Find Your Voice and Stop F***ing Up Your Hair: Advice to a Teenage Me

What advice would you give to your teenage self?

Let’s first set the stage by meeting the star of the show. Behold, Teenage Jessa:

My hair is as straight as I was pretending to be.

Teenage Jessa was very different from the Adult Jessa y’all know and love. For one, Teenage Jessa was the goodiest two-shoes that ever existed, long before Adult Jessa learned the hard way that following the rules doesn’t land you the world on a platter. Teenage Jessa would have never cussed or had sex or smoked the devil’s cabbage, that’s for sure. She spent most of her free nights at church events, for fun! She still loved music, but her dreams were a lot bigger back then. Teenage Jessa wanted to be the next Taylor Swift; Adult Jessa would crumble under that kind of pressure. And perhaps the starkest contrast is my state of mental health, because Teenage Jessa had to contend with some of the worst of my OCD and anxiety, while I’ve learned to control a lot of it these days.

It’s funny that I got this prompt today because I often think about what I’d say to a younger version of myself if I ever got to meet her. I consider myself to be very in-touch with my inner child — she’s running the show half the time — but my inner teenager is another story. Maybe it’s because I look back at that stage of my life and cringe a little. It’s easy to give Child Jessa some grace as an undiagnosed autistic little girl who just really loved parakeets, but in retrospect, Teenage Jessa seemed absolutely insufferable. Good little church girl who gets straight As and served as senior class president? I’m surprised I wasn’t voted “most punchable face.” (In reality, I was voted “most gullible,” which is…not much better.)

So what would I do different if I could relive my teen years? Well, this is the advice I’d give Teenage Jessa if I ever got to speak to her:

Be Bolder

Sometimes I think of all the lost opportunities I left unpursued. I could have moved to Nashville or LA or New York and made it big in the music industry. I could have posted more diligently on YouTube or promoted myself better on social media. I could have asked Chase Johnson to prom with me. Looking back through my life, I very seldom regret things I have done. Rather, I tend to regret those things I haven’t done. If I could go back, I’d take so many more risks. As the saying goes, shoot for the moon — even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. In a lot of ways, I feel like I never even left Earth.

Be Gayer

It took me a long time to come to terms with my bisexuality. Compulsive heteronormativity is one hell of a drug, okay? I definitely flirted with the idea of liking girls as a teenager, and I remember some complicated feelings arising around some of my close female friends, which I confided to my mother and absolutely no one else. Unfortunately, I was very steeped in an evangelical church that frowned upon all things queer, and so I convinced myself I was as straight as my artificially flattened scene kid hair at the time. I wish I’d given ladies a chance sooner, as I probably would have avoided quite a few less-than-stellar hetero relationships.

Be More Open-Minded

I’ll admit I parroted a lot of the bullshit my adolescent friends preached. All that “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” crap. I didn’t really mean any of it, and a part of me knew it was wrong to believe that stuff, but I wanted my friends to like me, and most importantly, I wanted God to like me. I thought I had to check a bunch of boxes to call myself a Christian. I thought I had to be conservative and marry a man and pop out some kids and live the white picket fence life to make Jesus happy, when that’s not the truth at all. There’s no “wrong” way to be a Christian, unless you’re flying in the face of what Christ stood for (like a good amount of prominent evangelicals).

Develop Your Talents

I’ve always said that if I’d had even fraction of a crumb of an attention span as a youngin’, I’d probably be a virtuoso guitarist by now. Sadly, my ADHD remained undiagnosed for nearly three decades, so I feel like I wasted a lot of time I could have used on productive things, like practicing my instrument or learning another language. It sucks to think of all the potential I could have had. As much as I embrace my neurodivergences, there are aspects of my brain I really don’t like, and this is definitely one of them. If I could talk to my younger self, I’d tell her to pester literally every adult in her life until they get her a damn ADHD assessment. I was literally treading water with a disability I wasn’t even aware of.

Get a Car

This one might be on Mom and Dad, since I was the youngest by a lot and I always got the feeling that they were hesitant to let me “adult” on my own. That being said, it took until well into my twenties before I finally learned to drive, and so I didn’t really gain that sense of independence you should feel as a teenager. I didn’t get my Hilary Duff “Sweet Sixteen” experience of driving around with my blonde hair everywhere, and that’s sad. I wish I’d annoyed my parents about getting a car more than I did, and while I know some of it wasn’t their fault — we were a working class family without a lot of extra cash — I could have totally like, saved up for it, ya know?

Advocate For Yourself

I think this is a running theme. I needed to advocate for so many things for myself. Honestly, I’m a pretty assertive person nowadays. Like, I told off a whole man in the karaoke bar once. Teenage Jessa would have never. But I wish she would have had that energy. There were so many things she needed in order to be successful, and yet she was too afraid to speak up and make her needs and preferences known. It’s why I never got a car, never got ADHD meds, and was basically strong-armed into the uglier side of Christianity despite my gut not aligning with it. It took me a long time to find my voice, and even longer to learn how to use it.

Stop Straightening Your Hair

Seriously, you’re frying the fuck out of it. Someday you’ll appreciate your natural mermaid waves.

When Despair Seems Like the Only Thing Left

I realize this blog functions as something of a barometer of how my life is going at the moment. When things are great, you get fun travel blogs and reviews of Taylor Swift’s newest releases. When things are not so great…well, that’s this post, sadly.

I feel like I’m sending a letter in a bottle to whoever is willing to listen. My life has been on a solid downhill track since Charlie Kirk had to get shot and ruin my entire plans for the future. Did you know my wife was the Office Depot girl? We were in the process of buying a house when the controversy went down and she lost her job over it, tanking my credit score and requiring us to drain my wife’s entire life savings to survive. Now I never liked Kirk, but I don’t think he deserved to die, and I’m especially pissed his smarmy ass got capped now because it literally avalanched into fucking with my well-being. Every time I walk by the house we were supposed to buy for our future family, I die a little inside.

