The sight of a blank page is intimidating, even in dark mode. There’s endless possibilities, and the longer you pause to construct your first sentence, the longer you’ll procrastinate writing anything at all. You cannot say you’ll start writing once the first sentence is perfect because guess how many years you can procrastinate off that one?
Sometimes I’ll go back and add a better sentence at the top if I think of one, because the slug on Facebook is important. Sometimes I don’t. It all depends on how much of a diarist and how much of a traditional writer I want to be that day. I do not compare myself to people like Ernest Hemingway (because he’s a novelist, not because I’m that talented); rather, I see myself more as a Dominick Dunne character from Vanity Fair. His only title was “Diarist.” His job was to go and sit in the back of famous court trials and write about them. I don’t write about trials, but some of my pieces (like the ones after the spy book talks) are reminiscent because I’m just taking in the whole room at once and writing it down. I would rather sit in the back and notice things.
Not that I can’t be a ham and make people laugh. I do that all the time because it’s how I know to relate to people. I often cover up how I’m feeling by trying to make the other person spit out their water. If they’re focusing on the fact that I’m funny, they won’t notice that…….. The list where that ellipsis lives is long. However, I think of that as The Leslie Lanagan Show, and being quiet in the back is my natural personality. For instance, when I was watching Jonna I was blogging the whole time. I just didn’t have my computer in front of me. When she’d say something I wanted to use, I’d make a note of it, etc.
I didn’t want it to be perfect, because I wouldn’t be brave enough to publish if I thought I had to aim that high. I just wanted to represent her accurately, always a challenge with people who are still alive, because you are not in their heads. You can only write your impressions of what they said, not what they were thinking at the time. I did not want to write something that made her wonder if I was even in the same room.
Twice, I have written things to be proud of, and I am. I think the biggest thing is that I wrote them like I write every other blog entry, as if Jonna and Tony aren’t my favorite writers in the universe and untouchable heroes, simply other characters in my weird little life. Because of The International Spy Museum, it’s kind of true. I met Jonna after Tony died, and we struck up a bit of a friendship.
The concept that she’s another character in my weird little life and not a deity is sort of alarming, frankly. I mean, who even am I?
Why do I keep saying things like this if someone like her knows my name?
It’s an issue.
I honestly think that the more known people are, the more they appreciate being treated like characters in my weird little life. That they want to be known as themselves, so they don’t have to be “on.” For instance, I would think it was way more interesting to meet Kamala Harris when it was just me, my sister, and some good music. That’s because I don’t care about the vice president as much as I care about her, if that makes sense.
Most Democrats have the capability to become characters in my weird little life because of my sister. She’s a lobbyist, so she lives in Houston (I’ve said this before, but new readers, etc.) and works in both Austin and DC on state and federal legislation. In her previous job, she had several states in her “territory,” and Maryland was one of them. We got to go to Annapolis and ended up in a regatta. We also found a great restaurant called “tsunami.” You really want the pork belly ramen.
I tend to eschew the spotlight, thus wanting to get to know the people Lindsay knows, just not in a place where everything is top volume and overwhelming. Cocktail parties are exhausting for me if it’s a lot of people I don’t know. I go into shutdown fast, selectively mute so that I couldn’t say anything even if I wanted to, because it would come out as stuttering while my brain lags like an Apple ][ e.
My thoughts come just as fast in person as they do when I’m writing. However, when I am writing, I can handle that volume of information coming at me because I can process it through my fingers at 90wpm. My brain cannot translate information into speech at half that rate. I get intimidated quickly and just stop trying. If it’s important, they’ll e-mail me….. Or, one can hope. Sometimes it backfires because it seems like I’m not interested in talking to people, and that’s not the case. I just like to take in my surroundings and read the room before I jump into it.
I’m not shy in the slightest. I have just made mistakes by not reading a room before, especially with my line cook loud mouth, that have made me reticent to talk first. In short, I’m trying to prevent problems before they come up rather than popping off and then having regrets. And by “popping off,” I don’t just mean anger. Sometimes it’s humor that makes people think “what the fuck is wrong with you?” The neurodivergent sense of humor is kind of dark, anyway. Then add line cook, where we’re all some kind of fucked up (I promise), and the differences between us and our neurotypical peers becomes even more stark, because we’re gathering in groups. You just don’t see it, because you don’t see that the kitchen is for misfits…
As Anthony Bourdain points out, it is a tribe that will have us…… And we know it. We are not built for office work or polite company. We are built to be aliens- because we are that different and also few people are educated enough about ADHD/Autism to really be able to understand it. One of the reasons that we seem like aliens is that none of our behavior makes sense to anyone neurotypical, and it’s always on us to adapt. There is a power imbalance that is unbreakable because neurotypical people have an air of superiority over “special kids.” We know it, so rates of anxiety and depression skyrocket when you also have ADHD/Autism. Not being able to navigate the world like a normal person takes its toll whether we’re talking about our personal or professional lives.
