Rosie - Consistency rather than burnout.

Remember me?

Hi,

I am sorry, I have been away for much longer than I intended.

Sometimes I don’t feel like writing. I guess everyone gets like that. For me, writing for you all is

somehow both harder and easier than writing in general. It is easier because I know I am talking

to people who know or at least will give me the respect of a hearing – it doesn’t always happen.

However, it can also be a struggle as it means wrestling with my neurodivergence. That part of

myself that I am gradually accepting but sometimes I still wish away. Since we last spoke the

world has felt very heavy and I have had to grit my teeth and get myself back into a routine to

safeguard the progress I have made.

I think that’s a lesson I struggle with as my brain has big ambitions and poor capacityestimation.

I commit big and emotionally invest. I fantasise a whole different future for myself

and crash when I inevitably get tired or bored. It’s a process but I’m trying to pace myself better. I

take my agenda to my mum and we strike maybe half of the items off the list before I start but I

am getting better at estimating and finally accepting that if I have lots of stressful agenda items,

I’m going to have to spread them out and plan in recovery time. The challenge that remains is

working out what recovery time means for me as my brain is not a fan of sitting still – but that is a

story for another time.

Anyway, I got stuck in a big old project that took over my life and then had to gradually set up the

next phase of my routine for job searching. Job searching is horrible. There is no pretending you

are not neurodivergent in this process from the cryptic and ableist job descriptions to group

interviews and the research demands of each application – my last one took me three weeks

flat out work only to be met in a ‘screening’ with candidates much more qualified than myself

and realising I had once again made a mistake. I’m going to be writing a lot more about

‘accessible’ (sarcasm very much intended!) job searching and applications but at the minute i t

is just a bit too fresh to tackle. After the victory of my degree seeing the barriers just multiply

around me has shaken my confidence and made my neurodivergence painfully prominent and

therefore writing to you all difficult.

As I want to be honest and real with you, my writing involves processing and facing up to that bit

of myself I often try so hard to hide. As an advocate, I guess it is expected that I am always a

neurodiversity champion but I think it’s important to acknowledge that being neurodiverse is

hard and that the barriers are real. It doesn’t make me a sham or a failure for self-stigmatising

and it doesn’t make me weak for needing a break.

I don’t know if this will resonate with anyone else but as much as you want to support others or

just keep moving forwards sometimes you have to reset and just settle before you can embark

on the next stage. Consistency is better than burnout.

Any thoughts?

Speak soon (I promise!)

Rosie.