A while back, I wrote this song. It’s called “Grandma.”

Now when I wrote this song, I wrote it as a personal manifesto — I will reach old age, and I will become a grandma someday. Even though it hasn’t been very long since I wrote it, with each passing day, it gets harder to sing it with my full chest. Because truth be told, I don’t know if I’ll ever reach senescence. I can’t help but feel either that either I’ll be gone in the next few years, or the entire world as we know it will be gone.

My entire life, I’ve wanted to follow in the footsteps of the rock stars I’ve looked up to growing up. Now, we barely have rock stars. We’ve got Taylor Swift, a shit ton of political talking heads, and a smattering of microinfluencers that like two people actually care about. That’s it. Those are your “rock stars.” If you’re lucky, you’ll have a song blow up on TikTok for a second, but then what? There’s no gaining fame and fortune from music anymore, especially with the advent of AI. Why would anyone seek out new music when you can just beep-boop three thousand pirate metal songs about kanagaroos? I probably sound like “old man shouts at cloud,” but having played with fire and seeing how destructive it is firsthand, I think I’m justified in feeling a little paranoid.

Now, I don’t even know if I want to go public with my music, or anything for that matter. I’ve seen how quickly things can go south. You can get cancelled over the slightest transgressions, and I don’t know if I could handle that kind of scrutiny. Not to mention the litigious nature of the music industry as it stands today. Music is and has always been a derivative art form — musicians are constantly aping other artists they look up to. But in a post-“Blurred Lines” world, you can get slapped with a lawsuit over songs that share a similar vibe, regardless of whether or not they have any commonalities on a theory level. It’s enough to sue over a song that’s inspired by someone else’s. That’s right— you can’t even have inspirations anymore. Why the fuck would I want to keep writing music when there’s a chance my heroes can slap me with a suit? I’d put down my guitar forever if that happened to me. I’d rue the day I picked it up in the first place, in fact.

And not to mention that a bisexual white woman who was near my age was just fucking murdered by the state, and what is the general public’s response? Instant character assassination. I can’t even share some of the shit I saw people post about the late Renee Good, who was, by all accounts, a great person. But according to the shitheads online, she was a terrible mother who had it coming. Never mind the fact that she could have been like, Casey Anthony levels of “terrible mother” and she’d still deserve a fair trial. How the hell are we letting these armed thugs wander the streets acting as judge, jury, and executioner. This is America. Where the fuck was her due process?

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I’m just scared. The political violence is ramping up and I don’t know if I’ll be the next victim. And if I am the next victim, what will the world write about me? Will they say I’m a slut who deserved it? Will they bring up my divorce and say I was a bad wife? Will they make up even worse for me in order to justify my murder? I sincerely don’t want to be a martyr. I always dreamed I’d be the next Ann Wilson, not Anne Frank. I wanted to change the world through my music, not be slain with such casual cruelty and thrown away like garbage. I always dreamed of better for myself. I sound like I’m suicidal, and I promise I’m not, if only because the only thing that scares me more than this life is the thought of what could come afterwards.

I don’t like the direction the world is going, and I sincerely wish I could get off this ride. I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to keep living like this.

Just Do It: The True Secret to Beating Imposter Syndrome

I’m sure you’ve all heard about my newest musical endeavor, The Kalamazooligans. If you haven’t had the pleasure of being trapped in a car with me in the last week or so, allow me to show you our first single. It’s…interesting.

Especially once “Elmo” and the “children’s choir” join in.

Following the “success” of “What’s in a Name?”, the members of the project started cooking up a ridiculous, over-the-top twelve minute monster song that essentially paints me as this benevolent, chaotic musical goddess known as the BEAT MOTHER who has taken all these misfits under her wing and gave them purpose and, perhaps most importantly, sick ass beats. It started as a joke, but it’s a huge role to step into, especially since, between me and you…

I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.

How I feel doing literally anything, but *especially* music.

I am not a Certified Audio Engineer™ nor do I have any proper training aside from one semester in the media production program at the local university, which I subsequently had to drop out of due to financial reasons. I have no business calling myself a “music producer” or “sound technician” or “audio engineer” or even “person who vaguely knows what they’re doing with a digital audio workstation.” In short, I feel like a fraud. An imposter.

Surely you’ve heard of imposter syndrome, that awful feeling that you don’t actually deserve to be perceived as “good” at the thing you’re known for, even despite whatever achievements you may have in that field. My old band, Syrin, had a pretty dope song about the subject, although I don’t have a link to it anywhere. Hell, I’ll probably write a song about it myself. It makes for great writing material, but it sure is hell to live through. Frankly, I don’t feel like I deserve the title of “beat mother.” I don’t feel like I deserve to teach music. Half of the time, I don’t even feel like it’s my right to play music.

But I’m learning to just do it anyways. Do the damn thing.

That’s the difference. That’s what separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls, and the grown-up nonbinary folks from the wee enbies. Maybe it’ll be uncomfortable at first, and maybe you’ll embarrass yourself a little. Do it anyways. You’ll never improve if you don’t try.

You can’t call yourself a musician or a writer or an artist or anything if you don’t do the thing. That is the crucial part of the equation. I can call myself a football player, but throw me onto the field and I’m useless because I’ve never done the work. But here’s the cool thing — there’s a very low barrier for entry into a lot of interests. If you wanna learn guitar, all you really need is a guitar. But you have to, you know, practice the guitar. Then, that’s when magic happens. That’s when you’ll start to feel that sense of being an imposter fade away. “Doing the thing” is the mortal enemy of imposter syndrome because it gives you the power to stare it down in the face and say “Well actually, I can call myself a musician because I am playing music.”

