I’ve got a podcast!
2024 has been a year full of negativity for me. Much of it has surrounded my realisation that understanding autism in me isn’t very easy to identify and negotiate in terms of other areas of my life. I had a full year (2023) where I experimented with adding small changes and accommodations to help me process feelings, re-arrange how I did chores and made time for relaxation, and I was starting to feel a bit better about my home life. However, I still had major struggles with balancing work, home life, and creative pursuits.
Unmasking is a difficult process but necessary. In the hope that I could make more improvements in my life, I took bigger steps in 2024 to stop caring about what other people thought of me, openly voice about my suspected autism when my string of questions might seem over the top to others, and just focus on problems I could fix. Let’s just say it was easier said than done. I unwittingly opened myself to more bullying and misunderstandings than ever before. I used to hide these aspects of myself, I’d double-down on pretending I was fine, or satisfied that I understood what was being asked of me. Pretending is hard for me because it is essentially a form of lying and I just hate lying. I wear my emotions on my face when I’m trying to hide my feelings. When I’m busy concentrating, my face goes slack and I seem upset or sad. No, I’m just concentrating. It takes a lot of mental fortitude to maintain all that.
So, this year has been a bit of a learning curve. I know I can’t continue to mask because I don’t have the energy for it and it makes me ill and irritable. I feel like a cracked egg: once that shell is broken, it can’t go back to being a perfect barrier against the outside. My only choice now is to move forward and find therapies to help me cope and self express. This is where the podcast comes in.
Wandering Thread Podcast
Episode 1: I talk about autism from my perspective and the need to change things up to preserve and nurture my well-being.
When I started my MA in Archaeology back in 2015, the pastoral tutor asked me what area of research interested me. I doled out about 20 interesting questions. In a humorous way, he said he usually only asked two questions about textiles: ‘How much?’ and ‘Does it make me look fat?’ Lol. He didn’t think I’d have any trouble coming up with a tailored project for my interests. I’ve always asked a ton of questions because I’m fuelled by the need to know ‘why’ for everything. Ever since I learned the word, I have used it, whether I say it explicitly. I want to know ‘how’ nearly as much as I want to know ‘why’. I ask a lot of questions because I truly want/need to know how and why. Connecting my knowledge together and broadening it gives me a sense of understanding, purpose, and it situates my knowledge in the complex world we reside within. I have many interests, but they are all connected to my need for creativity.
Believe it or not, my intense desire to know how to make a jumper is the same as knowing how the universe was created. How?! The first bit is obvious to all spinners and knitters/crocheters. When we start talking about what we know of the universe, it requires a bit of imagination to comprehend the vast forces that are shockingly violent and deadly beautiful in the same scale. When we embark on the creation of a sweater, we have to access knowledge about different wools, processing methods, spinning techniques, and whether we will blend it with something else or decide to knit it or crochet it. We will implicitly actualise the steps to achieve the goal, and we may spend a great deal of time thinking and selecting and experimenting before we begin, or we may spend a split second before beginning. That requires a fair amount of creativity, whether it was performed in the mind or through the process of making, or both.
I have always had an obsession with the universe and learning more about it. To think of those incredible chemical processes occurring in such a wide space requires creativity. The effects can be predicted and yet we are still impressed with the outcomes. They are both stunning and chaotic. Astronomy books will often use artists to express the visual aspects that are difficult to explain with prose or calculations. With better imaging abilities, and scanning in different wavelengths, we can compile photos that do not reflect the reality of our own eyes. CGI programmers combine the literal with the fantastical when they make moving models of different astronomical events, and computers can be tasked with calculating the outcomes of different types of activities to predict the occurrence of anomalies or other types of effects.
The point is, I don’t see much difference between the creativity required to make a jumper or understand the universe. It all requires accessing both sides of our brains. There is still the reality that different wools have varying types of elasticity and texture and are set because they are physical objects. We can change the needle to make looser or tighter stitches, but there is a point where a fabric loses certain qualities that make it no longer viable as a jumper. These are fairly static principles that can change a little, but generally remain as constants. Since these concepts use both sides of my brain, I am free to explore the creative elements while being supported with a logical structure. I love order and organisation as it helps me ‘hang’ thoughts and ideas onto something structural.
The use of this podcast as a therapeutic device will allow me to explore different topics that interest me. I have realised how hand based crafts support a neurodiverse mind and reckon that many of you will see things through this unique perspective, as I do. I can’t say how often I’ll post these podcast episodes, or how I might plan them going forward, but I really do love the idea of sharing my thoughts and ideas with those for whom they will resonate. The first episode is linked below for you! Comments here or on YouTube are appreciated. Thanks for reading! <3
