but I got very little or no writing done. I did, however, do other things.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And it’s been the same this time. I have actually managed to paint a picture (the first since July last year). Whilst that in itself was great, the best thing about it was the fact that I enjoyed it, and there wasn’t the same amount of angst which usually accompanies it.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Whilst I have struggled to write any posts, I actually managed to write a bit of fiction, which I have done in the past, but have struggled with since.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And then there’s the fact that I have rediscovered the joy in my yoga practice, rather than it just being a necessity to my well-being, which is how I regard it (my alternative version to medication to help manage my anxiety and adhd, because I cannot take drugs due to being an alcoholic/addict). Being obsessed with the computer means that my interest in everything else falls by the wayside - which includes my beloved yoga.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, two weeks of freedom. Again. Two weeks appears to be my sticking point, at the moment. It’s the longest I’m able to manage before I drift back to the internet. I used to have the same thing occur when I was trying to become abstinent from overeating, which I used to find frustrating and disheartening. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But I didn’t give up, and I got beyond that point when I was ready (which is usually not when you think you are), so I know that it’s just a part of the process, and not to listen to the Voice of Doom that tells me I’ll never be able to get completely free of this compulsion; or that I should accept it as part of the erratic nature of my adhd, and give up trying to manage it. Accept that I need something to take the edge off of my anxiety, adhd, and all the other stuff about being me that makes everything I feel so acute, and that this is the lesser of the evils I have used (alcohol, medication, food, television). </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Except that it only works to take the edge of whilst I’m on there. And then I’m left not only with the compulsion to keep going back, but also an increase in the symptoms that I was seeking to relieve. My anxiety ramps up, I become more agitated, my focus and attention is shot to bits, and my brain feels like it’s melting. Plus, I forget who I am, because I’m absorbing other peoples’ opinions again.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And here’s the other thing: I actually do have practical ways of taking the edge off, but without the negative consequences - with faith in a higher power, prayer/meditation, yoga, the change in my diet, and the barest bones of a daily routine to keep things ticking over and manageable - but no plans!! They’re not instant, and they don’t render me unconscious (ie functioning, but not quite all here - like the walking dead, rather than someone in a coma), but they work to bring everything down to a manageable level. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So, what happened to bring that ‘golden period’ to an end (other than me forgetting, yet again, the inevitable consequences of me web-trawling?) Because there’s always a reason, as I learnt with alcohol, food, and any other addictive/compulsive behaviour - it doesn’t just happen that I find myself back trawling the internet, or with a drink in my hand, or bingeing on food. There’s a build-up which, if it isn’t being dealt with, turns into a mental and emotional tsunami. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It may be the quietest tsunami you ever saw, because I am so poor at self-awareness, and so slow to process what’s happening to me, that it mostly doesn’t look like anything is wrong at all; but you’ll know it by the end result - me seeking ‘comfort’ and distraction on the internet from the feelings of restlessness, which I don’t recognise as being related to what’s happening in my life. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Of course, this ‘comfort’ is only temporary, and not very comforting at all, given some of the stuff I sometimes inadvertently come across whilst trawling, and all that happens is that my life then becomes chaotic (more so than the manageable chaos which seems to be an intrinsic part of who I am - a trait which I have yet to accept as a fact, whilst I still strive to be Mrs Meticulously Tidy and Organised).</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Here, then, are the events.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In November last year, I had to fill in an assessment form for the new disability benefit which is replacing the old one. The DWP scares me to death, and I’m hopeless at filling in forms.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In January my friend Dee (who lives in Scotland, and I haven’t seen in person for about two years) visited on two separate occasions (staying overnight each time). The second visit was in order to accompany me to the medical assessment I’d been called to attend for the new disability benefit.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Leaving aside the assessment, you’d assume that her visit would be a nice thing - and it is. Except that I’m autistic - EXTREMELY autistic, and I don’t deal well with being around people, even in my own home, even when they are my closest friends. It’s not relaxing, for either of us, as I have no idea how to behave, and I end up hovering around her.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As to the medical assessment, I haven’t had to go to one of these for quite a few years. This ramped up my anxiety about the possibility of them taking away that money.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">In February they informed me that, not only had I been awarded the new benefit, but that it had been increased substantially. Yet again, you’d think this would be welcome: and it is. But that doesn’t change the fact that, whether it’s good or bad news, I’m still clueless as to how to deal with it. