Episode 142: A new focus for this podcast

The episode transcript is below.

Thank you for joining me today on this special solo episode of beyond six seconds. Usually my focus on this podcast is on other people, but this episode, I’m going to talk a bit about my experience over the past year or two, including a pretty big revelation I’ve had this year and how that’s going to impact the podcast.

Now don’t worry, the podcast isn’t going away. I’m still planning to continue with the show, but just with a slightly new direction. I’ve been doing this podcast for just about four years now. And when I started, my goal was to learn more about others, how they experienced the world, how they struggle and triumph in the face of challenge and beat the odds. And I’ve interviewed so many wonderful people and learned their stories and just been really inspired and motivated and just excited to learn more about how people experience the world. And as it turns out, I wound up learning a lot about myself in the process.

So this past year 2021 has been a very interesting year for me. Really, nothing has changed this past year — except, in some ways, everything has changed.

So in 2020, I had so much energy. I was firing on all cylinders. I was ready to try new things while weathering the pandemic, finding opportunities in the changes that we were going through. I was giving virtual presentations and trying out new projects and just really, you know, had all this energy to try new things.

But then in 2021, I, I just felt like I ran out of steam in a lot of ways. You know, I had a couple of things happen in my life that, you know, wound up being just temporary setbacks, but, uh, the effects were long-lasting and, um, you know, it took me a really long time to recover. It took me months to, uh, really try to get that energy back.

Honestly, I just felt really exhausted. I lost a lot of my drive and I just kind of went into a bit of a survival mode. And I just felt like a lot of the coping mechanisms that had worked so well throughout my life, just weren’t working as well as we headed into the second year of the pandemic. It was something that took me by surprise and yeah for awhile, I was really kind of struggling with the fact that I didn’t have a lot of energy. It’s not something that I’m used to experiencing. So it really led me to be more introspective and try to look into myself and understand like what might be driving this and how could I kind of feel like, more like myself.

And, um, you know, around the same time, early in 2021, as I interviewed more and more people, I started learning more about neurodiversity and specifically about autism. I found myself resonating with a lot of the content created by autistic content creators. Not all of it, but, um, a lot. And then I started just reading more about autism and how it expresses in girls and women and found even more familiarities within my own childhood.

Then later in 2021, I decided to explore the diagnosis process for autism and see if there was really something behind what I had been thinking for the whole year. And, um, and it was confirmed. So in October, 2021, I found out that I am autistic and apparently always have been. So, surprise! If you know me and you’re just hearing this for the first time. Um, I was kind of surprised as well. Although the more I learned about what autism is and how it expresses itself differently in different people, the more I really started to suspect that I was autistic.

At this point, while I feel like my day to day life really hasn’t changed. My understanding of my life up to this point really has. It’s helpful for me to realize that, you know, certain things that I considered very deep and strong weaknesses of mine weren’t necessarily things that were signs of immaturity or just moral weaknesses or, or huge faults, but that they’re heavily influenced by my neurology. So like my struggles in lot of social situations. Um, a lot of my high sensitivity and, and sensory overload. Things that I’ve been able to mask and kind of in my own way, kind of wall off as I, I grew up to, uh, to just try to adapt to the outside world without even realizing what I was doing at that point.

Really that is, uh, something that knowing that I’m autistic really helps put that into context. So, so it’s still pretty early in my understanding of my own autism. I know it’s going to take me many months to, uh, to process this and really understand it more. I’m trying to journal a little bit about it, and I’m hoping that some of those journal entries will provide some input for the podcast.

So, um, one thing that I really want to commit to on this show is to talk a little bit more about myself. You may notice if you’re a longtime listener that I really don’t talk about myself and my own stories that much on my show. It’s something that’s been kind of hard for me, honestly. I’d much rather listen to other people’s stories and interview them and learn more about what makes them tick.

But, uh, when it comes to me, it’s, uh, it’s hard. So I want to be able to do more of that because I think that it can really help to hear from a lot of different autistic voices. And I probably am someone who many people would not suspect is autistic. So I think it might be interesting to hear a little bit about my experiences of that and how it frames up in my past and my present life. So, um, I’m committing to do more of that. So, uh, stay tuned for more of those stories.

Another thing that I want to do more of, and you’ll notice this in the next episodes that are coming out early next year. I want to feature more stories from people who are neurodivergent and that includes people who are autistic, dyslexic, have ADHD, dyspraxia, Tourette’s Syndrome, just to name a few examples, a lot of the conditions that normally fall under neurodiversity. Now I’m really interested in hearing more about those stories. I want to learn more about how people who are neurodivergent like me experience the world, what their inner worlds are like, what kinds of things that they do, because it’s such, neurodiversity is just, is so broad and really shows that you can’t stereotype people and put them in a box. I’ve met in my personal life so many people who are doing fascinating things and they also happen to be neurodivergent. So I want to highlight more of that just to, to show off different stories and different strengths that people have and be realistic about their challenges of course, but to show that really there is, um, quite a lot of diversity in the neurodiversity conversation. And I’ll continue to share other people’s stories as well. It’s just that there will be more of a focus on stories from neurodivergent people. So stay tuned for that as well.

Thank you for listening to this. I hope that you enjoy my future episodes. As I go on this journey, I’m really just at the start. But as I go on my own journey to understand my own autism, I hope that, um, that you will stay along with me for that journey. And if you haven’t already subscribed to the show, I would greatly appreciate that. You can find all my episodes at beyond6seconds.net. Follow me on my social media channels, whichever ones you like the best. I’m pretty active on Instagram. I have a YouTube channel that has YouTube recordings of many of my past episodes and will have recordings of my features on neurodiversity as well.

So if you have any requests or any questions about my own autistic experience, I certainly can’t speak for everyone who’s autistic, but I can tell you what it’s like for me. Reach out to me through the website, let me know what your questions are, and I would be happy to address them in an upcoming episode. But in the meantime, thanks so much for being a listener. And I’m really looking forward to sharing all of these stories about neurodiversity and all of the really cool and interesting things that my guests are doing and all their awesome interests and the way that they are impacting and shaping and changing the world. And I hope you’ll enjoy hearing about their stories as much as I do. Take care.

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