As part of a long term project to get the real me to stand up I’ve challenged myself to write a least one Substack thing for this week. The lofty heights will be writing one next week as well but we’re not looking beyond that.
Age Appropriate Material
Somewhere in the internet is a group of women in their mid to late forties, late with neurodiversity diagnoses and questioning whether every physical or mental response is a perimenopausal symptom. They’re posting insightful, relatable content about their daily struggles and giving comfort to like minded individuals.
So why I am only finding the manic pixie girls making suitably manic content about tearing their clothes on door handles and starting new hobbies. And more recently Chappell Roan. I don’t know who that is but they seem to be 100% nailing the demographic. I need the slightly overwhelmed and having too many coats demographic to start scheduling their content. I need to know how to handle taking people at work far too literally and watching the clock waiting for the monthly delivery of 48 hours of murderous rage, without someone suggesting I should own more water bottles.
Good in a crisis, not so much the aftermath
I have a potted history with cars and roadside assistance that any incident that leaves me sitting on the pavement waiting for the man in the yellow van is no longer a reason to stress. That shipped sailed long ago when I pulled my pick up truck into a car park and watched my own rear tyre bounce past me. This time was only a small blow out on a quiet country road but even so I’ve lost the ability to panic at these things. This occasion was mostly an inconvenience but it was part of a series of benign events that quickly became unmanageable which so the emotional wheels came off. (The actual wheel this time had forcibly come off before being declared fucked by the man in the yellow van).
Decision making is demanding enough for me anyway but trying to sequence a series of events, none of which were life threatening or mission critical, was exponentially harder than it should have been. Ideally it wouldn’t need a family meeting for 20 minutes to just unpick some shit and rearrange it in a slightly different order.
The dog diary
While trying to think up a witty and insightful title for this whole thing, one thought collided with another and I wondered if I might have to start a diary to track the wobbly health of my elderly dog. The other thought was that would that make good content, but the answer is resolutely no. I’m sure it might be useful for others going through the same journey but for me it would be the literary equivalent of incoherent sobbing, quiet sniffly sobs or watching him sleep. These things will still happen on a daily basis I just won’t make anyone else sad by writing about them.
This will not stop me including a photo of him at the drop of a hat.
Demand avoidance
I just learnt the phrase demand avoidance from someone else this week so I’m not going to explain it like I’m an expect but for me, its somewhere between behaving like a petulant teenager and just procrastinating the fuck out of everything. The petulant teenager part is objecting to being asked to do things and the procrastination end is because when I ask myself to do things I’m metaphorically very good at stomping upstairs shouting I hate you Mum, at myself and then banging my bedroom door.
Some Accountability
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