You don’t need a fancy degree for most things if you’ve got the fortitude to seek the knowledge yourself. Allow yourself to explore stuff that interests you and learn a thing or two. Most of what I’ve learned about music production, I’ve learned by dicking around in various digital audio workstations. Maybe a formal education would make me a stronger producer, but I’m not going to let my lack of professional experience keep me from already doing what I love to do. That’s where the word “amateur” comes from, actually — the Latin root for “love.” It’s not about making money or garnering fame. Amateurs do things simply because they love to do them, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Being an amateur doesn’t make you an imposter — it makes you someone who is in love with the act of learning itself.

Unless your interest is brain surgery, you shouldn’t need formal training to dabble in the things that fascinate you. In the immortal words of Nike and/or Shia LaBeouf, just do it.

A Daddy-Daughter Dance With Father Time

Do you need time?

We gettin’ philosophical with these prompts it seems. I’ll bite.

When I was little, I wanted nothing more than to be a grandma. I was really close to my maternal grandmother, from whom I got the name Joyce. To little kid-Jessa, she had the perfect life. She didn’t really have any responsibilities. My grandma never worked a day in her life, and she was passenger princess supreme since the day she first drove a car…immediately into a building. All she really needed to do was slather stuff in lard and cook it up, and aside from that, her life was all watching game shows and kicking back in her La-Z-Boy.

Now as a thirtysomething, I keep myself busy enough. I’ve got two jobs that tend to occupy a good deal of my time, an ever-growing polycule (I think I have like, a boyfriend now? Maybe two?!), and a band/collective of friends that has been hard at work cookin’ up creative projects galore.

But I want more.

For a while, it was hard to say what I wanted more of. I certainly need more money — my wife lost her job in a truly fucked up way I can’t really elaborate on at the moment, and we haven’t quite recovered since. A part of me wanted more fame, as I’ve longed to be a rock star ever since I first watched the Bon Jovi Crush tour VHS tape as a child. Maybe I wanted more things to love and care for — more cats, a dog, a bearded dragon, even human children of my own. I have a deep motherly instinct I’m slowly coming to terms with, after all. But I think the overarching theme of everything is that I need more time.

I’m 32 as of writing. I realize I’m a spring chicken compared to a lot of folks, but I’m also not in my prime anymore. I don’t have the stamina I used to at times. I get winded walking up the stairs, and I can’t belt like I’m Ann fucking Wilson the way I did in 2013, when I sang “Crazy On You” for American Idol and actually almost made it. I can’t imagine jumping around a stage headbanging like I did when I played in a shitty pop-punk band, and the thought of sleeping in that tiny ass tour van with my current 30-something spine is the stuff of nightmares. I used to swing dance like a motherfucker, too. I could do crazy ass aerials like these. If I tried doing any of those moves now, I’d snap my neck and die probably. I’m sure some of these things could be alleviated if I actually worked out like I’m supposed to, ate better, stretched, and found a way to intake a certain herb that is common and legal in the state of Michigan that doesn’t involve smoking it (edibles just don’t hit the same, man). But even if I ate the finest organic produce, did yoga at sunrise like clockwork, and smoked nothing more than brisket, I’d still have to contend with the fact that my health will decline someday. No one is young and healthy forever.

All this to say that I’m certainly feeling the weight of getting older. Or to put it frankly, I feel like I’m running out of time.

My main, cool job is hosting game shows for the music bingo and trivia junkies of the greater Kalamazoo area, but I moonlight as an overnight caregiver at a nursing home. It’s not the most glamorous job by any means, but it’s a decent enough living. It’s also not something I’m particularly good at — I’m notoriously shitty at my job compared to the other, less neurospicy caregivers who mostly have kids of their own to practice on. That being said, I do enjoy what I do most nights. It’s a pretty carefree job once all the residents are asleep.

But then you start thinking.

At a nursing home, you’re constantly surrounded by reminders that were running out of time. Memento mori, if you wanna get Latin with it. You find it every time you enter one of the residents’ rooms. Look around and you’ll be greeted by senior pics and wedding photos of a bygone era. It’s easy to forget that old people were once just young people like us, each with their own dreams for the future — and each now coming to terms with their own ending. The saddest part, in my opinion, are the dusty keyboard in Ms. E’s room or Ms. B’s largely untouched crocheting kit. This is a woman who, fifty years ago, built guitars for Gibson when the company was based in Kalamazoo. She could have built my old Epiphone at that factory for all I know. And now she can barely hold a crochet hook. The Other Ms. B was an avid swing dancer for years, and now she can’t even stand up independently, let alone do any of those crazy aerials from that video up there. A literal badass combat vet cries for help every night because he peed himself again. This isn’t the future I want for myself, and yet it’s the future we all get, barring a literal tragedy. You die young or watch yourself get old enough to lose sphincter control.

Truth be told, there are a lot of things in the future I’m not scared of, and I’m even excited for. The next generation of Pokémon is Gen 10, and the next Taylor Swift album is her lucky number 13, and while the most recent installments in their lengthy catalogues have been a little disappointing, I’m still hoping my favorites bring their A-game next time around. I’m excited to hopefully watch this political landscape crumble and rebuild into something better for everyone, not just the elites. I’m excited for my next slice of pizza, my next joint, my next song, my next stuffed animal, and my next kiss from one of my partners, but I’m not excited for everything that comes after, when it’s all over and I’m left alone with nothing but my anxieties. I’m really excited to have kids someday, but in a way it almost feels like game over. Like that’s the last big milestone. What comes after that? Menopause? Grandkids? Death? And what the fuck do I do when I can’t hold a guitar anymore?

It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be this young again. I remember writing earlier this year, around the time of my birthday, about how all my heroes are getting older, and so am I. It’s a weird feeling, watching everyone grow and change, even as every day feels the same somehow. I’m scared of dying, but I’m also scared of getting older. There’s no winning. I guess I take solace in knowing even the great and powerful Stevie Nicks felt this way once, so I’ll let her sing this one out.

