Full disclosure: I started using the good ol’ Mary Joanna to help me sleep at night. Yeah yeah, I know that technically means I’m not sober by the broadest definition of the term, despite being alcohol-free for about a year new (hell yeah). But I use it medicinally to help with my constant waking up in the middle of the night, and honestly, it does help me get a more restful sleep
Sometimes after I smoke, I don’t immediately fall asleep, and when that happens, I either get horny, paranoid, or philosophical. It’s kind of a crapshoot every time which of my high personalities shows up. It’s usually the one I don’t want at the time, which means using it as an aphrodisiac is a gamble.
“Jess, this is not the time to ramble about how we’re living in a simulation.”
Last night, though, I had a strange experience. My wife was giving me a pep talk regarding my mental health, which has been pretty bad as of late. Nothing concerning, just the usual “What if life is meaningless and everything I do will eventually be forgotten?” Which is pretty heavy stuff to think about literally every second of the day, and I’ve been in this mindset for most of my life. Yay, anxiety!
But, in my high, pseudo-intellectual stupor, something my wife said really itched a part of me I didn’t know I needed to reach — the past Jesses (is that the proper plural of Jess?).
I haven’t been nice to past me. Not any of them. I tend to think of my past selves as different people, instead of a cohesive part of who I became. I look at Child Jess through my adult eyes and judge her unfairly for being, well, an outcast. A pariah. The weird autistic little girl who stims by spinning around in the back of the classroom and making bird sounds. I get mad at my younger self for having the nerve to not fit in and be popular. And as my wife said, that little girl is a part of me still, and every time I resent my childhood eccentricities, I bully her the same way I was bullied by other people.
PROTECT THIS CHILD.
Then I think of College Jess. The me who was skinny and outgoing and optimistic and popular and excelled at school despite barely trying. Although she’s a part of me as well, I resent her for being all the things I wish I was now. I’m jealous of a past version of me! It makes no sense when I really think about it — at that time, my mental illnesses were worse than they’d ever been before, and I’d sooner saw off my own pinky toe with a nail file before I’d willingly deal with my OCD at its worst again. But I only see this rose-tinted version of the past, with this girl who is infuriatingly everything I want to be. Everything I was.
Yes, I was that bitch.
The thing is, these aren’t two different people. They’re all me, and they’ve taken me to where I am now. And honestly, where I am now isn’t that bad. I have a wife and a girlfriend I love dearly (that poly life, I’m tellin’ ya). I’m back in school for music therapy, and I’m closer than ever to getting this degree. I even won a scholarship for it! I’m about to be debt-free, and I’m working on getting back in shape. And despite my depression being ever-present, my mental health has never been better. Everything is falling into place for once, and I owe it all to my past selves for bringing me to this place. I started thinking of these past selves as an Inside Out-type of inner council that influences my day to day decisions and emotions.
It’s going to be a process, but I’ve started making peace with my past. I want to continue to honor and integrate these past versions of Jess into myself as a whole. Writing this out was my first step in healing these broken pieces of me. If your brain works at all like mine, I hope this little blog post helps you, too.
I want to start this blog post with a song. This is the musical episode.
It’s a beautiful piano piece, and one I happen to really like. It’s a simple, melodic piano composition titled “Lover’s Theme,” penned by a contemporary French composer, Hervé Roy (1943-2009). Take a moment. Close your eyes and let your mind wander. What mental images come to mind when listening to this piece?
I’ve been studying music therapy research methods and philosophies. Or rather, my program is making me study music therapy research methods and philosophies, but I’m a big enough nerd-in-an-unfun-way that I probably would study this topic unprovoked.
In formulating our capstone project, we’ve been asked to self-assess and analyze our ways of thinking when it comes to this stuff. See, there’s several schools of thought in music therapy research, but two stood out to me as polar opposites — positivism and constructivism. Positivism is essentially the belief that there is an absolute truth that can be measured, while constructivism tends to believe that many things can be true at once and often depends on a person’s lived experience. Neither of these ways of thinking are superior, but it helps to know which side of the coin you’re on before embarking in a research activity.
Most of my classmates leaned toward constructivism. Me? I was the weirdo positivist.
Maybe it’s because I come from an evangelical background that always preached that there was the way, the truth, and the life, and that was Jesus, and there was absolutely no other way to God, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m autistic and tend to think more literally than a lot of people. I like facts, and proof, and facts that I can prove in some quantitative way.
Maybe there’s more than one answer to the big questions of the universe, but one thing has to be truer than everything else, right?
I really want to think I could play a song like the one above and everyone would have a universal and measurable experience. Like, the sound of a pretty piano piece increases serotonin in the brain by an average of 45 percent in all subjects of the study.
Unfortunately, serotonin is not the bodily fluid most associated with that piece.
