I went to play in my cousin’s house one day after school (this was around 1982, I think), and she had a load of little bits of coloured paper laid out on the first few steps of the stairs.

“What’s all that stuff?” I asked.

“It’s my fancy notepaper collection!” she said, and there was something in her tone that made me certain, (1) that possessing a fancy notepaper collection was now the absolute baseline for admission into polite society, and (2) that it was a little strange that I hadn’t recognised it straight away.

Shit, OK, research required

I began covertly observing my class, and sure enough, there they were, displaying and comparing and swapping their own fancy notepaper collections. It was a girl thing, it seemed: I didn’t see any boys getting involved. All the girls seemed to be in on it, from the sunlit goddesses right down to the messy marginals like myself.

Not me, though. Somehow, without my having noticed, a sophisticated new economy had sprung up. I watched as clusters of girls formed at break time to inspect and assess each other’s wares, and to broker complex multilateral deals over cartons of free school milk.

From what I could tell, the whole thing revolved around notepads with detachable pages. Pastel colours and cutesy designs were de rigueur — puppies, kittens, gingham, flowers, strawberries, little Edwardian girls … borders of flowers and strawberries … puppies or kittens with flowers … little Edwardian girls in gingham peering out from behind enormous strawberries…

(And Pierrot, for some reason. No idea.)

Notepads with scalloped edges were good, notepads cut to the shape of the cover image were better, and scent of any sort would bring the traders flocking. Nobody would have dreamt of actually writing on any of this paper, you barbarian.

The most coveted treasure of all was a notepad cut to the shape of its cover image (typically a baby mammal), with a low-saturation copy of the same image printed on each page. If the pad was scented into the bargain, you basically had the Holy Grail on your hands — and could price accordingly.

Such were my findings.

So … now I needed a fancy notepaper collection?

Clearly. But how to get one?

Save up my pocket money? (Financially unrealistic.)

Wheedle a doting ancestor? (Daunting.)

Wait patiently for my birthday? (No chance.)

No. Instead, I came up with a genius plan:

I would MAKE a fancy notepaper collection ALL BY MYSELF

The evidence suggested that unique designs had a certain amount of currency, so surely my handmade offerings would be snapped up like hot cakes, and my path to world domination would be assured. On paper, at least, hahaha.

There being no time like the present, that very afternoon I sat down at the dining table to put my plan into action.

One thing I knew for sure: I was going to steer well clear of flowers, strawberries, kittens, and all that guff. Not only did I not particularly like them, I also knew that my drawing skills weren’t really up to it. What I proposed, instead, was to strike out into new graphic territory and inject some much-needed variety into the mix.

I got some plain white typing paper from the study and my pack of 30 markers, and made several sheets with a few squiggly lines down one side. That somehow didn’t look as impressive as I’d hoped, so I dug around and found some sheets of thin A4 card in yellow and pale green. I tried more of a zigzaggy border on the yellow — and then, in a surge of inspiration that I still remember vividly four decades on, I took a sheet of the green and drew around a plate, cut out the resulting circle, used a cup to draw a smaller circle in the middle for the writing space, and filled in the edge with more squiggles and zigzags.

The repetition was getting a bit tedious by this stage, so after a few more green circles I called a halt and packed up my creations ready for their launch to market the following day.

Reader, the whole thing was an unqualified success!!!

Yeah, no, obviously not.

Please imagine my shock and embarrassment when it became clear that my artisanally handcrafted and incontrovertibly fancy notepaper was not, after all, the hot-ticket item of that day’s trading.

Oh.

So yeah, I capitulated

Some time after my product launch flop, I was in a newsagent and spotted a tiny notepad in the shape of a puppy — something long-eared, a spaniel or a beagle, I think — with (you will be relieved to know) a low-saturation copy of the same image printed on each detachable page.

To set aside my aesthetic principles and wheedle a doting ancestor was the work of a moment: I swiftly secured the treasure.