Bullied by My Girl Scout Troop Leader (And Why It STILL Affects Me)

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Once upon a time, I was wildly uncool.

I realize I wrote that as if I’m now like, the bastion of coolness or something. I don’t want to pretend I’m like, George Clinton levels of cool or anything.

Now *there’s* a Clinton I want for president.

But although I’m not cool enough to front legendary funk collective Parliament-Funkadelic, I’m significantly cooler than I was as a child, when I had to eat lunch in the library to avoid being pelted with ranch dressing packets. Bullying was a pretty constant factor in my pre-high school years. I went through it all — one guy punched me right in the gut, another in the face, two girls conspired to get me in trouble so I’d lose my class McDonalds trip (those bastards), and most of the kids I went to school with typically followed any utterance of my name with “sucks.” I managed to mitigate a lot of it by avoiding my classmates, but it’s not like I could avoid people forever, you know? I could count the number of friends I had on one hand, and for most of that period, I could count the number of friends I had on one finger. And she went to a different school!

Flash-forward to 2025, and while I’m not where I wanted to be professionally yet, for the most part, my life is looking pretty swell. I have a loving wife and a sweet girlfriend and now even a few casual male partners that may turn into something serious. I have a band — I’ve been in and out of bands for most of my adult life, actually — and the bonds I’ve formed through these projects have mostly changed my life for the better. And perhaps most importantly, I have friends. Like, a lot of them. And it’s awesome!

But sometimes, something will be dragged up out of my memory that puts me right back into the scared little kid mindset I had growing up.

Meet Mrs. Marsack.

She didn’t actually look like this, but it felt like the right image to use.

I think that’s how her last name was spelled. I kind of hope I spelled it wrong because I totally don’t intend to dox this lady. That being said, if anyone deserves awful things, it’s Mrs. Marsack. Because Mrs. Marsack broke my child heart worse than anyone my own age ever could.

When I was in elementary school, I was in Girl Scouts. I don’t wanna shit-talk Girl Scouts because it’s a pretty neat organization as a whole, and everyone knows the cookies go hard. I still grab myself a box of Samoas whenever I encounter a gaggle of entrepreneurial scouts in the wild. That being said, my experience was not all cookies and roses. That’s because I had Mrs. Marsack as a troop leader.

Mrs. Marsack had a daughter in the program. Her name was like, maybe Abigail or Emily or something. Anyways, she was one of the “cool kids.” Most of the girls in my troop were “cool” to an extent. But not me! I was the little weirdo autistic kid who stimmed by making bird sounds and who wouldn’t shut up about Bon Jovi to literally anyone who’d listen. So needless to say, I had a bad time.

Kids who liked *these* guys were doomed from the start.

But I really did enjoy the activities! So when a huge camping trip was announced, I was absolutely thrilled. I’d never been camping before, and we were about to do it all — swimming, hiking, horseback riding, canoeing, everything a little girl could imagine and more. I almost had my bags packed when Mrs. Marsack called my mom in to “chat.” That’s when she dropped the most devastating news.

All the girls were invited…except me.

Apparently I “wasn’t mature” enough to go on the trip. My mother knew it was a bullshit excuse. I was significantly more mature in all the ways that actually mattered. Mrs. Marsack just didn’t like me.

This is the degree of “fuck you in particular” we’re talking.

So I locked myself in the bathroom and cried for hours. I think my mom had to pry the door open, I was that distraught. I’d always felt ostracised by my peers, but never to the extent that she’d made me feel. That rejection left a scar on my heart that never really healed if I’m entirely honest. Nothing will ever give me that experience back.

These days, I don’t often think about that time in my life. But every now and then, something will jostle that feeling out and I’m once again that scared, sad little kid on the inside. I think that’s why I’m so in touch with my inner child now, as an adult. I never had space to nurture that part of me away from the judgmental eyes of my peers and unsupportive adults like Mrs. Marsack. I think that’s also a small part of why I’m so outwardly outgoing in adulthood. I crave companionship the way a flower craves rain because I was so deprived of that community, that sisterhood. I need to be around people all the time.

It sucks because I had plenty of bullies in my peer group (looking at you, both other Jessica S.‘s in my class), but Mrs. Marsack was the first time an adult showed me not all grown-ups are my friend. I almost feel a little survivorship guilt because this trauma is relatively mild compared to the backstories of many of my friends. Most of their first betrayals by trusted adults were in their own families, and with much, much worse situations. But Mrs. Marsack still left a huge gash in my heart that I still contend with.

So if you’re reading this, let the message be this: be kind to the kids in your life. Especially the weird ones. You never know what kind of influence you might have on them. Don’t be some poor little girl’s Mrs. Marsack.

Creativity Overdose: What It Is and How to Fight It

So my wife and a good mutual friend of ours recently staged an intervention in my living room over a glaring problem that’s been worrying them for a while.

(Okay, it wasn’t an intervention, but it sure felt like it, dammit.)

You see, I suffer from something I’ve dubbed Creativity Overdose.

It’s an insidious beast that comes at the intersection of bipolar and ADHD. Creativity Overdose is when your ideas start to come at the expense of people around you. Another good name would be “Eddy from Ed, Edd, & Eddy syndrome,” since it’s basically what he has. Every three seconds, you come up with some hairbrained get-rich-quick scheme or the newest version of The Best Idea Ever™ that consumes your entire being. And that would be fine if you a. followed through on these ideas and b. they weren’t coming at the detriment of your loved ones.