You see, several years ago, a video went viral on ye olde interwebs. An absolutely putrid, disgusting video of two women enjoying each other’s…company. I’m not going to name it here, but if you haven’t gleaned what video it is by now, congratulations! You haven’t been corrupted by the internet!
This bowl of ice cream has no relevance to this post. Carry on.
Unfortunately (and probably to the chagrin of Mr. Roy), the piano piece you just heard was used as background music for the aforementioned shock video. So if you’re like me and had sadistic friends, you were probably tricked into watching this monstrosity. And chances are, you were traumatized.
You see, positivism doesn’t account for people’s unique experiences. If you’ve never heard the song in the context of that video, you’d probably have a very different reaction than someone who has. This is why learning to see things from other perspectives and accepting that there’s no one “correct” perspective is so important in music therapy. Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A song might evoke a positive emotion for you, but to someone else, that song was performed by their abuser’s favorite band. Or perhaps someone in that band was an abuser: I can’t listen to Brand New or All Time Low the same way anymore, which means half of the music I liked in high school is ruined forever. Thankfully I’ve still got Jimmy Eat World.
DON’T LET ME DOWN JIM ADKINS.
I never got why music therapy, especially certain listening experiences, were contraindicated for particular patients. Music evokes a lot of emotions, and they’re not always positive. That’s the danger of a strictly positivist philosophy. Emotion is not easy to quantify, and it’s even more difficult to predict.
My perspectives are changing all the time, and the older I get, the more I’m realizing that everyone has a different version of reality. Maybe humans are more complicated than can be described with numbers. Maybe I need to learn to be okay with that. I always sought solace in certainty, in knowing there was an answer. Perhaps no one can know the answers, because there are none. Or conversely, there’s a zillion correct answers.
I may never know for sure, and I need to accept that.
If you didn’t grow up in the church, the idea of a “Genesis week” is probably foreign to you. If you did grow up in the church, you probably heard it told a zillion times in Sunday school, but maybe never heard it phrased that way. Basically, it’s the creation story of the Abrahamic faiths — God spoke, and in seven days, the universe was formed.
These days, in my post-evangelical philosophy, I don’t believe the world was formed in seven 24-hour days, but over several eras, in accordance to what we now know from scientific discoveries. This ideology is known as old-earth creationism, and seeks to reconcile the concepts of evolution and the text of the holy scriptures. In fact, the Hebrew word for “day,” yom, can mean a period of time, not just 24-hours, which implies the creation “week” was actually millions upon billions of years.
This is tangentially related to the topic at hand, kind of (I hope).
I’ve been a little creatively stifled as of late, mostly owing to my own dumb brain. I’ve been meaning to post the entire first part of my story (not just the intro), but I keep chickening out and not doing it. At the same time, my band is in the midst of recording its debut album, and of course, that’s progressing at a snail’s pace too. I want to write and play music and draw and dance and do all of the things that have been on my heart, but I just can’t seem to shake this mental block.
I revisited Psalm 51, the emo poetry King David wrote after being called out by the prophet Nathan for thinking with his dick. (I need to be a biblical scholar with these descriptions, I swear.) I’ve always related to this passage as someone who’s also slutted too close to the sun and ended up hurting people I care about (although I never, you know, had a dude killed in war so I could sleep with his wife). A lot of the time, when reading through this psalm, I’d reflect on the whole “I suck and need God’s grace” aspect of it, but there’s a sneaky little part that I’ve always overlooked. I discovered it when I switched over to The Message version of the Bible, which is basically the translated scripture disguised as John Mayer lyrics.
God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life.
-Psalm 51 (MSG)
There it is! The Genesis week!
The intention of this verse, I’m assuming, is that we need God to take a Genesis week to work on us, but my first instinct was to apply this to my own life as well. Do I need a Genesis week — a week (or an entire era) of intense creation?
Humans are innately creative, but I feel like sometimes we suppress that part of ourselves. As children, we were always playing make-believe and acting out stories we made up. The fact that we’re born like this is no accident — we were made in the image of God, and so the power and desire to create is rooted in the very depths of the human spirit. It’s the one thing that makes us different from the rest of Animalia. Even if my cat had opposable thumbs, he still wouldn’t be able to paint a picture, or write a story, or dance in a ballet production (as hilarious as that would be). That’s a uniquely human characteristic.
Basically, when God created humans, He gifted us with His own special ability to imagine, to create. Think about it — the power that created the entire universe is inside you! And yet, we take that for granted. Our society tries to beat the imagination out of you before you have the change to do something revolutionary with it, and sadly, it often succeeds. It reduces us to little more than lazy housecats content to eat, sleep, and poop all day. We were built to be like God, but spend most of our time being like Garfield.
I think we all need a Genesis week. Imagine what would happen if we all stepped back for a while and did what made our hearts happy. What would happen if we threw ourselves into our creations and stopped caring what other people think? What if we wrote, sang, danced with abandon? What if instead of being so divided, we united over music and art and storytelling, the way we were intended to be? I think that would spark more than just a revolution. It would create a new Eden, a place of peace and contentment.