Except … it wasn’t, really. Treasure, that is. The thing was small enough to fit in the palm of my seven-year-old hand, and it had an annoying puppy printed on every single page. Useless in practical terms, and in any case, by this stage of the game such things were ten a penny to the sunlit goddesses and their coterie.

Moreover, around this time, as mysteriously as it had arrived, the tsunami of zeal for fancy notepaper was beginning to ebb away. Yet again, I was behind the curve.

I do recall that one of the kinder girls in the class (who was, I think, neither a sunlit goddess nor a messy marginal) did swap with me, somewhere along the line. I don’t remember whether she took pity on me and accepted some of my homemade efforts or whether she got a sheaf of annoying puppies, but in return, I received a single sheet of pale purple paper with (oh joy!) a chemical purple scent.

It was precious to me for a while, but I have to tell you now that it did not form the seed of a world-dominating fancy notepaper collection.

And that was the end of it. I don’t remember actively trying to participate in any classroom craze again until I got a Lolobal in sixth class with my birthday money and bounced determinedly around the yard every lunchtime for weeks, all by myself.

All by myself

The significance of this detail was obscured to me at the time.

Looking back now, it’s clear that what I was doing in both of these cases was trying to mimic the behaviours I’d observed so that I’d achieve the (vague, unspoken) goal of fitting in.

Unfortunately, I didn’t understand that merely owning the observed objects and replicating the observed actions wasn’t enough. There was a whole complicated layer of collaborative social signalling and performance going on that simply wasn’t obvious to me.

And this, my friends, is how autistic microtrauma works. Years and years of subtly, quietly, consistently trying to achieve social acceptability in a neurotypical paradigm through analysis and reconstruction from first principles — and subtly, quietly, consistently getting it wrong, time after time, without ever really knowing why. Until all you know, deep down, is that your way of being in the world is wrong, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Whoa, Léan, what a downer!

I know, right?

This whole memory is laced with discomfort for me. The part where I decided it was easiest to just make my own version of the thing that other people seemed so unproblematically to possess feels particularly poignant (if you know, you know). Even now, remembering my optimism as I drew wavy coloured lines on typing paper for a happy afternoon, I sting and fizz with shame.

Going to publish anyway, because this is where we are.

I suspect I’m going to feel this way about every post I make for the next while, because I am trying to change the habit of a lifetime and not bend myself into what I perceive as the acceptable pretzel. And yes, I further suspect that I will reiterate this every time, even at the risk of boring you.

It’s a process. I’m in it. On we go.

As I was saying last week, the past couple of years have prompted a fairly major life reevaluation for me. Yeah, me and half the planet, I know.

Somewhere along the way, I’ve become interested in ecology, biodiversity, and the concept of rewilding.

You’ve probably heard of rewilding

The basic idea is that rather than try to impose our view of what a given piece of land should be like, we simply step back and — literally — let nature take its course. This leads to a balanced, diverse ecosystem that is (necessarily) suited to its circumstances.

In practice, it’s not usually a totally intervention-free approach. You need to be aware of invasive species (both plant and animal), and you probably need to take steps to prevent them from hindering the development of the wild ecosystem. That might include things like fencing out deer so that tree seedlings have a chance to grow, or controlling the spread of plants like Rhododendron ponticum (that’s the single species that’s invasive in Ireland — #notallrhododendrons as I learned quite recently).

Don’t listen to me, obviously!

I am not an expert.

I’m a patchily informed armchair enthusiast, and I’m not even scratching the surface here: I’m lightly touching the surface with one fingernail and giving it a laden look. Read materials put out by reputable sources such as established bodies responsible for wildlife, agriculture, and similar. Read work by investigative journalists and climate action organisations. Listen to a variety of people who are actually out there on the land, doing the work. (For the Irish context, I highly recommend the book Whittled Away: Ireland’s Vanishing Nature by Pádraic Fogarty.)

