This week is Neurodiversity Celebration week.
When I reflect on it, it was the heightened amount of messaging on social media that made me start researching around my own neurodivergency. This has culminated in me believing I’m Autistic.
So if you wanted an example of why these diversity weeks can be important, here’s a living, breathing example for you.
I’ve regularly had conversations where I’ve noticed I was different.
It’s been hard to put words to this, and whenever I’ve talked about being different to other people they have always tried to reassure me – we are all different in some way, right?
I never thought of myself as demonstrating signs of autism. My understanding was that autism were for those with very exaggerated traits. Even when I saw some resonance with certain common behaviours, I thought of autistic people as showing little regard to emotion, whereas I knew myself as highly emotional and sensitive.
Yet I read an article which highlighted that many traits of autism vary a lot – non-stereotypical autism shows up as being highly empathetic and sensitive, as well as being existential or spiritual beings. These signs of non-stereotypical behaviours are more common for women, ethnic minority and queer/gender non-confirming folk too.
So am I Autistic? Most probably.
This week I’ve been spending a lot of time in the world of fantasy. I’ve been binge watching Japanese anime, mixed up with RPG video games. I had forgotten the beauty of getting engrossed in a whole different, fantastical dimension.
But as an adult, the world of ‘fiction’ lost its appeal. In fact, I think I’ve ended up becoming quite condescending and judgemental about it
This week was the point that I realised that somewhere along the way I had lost my joy for fantasy.
This weekend, I went to a small group discussion with marginalised people from racialised backgrounds.
It’s really interesting being in these open spaces, delving on complex and emotive topics. I was fascinated by how someone was trying to explain the challenge of finding a group for people like them.
This brought up a conversation more broadly about a sense of belonging. This got me thinking about my own personal experience. It’s something I’ve struggled a lot with.
Yesterday, I used my phone so much that my thumb started hurting. Not that it stopped me, I simply switched hands so I could continue tapping away.
But if it’s getting to the point that holding a phone is starting to hurt, that’s probably a as obvious a warning sign as any.
Connecting with people can be very fun, and I’ve been doing it more so than ever. But I’ve been finding that this thirst only gets stronger the more I consume. So when I stop getting messages, my body gives me a feeling of anxiety. This is the definition of an addiction.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been speaking quite a lot around the subject of raising issues to the people around me.
I actually had something in my personal life – I felt uncomfortable with something around a social gathering. But I also felt very uncomfortable around causing a fuss for other people.
The truth is that it’s never really comfortable to raise an issue.
I finally bought a new phone. This was after five years since purchasing the last one.
I previously had a decent android which worked well. The battery started to fail me, but I got that replaced last year. When I did that, It actually felt like a new phone.
But by late last year it started to fail. Some internal overheating error meant it stopped charging at all. I basically had a phone that I could only use if it was plugged in. The ‘mobile’ part of mobile phone was lost.
So this week was time I finally upgraded. Yet, I had a moral quandary here. After all, the constant purchasing of new phones is one of the most obvious examples of needless materialistic waste.
Emotional reactions aren’t exactly hard to find. Online, the world can feel very polarised, so it can be a challenge to keep a cool head when discussing divisive topics – be that climate, diversity, war or anything else.
For many of us, we’ve been taught the value of avoiding emotional reactions. It’s important for us to be able to listen to others without reacting straight away. Yet whilst we are better off not reacting to the first emotion that we have, I also feel we have gone too far the other way.
We have inadvertendly idealised the idea of being cool, calm and collected over the ability to express genuine feelings.
I’m on my last leg of Argentina. In fact, I’m currently writing this article thousands of miles in the sky, on my way back to Europe. This week I went to Bariloche, Patagonia. I returned to Buenos Aires for one night before returning back to Brussels (with an exotic layover in Frankfurt).
My trip to Argentina has been weird. It had a mix of solo travel, spending time with some family (brothers/cousins) and also travelling with extended/new friends.
What has also been travelling with me is a consistent cough, which has been a particular challenge on certain days too.
This article marks two years of writing articles each week consecutively. The last time I missed a week was in January 2022. And it just so happens that I’m writing this one from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I’ve been posting pretty frequently on social media around the different things I’ve been seeing. I didn’t really have a set intention to do so, but I just felt like getting the thoughts out of my head and into the world.
Throughout my posts, I wanted to ensure that I kept a level of grounded realism about travelling. We’ve all seen the exotic lifestyles being portrayed on social media that are far from reality. Instead, I wanted to talk about how I genuinely experienced the parts of my trip.
The untold truth about travelling is that whilst it can be great, amazing, breathtaking, it is still living life. There are exciting moments, and there are boring moments.