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Dec. 6th, 2022 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormI've been thinking about what I like.
That's not right. I've been thinking of what the world looks like when what I do is a straight-line expression of who I am. I have interests and values, and instead of trying to mediate that for the outside world, what happens when I just let it flow out?
I do animal things. I lie on the floor in the dirt. I make clothes. I make gardens. I transform meat into charcuterie. I write and write and write.
The guy who does the "Autism from the Inside" youtube channel has been working on his burnout cycle for awhile. Most recently, he's decided that what prevents burnout for him is not just more rest, but an adequate amount of play as part of the cycle: work, play, rest.
I've been thinking a lot about how I play lately.
A lot of my play is super autistic. That is, to observers socialized to this society, it looks like work and/or capitalist productivity. Kids line their toys up or sort them by category or think up situations so complex it can be hard for other people to follow them into that play. I line my spreadsheets up and sort my seeds by this category and then that, looking at the different patterns they make. I do projects that are environmentally-reactive, responding to surroundings so complex that other people have trouble following me into the game.
But.
It's not capitalist productivity. It is play. Every meme that said you need to rest chipped away at how I thought I was supposed to handle being tired until I didn't know what I needed. Performativity seeps in the smallest cracks, and even though I wasn't performing for anyone in particular I saw the template - neurotypical maybe, though I have a lot of autistic friends that follow it - where rest was equated either with doing nothing or with consuming.
It did not serve me.
Now I keep busy, but I'm busy doing things I like. I don't feel external productivity pressure to do these things and I work very hard at that, it's key; I don't feel guilty if I don't do them. I slip like quicksilver between activities as I need, my attention pooling long and deep sometimes and skipping across many activities other times.
Doing these things energizes me. It pulls me into the world, and then I want to live in the world instead of hiding from it as I do in burnout.
It's also just so opposite of all the advice I see. I guess I should be used to it now; that society and those recommendations are not built for me. It's weird to think they work for some people? But I guess it's just as weird for those people to learn that all this "work" works for me.
That's not right. I've been thinking of what the world looks like when what I do is a straight-line expression of who I am. I have interests and values, and instead of trying to mediate that for the outside world, what happens when I just let it flow out?
I do animal things. I lie on the floor in the dirt. I make clothes. I make gardens. I transform meat into charcuterie. I write and write and write.
The guy who does the "Autism from the Inside" youtube channel has been working on his burnout cycle for awhile. Most recently, he's decided that what prevents burnout for him is not just more rest, but an adequate amount of play as part of the cycle: work, play, rest.
I've been thinking a lot about how I play lately.
A lot of my play is super autistic. That is, to observers socialized to this society, it looks like work and/or capitalist productivity. Kids line their toys up or sort them by category or think up situations so complex it can be hard for other people to follow them into that play. I line my spreadsheets up and sort my seeds by this category and then that, looking at the different patterns they make. I do projects that are environmentally-reactive, responding to surroundings so complex that other people have trouble following me into the game.
But.
It's not capitalist productivity. It is play. Every meme that said you need to rest chipped away at how I thought I was supposed to handle being tired until I didn't know what I needed. Performativity seeps in the smallest cracks, and even though I wasn't performing for anyone in particular I saw the template - neurotypical maybe, though I have a lot of autistic friends that follow it - where rest was equated either with doing nothing or with consuming.
It did not serve me.
Now I keep busy, but I'm busy doing things I like. I don't feel external productivity pressure to do these things and I work very hard at that, it's key; I don't feel guilty if I don't do them. I slip like quicksilver between activities as I need, my attention pooling long and deep sometimes and skipping across many activities other times.
Doing these things energizes me. It pulls me into the world, and then I want to live in the world instead of hiding from it as I do in burnout.
It's also just so opposite of all the advice I see. I guess I should be used to it now; that society and those recommendations are not built for me. It's weird to think they work for some people? But I guess it's just as weird for those people to learn that all this "work" works for me.