There’s a reason I study music therapy, and it’s because I feel there’s nothing closer to God than the act of creation. Nothing heals and changes people quite like creating music — or creating anything for that matter! Throw yourself into your creative endeavours, and if you don’t have one yet, find your passion. Maybe it’s baking. Maybe it’s knitting cat sweaters. It doesn’t matter.
Fair warning: I’m going to be writing about this topic a lot in the next few months for reasons I’ll elaborate on in a few paragraphs.
And yes, I will be using this topic as an excuse to post as many adorable pictures of little Jess as I can.
My last blog post delved a little into what it was like growing up autistic and how I’ve learned to mask to such a degree that most of my psychiatrists don’t even take me seriously when I mention that I’m likely on the spectrum. For that reason, I’ve been hesitant to “claim” the title of autism. If I’m “cured,” then I don’t have autism anymore, right? If I can blend in enough with the “normies” to not have any visible disability, and I can’t even get a proper diagnosis, I’m not really autistic. I’m just faking it for attention. Initially, I gave up on getting “properly” diagnosed for that reason.
Last week, I began research on my project for the undergraduate symposium. It will go hand-in-hand with my presentation that is conditional for my receiving of the Brehm fellowship, awarded to students who are looking to contribute to the field of disability research and advocacy. I chose autism as my focus, primarily because it has affected my life in deeply personal ways, even without a clinical diagnosis.
Even if I had to “change” to fit in with neurotypical society.
One of the books I found myself drawn to study was Unmasking Autism by Dr. Devon Price. His research comes from a neurodivergent place, being autistic himself, as well as having a queer perspective as a trans man. The book focuses on the ways neurotypical “passing” folks have used “masks” to fit in with societal norms. Traditionally, these masks were forced on us by things such ABA, now viewed as harmful by most autistic advocates. Some of us, like me, consciously decided to, as I like to say, break our own bones to fit in someone else’s box.
At this point in life, after decades of studying people’s behavior and learning what works and what doesn’t in social situations. I “pass” well enough that I’ve hesitated to claim the autistic title. I’m scared I’ll be looked at as a fraud by the community, someone who claims the title for clout and to excuse my admittedly sometimes annoying idiosyncrasies. But as I’m learning, that’s about as nonsensical as me trying to pass as straight for so many years when I knew damn well I was pansexual, and about as harmful too. It’s harmful to the community, as I perpetuate internalized prejudices by denying my identity, and it’s harmful to myself, as I force my body and mind into a crevice they were not designed to fit into.
Cats make it look so easy.
Here’s the thing — Price explains that oppressed folks are ridiculously underdiagnosed because we’re forced to conform even more than people who are part of the majority. Straight white dudes can skate by on their privilege, but we have to try harder to make it in this world, and part of that involves hiding the less socially acceptable pieces of ourselves. Not only that, but the current diagnostic tools used for detecting autism is literally based on its presentation in white little boys. If you’re black, or an adult, or a woman, or any combination of that, it’s damn near impossible to get a proper diagnosis because of implicit biases in the testing process.
Here’s the other thing — a proper diagnosis isn’t a requirement to be part of the autistic community. In addition to the roadblocks mentioned above, there’s also the problem of access to testing, which is often prohibitively expensive and not readily available to everyone. For this reason, self-diagnosis (or as Price puts it, self-realization) is valid. If you relate to the autistic experience, you’re probably one of us. Surprise!
“ONE OF US. ONE OF US.”
So that’s that. I’m autistic. And no, I don’t have autism any more than I have pansexuality. It’s just part of me. And that’s important, because we need more people to advocate for people like us.
Just a few days ago, a dear well-intentioned friend of mine invited me to an online seminar about some wellness products. The speaker went on and on about how her tinctures and potions can cure this and that. And then — I shit you not — she spoke this exact sentence:
“Our products have been shown to eradicate autism.”
Almost immediately, I excused myself and logged off. I felt gross, like someone told me they could fix my gay, as if that wouldn’t erase the beautiful, loving relationship I have with my wife. This time, that sentence — it was about me. It took me three decades to come to terms with who I am. It took me three decades to learn to have a beautiful, loving relationship with myself, with my own identity. And the fact that someone tried to sell me a cure for that feels insulting.
We need more people to fight the good fight for us. We need more people to stand up and declare that there’s nothing wrong with us, just that society isn’t built for us. We’re not the problem, the current rigid sense of “this is what is socially acceptable and this is what is not” is the real problem. As long as we don’t fit into the narrow ideals of what is acceptable behavior, we’re going to continue to be dehumanized and discriminated against. So something needs to change, and maybe it shouldn’t be us.