My poor wife has had to deal with approximately 6,348 new ideas since January, and getting back into academia and becoming a specialist on the way AI affects the brain on a psychological level was the straw that broke the camel’s back (I’m shocked it wasn’t my short-lived oil painting business). I don’t envy her for having to deal with my manic ass on a daily basis, and I want to be a better, more reliable partner for her. She deserves that much from me. So here are four ideas I’m putting into practice to negate my struggles with Creativity Overdose and keep the mental and interpersonal peace:

1. Write down your ideas (instead of burdening people with them)

This is hard if you’re an autistic extrovert like me. Sometimes, the neurospiciness kisses the extroversion just right and you feel the need to infodump about every grandiose idea you’ve ever had to your loved ones. I can assure you, they don’t want to hear about it. I know it hurts, but for the most part, it’s true. This is tough love. Nobody wants to hear about your Parakeet Circus idea, especially when the last time you tried to start a Cirque du Soleil featuring parakeets, you blew up three parakeets. Unless the project is cued to be finished or released, absolutely shut up about it. Not everything is about you. (I’m talking especially to myself here.)

2. Write down all of your current projects

Okay, now that we’re not telling everyone all the shit we’re up to, let’s figure out what we’re actually up to anyways. Write down every single thing you’re currently working on, no matter how small or insignificant. My current list has all the musical projects I’m working on, my two jobs, school stuff, my podcast, and even getting my passport. Write down some steps you’ll have to take for each one, too. Putting it all down on paper will help you see how busy you really are and maybe give you a little more perspective on how much you actually need to fill your plate. When you’re excited about stuff, it’s easy to underestimate how much it really takes to get things done.

3. Pick one thing to hyperfocus on for a month

Here is the tricky part. You’ve gotta prioritize. Label the projects on your list from most to least important. Like, “you’ll die if you don’t do this” to “this can wait a few months or even years.” Shelf the stuff that can wait. If writing the book that’s been on your heart for years can wait a few more years, that’s perfectly fine. Like, I’m probably gonna end up releasing Venona at an absolute snail’s pace, but I’m not worried about getting the story out there at this point. Unless something goes terribly wrong, we’ve still got a lot of time on this planet. Don’t worry if you can’t get to everything in the next year or so. Pick one thing (maybe two, since you’ll probably need to pick whatever your main job is for survival reasons) and really buckle down and get it done before moving on. It feels good to get something done for once, trust me.

4. Help someone else create something instead

Here’s something I’m really learning — it’s better to collaborate than work alone, and sometimes it can be just as rewarding helping your loved ones meet their goals as it is meeting your own. My wife wants to be a professional artist and merchandiser, so I’m going to step aside a while and let her work on that. I’m going to take a year off school so she can save for the equipment she needs, and I’m going to support her any way I can. See what your friends need for their endeavors and ask how you can help them. Assisting someone else in reaching their dreams can be a good feeling in and of itself, and it can further inspire you in your own dreams as well. The best part of having creative, ambitious people in your circle is that you can all help each other up.

So what do you think of Creativity Overdose? Have you experienced this in your life? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

If you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

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Autistic Joy: Little Things That Make Neurospicy Brains Happy

It’s rather unfortunate that autism has the less-than-favorable reputation it does. Sure, it’s more accepted than ever, to the point where it’s trendy on TikTok to claim neurodivergence (a trend I have mixed feelings about if I’m honest). But many on the spectrum still feel misunderstood by the public, with only 16 percent of autistic folks and their families feeling people actually “get” them and many choosing not to interact with the world because of it. It’s a big reason I’m self-diagnosed — when my childhood psychologist suggested the “A” word back in the early 2000s, my well-meaning parents ran the opposite direction, afraid their beloved daughter would get saddled with a label that would get her further ostracized by her peers. My girlfriend had a similar experience growing up. And then you have people like RFK Jr. who say — and I quote:

“[Autistic people will] never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.”

So yeah, it’s pretty clear the world looks down on us for being different, which, to be fair, has always been the case. It’s never been “cool” to be autistic, right? Why would anyone want to be on the autism spectrum?

Here’s where I’d say “Wrongo, partner!”

Definitely read that in her voice, by the way.

There are lots of special kinds of joy that come with being autistic, or even ADHD and similar kinds of neurospicy. There’s been quite a bit written on the neurodivergent love languages, many of which I feel are closely connected to the kinds of neurodivergent joy. That neurodivergent joy is what I want to write about, because I saw it at work amongst me, my ADHD wife, and my AuDHD girlfriend this past weekend when I took them to my hometown. That brings me to my first joy:

1. Sharing Lore

Taking my partners back home was such a cool experience. I got to share so many parts of my backstory with them, parts I couldn’t show them without taking them to the exact place in time where my story unfolded. I could point out my high school, the Dairy Queen I went to as a kid, all my favorite plushies in my childhood bedroom, and so much more. It’s all part of my lore, as I’ve started to say. Sharing parts of your past with your loved ones scratches the same itch as infodumping, except in this case, you’re infodumping about yourself!

Hearing other people’s lore helps us connect to them as well. This past weekend, my dad regaled us with the story of how he saved for two months to go to Woodstock, despite his coworkers making fun of him, because he knew it was going to be a big deal. He ended up going with six friends and left with 28. I knew music was a big part of my family’s lore, but I never truly knew the extent to which my own father was present for a huge moment in music history. Just taking that time to talk to him gave me a lot of joy.

2. Sharing Media

During the trip, I allowed my girlfriend, Livvy, to take control of the hotel television, since she has some sensory stuff regarding talking and background noise. Most of the time, she left the TV off and the three of us, ya know, engaged with the outside world. But when we got back to the room every night, Livvy would search for one of her childhood favorite shows, Zoom. She loved that show so much that her grandparents taped it and sent it to her so she could still watch it after it went off the air. And now, she wanted to share it with us!

I can’t express how happy she was that we not only took the time to watch what she wanted to show us, but actively participated in it as well. We started daydreaming funny skits and science experiments we could do in our spare time, like the kids on the show. We even had our favorite cast members and tried doing the “ubby wubby” language ourselves (with little success). Livvy was so pleased we were as into the show as she was!

