Looking back on 2023, I feel like I have a lot to integrate. More than I know how to handle really.
But maybe the biggest thing I’ve had to come to terms with is that I’m fundamentally a different person than I’ve tried to be for so long. I wanted to emulate the successful engineers and scientists I’ve worked closely with for 25 years. I wanted to have a lab of my own, an engineering team. I wanted to grow in the ranks of a conscious organization. I wanted stock options.
And yet every time I’ve taken on a role in a company, or a lab, the result has always — always — been the same.
I can’t stay synchronized with them.
No matter what I’ve done, no matter how I’ve tried to communicate with my colleagues about being autistic / ADHD, I’ve had the same result again and again. I drift away.
I drift away because I’m so uncomfortable with the demands being placed on me, that I find innumerable reasons to chase things I find stimulating. A genius coping strategy of mine. Constant curiosity gives me all those innumerable opportunities to avoid what is charged.
A cat in the dog pack.
Now that I’ve systematically tried every conceivable way to pound my square peg into the corporate-approved round hole, it feels like it’s time for me to lean into what makes me uniquely unsuitable for corporate life.
My creativity.
That’s the other thing that happened in 2023. I started to tap into my creative voice again. I started a practice of reconnecting with my inner artist child through journaling (morning pages), and taking time for reflection. I’ve spent many an afternoon riding my bike around the Vancouver seawall, receiving downloads. Catching glimpses of an inner knowing that I left behind.
When I started writing down what this knowing had to say, I was surprised to see it come through as poetry. Why poetry?
Here I am trying to be a serious person with a serious career. A provider for my son. A consistent partner. A soccer coach. An engineer who builds real things in the world. And I’m feeling especially enthusiastic about … writing poetry.
But when I saw what came through — some of which eventually became the book Flight of the Starling — I felt I was reconnecting with a part of myself that was never okay for me to lose to begin with.
This very important creative voice inside of me has always been too much for my family, because I could never filter it to be palatable for them. I was always too raw. Too blunt.
Too me.
I started In the Same Breath as a place for me to be raw. This is the newsletter that I needed to read as an autistic kid, and as an autistic adult, and now as an autistic parent. Because the opposite of trauma is self-expression. And it would have meant a lot to me to see that familiar rawness embodied and expressed by another human.
So in the spirit of acknowledging this raw, vulnerable, and beautifully creative artist child of mine, I’ve decided to rename my newsletter Unprogrammable:
The name Unprogrammable sums up what neurodiversity means to me. That my nature is to create, and creation can’t be programmed into me. Creation requires a disobedience to established ideas. Creation is disruptive. Creation is raw. Creation is … unprogrammable.
I’m excited and terrified by 2024. But whatever it brings, I’m going to lean into being seen in my creative process. Even when (especially when) it’s raw, vulnerable, and messy.
Sending you love and hope for 2024. Thank you for going on this journey with me.