This was a lot of words, but I feel like it’s important to say. I am autistic, and I don’t owe anyone a proper diagnosis to claim that. Not in a world that makes it prohibitively difficult for an AFAB adult to even get clinically diagnosed, let alone get assessed. Not in a world that beat all the quirks and idiosyncrasies out of me before I even reached adulthood.
Damn it, Rina Sawayama. This website is going to turn into a fan blog if you keep this up.
I swear this woman lives rent free in my head.
I was on my way to work, listening to her as per usual, when her song “Phantom” came on. I’d listened to it in passing, but I never really listened to it. The second verse just hit me like a truckload of turkeys.
If I could talk to you, I’d tell you not to rush You’re good enough You don’t have to lose, what makes you you Still got some growing to do
When did we get so estranged Haunted by the way I’ve changed Claiming back the pieces of me that I’ve lost Reaching in and hoping you’re still, waiting by the windowsill I’d bring you back to us
I wasn’t a popular kid. Quite the opposite, actually. A lot of it, looking back, was because of my (finally freaking diagnosed) ADHD and (still freaking undiagnosed) autism. I was the weird kid who spun around in the back of the classroom and stimmed by making parakeet sounds. I had special interests like 8-track tapes and Bon Jovi, stuff “normal” kids thought were strange. I had sensory issues when it came to smell and gagged at the scent of ranch dressing, which my peers loved to torment me with. I had to eat lunch in the library to avoid being pelted with the stuff! And it’s so easy for me to forget that I used to come home from school crying every day because kids are so fucking cruel.
What changed?
In the autistic community, there’s a term called “masking.” You hide parts of yourself to fit in. You learn to “pass” as neurotypical, because there’s no other way for people to love you. When I got into middle school, something flipped. I methodically studied what the “cool kids” were wearing and doing, and made myself into a caricature of who I really was in order to be the “most popular” version of myself. I clipped my own colorful wings to become something I wasn’t, all for my peers’ approval. And it worked. By senior year, I was unrecognizable. By college, I was — dare I say — popular. But little Jess—
—that Jess was dead. And I killed her.
I’ve brought up getting a proper autism diagnosis to my therapists several times, and each time I get almost laughed out of the clinic. But you’re so popular, and social. You don’t look autistic, whatever that means. You don’t go on and on about your special interests — because I learned early on that talking about the color of Richie Sambora’s toothbrush would get me ostracized. You don’t stim — because making silly little sounds and moving my body in ways that make me feel good aren’t “socially acceptable.” You don’t have sensory issues — because I had to force myself to deal with things that made me really uncomfortable, because otherwise, no one would like me.
I broke my own bones to fit in someone else’s box, and left me with a phantom of myself.
I wish I could tell my younger self that she doesn’t need to change to fit in. That she doesn’t need to hide entire parts of herself. That she’s valuable the way she is, and doesn’t need to change. That’s why autism acceptable — not just awareness — is so important. Because somewhere, some little girl is feeling the exact way I felt back then. And I don’t want her to feel like she needs to kill her autistic self in order to be loved.
I hope she’s still there, waiting by the windowsill.
Well well, it’s 2023. I’m going on my thirtieth year of life, which is surreal to me. As a kid, all I wanted was to be old. Well, specifically a grandma, so I could have people do stuff for me and I could watch game shows all day.
Living the dream.
Now that I’m actually getting older, the idea scares me. It’s not like I haven’t talked about this on my blog before (so much that I’m too lazy to link all the times I mention my fear of getting old). A lot of it is that I’m scared I’ll be viewed as geriatric in the music business, that people won’t want some 30-something rock star over all the fresh young meat out there. But there’s another side to my fear of growing up, one I always sneered at when other women discussed it in the past.
The ol’ “biological clock is ticking” feeling.
I feel like it’s often frowned upon in alternative, queer, feminist-leaning communities to want a family and kids. Which is a damn shame, because we’d make much better parents than those creepy reactionaries with a definite breeding fetish and a need to fill their metaphorical quiver with like, twenty soldiers for the Lord.
Looking at you, Duggars.
Maybe I do have a slightly spiritual reason for wanting kids of my own though — I feel it’s my duty to raise up kids who change the world for the better. There’s no higher calling, right? And people have been procreating since the dawn of time. What if my bloodline ends with me? Will I have failed on the most basic measure of success? Animalistic instincts literally exist to keep a creature alive to propagate its species. It’s both a spiritual and an evolutionary need.
But what if I fail? What if I never have kids of my own?
My wife and I are planning on trying for a baby after I graduate from music therapy school and we buy a house, which is way closer than I could have ever imagined. Life moves so slowly day to day, I forget I’m about to jump into the next stage of life soon. And part of that stage involves me getting knocked up (with some help from a sperm donor, obviously). But I’ve never tried for a baby before. All my sexual experiences with penis-havers were characterized by me actively trying NOT to get pregnant. And as far as I know, I’ve never been pregnant before. What if I like, straight-up can’t?
