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So I have had this DreamWidth account for several years and have posted exactly once. (Yikes!) So this is my attempt to actually participate in digital life instead of just lurk.
What do I want with this space?
Maybe I'll write about what I'm reading (or want to read), either published or fanfic (or both). Maybe I'll write about what I'm making (I like to think of myself as a fiber artist and aspiring/casual doodler/sketchnoter/visual artist). Maybe I'll revisit the whole poetry and haiku thing. Maybe I'll share highly anonymized work stories (I work in human research compliance at an academic medical institution). Maybe I'll talk about my lived experiences as a queer, nonbinary, neurodivergent person. Who knows! I hope it'll be an adventure.
So here's an invitation to join me on my adventure into my weird and random brain.
Title: Doom and Bloom: The Case for Creativity in a World Hooked on Panic
Author: Campbell Walker (aka Struthless)
Pub Year: 2025
Genre: Nonfiction, Self-Development, Creativity
Struthless is a YouTuber from Australia that I follow who talks about creativity (he's an illustrator in addition to the whole YouTuber thing), productivity, and mental health. He's interesting, and I enjoy his perspective a lot of the time. In fact, I would consider him one of the best examples on the internet of cis-het non-toxic masculinity. So I looked forward to reading his second book, Doom and Bloom, and suggested my library acquire it. (One of the things I love about my local library is that I can suggest up to 20 pieces of media every month, and if they approve of the acquisition, I get to borrow it the moment it arrives. But back to the review...)
Doom and Bloom is a nonfiction comic that structures mental health and creativity practices around a central metaphor of growing a garden in hell. It also mimics the structure of Dante's Divine Comedy, starting with the doom facilitated by social media and internet flame wars, through the groundwork of foundational mental health practices, to the bloom of your own garden of creativity. This narrative arc is one that I haven't seen in self-help before, and one that I enjoyed. And the metaphors (and dad puns) he uses throughout were cute and enhanced by Walker's illustrations and artwork. His illustration style is playful, colorful, and doesn't take itself too seriously.
But make no mistake, this isn't just fluffy feel good self-help. He has a tendency toward gallows humor, which I know is not everyone's cup of tea, and he uses personal stories that are sometimes bizarre and sometimes tragic to illustrate his points. His life journey is very foreign to me, but he has a way of telling stories of personal tragedy that is relatable and doesn't feel like a trauma dump, but a way of acknowledging pain, looking suffering in the eye, and dealing with it the best you can. (Content warning for the book: he talks about the mental health impacts of a friend's suicide, prior substance use, and his childhood sexual abuse.)
In summary, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to those who 1) consider themselves creative, 2) enjoy the self-help genre generally, and 3) appreciate gallows humor.
Author: Campbell Walker (aka Struthless)
Pub Year: 2025
Genre: Nonfiction, Self-Development, Creativity
Struthless is a YouTuber from Australia that I follow who talks about creativity (he's an illustrator in addition to the whole YouTuber thing), productivity, and mental health. He's interesting, and I enjoy his perspective a lot of the time. In fact, I would consider him one of the best examples on the internet of cis-het non-toxic masculinity. So I looked forward to reading his second book, Doom and Bloom, and suggested my library acquire it. (One of the things I love about my local library is that I can suggest up to 20 pieces of media every month, and if they approve of the acquisition, I get to borrow it the moment it arrives. But back to the review...)
Click for more
Doom and Bloom is a nonfiction comic that structures mental health and creativity practices around a central metaphor of growing a garden in hell. It also mimics the structure of Dante's Divine Comedy, starting with the doom facilitated by social media and internet flame wars, through the groundwork of foundational mental health practices, to the bloom of your own garden of creativity. This narrative arc is one that I haven't seen in self-help before, and one that I enjoyed. And the metaphors (and dad puns) he uses throughout were cute and enhanced by Walker's illustrations and artwork. His illustration style is playful, colorful, and doesn't take itself too seriously.
But make no mistake, this isn't just fluffy feel good self-help. He has a tendency toward gallows humor, which I know is not everyone's cup of tea, and he uses personal stories that are sometimes bizarre and sometimes tragic to illustrate his points. His life journey is very foreign to me, but he has a way of telling stories of personal tragedy that is relatable and doesn't feel like a trauma dump, but a way of acknowledging pain, looking suffering in the eye, and dealing with it the best you can. (Content warning for the book: he talks about the mental health impacts of a friend's suicide, prior substance use, and his childhood sexual abuse.)