However, on a personal level I’ve found myself ruminating on the abstract notion of rewilding — as in ceasing to impose human cultural priorities, allowing a system to regenerate naturally. It has really got in amongst me.

Why?

Well, it began to bump up against another major strand in my recent thinking, which I also wrote about last week: the identification of my neurodivergence — and more specifically, my growing understanding of just how thoroughly I’ve learnt to mask and suppress my impulses in order to stay [some perceived version of] safe.

To a greater or lesser extent, I’m always engaged in an attempt to pass, to fly under the radar and not be found out. It’s worst in large groups, where I constantly monitor myself to try and make sure I’m behaving plausibly.

(Glance around… Is this a normal way to position my hands? Has it been long enough since I last crossed my legs that I can recross them without looking peculiar? Will it help me to endure the maddening flicker of that light strip if I surreptitiously bite into the scarred grooves inside my lower lip? Can anybody smell me? Probably not… Can they, though?)

Always, I’m asking the key question my embattled brain has come up with to deal with the world:

What Would a Real Person Do?

This is a nasty, debilitating question, and no mistake. When I catch myself at it, I can sometimes pause and unhook its vicious little claws from my flesh. But a lot of the time, the question weasels its way in before I’m even aware of it, and then I expend considerable energy trying to find the correct answer.

I bend myself into the shapes I’ve come to believe are the expected shapes.

I wear the uniform I’ve come to understand as the expected uniform.

I study all forms of human expression diligently, and I do my best always to use the expected phrases, tone, and gestures.

To an extent, I think most of us do this. We want to be accepted and understood, and since communication happens most effectively in the language of the receiver, we try to send out comprehensible signals. The problem for neurodivergent people (as I currently understand things) is that all these unspoken expectations tend to develop to suit the dominant neurotype. So neurotypical people get to do what comes naturally, while we’re left having to work things out from first principles.

I’m reasonably proficient at that, but sadly, a lifetime of experience suggests that I’m never going to get it quite right. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m … frankly a bit odd — nothing too egregious, but I just don’t really come across as “normal” (HEAVY quotation marks, there). Now, as it happens, I’m privileged enough to be eccentric, darling, but … well. Nobody I’ve disclosed my diagnoses to has exactly been shocked.

I’ll tell you what though, all this effort to camouflage and contort myself? It’s tiring.

I’m tired.

So recently, I’ve begun to think, what if … rewilding, right … but for the self?

REWILD YOURSELF

“It’s a sort of [rallying cry], you see. Never been very good at them myself but I’m told they can be terribly effective.” [—Slartibartfast, more or less]

What would happen if I abandoned my (doomed anyway) attempts to fence myself off into nice manageable areas, to clear and dig and plant myself with cromulent crops, to poison my unacceptable seedlings and fertilise the ones that people seem to want?

If I let myself — my self — grow wild, what would emerge?

Only bad scary things aah no stop don’t do it, opine the headweasels.

But they may be mistaken.

I reckon it has to be worth a try.

So yeah, that’s the new project. All going well, it’s going to get WEEDY around these parts. (And I’m going to try not to get scared into paralysis, which would be very me.)

PS: I just reread last week’s post and realised that the above is essentially a repetition of it, only this time with a possibly useful metaphor. In an act of defiant self-rewilding, I’m going to publish it anyway, because it’s what I want to say today, and that’s the point.

Seriously.

The whole thing has been personally, professionally, existentially shattering.

I don’t actually know if I’ve had Covid-19 or not. I may have, back in March 2020, when Ireland was still sorting out its testing infrastructure. My elder child and I had the classic respiratory symptoms, but we didn’t get tested until (respectively) day 18 and day 11 after onset, and neither test detected the virus.

I spent the rest of 2020 enduring a series of irksome health crises, some of which landed me in hospital, some of which were consistent with long Covid, but since they were only one or two notches more serious than my usual tatty string of health issues, it’s impossible to say for certain what was going on.