The idea scares the shit out of me. That someday, I will die and no one will be alive to carry on my legacy. That I’ll be completely forgotten.
Why yes, this scene from Coco did traumatize me, a grown woman.
I know I shouldn’t worry about it too much yet. My mom had me at 38, for cryin’ out loud. I’ve got at least eight years to make these kids, right? Right?!
I guess what’s helping me get through this albeit normal fear is that we’re people, not simply animals, and we’ve created multiple ways to “have kids.” Maybe that kid is a work of art, or a story, or a song. Freddie Mercury never had a biological child, but we still know who he is, and people will know him for generations to come. How many others have that honor? Think about it — do you even know your great-great grandma’s name? In the end, we all get forgotten, no matter how many children we bring into this world, unless we do something great on this Earth that will live on after we’re gone.
This has been a really depressing blog post considering it’s the first post of the new year, but I don’t mean for it to be. Rather, it’s a call to do something big with the little time you have here. You’re worth more than just your ability to make babies.
So, this is it. The last blog post of 2022 (probably). And I even redecorated for the occasion! Like the new color scheme? I had to incorporate bluey-green, because it’s my favorite color, but the brown just takes it to the next level, right?
I also had to update my picture. I haven’t been blonde for a hot minute, which is so weird to me, but fitting. My teens were blonde, my 20s were weird hair colors, and my 30s will be black. I’m like a Pokémon that changes colors as it evolves, and I feel like I’m finally evolving into the most powerful version of myself. I’m about to reach level 30 and become a mighty electrifying Ampharos after spending several levels as a cute, nonthreatening Flaafy.
Now I just need an Ampharosite so I can have badass hair.
This evolution has brought on a lot of changes, many of which I’ve documented in this blog. I stopped drinking entirely, which is wild to me because I love beer (hit me with your best non-alcoholic beer recommendations in the comments, readers!). It just wasn’t serving me anymore and was causing more damage to my body and mind than I liked. In addition, I got formally diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder and started taking the medications I actually need. Those two changes alone have been revolutionary. I’m not the same person I was this time last year by any stretch of the imagination, and it feels good. I wasn’t a huge fan of that version of me. I like this one more.
But the thing about evolution is that it doesn’t stop happening. In order to be the absolute best version of myself, I need to keep working on the most important project I’ll ever be tasked with — Jess J. Salisbury. Me, the person. Not the blog, although that’s a part of it.
The new year is supposed to be a time of setting goals and making resolutions, many of which won’t make it to the end of January, much less the end of the year. I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want to set goals I can easily set aside at the first sign of failure. My goal is to hit the gym at least three times a week. So what happens when I have a busy week and fall off for a few days? Do I just give up? That’s why I don’t like viewing my goals as “resolutions.” Instead, they’re part of a sort of year-long bucket list.
So what do I plan to do? I’m glad you asked! I’ll start with the goal that’s most pertinent to this website.
Two blog posts a week
That’s right. No less than two blog posts any given week. If I screw up one week, I’m challenging myself to jump back on it the next week. I recently wrote a post about the direction I want to take this blog, but feel free to drop more ideas for things you want to see here. I’m thinking more music musings, some book reviews, maybe some more spiritual stuff, and of course, my guide to living with ADHD, as well as the fiction I’ve been working on. There’s no shortage of things I like writing about, so make sure to keep checking back for new content often!
Keep a planner all year
I started keeping a planner a few months back. Surprise! It’s done wonders for my mental health as well as my organizational skills. My initial trick was to get a subscription to a monthly planner, so every month I’d have fresh new pages with new prompts and visuals to keep my attention. But then, the unthinkable happened — my December planner got lost in the move! Thinking quickly, I downloaded an app called Zinnia, which is essentially a journaling app for your phone. And this has been ridiculously helpful for me, since I’m on my phone all the time anyways. I can’t leave it at home. It’s always with me, everywhere, all the time.
Get down to my goal weight of 140
Ah yes, the dreaded weight loss resolution that everyone either makes or makes a blog post decrying. Yes, losing weight for vanity reasons is a slippery slope into nasty things like eating disorders, and I’m first in line to support the body positivity movement. But here’s the thing about being body positive — it only works if you’re treating said body positively. I gained a lot of weight over the last several years, and I’ve realized I can’t blame it all on my psychiatric meds, especially now that I’m taking Adderall, which should balance the antidepressant weight gain out. No, I gained this weight because I’ve treated this temple like a freaking dive bar, poisoning it with copious amounts of alcohol and greasy low-nutrient foods. This extra weight I carry is a physical manifestation of the baggage that came with being a compulsive binge eater in the beginning stages of alcoholism. I’ve cut out those two habits and already dropped nearly 30 pounds. Now I’m adding the habit of working out regularly and staying active, and I haven’t felt this good since I was in high school and in the best shape of my life. By the end of 2023, I should be down to my pre-gain size, and I’m so ready.