In summary, I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to those who 1) consider themselves creative, 2) enjoy the self-help genre generally, and 3) appreciate gallows humor.
So I've decided to kick off this whole DW thing by talking about myself. I am queer and nonbinary and self-diagnosed autistic. Probably the people who will read this already know this stuff, so maybe that's enough said on the surface level stuff.
So let's dive into the deeper stuff.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pauraque, and their post inspired me to talk about my neurodivergent journey. As with the majority of my personal stories for the past 2 decades, it involves my wife, so let me start with a seemly random aside. In 2017 my wife came out as trans. Not only did this have a major impact on our relationship, it prompted me to claim queerness (to myself and others) and recontextualize my life through a queer lens. While looking at my life through a queer lens, I came out as nonbinary in 2019, but then I set aside that realization and did nothing with it. In early 2020, I had a Medium account and followed a few authors. Two of those authors happened to both write articles about being autistic in the same week, and I resonated with various parts of both of their personal accounts. I mentioned this to my wife as a full and complete thought. She waited, anticipating that I would come to the natural next question of what that implied about my own relationship to autism (I had not made that connection). She then straight up asked me if I thought I might be autistic. And I said, "Oh." And eventually, "That's a good question."
Cue the pandemic and another personal realization that got set aside.
Eventually the acute anxiety of the pandemic cooled down and I moved to a new job that required less emotional labor from me, allowing me the mental space to be introspective. I also started to read a lot of nonfiction by queer and aspie authors and about queer and aspie experiences. One of my favorite authors in this arena is MJ Barker. Their book on How to Understand Your Gender helped me think about gender (and autism). For me, my experience of gender and my experience of neurodivergence are deeply intertwined. When I was first thinking about gender, I worked through an understanding your gender workbook (not MJ Barker's), and while I came to the conclusion at that time that I was genderqueer / nonbinary, there was a lot in the book that didn’t fit. On looking back after accepting that I was aspie, I realized the book was very neurotypical and a lot of the experiences I recounted when going through its activities described my aspie experiences more than my gender experiences. But the two are really linked in my mind. In my later reflections, I was able to clearly see how aspieness (a difference in social skills and socialization) impacts my gender (since my primary disconnect with the gender binary is the social expectations that surround it); how my sensory proclivities impact my gender expression (I'm very picky about the way my hair, jewelry, and clothing feel); how as a kid in a deep red southern state, masking was required to include performing southern femininity standards; how my aspie tendency toward intellectualization impacts how I deal with emotion and the feminine/masculine binary. In addition to finally having mental/emotional bandwidth to think on these topics, working through all of this history was facilitated by a therapist who actually understands queer, trans, and neurodivergent issues. (My previous 3 therapists were various levels of not a good fit.)
All of these things also impact how I think about my work, career, and the professional roles that I play. One time in therapy a couple of years ago, my therapist commented that my job sounded very relational. That intrigued me as my neurodivergence makes social situations and relationships a constant challenge. But he's right. That led me to considering, how did I end up in a job/career that requires me to relate to so many people all the time?
While I find most people baffling and sometimes stressful to interact with, I care about people individually and collectively. I have often felt 'other,' so I hope to make other people feel welcome. I have a preference for finding answers on my own and tend to answer other people's questions readily (I never stopped being an egg head). I also have a long history of embracing weirdness, resisting conformity, and appreciating other people's quirks. Difference is something that makes a person interesting and not a reason to make me fear them. Obviously, I am not without bias, but it is a principle I practice to meet people where they are and to be curious about their point of view. And while I couldn't exactly name what I was doing at the time, developing communication and "soft skills" through observation and nonfiction reading (I sometimes read awful management books and figure out all the ways in which they are terrible) was something I invested a lot of energy into earlier in my career. So I'm weirdly good at connecting with people in professional contexts.
So aspieness makes my work challenging, but also rewarding. And with knowledge of myself, I can manage stressors way more effectively. I work from home primarily so I'm no longer regularly exhausted by a daily commute in packed public transit. I can wear whatever the hell I want as long as I'm reasonably "professional" from the waist up if I have to attend a video meeting. My professional drag wardrobe is minuscule these days. And I can sprawl on the floor at a moment's notice if I need to. My wife will look at me fondly when I do this, but I won't be in the way of colleagues or get bemused expressions like that one time...
TLDR: My life has been enhanced by understanding how interacting with the world is different for me than for other people.
