Last Tuesday, I wrote about how much effort it takes for me to try to be understood by people, how overwhelming and destructive it can be when I’m misunderstood, and how I’m choosing to write to be understood.
It takes a lot of energy for me to write, too—I’ve written before about what it takes my autistic brain to be able to sit down and write—although it’s less draining than the effort it takes for me to communicate directly with people, and I have more control over it.
What I’m learning is that, to tap the creative outlet and achieve the high ambitions I have for my writing, I need a lot of energy and focus.
I need to de-clutter my life to give myself the time and space I need to think and write.
I need to reorient myself so that most of the energy I have available on any given day is being spent to fuel my writing and not being wasted, not distracting from that mission I’ve accepted.
Because part of my healing comes through writing. And for all of the progress I’ve made in my personal growth journey through writing, the journey has taken steps back and been harder when I’ve spent energy away from my writing and my healing, where people have misunderstood me and mistreated me and hurt me.
I feel like, underneath all the progress I’ve been making over the past two years of this personal growth journey, I’ve been flailing to a certain extent, not fully committed to the creative vision I have. Or maybe I was just being naïve to what it would take to achieve that.
I’ve been trying to have it all: a career, a social life, friends, along with growth and power and creativity and vision. I was stretched too thin, with too little to give to any of them.
Now, with this decision to fully embrace my writing, I’m embracing creative solitude.
I’m further leaning into the personal growth journey by dedicating more time and space to that which provides me the most healing—writing—and away from that which has historically hurt me and held me back—namely, other people.
I’m being stingy with where my energy goes, cutting out that which doesn’t serve me and my vision.
I’m being defensive about who gets close enough to me to hurt me, to distract me from my writing.
I’m recognizing that time is the most valuable resource, and the only non-renewable one. Each day that passes doesn’t return, so the longer I hold myself back from writing, the less time I’ll have overall to achieve what I want to.
I’m recognizing that I have greatness within me, regardless of how people have seen and treated me throughout my life, and that getting that greatness onto the page and out into the world requires a lot of thinking, a lot of energy, and a lot of time.
I’m choosing to fill my cup up with books and movies and music and art instead of forced relationships and conforming to what others expect of me.
I’m choosing to dedicate myself to the day-to-day work of writing and creating: plodding, technical, frustrating at times, blissful at others, fulfilling always. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have,” as Maya Angelou said.
I’m choosing to find respite in my own world, in my head, in the rich inner experience that is so characteristic of autistic people, rather than in the cold and punishing and artificial “real” world.
I’m choosing to take this moment in my life by the scruff of the neck and wring all the creative opportunity from it.
I’m choosing to live on the page, come hell or high water.
Isn’t it a bit surprising/
How our fortunes ebb and flow/
And only to the enterprising/
Does the magic fortune cookie go/
Believe me/
It’s the time of your life, so live it well/