Become conversational in Arabic
Wallah, I mean it this time. It’s easy to forget in my white British-American English-speaking bubble that nearly half of the world is bilingual, but working at my new job has made me acutely aware of how much I suck as a global citizen. Like, I’m useless in any country that wasn’t once taken over by the Brits. But nearly everyone I work with is bilingual. I live in an area with a pretty hefty Arab population, and most of my coworkers and several of our patients can speak Arabic with ease. I don’t exactly plan on being a diplomat to Egypt or a Quranic scholar, so I’m not holding myself to incredibly high standards here. I just want to be able to say basic sentences and hold a conversation in Arabic. Right now, I know how to say “hi,” “bye,” and “give me bread,” which is useful if I’m ever like, in a dire bread emergency in Lebanon or something, but it would be nice to know some pharmacy-specific phrases.
Do 75Hard AT LEAST ONCE
I tried this already. Remember that? Just one of the dozens of things I’ve started and didn’t finish? I’ve been using the “bUt I hAvE aDhD” excuse for too long. Okay, so lots of successful people have ADHD. They’re not whining about how they can’t finish the thing. They’re out there, taking their Adderall and meditating and doing everything they can to do the damn thing. And that’s what I want to do. So 75Hard is a bunch of arbitrary rules you have to follow for 75 days. But I’m gonna follow them if it kills me, just to prove to myself that I have self-discipline, the thing that has evaded me my whole life. I don’t know when I’m going to do this (although it will probably be in the summer when it’s nicer out and I don’t have to do my daily outdoor workouts in a blizzard like a psychopath), but I want to do it once. Just so I can say that I did it.
Release WUJ 2023
Speaking of things I’ve started and never finished, I’ve been saying new music is on the way since our last release, “If I Stay,” which came out more than a year ago. This isn’t just a “me” thing, since I’m only one member of the band and this will be a group effort, but as the frontwoman, I need to make sure we keep moving in the right direction. I’m tired of stagnating as a musician. I write songs to be heard by others, and if no one’s hearing us, what’s the point of having a band? And speaking of which, I want to be more “on top” of our social media this year. People need to hear us, and if it takes TikTok or Instagram to get our music out there, so be it. The world is changing and so is the music industry. I need to take advantage of modern social media and learn how to use it to get us noticed. And speaking of music, there’s my final, most crucial goal for the year.
Finish my classes with at least a B and get that music therapy degree (finally)
That’s it. The degree I’ve been working toward for literally twelve years is so close to being mine. I started down the road to being a music therapist at 18, when my parents convinced me to change my major from pre-med to music (unlike every other parent ever), but I came to the conclusion that I was too mentally ill and messed up to ever help anyone else. And that’s a fucking lie. I now believe my mental illnesses and neurodivergences will make me a better music therapist because I’ve been on the other side. I will know how my clients’ minds work even better than a neurotypical music therapist would because I’m one of them. And now I have the tools, medications, and coping mechanisms I need to make it through the schooling I need. It’s too late to turn back now. I’m going to get this degree and get a fancy little “MT-BC” after my name, once and for all.
And there you have it. I’m done with being mediocre. Only I have the power to change my life for the better, and this is the year I finally do it.
I feel bad for leaving everyone on a sad note with my last post, so this one is more optimistic, I swear!
My wife and I stopped drinking earlier this year. Officially, for real this time. We haven’t had as much as a drop in the last several months. And frankly, I’m pretty okay with that. Sure, there’s some FOMO when my friends are sipping on a nice craft beer or mixed drink, but for the most part, I don’t miss it. I’ve lost weight, I don’t have no-reason hives nearly as often, and I’m not constantly in a daze from being drunk or hungover almost every day.
We were paying money to have a bad time.
Something peculiar happened when we stopped drinking though. We found ourselves unable to relate to a lot of our friends who did drink a lot or rely on drugs to have fun. Suddenly, sobriety was lonely as hell. I call these growing pains, though. As in, we’re finally growing up, but the people around us are stagnating. It’s a good problem, although it doesn’t feel good in the moment.
My old church and pastor are problematic for a lot of reasons, and if you’ve snooped long enough through my blog, you’d know why. But my former pastor did have a lot of wisdom I still love by to this day. One of his sayings was “show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” As 90s sitcom “special episode” as it is to admit, the people you surround yourself with influence you more than you think.
Think of it this way. If someone’s standing on a table for some ungodly reason, it would be hard for them to pull another person up onto the table with them. It would be much easier for someone on the ground to pull the person on the table down to their level. It’s best to climb onto the table alone. That doesn’t mean you can’t have any friends when you’re working on yourself, though. Maybe people will see that what you’re doing is weird and different and better, and they might even climb onto a table as well.