Regardless, whether it was due to the Big Bad Virus or not, my already frail abilities to structure my time, plan and carry out tasks, act usefully in relation to non-urgent matters — in short, my executive function — just…

…c o m p l e t e l y . . .

. . . d  i  s  s  o  l  v  e  d  .  .  .

I mean.

Completely.

(Since you ask, yes, I still managed to do my one word and my one stitch every day. I’ve been doing that for a decade now, and apparently it’ll take more than the mere upending of life as we know it to stop me. But for many, many, many of those days, the word was more likely to be in a WhatsApp message than my novel draft, and the stitch was a few seconds’ work on a years-long crochet project I keep in my bedroom for times when no other textile work is possible. These still count, mind you. That’s part of the deal.)

But sure, look. Hardly surprising to be having difficulties, says you, in the foggy, floaty, out-of-time context of a hard lockdown.

You’re not wrong.

But even after the initial restrictions eased up, and we could once again venture more than a few kilometres away from our homes — and meet each other, carefully — and then maybe slightly less carefully — and people began to travel longer distances — and a timid, etiolated version of a summer holiday became a realistic possibility — and the autumn surge raised the stakes again — and a “meaningful Christmas” put us all back in the slammer for the beginning of 2021 — and then that, too, passed — and we began to get our jabs (ALLELUIA) — and all the rest of it … even after all that, I still felt significantly impaired. In myself. In my daily life, and in my broader being.

So around the middle of 2021 I went and got myself assessed for ADHD, and guess what? I have that.

Cue identity crisis.

It turns out I have a lot of internalised ableism. I wish it weren’t so, but there it is.

You see, the ADHD thing wasn’t my first time splashing around in this particular pond. It’s nearly four years now since a specialist confirmed my informed conclusion that I’m autistic. Turns out, in fact, that I’m a very typical case of a parent who watched their kids being assessed and diagnosed and went “…wait, if they are, what am I?” I sought an official diagnosis, not because I needed it for any immediate practical reason, but in large part as a gesture of solidarity with my children.

Being told I was indeed autistic was like being granted membership of an exclusive club to which I’d applied. It was a joyful and positive thing for me. Only later did the insidious effects of unchallenged ableism, and the realisation that I was unwittingly carrying decades of microtrauma, begin to make themselves felt. Let’s just say there’s a lot to unpack.

Adding ADHD to the picture really brings it into focus. I think it’s fair to say that the pandemic has made all disabilities more intense, and neurodiversity is no exception. 2021 has left me feeling like a Deficient and Disordered person — clue’s in the name, after all. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Thanks, eugenics!

(No, seriously. Get me to give you my rant about the history and politics of neurodiversity some time. It’s spicy.)

So that’s me: Deficient and Disordered.

Rationally, I know that’s bullshit.

Or at least, questionable.

Or at the very least, not the whole story … right?

But it’s a powerful discourse, very hard to push against when you’re already somewhat pulverised by *GESTURES AT EVERYTHING*.

For the avoidance of doubt: I am addressing the situation, with appropriate professional help, and I’m not currently in need of any health advice.

But what, you rightly ask, has ANY of this got to do with the price of lemons?

To put it another way, why am I telling you this — why here, and why now?

Fair question. Very fair.

I find the answer rather sad, actually. The fact is, part of what has happened to me is that I no longer feel able to speak with authority. I used to think I had a fairly good understanding of creativity and art-making — at least enough to start writing about them, and maybe to help a few people reach their own understanding.

Then again, I used to think I was a vaguely functional human being, and look how wrong THAT turned out to be!

Joke. That’s a joke.

(Mostly.)

Look, it’s not that I don’t believe I’m functional. Clearly, I am. Vaguely, at least. In parallel with all the evidence of my falling apart these past two years, I can also point to tonnes of things I did manage, and did achieve, despite everything.

