Small Journal #6: Soft Landings

Day 18 of Nano Poblano, and as usual I’ve found myself flagging a little. You know how it goes – you start the month full of promise and then you realise just how much of a task you’ve set yourself, and how you’re prone to heaping too much pressure on yourself.

I have always been an all or nothing kind of person.

These days I know it’s the ADHD aspect of my wiring (and maybe the Autistic part too?) – the desire to prove to myself that I can do it. But I realise that it’s unrealistic now to expect myself to match some arbitrary idea of perfect marks, a perfect 30 days of posts.

I’m the oldest daughter too. I’ve always taken on the expectations of others and felt I had to match them, even to my own detriment. I find it hard to say no, though I’ve been practicing a lot more since I started therapy in 2020.

I spoke to my therapist about doing Nano Poblano and she did ask if I’d be posting every day. And I said, well probably not since we know my track record of flaming out and feeling bad about myself. This is why I thought posting on Instagram on some days would ease the pressure.

It has to some extent, but I still find it a little difficult. She always reminds me that I don’t need to have an all or nothing mindset, that being kinder to myself is important. It’s an exercise in self-compassion and patience.

It’s very hard to wing it and post something every day, especially since I don’t have much in the archives for this year – no poetry, not as much art as I’d like, or photos even. Even harder when I’m still learning how to take care of myself properly – my sleep is all over the place, I struggle so much with basic executive functioning tasks at the moment, and this year has been unexpectedly stressful. There’s been a lot of change, and the ground seems somewhat shaky.

We all know that the only constant in life is change. Everything changes, all the time, even if it’s very slow, imperceptible change. This is tough as an autistic person who desires comfort and safety, a space to feel safe with a soft landing.

I’m not naive, and I know that so much of life is often struggle, especially in the world we’re currently living in. But I do wish everyone who needs it a soft, safe, space. So many of us are not feeling very safe, even if we do have safe spaces and people.

Maybe this shakiness and harshness is making it hard for me to be creative or write. I often come back to this feeling of not having enough words, or not being able to write something that feels exactly like what I wanted to say. Or just being able to express the bigness of what this moment feels like, or even the smallness.

There’s so much noise in the world, especially on social media, that my brain feels very loud sometimes. But maybe our work as writers is to sift through that and find a quiet space for ourselves where we can land and think. To parse what we’re seeing, feeling, and thinking.

‘Life just seems so full of connections. Most of the time we don’t even pay attention to the depth of life. We only see flat surfaces.’ – Colin Neenan