3. Being Around Other Neurospicy Folks

When you’re wired differently, it can be exhausting masking in order to fit in with polite society. Masking is typically associated with “higher functioning” autistic individuals, as shitty and outdated as that terminology is (we prefer people refer to our support needs instead of the “high and low functioning” labels). As someone who’s gotten so good at masking that many outsiders aren’t aware I have the ‘tism in the first place, I can tell you it’s absolutely exhausting. It’s a form of hyper-vigilance and suppressing natural urges. You basically have to water down your entire personality.

But when you’re in a group of other neurodivergent people, you can let all of that fall away and reveal your true self. I don’t have to pretend to be interested in mundane things. I don’t have to make eye contact (which is scary as hell to me if I’m honest). I don’t even have to say words. I can communicate in noises if I want to, and oftentimes, that’s exactly what my partners and I do! It’s freeing to not be restricted by social norms and expectations.

4. Researching What You Love

I (probably rightfully) get a lot of crap from my loved ones for being too glued to my phone, but I’m going to let you all in on a little secret. If you see me on my phone, there’s a very small chance I’m texting a friend. More likely than not, I’m reading!

I’ve always been like this, and I’d be the first to admit that had smartphones not been invented, I’d have to carry a huge bag of books around with me everywhere I go. I’m always reading something or other, usually nonfiction, and usually about one of my special interests. I love reading about creativity, spirituality, or whatever library book has captured my attention most recently. When I was a kid, I’d hide in the nook between the kitchen and the bathroom in my grandma’s house, right where she kept a complete set of Encyclopedia Britannicas on a bookcase, and just study them for hours. I kind of miss physical books, if I’m honest, but I love having the ability to read about anything and everything at a whim nowadays. It’s a kind of special joy.

5. Being Respected

Obviously we love researching things, but we also love getting recognized for our research too! We love the thought of being an expert in our field of interest, even if it’s not a formal area of study. For me, music theory is a big area of interest. I do have a degree in music, which does make me feel good about myself, but even more than that, I love when people tell me that I’m knowledgeable. Even more than that, I love when I get a chance to demonstrate my knowledge. When someone asks me why a song works, I’m always happy to explain things like chord progressions and the circle of fifths and why those concepts are important in popular music.

I think that’s why it almost feels like a personal slight when we don’t get the respect we require as it involves a particular special interest. I still remember the one of the only times a non-music professor made me feel like shit about my abilities and know-how. It took me years to recover and get back to a place where I felt confident about myself in music again. We autistic and ADHD folks are so sensitive to the slightest criticism — we’re prone to rejection sensitive dysphoria for a reason — but the flip side is that we get an even stronger sense of pride from positive feedback.

Which of these “joys” do you relate to the most? Leave a comment below! And as always, if you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

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Putting on the Straight Jacket: Choosing Between Safety and Your Own Identity

Alright everyone, today we’re talkin’ trauma. But first, the daily prompt WordPress gave me tonight:

What sacrifices have you made in life?

It’s serendipitous that this was today’s prompt, because while this wasn’t necessarily the direction I was planning to go in with this topic, I feel there is another important angle to consider.

Living and being in the world authentically requires sacrifice. And it absolutely can cause trauma.

Up until a certain age, the trauma I experienced never really left the school hallways, so once I was done for the day, I could compartmentalize all that BS and, I don’t know, play Sims all day. My bullies didn’t really live rent-free in my mind since I was too busy thinking about all the stories I wanted to write, and to be entirely honest, I didn’t have much else to worry about as a child. You know, aside from my terrifying OCD-driven intrusive thoughts.

No brain, I *don’t* actually want to stab my mother, I literally just want to play dolls.

Here’s something I came to realize: things were so easy because I actually had a pretty privileged life growing up. I was white, relatively well-off (well, blue collar, but my family never hurt for food), and straight…right?

Oh.

In the immortal words of NSYNC, bi bi bi.

I think I always knew in my heart of hearts that I was bisexual. You see, speaking of Heart, I came to realize I was staring just as longingly at old photos of Ann Wilson as I was at Peter Frampton. Yes, I am a millennial. My mom gave me some of her vinyl collection when I was around 12, and the cover of Dreamboat Annie just like, awakened something in me.

Then, I went to the church I grew up in and that got beat out of me pretty quick. I learned what it was called when a girl thinks another girl is hot. It was called being a homosexual and it was bad because…they never really said aside from a couple of Bible verses that I’ve since discovered meant something else entirely. But the message was clear. If being gay was bad, then I was not gay, simply because I did not want to be bad.

And then I met my best friend in college. She was a lesbian. The closer we got, the more I realized I preferred being around her to any of the guys I dated. I even realized I preferred her company to that of the man I eventually married. No one made me laugh like her. No one understood me like her. And like, she was way cuter than most of the dudes too.

If you haven’t caught on yet, she’s my wife now.

But something changed when I just said “fuck it” and started living openly queer. Suddenly, religious and political discussions were a minefield and I’d be taken aback by how freely people would say the most dehumanizing bullshit about folks like me — especially if the person I was talking to didn’t immediately register that I wasn’t straight like them. I had to watch how I word things around strangers, as dropping a phrase containing the words “my wife” could potentially put me in danger. Driving through smaller towns felt especially unsettling now. I wasn’t sure if I was surrounded by people who’d want me dead if they knew the truth. I’m originally from a small town; I know how it is. These folks don’t often meet people who aren’t like them, and when you’re that insulated from the full range of human diversity, exposure to that diversity can feel threatening. And when people are threatened, all sense of reason falls to the wayside and it’s fight mode.

I don’t want to fight with these people. But they want to attack me. All for something I never chose for myself. All because I thought girls were pretty.