It’s more that discovering I’m definitely extremely neurodivergent has turned my whole sense of self inside-out. Or moved it six metres to the left without warning me. Or revealed that I’ve actually been looking at the back of the tapestry all these years, not the front. And having been so oblivious to something so huge for so long, how can I trust myself to say anything useful?

For this and other reasons, I fell silent.

I stopped posting to the blog some time in 2020, and the mental topography of 2021 ensured that until now I haven’t been able to start again.

And you know what? That’s painful. It’s not what I want. My creative work is above all an act of communication, and Strange Forms was supposed to be my home, my haven, where I could express all the seething, sparking, swirling ideas I have about life and art and creativity and oh, everything.

That’s not actually how I set it up, though.

The truth is, Strange Forms, as I originally created it, turns out to be heavily masked.

Neurodivergent people mask some to most of the time. We learn it so young, and we do it so thoroughly, that we often don’t even see we’re doing it until some crisis forces us to look. It’s part of how we try to stay safe, and in the long term it’s quite bad for us.

Without intending it — or even realising what I was doing — I invented a mask persona for this site. I endowed her with traits and signals that I believed would make her plausible, likeable, acceptable. Essentially, I wanted her to pass as neurotypical — specifically, so that she’d have a chance at building a sustainable online business.

And that’s the crux of the whole thing. Because what I know deep in my bones — a strict rule of the world, which I’ve followed all my life — is that I will never be a Popular and Successful Human if I show the people what I’m really like. (Yeah, I know. Don’t argue. We’re talking emotions here.)

It follows from this that any attempt to present myself as conforming to the expectations of any group of people, no matter the context, necessarily involves masking. Because according to the rule as stated, not masking guarantees failure.

Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clear that masking guarantees perdition.

A pretty conundrum.

We turn now, with a distinct sense of relief, to the price of lemons.

The basic deal is, things are going to be different around here.

1. Strange Forms is not going to behave much like an online business, at least for the next while. No try-my-delicious-creativity-coaching, no join-my-list, no buy-my-product. I want to see what I build when I’m an authentic version of myself, rather than a pallid, flimsy version of someone I’m imagining you want to see.
2. Strange Forms is very much part of how I need to express myself creatively. I have so many ideas and plans, and I really hope I can bring some of them into the world. I want to do lots of writing and visual art and making and performance. I want to make a podcast. I want to make a YouTube channel. Most importantly, I want to connect. And I have to be extremely careful about how I show up here, to avoid falling into the masking trap.
3. I still think that Reboot Your Creative Drive is potentially pretty useful. It was written before I reached my current understanding of myself, so I do cringe a bit at some parts of it. It was also written in the Before Times, and that shows. However, there’s a lot in there that might help someone. I’d like to keep it available. I’ll change the language around it, though.

All of this will happen gradually. I have a bit of rewriting and tweaking to do. I’ll be leaving the old blog posts up, because that’s how I roll, and I’m aiming to establish a regular posting practice here in 2022.

So yeah, the pandemic broke me.

What I’m kind of hoping is that it broke me open.

Wish me luck.

Do you like self-coercion as a tactic for making art?

One of my favourite pieces of artistic trivia concerns the eighteenth-century Italian dramatist Vittorio Alfieri, who (we are told) would instruct his manservant to tie him to his writing chair every morning until he’d done his allotted quota of work.

Yes, you read that right.

To tie him.

To his writing chair.

Get a good mental picture of that, now.

(What he expected the manservant to do after the writing session is not a matter of polite historical record, hurr hurr hurr.)

Alfieri is an extreme example of a principle so prevalent in our society these days that it might fairly be described as dominant.

(Not unlike Alfieri’s manservant, hurr hurr OK I’ll stop.)

Yes, Nike, I’m looking at you, and your JUST DO IT schtick. Push through the pain barrier. Crush it. All that carry-on.

