Ok so I’m back? I dunno, the fact that I never gave up this blog maybe means I was eventually come back to it. I still have “blogger” on my business bio so there: validation. I deleted a lot of posts. Some of it was whiny, some was incomprehensible. I might take down the poems because I would like to release them as a book. And there is a lot of content I never posted in the first place. Most of that will likely stay hidden. If it wasn’t worth it at the time, do I really expect it’s improved with aging? I am also playing with my writer website. Right now this feeds there, and I’d like to think I’ll start posting more book news here among my other rumblings. We’ll see how that goes. I was 5 minutes from starting a Substack but oh, how I do not wish to start over again. I don’t have the hustle to turn a Substack into a great paying venture (at least not yet) so I’ll just burble away here for now. This is a year of pruning my orchard, of getting rid of dead wood i.e. poorly performing components of my system. Yeah there’s a system. It’s not great but it’s there. Maybe this time I’ll stick to it.
Well, it’s official. I don’t care about this blog anymore. I’ve had it for three years and that seems to be my upper limit for investing in projects that don’t have external motivation or a tangible return. I never really posted for attention, mainly for my own interest. I’ve gained no more than a handful of subscribers, and I don’t feel like doing the work to get more.
So I guess this is the end.
I don’t know if I ever had a goal with blogging. Just the desire to try. To see what happened. To help me build a routine around writing, but in the last three years I’ve learned that as much as routines help me navigate my daily life, they completely derail my creativity. Being obliged to write is the surest way of rendering me incapable of writing.
And, like…I’m bored of it. I don’t even read blogs with any regularity. I’d rather read a book. And blogs about writing tend to focus on beginner stuff that I’ve heard before, tried before, and either have already integrated into my habits or have discarded because it didn’t work.
Blogging is one of the latter. A habit I want to discard because it’s not bringing me joy. It’s not selling any books, either. And to be perfectly honest, that matters to me almost as much as the joy.
My sixth post of the year and might be my last ever on this blog. I don’t have the time, motivation, or audience to make it worth keeping up, and an abandoned blog seems worse than one that ceases to exist. This won’t be the first site I’ve deleted. This is my content and I don’t want it laying around, training AI without me granting permission.
WordPress is a very good backbone for websites and not much of a vibe otherwise. The whole Meta suite is an exhausting grind (even Threads, which I loved for six months.) X is a toxic wasteland, the other platforms (Bluesky, Mastodon) too convoluted. Social media in general is not the paradise we deserve.
Nothing derails my plans more effectively than making them. For example: I set up my personal brand as author, blogger, and general nuisance and then essentially stopped blogging.
I have a lot going on, and this site was only ever meant to be an exercise in working out my thoughts coherently enough that other people would be able to read them, thereby clarifying these thoughts for me. I don’t know if that happened. As well as several dozen poems, I’ve posted a lot of rambling rants, a lot of mediocre ‘content’ as we’re meant to call everything that arises from the slightest creative human endeavor.
Is this post content? Is it shareable? Do I care?
Most of my parasocial needs are being met on Threads right now. It’s not a perfect platform thanks to Meta, who are either fascists or idiots or both given the way they disable trans and POC accounts via algorithm but won’t take down hate accounts despite hundreds of real users’ reports. They don’t fucking care, but I’m content to work chaos on the margins. I don’t have the energy to get on BlueSky or Mastodon or anything else. I’ll wait for a new exodus, when the process of enshittification has gone too far to tolerate.
In celebration of Autism Awareness Month, I’d like to make you aware that I have autism.
Just a little. What we used to call Asperger’s Syndrome but don’t anymore because Asperger was a nasty little fascist and his aim was to determine which autistic people were socially valuable and which were, you know, expendable.
So fuck that. Thanks to a host of diagnostic tools* I am now confident in saying I have autism.
The kind where you can still have relationships and conversations but it comes at a high cost, demanding more of your cognitive capacity than neurotypical people expend on the same activities. The kind you figure out you have when you’re in your forties and are worn out from decades of trying to do what everyone else does, and failing. The kind that seems really trendy now, as if it’s a fun way to cook eggs or tie your shoes that we learned in a TikTok. What’s really happened is that the criteria for autism has been revised, and now represents a broader and more accurate picture of how it presents.
