Blog Boggled

My writing corner; and yes, I do use my paper dictionary et al.

I haven’t quite mastered this blogging thing, you know.  Scrap that: I’m really naff at it.  I’m very autistic and adhd-ish about it all - which for me basically means rigid and inconsistent.  This shouldn’t surprise me but, well, it does, ‘cos it’s not how I intended it to be.  Somehow I seem to think I can leave all that behind me when it comes to my writing, and art… and the internet, and life in general… 

I had great plans to post regularly, and multifariously: not only adding articles, but poetry, artwork, photos, and the like.  Similar to the kind of blogs I enjoy looking at (when I sneak on the internet looking for inspiration, but end up drowning in the endless sea of sites).

I think part of the problem is that my reasons for starting it were rather ambiguous.  It was vaguely meant to be a way to share about being a newly-diagnosed autistic.  It was also intended as a way for me to do some kind of Twelve Step work, sharing my experience, strength, and hope with alcoholics (mostly autistic ones, since that is my experience) as I am not able to do so in person - one on one, or in AA meetings - ’cos of my anxiety and difficulty with communicating verbally.  And then it was also meant as an outlet for me to write, because I wasn’t doing any. 

Perhaps I expected it to kind of evolve all by itself, as it likely would have done were I not autistic.  Instead of which, my style and approach have remained static - as I should have expected.  After all, I don’t deal well with change; and I certainly don’t do it spontaneously (do you think this means that I could never spontaneously combust either?).   

Now I come to evaluate it, of course it seems obvious that, having found a manner of writing which suits me (very formal; always with title; single topic; essay-style; as near to two A4 pages as possible; and grammatically correct and edited to within an inch of its life, as if it’s going to be critiqued and marked by someone other than me), I would end up rigidly adhering to that formula. 

So it seems that this is going to require some conscious effort and attempts to change, on my part.  I’m not quite certain how I’m going to do this, to be honest, other than that my default position - which is to try to copy the advice of other people (fellow bloggers, in this case) - has not, and never will, work.  Not only has it not worked, it has failed miserably, and left me feeling miserably inadequate in the process. 

And what, I hear you ask (or maybe not, since I could be writing this into a void), is this golden piece of advice, which seems to work for everybody else but not for me?  Planning.  Yep: my favourite.  Whenever the question of my inconsistency in writing and art comes up, I revert to thinking about THE THING THAT DOES NOT WORK FOR AN INCONSISTENT, PLAN-RESISTANT AUTISTIC WITH ADHD!  Why, oh why, I ask myself, can I not follow a simple bloody plan, for the love of God?

For a start, I’m really poor at making plans (something to do with the executive functioning area of my brain not being wired-up ‘correctly’).  I try to keep them simple, but they end up looking like Spaghetti Junction in written form.  So already I’m handicapped.  Even simple notes written to myself often look like mini-essays.

But this, unfortunately, is one of the main tools people suggest for basically dealing with everything in life, it seems.  And since it appears to be a universally-held truth that a plan is an essential for dealing with your life, then of course it must be right.  Right?  WRONG!!!

And then we come to actually following the bloody thing.  Never was there a woman so desperate to follow a plan (or a crowd of people, or a flock of sheep, or a load of lemmings off a cliff) than I.  

My writing desk - mainly decorative.  And there's some of my art, in situ.

My life has been littered with all the failed attempts to implement one variation or another of what has become like the holy bloody grail to me, from secondary school onwards (when one is introduced to the concept of homework, and the need for some sort of ability to be able to organise and motivate oneself in order to complete it.  You won’t be surprised to learn that I never could do it, and every piece of homework was left until the night before, or the morning of, the day it was expected to be handed in.  This is not helpful when you already suffer from an inordinate amount of stress and anxiety about going to school as it is). 

But I’m nothing if not persistent, and a slow learner.  Hence thirty years later, after leaving school, and I’m still trying to do something it has been proven that I cannot do.  Sheesh.  Enough already!