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Also as a consequence of both Dee’s visit and the assessment, she told me that I’m a lot further along on the autism spectrum than we thought - closer to the Temple Grandin autistic end, rather than the Asperger’s. Whilst I know that I am extremely affected, it still comes as a bit of an unwelcome surprise to be told just how much so. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Around the same time, I extended my circle of contacts from one (my friend Dee), to two. And then, in the last week, I added another. This is a big deal for me. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have been perfectly content to only engage with one person for a long time now (in this regard, I am classically autistic, preferring my own company to that of other people because of the stress engaging with them induces. Plus, too many people offering too many differing viewpoints and opinions confuses me). </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">But, as she said, she is coming up to her seventieth birthday this year, and, assuming she dies before me (jolly, I know!), I have no-one else with whom to share, or for support. And whilst I may prefer my own company, and to have as few people in my life as possible, I do actually enjoy my limited interactions with her; and even I know that I need to have some people with whom to converse at a deeper level than simply to exchange polite greetings, the way I do with neighbours. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It is also my fiftieth birthday coming up which, whilst I’m not consciously aware of it causing me any conflict (mostly because I just ignore it, the way I do every birthday - it’s just a number to me), no doubt there’s something going on. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">For one thing, I have found myself thinking more frequently about how I’ve got less time to do stuff, and how I wish I’d got my act together a lot sooner (particularly with regard to writing and art, but also with accepting and managing my autism/adhd). I also sometimes find myself envying those who’ve been diagnosed earlier, which is not helpful, ‘cos it just leads to me feeling regret about my life. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And then, in the last few days, I found out that one of my Aunts has died. She is the last of my dad’s six brothers and sisters, and she was the oldest. It wasn’t a shock (she was into her eighties), but, due to the distant and confusing nature of our relationship (of my relationship with the whole of my family), I have no idea how I feel, or what to do.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">This culminated in me having the ridiculous idea (given that I cannot paint to order) that, rather than buy a card, I would like to paint one to send to her family (these are people I haven’t seen, or spoken to, for over twenty years). And so I came on here to look for photos of appropriate flowers. And got overwhelmed. And then got distracted. And got lost for three days. And now here I am, trying to drag myself back out of it. Well it inspired me to write, anyway, which is the ultimate irony.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So there you have it - the anatomy of an autistic meltdown.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I hope that the only things melting in your life are food-related.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 20px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; line-height: normal;">
</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Śanti</span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-25902179669278117912017-03-31T20:17:00.000+01:002017-04-01T09:14:34.914+01:00LITERARY INSPIRATION #7<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>BOOK - THE HOUSE IN NORHAM GARDENS by Penelope Lively</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l0h8uuanCL8/WN6oIQ7n9UI/AAAAAAAAAlc/rUqVhAquTywlFMeQ3ksTwfY1rzP2D1yowCLcB/s1600/DSCF1981.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l0h8uuanCL8/WN6oIQ7n9UI/AAAAAAAAAlc/rUqVhAquTywlFMeQ3ksTwfY1rzP2D1yowCLcB/s400/DSCF1981.JPG" width="366" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal; min-height: 28px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>“There is a rather regrettable tendency nowadays to fence people off according to age. The “young” - as though they were some particular breed. A misleading idea, on the whole. Perhaps you are just not good at being fenced off.”</i></b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Oh. I see.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“The same is done to us, of course. The old.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Do you feel fenced off?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Only by the tiresome business of one’s joints going stiff, and one’s teeth falling out, and not hearing so well. Otherwise one is much the same person as one has always been, and the world is no less an interesting place, I promise you.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“That must be good. To live with old people.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Yes. Yes, it is.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“But here you do not respect old people as much as we do. In my country we admire the old. We take advice from them. Here it is the young who are admired.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Oh,” said Clare. “Are they?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Of course. Haven’t you noticed? They are made to feel important. Their opinions. What they say, what they want. You push your old to one side. You let them be poor.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Despite being published in 1974, when I was seven years old, I’d never heard of this book until last year. It is possible that I did read it back in the depths of my childhood, but that I have forgotten it - I did devour so many books, so quickly, once I discovered the joy of reading, that I cannot recollect all of them. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Then there’s the fact that this is a very ‘quiet’, character-driven book, full of nuanced messages, and hardly any action - all of which would have gone completely over my head back then, and would not have interested me. I was attracted to adventure books, like The Famous Five, Mallory Towers, and the Nancy Drew books; which then morphed into the thrillers of authors like Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley, Frederick Forsyth, and Gerald Seymour. High on plot and action, low on all of that sappy emotional waffle, is how I viewed things back then. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Notice how there’s a lack of female authors in that list. By the time I reached my teens, I’d developed an abhorrence for all things feminine, which I considered to be weak, and wussy - an example of me doing what it describes in the first quote, ‘fencing people off’ (known to me as compartmentalising), only I did it based on gender rather than age. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sJdnVu4rKzU/WN6ocmFTJAI/AAAAAAAAAlg/TjpZF_PZwqM-Xncegz04GZRFnW6RwEjgwCLcB/s1600/DSCF1978.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="383" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sJdnVu4rKzU/WN6ocmFTJAI/AAAAAAAAAlg/TjpZF_PZwqM-Xncegz04GZRFnW6RwEjgwCLcB/s400/DSCF1978.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">But, remarkably, here I am now, discovering a wonderful world of ‘quiet, character-driven’ literature (mostly written by women, mostly children’s books) filled with timeless messages - in this instance, about the young (and youth) being revered, and the old (and ageing) largely ignored and/or reviled, and both demographics being pigeonholed.</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">And I have to say, as I head towards my fiftieth birthday this year, that getting older is not the awful experience I imagined it to be (which was based mostly on the messages I’ve received and absorbed from the anti-ageist society I live in). It’s true: based on my increased life experience, I actually do have more wisdom now (or perhaps that should be 'some'?!). </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I also feel more intelligent, which is probably based on the increase in knowledge I have attained; though it hasn't changed the fact that I still don't have any common sense, and that what's obvious to other people is not so to me. As my friend Dee says, I am so intelligent that she can't believe how dumb I am sometimes! </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Plus, the most fun, least conventional, most unique, creative, energetic, enthusiastic, interesting, knowledgeable, and wisest person I know on the planet (and have ever met in my entire life) is my best friend Dee, who just happens to be coming up to her seventieth birthday, and actually gets younger in spirit every year, as she continues to be freed from the constraints that society tries to place on us. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 17px; line-height: normal; min-height: 24px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">So, those people who revere youth can keep it.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I never had a worse time in my life than the first thirty years.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It was so miserable, I tried to put an end to it after twenty-one.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I now consider that, for some of us, youth is an affliction not a blessing. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5062439277592325948.post-11642434471626565142017-03-31T18:33:00.000+01:002017-03-31T19:09:16.654+01:00LITERARY INSPIRATION #6<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 20px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>BOOK - THE HOUSE IN NORHAM GARDENS by Penelope Lively</b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-swkAWRlisZA/WN6R4_CtDvI/AAAAAAAAAlM/gs-s2U9bWxgeRqiRjQ8RCZqJKB9r7LXewCLcB/s1600/DSCF1975.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-swkAWRlisZA/WN6R4_CtDvI/AAAAAAAAAlM/gs-s2U9bWxgeRqiRjQ8RCZqJKB9r7LXewCLcB/s400/DSCF1975.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i><br /></i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<b style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>“So what I really wanted to say was that you must remember that language is an instrument, Clare. An instrument to be used precisely. Nobody can say what they mean until they use words with precision.”</i></b></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i></i></b></span><br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Language,” said Clare to Liz, “is an instrument. You have to use it precisely. Like a screwdriver or something. Not just bash around vaguely?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“What are you on about?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“But the trouble is people don’t. They say things like “quite” and “rather” and “ever so many” and “by and large” and “much of a muchness” and “quite a few”. Now what do you suppose a person means when he says “quite a few”?”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>Liz said, “It would depend what he meant quite a few of. Bananas, or miles, or people living in Manchester.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Years.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Then it could mean anything.”</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b><i>“Quite,” said Clare.</i></b></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Iowan Old Style'; font-size: 18px; line-height: normal; min-height: 25px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;">My sentiments exactly!</span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;">I couldn’t have put it better myself.</span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;">She has expressed succinctly in two passages the literary and conversational frustrations of a literal-minded and grammar-obsessed autistic.</span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Enough said.</span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;">I should just let the words speak for themselves.</span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;">Shut up, Lisa, and sod off.</span><span style="font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span></div>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span></div>
Lisa - The Artistically Articulate Autistichttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03111345548174623110noreply@blogger.com