So let's dive into the deeper stuff.
Click for Ramble
I recently read some personal posts bypauraque, and their post inspired me to talk about my neurodivergent journey. As with the majority of my personal stories for the past 2 decades, it involves my wife, so let me start with a seemly random aside. In 2017 my wife came out as trans. Not only did this have a major impact on our relationship, it prompted me to claim queerness (to myself and others) and recontextualize my life through a queer lens. While looking at my life through a queer lens, I came out as nonbinary in 2019, but then I set aside that realization and did nothing with it. In early 2020, I had a Medium account and followed a few authors. Two of those authors happened to both write articles about being autistic in the same week, and I resonated with various parts of both of their personal accounts. I mentioned this to my wife as a full and complete thought. She waited, anticipating that I would come to the natural next question of what that implied about my own relationship to autism (I had not made that connection). She then straight up asked me if I thought I might be autistic. And I said, "Oh." And eventually, "That's a good question." Cue the pandemic and another personal realization that got set aside.
Eventually the acute anxiety of the pandemic cooled down and I moved to a new job that required less emotional labor from me, allowing me the mental space to be introspective. I also started to read a lot of nonfiction by queer and aspie authors and about queer and aspie experiences. One of my favorite authors in this arena is MJ Barker. Their book on How to Understand Your Gender helped me think about gender (and autism). For me, my experience of gender and my experience of neurodivergence are deeply intertwined. When I was first thinking about gender, I worked through an understanding your gender workbook (not MJ Barker's), and while I came to the conclusion at that time that I was genderqueer / nonbinary, there was a lot in the book that didn’t fit. On looking back after accepting that I was aspie, I realized the book was very neurotypical and a lot of the experiences I recounted when going through its activities described my aspie experiences more than my gender experiences. But the two are really linked in my mind. In my later reflections, I was able to clearly see how aspieness (a difference in social skills and socialization) impacts my gender (since my primary disconnect with the gender binary is the social expectations that surround it); how my sensory proclivities impact my gender expression (I'm very picky about the way my hair, jewelry, and clothing feel); how as a kid in a deep red southern state, masking was required to include performing southern femininity standards; how my aspie tendency toward intellectualization impacts how I deal with emotion and the feminine/masculine binary. In addition to finally having mental/emotional bandwidth to think on these topics, working through all of this history was facilitated by a therapist who actually understands queer, trans, and neurodivergent issues. (My previous 3 therapists were various levels of not a good fit.)
All of these things also impact how I think about my work, career, and the professional roles that I play. One time in therapy a couple of years ago, my therapist commented that my job sounded very relational. That intrigued me as my neurodivergence makes social situations and relationships a constant challenge. But he's right. That led me to considering, how did I end up in a job/career that requires me to relate to so many people all the time?
While I find most people baffling and sometimes stressful to interact with, I care about people individually and collectively. I have often felt 'other,' so I hope to make other people feel welcome. I have a preference for finding answers on my own and tend to answer other people's questions readily (I never stopped being an egg head). I also have a long history of embracing weirdness, resisting conformity, and appreciating other people's quirks. Difference is something that makes a person interesting and not a reason to make me fear them. Obviously, I am not without bias, but it is a principle I practice to meet people where they are and to be curious about their point of view. And while I couldn't exactly name what I was doing at the time, developing communication and "soft skills" through observation and nonfiction reading (I sometimes read awful management books and figure out all the ways in which they are terrible) was something I invested a lot of energy into earlier in my career. So I'm weirdly good at connecting with people in professional contexts.
So aspieness makes my work challenging, but also rewarding. And with knowledge of myself, I can manage stressors way more effectively. I work from home primarily so I'm no longer regularly exhausted by a daily commute in packed public transit. I can wear whatever the hell I want as long as I'm reasonably "professional" from the waist up if I have to attend a video meeting. My professional drag wardrobe is minuscule these days. And I can sprawl on the floor at a moment's notice if I need to. My wife will look at me fondly when I do this, but I won't be in the way of colleagues or get bemused expressions like that one time...
TLDR: My life has been enhanced by understanding how interacting with the world is different for me than for other people.
My first post
Nov. 21st, 2022 09:31 pmWhen I don’t know what to write, I write haikus. So here’s one for you:
What space for my words
What little space will be held
for my Randomness
And here’s another:
What space for my words
What little space will be held
for my Randomness
And here’s another:
I am brevity
Brevity, the soul of wit
Not one whit of wit