So I’m not going to make yet another attempt at planning how often I’m going to write, and post, ‘cos I did that and here we are - I’ve barely posted anything this year.  It’s like the minute I set a goal I do the opposite.  And it’s not intentional.  Not at all.  

Which is why I don’t like the term “oppositional defiance” (which is likely what it would be considered to be, especially given my history whereby I can never seem to do what I’m told, whether it’s me or someone else doing the telling): the word ‘defiance’ always sounds like the consciously wilful action of someone who just wants their own way, and thinks they know best.  And it’s not.  

I hate getting into trouble, and do you know how much trouble I get into when I behave like this?  And how much of an impediment it is to me being able to achieve and succeed at things I really want?  Just take a look at how long I’ve been keeping a blog, and how sporadic my work has been, and how frustrated this makes me.  

And how logical is it to suggest that I’m trying to get my own way when I can’t even follow my own instructions, which are about trying to attain what I want?  Of course, it is possible that I have misunderstood what people mean by the term ‘oppositional defiance’ (it has been known to happen… often), but there you go.  Words matter to me.  

As does “a well-placed comma” (which can change the whole meaning of a sentence - as can a badly-placed one: which can be especially important to an autistic already struggling under the weight of literality, and trying to figure out what people mean by what they say.  Having to grapple with incorrect grammar on top of that grates on my already tautly strung nerves).  It appears that not only am I acutely sensitive to things like noise, smell, and other peoples’ emotional energies, but I’m also grammatically sensitive too.  Yay me!  “A well-placed comma…” has now become my catchphrase.

So, a new adventure awaits me.  I blame my friend.  It was she who mentioned (again) the other day the infrequency of my writing, and what it was that she’d expected me to do with my blog when I started it (something about it being a catalogue of my journey through my life with autistm, adhd, and the 12 Steps, etc.  Sounded vaguely familiar…)  She also mentioned having expected me to play with what is the most informal platform for writing, with no rules, and room to experiment.  I was kind of surprised.  Does she not know who I am?  Me?  Experiment?!  PLAY?!!  Pfft!!!!

She also mentioned just now that anyone reading my blog has no sense of continuity, or of who I am, or what’s happening in my life because every post is not only inconsistently posted, but has no link to the last; that what’s important is not the style of the writing (which is what I get hung up on), but the content and flow, if I want to connect and allow other people to feel a connection to me.  Which I do, but which I’m appalling at, both in writing and my life.

So I shall be attempting to do some of what she suggested, along with some of the ideas that I had.  These include writing a post once a week, even if it’s just to say that I have nothing to write about.  Wish me luck, and see you then. 

A closer view of Rabbit keeping an eye on things.

     

"Let Us Play"

It has been known for me to run screaming as far away in the opposite direction as I can get on hearing the words, “Lisa, go and play.” Okay, so this is a slight exaggeration: I don’t think I’ve ever actually run away from the dreaded activity (though I could just have misplaced the memory), but I have stuck like a limpet to the nearest wall (or person) furthest away from where all the action is taking place; or insisted on doing something else entirely – like housework. Yes, give me a wet cloth and a vacuum cleaner in favour of the alarming array of ‘play things’ this world has to offer, and I’ll be as happy as an undertaker in the middle of an epidemic.

So, who in their right mind would view, with such stomach-churning apprehension, the spectre of play as being on a par with a visit from one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (five if you count Kaos in Terry Pratchett’s version)? Why, little ol’ me, and my little ol’ autistic self, of course.

Now I’m sure there are loads of non-autistics out there who would read what I’ve written and say that they know what I mean ‘cos they feel, or have felt, that way too. They’re often part of the ‘rediscovering your inner child’ brigade, and they talk about having lost or had squashed their ability to play and be creative in the drive to be grown-up and responsible, and to achieve. I know something about this stuff: I was once part of it (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...), and I got completely lost in it (it’s a VERY BIG galaxy!)