I don’t want to say ‘syndrome’ or ‘disorder’. That sort of language is itself part of the problem. I am not a bad or broken person, not incapable and in need of repair. I am simply differently endowed, and for the most part lacking context in society, which tends to flatten difference in the name of general harmony.
Ant the truth is, the real truth, the reason I’m writing this blog, is not because I feel a deep-seated need to reach out to you, this small group of strangers who will read these words, but because I put the word ‘blogger’ in my fucking author bio, and it’s been so long since I posted that it feels like a lie.
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*please do not come at me re self-diagnosis, the available tools are the same as what they use in clinics.
I just read a post on That Subscription Site Full of Fash (not linking to it, see under Full of Fash), where the writer argued that writing isn’t art because we sell it like a commodity.
I’m sorry, what?
Books (e-books & print) are reproductions of a larger piece of art. Saying books aren’t art is like saying a lithographic print isn’t art. Just because it can be replicated and sold in small, affordable versions doesn’t lessen its artistry. The original art – the carved plate – will never be seen by the public, just like a manuscript will never be seen by the public.
The art of a book is in its totality, from the first draft to the cover design to the font choice. Art isn’t special and should not be treated like some far away thing that only clever people do while us plebian slobs consume it. Art is everywhere, everyone can be an artist, and getting over the Big-A art concept is important to undo this idea of virtuous consumption that comes with it, this idea that calling it Big-A Art elevates it above our mortal plane. I would argue that selling things at a price only wealthy people can afford is a moral failure. You’re catering to the literal worst people on earth. Anyone who can drop a million bucks on a single piece of art? Must be nice, now fund a library or go away.
Sorrynotsorry but if you sell it, it’s a commodity. Big, expensive art that exists as a singular piece is still a fucking commodity. You expect money for it. You didn’t do it for fun or for your mom but to sell. It’s art but it’s still a commodity.
Poetry is concealed truth. Poems are true, but they are best when that truth sidles into your understanding without you needing to directly perceive it. When they leave feelings and questions that linger in your mind and in whatever it is we call a soul. Writing poetry has helped me say things about myself that I don’t know how to say, which is why I rarely give context for my poetry. A good poem tells its own story, but sometimes we must defy convention.
After laughing way too hard at too many autism memes, I did a self-assessment.
Well shit….
This hit so much harder than finding out I have ADHD (and before you call me out for self-diagnosis, know that this is a questionnaire that clinicians use.) I haven’t felt grief like this in decades, as if someone died. That someone is the old me.
I am shaking as I write this. My understanding of myself has been radically altered. That’s why all my books are full of desperate, rootless young men dying to be seen, be accepted, be useful. Human behavior has always been opaque to me. I spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about what people think of me. If I can be of service to them, they’ll want to keep me around.
As a consequence I am superb at masking. At shielding myself behind a radical aesthetic that is itself a hyper-fixation, giving the world a curated version of myself. My aesthetic is a form of service, for one of my aims is to be the most interesting thing someone sees that day. But I’m not fully out to everyone close to me, so I am always consciously performing. Why not come out? Because honesty is terrifying.
I need to know that I can be wholly myself with the people I trust. To know this, I have to trust that when I show up as myself they will accept me as I am. To find safety I have to plunge into the abyss. Again.
But I’m tired. Tired of not saying these things, tired of faking it. Sometimes no matter how hard you fake it, you never will make it. But maybe you’re trying to make the wrong thing. Maybe you can just be yourself.
I’ve been with my spouse for almost three decades and I’m still convinced he’s going to decide one day that I’m too damn much for him and leave me. Like, calm down. But expressing this to him seems physically impossible. When I’m emotional, I can’t speak. I can write (I say as I’m crying into my keyboard) which sort of makes sense because speech and writing are controlled by different parts of the brain. Autism impacts the speech centre. If I want to say difficult things to my husband, I have to write them down and read them off a script.
So be it. If that’s what it takes. There’s no shame in it. We make life more difficult than it needs to be. If you think life is unkind, start being kinder to yourself. If you keep falling short of your target, move the target closer. If you don’t know what to do, try writing a poem.
Try. You are stardust. You have galaxies of time embedded in your every cell, meteorites in your veins. Become what you are. You are infinite.
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