Autistic people have trouble in interpersonal relationships, even among each other because if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. It does not present in everyone the same way, and I often think after many hours of study that the kind of ADHD that presents in women and the kind of ADHD that presents in men is so different that women are probably at the autistic end of the spectrum and men aren’t so much. Their ADHD presents as aggressively hyperactive. It’s not that women don’t display these tendencies as well, because I was married to a woman like that. I just think that the “male” presentation of ADHD is more accurate, and that the kind of ADHD that only makes you stare out the window and get lost in your own little world is more likely to be autism. Therefore, the criteria is the same for all genders. It’s not that there’s more autistic women, it’s that more autism is being caught. There hasn’t been much research on autism in women, because there are so many women that are struggling and only hear “you don’t look autistic.” I get it.
But please know that because I am autistic, I can predict with 90% accuracy whether someone else is, according to science (really). Neurotypicals can’t, because they don’t have the pattern recognition. They aren’t looking for the same things, because people tend to equate autism with severe retardation. If you are high IQ, you fall through the cracks. People understand autistic people who rock, scream, etc. They do not know what autism looks like after years and years of social masking.
Here’s my pattern recognition and how it might differ from yours:
- Your gait
- The number of different foods that you eat
- How many times you have to go to a private place during a party for some sensory deprivation
- The way you talk, because there’s a specific patois to neurodivergence- conversations are spaghetti code
- The speed at which you talk- if Aaron Sorkin and Amy Sherman-Palladino have nothing on you, you may be autistic/ADHD 😛
- The look in your eyes when you’re overwhelmed
- Seeing stimming that other people wouldn’t notice- for instance, adults condemn a fidget spinner, but not knitting your eyebrows……. and it’s the same exact idea for calming yourself
- How often it seems like “you’re just not there”
- When you are dialed into a special interest, and what happens when you’re facing drudgery
- How clean people’s houses are, because all neurodivergent people suck at sticking to systems and live in piles- no judgment because if you came to my house you’d see the same exact shit you do
- Living in piles and yet knowing where everything is- because we don’t fit into your systems, we make our own
- The way you write an e-mail, because again, a specific patois- which may or may not match your voice in person
- The way you talk about your task list when it’s clearly overwhelming, especially when it’s already overwhelming and it’s three things.
- How well you can multitask
- How well you remember what you’ve heard vs. what you’ve read- most autistic people take in things through sight
- Whether you make eye contact, and whether it looks like you’ve been trained into making eye contact as opposed to it being completely natural
- Perceiving social masking instead of genuine comfort…. If you have to appear at a party, you’re ready to go long before anyone else (it’s a universal “you,” but it’s me)
- These are not all the criteria, but it’s a good start. This last one is just “et al.”
I am not the expert, I just have lots of education because I made time for it. I also have the lived experience so that when the MDs and PhDs were talking, I could understand my past behavior in a completely different way. It’s interesting that there are so many tie-ins.
A lot of people who are neurodivergent are INFJ as well. In order to be “The Counselor,” there’s so much that goes into it…. Mostly introversion unless you’re in front of a crowd. My examples for this are writers and ministers. With ministers, it’s easier to connect to a thousand people than it is to go to a cocktail party. With writers, they’d rather sit in their offices til Jesus comes than do a book talk. All of the publicity is a necessary evil, not what an author really, really wants to do.
Authors who seem arrogant are generally one of two things….. Trying to fake it until they make it, or they’re not really artists. They’re trying to sell books, and they know it’s not very good….. But it doesn’t matter because people will buy it anyway. For instance, all those non-fiction books on how to get rich without really trying. It’s not pulling pain out of you as a writer, which is what makes it art.
When you write crap, you’re never going to see the real point of being an author, which is to wrestle your demons- even in fiction. For instance, Mary Shelley poured her heart and soul into “Frankenstein” to talk about her relationship with Lord Byron. The book was never intended to start the sci-fi genre, and yet it did. Sometimes I wondered whether she identified more with Frankenstein or Jenny. Either is a hot take.
Jenny has never appeared on screen, but she’s someone who was raised with Victor as a brother and then somehow weirdly engaged to him. She was accused of something she didn’t do, and went to the gallows. The reason she didn’t do it is that the monster did.
It looks different when Lord Byron is the monster.
And now all the fright is over, because the page is no longer blank. On the other hand, to quote another marvelous author…… “Tomorrow, AND tomorrow, AND tomorrow AND tomorrow…..”
The sight is relentless, and turns pain into beauty…. But that’s only by going by and seeing the other days where the pages have not ended up empty. In order to understand my future, I have to understand the past.
It gives me the insight to make “The Sight” not so intimidating.
A little.
Stories That Are All True 