In the last few months since the current administration took over, I’ve been considering what I’d even do in the case that homosexuality is outlawed. I am bisexual, and I could put on the straight jacket if I really needed to. I had for all those years I exclusively dated men. But I realized I wasn’t truly happy in that arrangement. I wasn’t fully, openly myself.

That’s why the topic of sacrifice kind of hit me. I’m sacrificing a lot of comfort and privilege just by being who I really am for the first time. There’s a term for that constant sense of looking over your shoulder that comes with being a marginalized person. It’s called minority stress, and refers to the chronic stress that we experience from constant discrimination and not knowing if the next person we run into will be a crazed bigot who wants to murder us. The thing is, I never had to experience that as a kid. My wife may have, since she’s black and race is a lot harder to conceal than sexuality. But remember, I was a white kid in a white family in a 99 percent white town. The only source of trauma for me, like I mentioned at the start, was being bullied.

All of that being said, would I go back in the closet if it meant freeing myself from the stress and potential threats? Would I willingly live out the rest of my years playing the role of the traditional wife in a heterosexual marriage? Would I sacrifice my own identity for my safety? Honestly, I don’t think I would. It is hard adjusting to being a marginalized person when it’s not something I grew up experiencing, but after spending years running from myself, I’m not about to backtrack on work I’ve done to be who I really am. Because who I really am is finally here, and she’s ready to take on the world.

The Queen of Hungry: Surviving When Food Loses All Appeal

I just had a horrific realization.

All I’ve had to eat today is two mini Reese’s cups and three bites of a Tim Hortons croissant. There was a nonalcoholic beer and a virgin Moscow mule in there too for good measure, but for the most part, I’ve been subsisting off whatever nutrients my body has stored up.

And I’m still.

Not.

Hungry.

It’s not that I don’t want to eat. I simply haven’t had an appetite in months. And it’s getting worse.

My mukbang videos would consist of me staring at a cupcake and maybe licking the icing off while crying.

A few years back, I started Adderall as a way to combat my ADHD symptoms with quite a bit of success. For such a scary drug with so much potential for abuse, I didn’t notice any negative side effects at all — except for the small fact that it nuked my appetite. But I didn’t mind at the time. I was pretty overweight due to having just quit drinking in order to stifle a worsening alcohol problem, and getting sober did wonders along with the Adderall in getting me back down to a healthier weight. But now that I am a healthy weight, I don’t want to go too far in the opposite direction either.

So here’s the real scary thing I realized today. it was around noon and I’d been awake for a few hours when I went to grab food and coffee for me and my wife from the Tim Hortons down the road.

Okay Canada, just annex Michigan already.

I was ordering and nothing sounded appetizing, which isn’t unusual. Except I remembered I hadn’t taken my Adderall this morning. Instant-release Adderall only lasts 4 to 6 hours and the XR version lasts 12 hours, which means yesterday morning’s dose shouldn’t have been affecting me anymore. Typically by noon, if I don’t take my Adderall, my appetite starts coming back, but it was crickets. My appetite was still nowhere to be found.

Desperate, I got home and hit the uh, Penjamin Button.

Typically I can stimulate my appetite with a certain herb that is legal (and very prevalent) in the great state of Michigan. Today was different, though. I could have smoked enough green to make Snoop Dogg and Willie Nelson look at me funny, and absolutely no amount of THC in my bloodstream made me want to eat.

If my Adderall isn’t what’s causing me to stop eating, and if weed isn’t making me hungry anymore…

Am I dying?

Probably not, to be fair. My brother and my mother are certifiable hypochondriacs, so it’s not too outside the realm of possibility that I, too, am assuming the worst about my own state of health. My doctors have all commented on how healthy I seem. Like, high blood pressure runs in my family, and I’m at the age where my siblings had to start worrying about it, but my blood pressure is always low. (Pretty sure I’m a vampire or something — it would also explain the light sensitivity.)

Let’s play “Vampire or Just *Really* British?”

Still, there’s something unsettling about living with anorexia. And that’s what this is, albeit not the anorexia nervosa most people would associate with the term. Anorexia is the medical term for a loss of appetite, and while I’m not intentionally starving myself, I am afraid I’ll start seeing some of the symptoms of the eating disorder if I don’t get some nutrition in me soon. I could develop such nasty side effects as dry skin, bad breath, and even infertility, which is a deep-rooted fear I’ve written about before. Like, not to be TMI or anything, but my periods have dwindled to almost barely extant. And worst of all, I could lose my hair. Female pattern baldness and facial hair already run in my family. If I play my cards wrong, I could spend my twilight years looking like the white woman version of Steve Harvey.

I don’t know what the solution is to this problem either. Forcing myself to eat is nauseating, even when it’s stuff I love. Sometimes, when I need a quick snack, I buy myself a two-pack of Reese’s cups, which are by far my favorite candy, only to leave the second cup uneaten. My wife’s been racking her brain trying to think of ways to get me interested in food again. She’s spent probably well over $100 on fast food in the last few days trying to find anything that will get me eating. Most of it is still in our fridge, languishing. I feel awful about wasting it, but I just can’t bring myself to consume it.

This isn’t the first time an alarming lack of appetite has been a problem for me. As a kid, I was very sickly and uninterested in food for the most part. Part of it was because it often hurt to eat (I was prone to tonsil infections), and part of it was because I was a small autistic child with the taste of a small autistic child. But a lot of it was because I just wasn’t into eating anything. Nothing tasted good to me. And when I got sick (which, again, was frequently), it was even worse. At one point, I dropped down to a potentially deadly weight following an unfortunate flu immediately after my tonsillectomy. I vaguely remember even being turned away from the pediatrician; they didn’t think they could do anything. So my parents stocked up on Pediasure, intent to fatten me up one way or another. My dad would even go out of his way to bring me my favorite food at the time, the only thing I’d eat half of the time — Pizza Hut.

