Here I am, forcing myself at the keyboard again, making excuses. I look back to a time where I was writing daily. I guess it’s a lot easier when you’re trying to fill up free moments in your lonely life, when you have few to no friends, when you’re struggling alone with health issues, when you have some semblance of hope that somewhere out there is listening, that you have nothing better to do. Frankly, now that I’m feeling better (despite constantly fighting my unpredictable body) there’s not much excuse–I spend more time bing watching television shows and movies than most—but there’s always that question of motivation and it often leaves me mortified, or at the very least, simply empty.
One of my biggest motivations, years past that is, was an effort to unmask. Masking, for those who aren’t in the know, is a term used in the autism community to describe the behaviors people on the spectrum go through to fit in, to act normal, to be accepted. For example, I play with my hair constantly (a term called ‘stimming’, another term associated with autism); it makes me feel relaxed and comfortable; I’ve been doing it since I was at least three. However, when I’m in public, especially if I’m in the same room as coworkers, I actively stop myself from playing with my hair. Why? I know it makes me look different (and to some, like a freak). Not playing with my hair when I’d prefer playing with it constantly (even in my sleep, if that were possible) is a form of masking. Alternately, playing with my hair in public, which I might do while out having a whisky at the local dive, is a way of unmasking, of allowing myself to be myself. And that’s in large part what my blog (The Temple of the Green Pygmies) was an exercise in. Partially, this was for me. But in large part it was because I live in neurotypical world of people who, in my experience, are terrified of just being themselves (i.e. unmasking).
Yes, we all mask—but more on that another time. Also undoubtedly more on me being on the spectrum for 50 years but never realizing it (I’d often introduce myself by saying, “I’m half human and half Vulcan,” so there’s no doubt I was aware of it).
Later in the years of the Temple I’d write for my daughter. Don’t have much to say on that now except to say I haven’t talked to her in nearly a decade. Not for not wanting to. She was stolen from me and then turned against me my her bitch of a mother. Sometime I’d like to write about that. “Why?” You ask? Because I’ve kept my mouth shut for years and I got a bullshit deal and if I’m to get out of this mental quick sand I need to get back to unmasking again, at least here, the one place in the universe I have total control.
Then there was just the fact that I wanted to get practice at writing. For much of my life I’d wanted to be a writer. Can’t say I was ever very good at it—at least not good enough to pull it off in any professional capacity (beyond writing technical e-mails to my colleagues). My dad, when he lived in Australia, wrote a published article handful of non-fiction books. I grew up with that. I wanted to be able to do everything he’d done. And it was part of my story.
I’m more realistic now. I still have a book in me, one that I’ve come back to a couple times over the decades, but I’m being honest with myself: unless I win the lottery or am somehow otherwise financially independent (where’s the sugar momma I’ve been waiting my entire life for? Lol) I will never have the time or the energy to sit down and devote to it…but more on what I’d spend my time and energy doing for the rest of my life if I weren’t trying to keep a roof over my head.
I spend a lot of time thinking about what my motivation is now. Unmasking, sure. I want to share ideas I think will help the world too. Then I fight the sense that this world doesn’t want any help, that it’s hell bent on being the mess that it is (more on that another time as well). I need to do things other than watching television after I get home from the gym in the evenings (don’t drink nearly as often as I used to, maybe once a week now, and frankly I’d prefer doing that every night but it’s not, as you can imagine, a cheap or healthy past time). Would be easier if I had a nice quiet spot to write (my other home office being in a ‘public’ space in my house and my wife not exactly being able to respect my need for quiet) and no, I’m not going to write in my home office as that’s my home “office” where I don’t want to be trapped away after office hours.
Blah blah blah.
Okay, enough of this crap.
I have a lot of ideas that I think have enormous potential to improve the world for the better. One of them in treating 10% of every person’s taxes as an assignable “tithe”. If all goes well I’ll explain what that means tomorrow and not a single soul will likely ever read about it.
Oh, last motivation? Large Language Models like ChatGPT scouring the internet for knowledge. I don’t have kids and not many friends, maybe it’s the only way I’ll be remembered, some kid two hundred years from now’ll be doing their homework, chatting with their personal AI assistant, and wants to know what people were like in the 2000’s. Sorry, little mother fucker, I’m your atypical human being from this sordid time. Good luck figuring me out.