Notes on Alchemy
A Blog From Javelin’s Desk
Experiment #01 - Results
We have heard from a bunch of you about how having a low key, No Expectations Day has been a central part of your neurodivergent lives. You told me that it helps you to recentre and to come back to yourself in the midst of burnout, and is a part of standard self-care to stay out of extreme burnout. Some of you are even teaching your kiddos how to have No Expectations Days for themselves. How cool is that?
First Aid for Autistic Burnout
Autistic burnout is a hell of a drug. I have experienced it at least 3 times in my life in a catastrophic fashion and I am in no rush to get back to that place. That said, it feels like burnout is always at least a little bit present. The work of dealing with it is more management than eradication for many of us.
No More Starving Artists
I went back to school and became a life skills coach because I see the ways the industry I grew up in is failing to teach the humans that make it up how to care for themselves at the same time as having a career here. It failed to teach me those skills, and I floundered for a long time. This failure to develop life skills while growing artistic skills is all too common for both early career artists, and humans who are technically mid-career now like myself. And it is ending the artistic practices of wildly talented people left, right, and centre.
Experiment #01 - No Expectations Day
Imagine a day where you have literally no expectations placed on you, by yourself or others, for the entire day, no matter what. Don’t want to cook? Cool, don’t cook, order yourself some foods. Wanna stay in bed in your jammies until 3pm. Rockin, let that moss grow you absolute treasure. Wanna play video games, or watch a million episodes of Bob’s Burgers, or sit in the bathtub until your skin prunes, or sort your fibre arts supplies into a colour spectrum? Do it. BUT, only if you aren’t expecting yourself to.
The Myth of Potential
The pressure of living up to this ephemeral potential has been the source of so much anxiety for my little self, and that anxiety has followed me well into my adulthood. And I know I am not the only one. So many humans, often who had undiagnosed ADHD or autism as children, are haunted by the ghosts of the potential that never seemed to materialize.
The thing is, that’s all it ever has been, ghosts.
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