And I mean, I’m still here today. And I’ll get through this somehow. I often think back to just a few short years ago when I wrote about my struggles with being overweight, back when I was still drinking heavily and *surprised Pikachu face* not losing weight. There’s probably a simple solution. My friends who’ve been in a similar situation say they lost their appetites due to stress. And while I personally don’t think of myself as stressed, I do work three jobs (including a new one that’s probably going to be hella stressful), in addition to having classes, several music projects, and two serious romantic partners. My bandmate often chastises me for getting in over my head, and I’m realizing they often have a point.

That being said, I don’t know when things will eventually slow down for me, and part of me doesn’t want them too. I enjoy staying busy, although if it’s coming at the expense of my health, maybe I really do need a break. For now, I’m going to try to be diligent about taking my vitamins and attempt to drink a protein shake every day. That’s what I had been doing for a while, when my Adderall first started messing with my appetite. I made myself a shake every morning to drink with my medications, and I took my multivitamin, and so I knew that even if I didn’t eat anything else for the day, I’d still have some nutrients going into me. I need to get back into doing that.

Anyways, apologies to anyone who reads this and freaks out (Mom). My health has otherwise been pristine, although I am knocking on like, all of the wood. And I promise most of my life is actually going very well for once. I have some creative endeavors to throw myself into, a new job that will help me make enough money to afford the emo cruise I signed up for (IT’S GOOD FOR NETWORKING!), and I have the best support system in the freaking world. I just wish I liked food still, because you could air drop me a chicken shawarma from my favorite restaurant in the entire world and I’d maybe take three bites, tops.

If you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

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Grieving in Advance: Why My Brain Won’t Just Let Me Enjoy Things

I have severe OCD. I’ve talked about it pretty extensively on here, but I don’t think I truly delved into how cripplingly bad it was at its height. When I was dealing with fears relating to the internet, I wouldn’t even touch a phone or computer without someone sitting with me in case I had a panic attack. In my “literally everything in this room could be used to kill me” era, I couldn’t even take a shower unless my mom was in the room.

As of writing — and I am knocking on like, an entire lumberyard’s worth of wood right now — I have not had any compulsions in multiple years. I define “compulsion” as a thing my OCD makes me do, like demand my mother watch me bathe at age 14 like a complete lunatic. Lately I haven’t had any of that, so by the looks of it, we’re out of the woods! (I’m not going to make another Taylor Swift reference here, I swear.)

But these days, I still deal with anxiety, albeit internally. To be fair, a lot of my anxieties about the world are, uh, justified (I don’t even know which awful news article to link to in order to make that point). That being said. I worry about a lot of things normal people don’t think about. Take, for example, my terrible habit of pre-grieving.

“Jessa,” you begin, “what the fuck is pre-grieving?” Glad you asked, nameless faceless reader! This is when I start mourning things that haven’t even happened yet!

Want me to ruin pets for you? By adopting a fuzzy ball of love, you’re basically investing in a shit ton of heartbreak a decade or so down the road. Like, Krubby is gonna die someday, and my brain literally can’t handle that. It’s not an irrational OCD fear like my old ones — this is something that will inevitably happen. And there’s no ritual I can do to alleviate that anxiety. I can’t beg my mom to sit with me. I can’t Google random words until I feel better. I just have to live with the knowledge that one day, I’m going to lose my feline soulmate.

And that fear extends to everything. I was with Olivia, my girlfriend, for our anniversary. We rented the same hotel room we got together three years prior, when we decided to meet in Kalamazoo, but the pool was closed. And you don’t get between a Pisces and the idea of soaking in a body of water. So I had this idea — let’s go to the hot tub gardens instead.

And it was nothing short of magical. We got there well past midnight, after a romantic evening together. We sipped sparkling raspberry juice and she held me under the stars, so close I could hear her heartbeat beneath the bubbles. At the end of the hour and a half session, we dried off and got dressed and I found myself saying something to the effect of:

“That was great. Even if it’s all going to be over soon.”

It really hit me in that moment. Maybe it won’t be that weekend, or in a year, or in 10 years, or even in 50 years if we’re lucky. But there will be a last time I’ll ever see her, and that scares the shit out of me. The current political climate only exacerbates this fear — I don’t want to think about my sweet Olivia being taken and tortured and killed, and it’s unsettling to think that could even be a possibility. I love her so much, and I don’t want to imagine my life without her.

It’s not just Olivia, or Krubby for that matter. It’s my wife Crass and my parents and my karaoke friends and if I’m honest, it’s everyone and everything. It’s all impermanent. Everything will eventually crumble. And I hate that. I hate that eventually, I’m going to lose everyone I love and quite possibly everything I love and then what? I die too?

There was this mostly forgotten very underrated vaguely Christian emo-tinged indie band called Shirock back in the late 2000s. I was a fan of them — my friends took me to see them for my 16th birthday and I got to sing onstage with them, actually. Their music was pretty good, and I still remember a lot of their songs fondly. But the one that stuck with me the most throughout the years is “Everything Burns.” The theme of the song is that nothing lasts forever — everything burns in the end.

But love lives forever. At least that’s what the song implies.

I’d like to think my love will live on in some way after I die. I’d like to think that should my loved ones die before me, their love will live on in some way too. Maybe it’ll live on through me. I don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. I sincerely wish I did, because that would make this whole anxiety thing a lot easier.

Unfortunately, considering my mental health history, I don’t think this is going away soon, but I’m trying to keep things in perspective as much as possible. As upsetting as it is to think about, everyone dies eventually. It’s natural. It’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m going to keep trying to enjoy life as much as I can, though. I don’t know how much longer I have in this earth. If I use this fear as motivation to spend time doing the things I love with the people I love, it might not be all bad.

If you enjoyed the writing in this post and elsewhere on the site, please consider donating to Jessa’s tuition fund! Any help is appreciated!

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