These are good influences, definitely.
The point is, the road to getting better is lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of hanging out at bars and partying your life away, meet new people at gyms or church. Learn a new hobby and join a local group for it. Even online groups like r/decidingtobebetter on Reddit can be helpful. It sucks distancing yourself from old friends, but holding onto habits that hurt you in order to still relate to them is not worth it. You can’t keep breaking your own bones to fit into someone else’s box.
ADHD stands for “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” so it goes without saying that lack of attention span and general moving-around-a-lot-ness are the classic symptoms. But there’s a third symptom that doesn’t get a lot of spotlight — impulsivity.
The cause of many a spontaneous midnight Meijer’s excursion.
My impulsivity has probably been the most detrimental part of having ADHD. It’s led to a lot of addictions, like sex and alcohol, which I’ve not been shy about on this blog, especially since I’ve largely overcome these addictions. But one vice continues to plague me. Compared to the others, it seems relatively benign, but that might just be what makes it so insidious.
Yup, I’m a shopaholic. And unlike sex and alcohol, there’s no 12-step program.
Unless those 12 steps are in the direction of a mall.
We recently moved to the opposite end of the Metro Detroit area, a solid 45-minute drive from our old place, and more than an hour if you count the fact that I was driving a moving truck bigger than Arkansas through a thunderstorm to get there. The drive was rough, but the packing was even worse. Despite having the help of several amazing friends, getting all twenty-something bags of clothes into the truck was annoying and draining, and making them fit was another challenge. Even with our huge-ass truck, we had to play Tetris to get everything inside.
I wish I was exaggerating all of this, but my shopping addiction had gotten so out-of-control, it was starting to affect my life. These dresses and sweatshirts and accessories had brought me so much joy when I first held them in my hands, yet now they were little more than a nuisance. I spread them out on the floor of the new bedroom after tearing through the garbage bags they’d travelled in. Did I mention these particular bags were the biggest garbage bags the store had?! Like, designed for yard waste, not clothes hoards.
I started thinking of the financial impact of all these purchases as well. There, lying on the ground, was several thousand dollars worth of terrible life choices, if not significantly more. I’ll get to “dealing with money woes with ADHD” in a future entry in this blog series, but right now, Mt. WhythehelldidIbuythis is occupying half my bedroom and my poor wife is having to take up rock climbing just get to her own side of the bed.
“Damn it, Jess.”
So, let’s start by acquiring some hangers. This step can be as expensive or cheap as you’d like, but considering we’re putting the clothes we truly love and treasure on them, I’d recommend getting some hangers you at least like. Imagine you’re Andy and your favorite clothes are sentient beings. What would you rather rest on — some uncomfy wire hanger or a nice, plush velvet hanger? Just keep in mind however many hangers you get, that’s how many clothing items you get to keep.
You see, my entire perspective changed when I started viewing the apartment as a container for possessions, and by extension, a closet and dresser function as a container for clothes. Whatever doesn’t fit in the container has to go. Think of your closet as Noah’s Ark, and we’re about to flood the bedroom with the wrath of God and/or Marie Kondo.
Thou shalt spark joy (or else).
So begin with the essentials. If you have a uniform, start by putting those aside. I’m a pharmacy technician, so I like to have several pairs of scrubs in various colors so I don’t look like a cartoon person wearing the same thing every day. Then, identify a brand or clothing style you really like and wear a lot of. I have a ton of dresses from the faux-vintage brand Belle Poque that I love, so I’m sparing all of them. They spark joy, and I wear them frequently. They’re safe from the flood.
Now, the fun begins. Start putting everything into piles by type: sweatshirts, t-shirts, jeans, leggings, scarves, etc. Choose a system that makes sense for you. If you’re really into dresses and skirts like me, perhaps sort them into maxi length and shorter length. Then, once everything is in its place, choose a predetermined number of pieces from each pile to save. Noah let two of every kind of animal on the ark, but I like three as a rule of thumb. That allows for a little more variety. If you have more or less closet/dresser space, you can adjust this number accordingly. If your space is very limited, maybe choose one or two articles of clothing, and if you’ve got a lot of space, you can do four or five garments each. But three seems to be the “golden” number. Take your chosen clothing, put them away neatly, and congratulate them for making the cut.
But now, you probably still have a huge pile of crap to get rid of. Here’s a hard truth: you’re not going to take this shit to Goodwill. You have ADHD. All your donation bags will languish in the corner until you have to move again, and the cycle will repeat. Even if you do manage to get to Goodwill, there’s a decent chance they won’t take it. Donation centers are overrun with contributions from people who are also in the process of decluttering their junk. But this doesn’t mean all your leftover clothing is doomed to the dumpster.
