My Career Made Sense Once It Became Storytelling

What is your career plan?

My combination of physical and mental maladies make it where it’s hard to stay employed. I have gotten many jobs in many fields, and I’ve enjoyed all of them. I’ve just never managed to last long enough at anything to establish a career. When you are neurotypical, it does not make sense to you why I would get fired. And then I listen to how you talk about your coworkers and in instantaneously becomes clear. No matter how loving and open you think you are, neurotypical people do not like working with neurodivergent ones. Whether it’s that someone doesn’t like their tone or they’re doing something completely wrong doesn’t matter. In an office, there is very little difference in simply being annoying and ACTUALLY being bad at the job. It matters that you’re pleasant just as much as you’re competent. Not wanting to work with someone is just a valid reason to let someone go, because it’s not the boss’s job to babysit.

However, my survival cannot be dependent on neurotypical people, either. My livelihood is threatened by my own body- demand avoidance, burnout, and meltdown being the big three. I can cope and muddle through in a job. I excel when I sit down at my keyboard to tell you about the world around me. I am not thinking about all the ways I could be criticized, which is good, because If blowback was always my first thought I would not be doing well. I would be over focusing on people who didn’t like my writing while ignoring people who do. That doesn’t seem healthy, going out of my way to focus on the negative.

I keep thinking about what Daniel said…. “Just because you write in bulk doesn’t mean you say anything of substance.” It plays like a tape in my head, and what I have to remember is that whether it’s good or bad, being able to go back and read about what my life was like in years past is invaluable. If you asked me what I was doing five years ago today, I could probably tell you. I just have to remember that Daniel was miserable and trying to hurt me. I notice that lots of people treat me like absolute SHIT and then say, “I’m not going to be the villain in your story.”

I also have a problem with consequences equaling negativity. I didn’t tell you that Daniel or Supergrover was a bad person. I told you what happened. BOTH of them are extraordinarily defensive and nothing is ever their fault and you’re a really bad person no matter what they did, because they don’t like to feel. Anything you do to make them feel is suspicious. They googled it, and they do not like it.

My life got so much better when I decided I was tired as fuck of both of them. I am a storyteller, therefore I don’t need any “friends.” I need actual friends, ones who believe they are capable of making mistakes instead of coming unglued when they’ve hurt me and I said something about it.

According to them, I should just keep my mouth shut because their bad behavior is good. It’s me telling people about it that’s problematic. If their behavior was so perfectly perfect in every way, they would not get mad that I wrote about it.

I am not going to let them make me a victim by insisting that I keep my mouth shut over things they did that genuinely hurt me. Neither of them gave a damn about me and my pain. They wanted to be hero-worshiped and showed up every single day to hear me extol their virtues and lost their everliving SHIT when they realized I was going to treat them like a normal person and not play them up to be gods among men. However, I don’t NOT do that, either. I love the people in my life and I often write glowing things about them that make me cry. But when I’m not being glowing, it’s not that I’m hurt. It’s that I’m a bad person because I opened my mouth.

That pattern seems on brand. You’re only as sick as your secrets.

So, instead of fighting with friends and coworkers, I would rather record my life and move in the direction of my own system rather than trying to fit into someone else’s. Because needing their love and approval got me nowhere, I replaced them with self-confidence.

I am not trying to be hard nosed. I am trying to own my story. The part that they’re angry about is that I am not telling the story the way they want to hear it………………… While never even DARING to have the guts wo write their own. It’s easier to bitch at me…………… But absolutely nothing will keep either of them from lurking and fuming. There’s not a chance either of them will just go the fuck away and leave me alone.

Repeat with anyone that has ever known me, because I generally end up talking to myself. It’s how being autistic is. You rarely have friends because you’re social masking and there’s something officious and off-putting about it. I don’t care if you think that’s annoying. I just ask that you stop interacting with me rather than bitching about my writing. My writing lives within me and around me. You ain’t shit.

It’s not that my friends aren’t valuable. They cannot give me direction and focus. That’s all on me. And until they start digging deep, they’ll never understand how hard it is. They’d rather be locked down, hurt, and lashing out at me. Thankfully, that has stopped because I stopped allowing it.

Supergrover does not get the right to absolutely shit all over everything and then walk off like nothing happened. She participated, and now acts like she’s a motherfucking hero and I’m a mental patient.

You do you, but okay.