That’s not what I am talking about, though it may sound the same. That stuff is learnt, and behavioural. There’s nothing learnt in my reaction to play: it seems it’s all in the wiring (though I could be proven wrong on that point sometime in the future, as I progress on my journey of discovery to find out what makes me tick – probably an alarm clock mechanism, the way I go off at frequent intervals).

Were it simply learnt, and the result of a repressed play-instinct, I’d surely have unlearnt it by now ‘cos I’ve been wholeheartedly encouraged to express my creativity, and play, for the last fourteen years. It hasn’t made a great deal of difference. You’d have thought I was being forced to learn algebra, the way I have reacted – as if the effort was equivalent to having to wade through treacle whilst wearing lead-lined boots, and carrying an elephant.

And that, I have to say, is how it does feel a lot of the time. It’s like I have to gear myself up to use the part of my brain that doesn’t appear to work so well. I feel as if I have to find the magic password to log in (which can take what seems like aeons), only then to discover that my access to it is restricted anyway.

My idea of play is to come on the computer and read ebooks, or go surfing the web (“trawling”, as I prefer to describe my random, unauthorised, mind-numbing wanderings around anything and everything I can think of to look at, when I head off on one of my wilful, disruptive, over-stimulatory, compulsive excursions, which my ego views as ‘breaks from the stifling confinement of my daily plan.’ Yeah, right. Some break!

By the time I’ve finished (or, rather more aptly, by the time it’s finished with me, ‘cos I’m certainly not in control, much as I like to think I am) my mind is numb, my arse is numb, my right arm is numb from constant mouse-clicking, and my vocal chords also appear to have become numbed because I can hardly string two words together to form a coherent sentence.

As a child it seems I used to “play at” things, a form of copying which appears to mimic play, but was restricted by my limited imagination. So my favourite game in junior school was playing at ‘Charlie’s Angels’ (the original tv series version), and I would ALWAYS have to be the same character, Kelly Garrett. She was my favourite, so I couldn’t be anyone else. Why would I want to be?

And why would anyone want to play at anything else once you’d found a game that you liked? But apparently, according to my non-autistic friend, that’s what she and her friends would do, and what the general neurotypical child does – they make up different games every time they play. I’m completely baffled as to where they get their ideas from – obviously some place in their heads that either doesn’t exist or is hard to reach in mine. If I try to stretch my imagination it feels like I’m having a brain haemorrhage - and I can’t afford to lose anything else from up there!

I liked things that required clear guidelines and rules (at least then I knew what I was breaking when I would inevitably break them!), so I loved sports, and board games. They suited not only my imagination (or lack thereof), but also my competitive streak – less of a streak, and more of a great, gushing river. Ask me to spontaneously play and I’d look at you as if you’d asked me to spontaneously combust. I’d have more chance doing the latter, and probably more fun trying.

I play now by doing things like art and crafts. I’ve recently discovered that I seemingly have a talent for painting, which I love doing: though you wouldn’t think it if you saw what I have to go through to get started on a painting!

I bought an artist’s set that contained a load of watercolour paints, and other goodies, and some ‘proper’ watercolour brushes and paper: and then, in true autistic fashion (at least in true autistic Lisa fashion) I wouldn’t touch them, other than to open the box and admire them, and wish that I could use them. I have since used them, and I now have the fruits of my work adorning the walls of my home, which I am so pleased about. I look at my paintings and can’t believe that I did them, which is half the problem when it comes to me contemplating the next project: I doubt that I can do it again. But so far I’ve been proven wrong each time, and I just have to go through that whole process of pushing through the ‘stuckness’. It’s a bugger, though. Talk about being a tortured artist!

The ironic thing about all of this is that the one thing I have no problem playing with is words, and yet they’re the foundation of communication, and the bane of my life when it comes to having to use them to interact with other people. Go figure that one out if you can. One of God’s little ironic twists, methinks.