The first line of defense against the landfill is your friends. Hit up some folks who have a similar style as you and lure them over with the promise of free stuff and maybe some pizza or something. Then, let them go wild. If you have any trans friends, this is a great opportunity to help them out in particular! Early on in the transition journey, a lot of people are trying to figure out their style and sizing. I managed to offload a lot of cute clothing that no longer served me when my long-distance girlfriend, who is trans, came to visit one weekend. Seeing her face light up as she methodically tried on all my old dresses made my heart happy, and I was glad to give some of the cute pieces that no longer fit me or my lifestyle a second life with someone who would really appreciate them.
Then, see what you can repurpose into something else. If you’re not very crafty, you can skip this step, or perhaps find someone who can repurpose your stuff for art projects and other things. I’m considering saving some of my old band tees to turn into a quilt or tapestry. This is a good way to salvage some of your sentimental pieces.
Now, take what’s left after letting your friends pick through your clothing. Is there a local church or organization looking for donations? Think creatively. Lots of places you wouldn’t even consider may be looking for clothes to help the community. There’s even a kinky art collective in my area that takes donations!
If you’re at a loss, there may be some donation bins in the area. Do a quick Google search to find some places to take your leftover clothing. Some are donation, some are recycling. Take the stuff that’s still usable to a donation box and leave it there, and the more beat-up clothing can go to a recycling box. It’s important to do this step as soon as freaking possible. Do not let your bags of clothing refuse sit in the closet. Put it in the way of your front door so you HAVE to take care of it in order to go anywhere. Unless your house is literally on fire, don’t move the bags unless you’re taking them to the bin.
What happens if you can’t find any place to leave your old clothes? This is the hard part — you might have to throw some stuff away. It feels wasteful, and I’m not going to lie and say it’s great for the environment, but sometimes, sending things to the landfill is the only option you have. In ye olden days, people would bury the things that no longer served them. In fact, in many witchy traditions, old spell ingredients were buried in order to let them return to the Earth from which they came. Make this goodbye a sacred moment. Thank your clothes for coming to you and being in your life, even for a moment, and wish them well on their journey to becoming dust once again.
Once everything is in its proper place, take the time to celebrate. ADHD is hard to manage sometimes and it’s not easy to break the detrimental habits that come with it. I happen to have the triple-whammy of ADHD, autism, and OCD, the last of which being a hallmark sign of hoarding tendencies. But you, dear reader, are stronger than you know, and if my dumb ass can do this, so can you. There’s no feeling like opening the closet to find nothing but things that bring you joy, instead of feeling bogged down by stuff you barely even care about. Once you learn to let go, you’ll discover what it means to truly appreciate what you have.
Ever since, my Facebook feed has been inundated with all kinds of takes on her demise. Some people are celebrating her life and mourning her death, while others are mourning her life and celebrating her death. Some people see her as a feminist icon who ruled an entire country in her own right and took no shit, while many understandably see her as a symbol of the British monarchy and imperialism. And yet, some people are lavishing in the moment Princess Di greets her at the pearly gates with a brick. Needless to say, like most world leaders, Queen Elizabeth was a divisive character.
I think she was all these things. And most importantly, I think she was — hear me out — Just Some Guy™.
People love to sort each other into Good Guys™ and Bad Guys™. We’ve become more polarized in recent years, thanks to an uptick in political fervor brought on by populist leaders like Trump, but it’s always been a thing. We human beings love our black and white morality. You’re for us, or against us. And in certain things, I’m prone to agree. You can’t be a Nazi and a Good Guy, for example. If you ascribe to that ideology, you’re automatically in the Bad Guy category. There’s not a lot of people who are unambiguously Good Guys, but—
Okay, there are a few.
Anyways, back to Queen Lizzy. She did some really dope things, like getting off her royal highness and serving in the military during WWII as a frickin princess. Yes, she was a princess who worked to aid the effort to fight literal Nazis, who we have established to be absolutely, 100 percent Bad Guys.
Cinderella would never.
At the same time, she was complicit as the British Empire committed many atrocities against other countries. Plenty has already been written about how shitty Britain has been throughout history. I mean, what do you expect from a country that’s tried to take over the world? I say this as someone who is of primarily British descent. Most Americans get to brag about cool stuff their ancestors’ countries did. Me? Nothing but imperialism and some dope ass rock music, which, in all fairness, was “borrowed” from black American musicians. So really, just imperialism.
The point is, everyone sucks. The queen sucked. Trump sucks. Biden sucks. Freddie Mercury sucked. My mom sucks. I suck. And at the same time, we all do really cool stuff (except Nazis, because fuck them). That’s all part of this thing called being human. We’re all magic moving sentient carbon lumps, and there’s nothing wrong with that. All we can do is reduce the amount of sucky things we do and try to do more cool stuff. Learn from other’s mistakes and try to be a better person.
There’s no Good Guys or Bad Guys, for the most part. Just Some Guys, and the queen? Definitely Some Guy.