Sorry, but no thanks. A crucial aspect of my creative practice is that it isn’t forced. I don’t go in for Just Do It motivation, or for pushing, or crushing, or being tied to articles of furniture (…at least, not when I’m working, ba-dum-tssh!).

It’s not my bag, baby

Well, how nice, you may reply, how positively spiffing, Léan, that you need never force yourself to do something you don’t feel like.

Now, hold your horses, because that’s not it either.

All I’m saying is that self-coercion is incompatible with my creative practice.

That’s not some moral stand I’m taking: it’s just a fact. Indeed, it’s a highly inconvenient fact, because I live in the same world you do, and sometimes I need to get something done that I don’t feel like doing.

When that happens, I wish I were able to Just Do It.

I’m genuinely inspired by the model of the super-organised artist who has the Creative Habit locked and loaded. He sits down at his desk each day to rattle out his quota of words. She shows up at her studio having already meditated and put dinner in the slow-cooker. They do what it takes.

It may have been William Faulkner who said he wrote only when inspiration struck – “Fortunately, it strikes at nine o’ clock every morning.”

There’s beauty in that image of regularity, and it works for a lot of people. My grandmother wrote for three hours every morning, Monday to Friday, rain or shine. She published more than fifty books, so presumably she was on to something.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to establish that sort of fruitful routine.

Actually, I kind of am able, just not for longer than about a week at a time. There are too many variables in my life over which I have too little control. Reluctantly, after many attempts, I have concluded that Just Do It is not a viable strategy for me – at least, not for the moment.

And hey, if you’ve read this far, I’m thinking you might be in the same boat. So what do we do instead?

Three ways to make art without self-coercion

One

Do self-engagement. Find out what specific things are apt to lull you into a creative frame of mind. Keep a list, and when you encounter resistance, pick something from that list and do it, with a flourish.

See if that helps.

If the resistance persists, get down in there and be present with it.

Notice the physical sensations it produces. Talk to it, and listen for its responses. Many people find that actually writing down a dialogue with the resistance can help to tease out what’s going on, at least enough to unravel the snarl and get working again.

That’s all you need for now.

Two

Here’s an idea I got from a wise friend.

Beside my desk is a piece of string suspended between two shelf-brackets, with a row of little cards attached to it by those dinky little mini-clothes-pegs that I find so irresistible. On each card is written the name of a current project.

This assemblage is called the Washing-Line of Possibility, and when I look up at it I remember that I’m not trapped; I have choices.

If you’re comfortable with having several projects on the go, and the one you need to work on is unappealing for some reason, try another for a while and see if that loosens things.

You’ll probably find, when you go back to the primary project, that your lovely, helpful brain has been foostering away behind the scenes resolving whatever was holding you up.

Three

Take the softly-softly approach.

Determine what Barbara Sher refers to as the CWU – the Complete Willingness Unit. That’s the largest chunk of your work that does not trigger your resistance.

Think about what you want to get done. Break it down. Now break it down some more. Keep going until that inner voice says, “Well, OK. I could probably do that.”

Even if all you will agree to do is sit down at your desk or stroke your clean brushes or pull open the drawer where the cut pieces lie, that’s the deal.

That’s officially enough.

Let yourself do it, whatever it is, without judgement, then ask again, what’s the CWU?

For bonus points, celebrate every little win. Come up with a delicious reward scheme, and follow through it.

(That last bit is really important, by the way. I don’t want to confess to you how old I was when it finally dawned on me that breaking a promise to myself is really no better than breaking a promise to somebody else. I was old, people. I mean, younger than I am now, obviously, but still. Old.)

And look, if all else fails…

…you can at least procrastinate productively.

Use your resistance as leverage to knock other tasks off the to-do list that might otherwise languish there. My dear, there is no shame in an alphabetised spice-rack. (But if there were, it would be located between the rosemary and the tarragon. AM I RIGHT?!?)

And try again tomorrow. Best of luck.