More Than My CV

This week marks 6 months of job hunting:

50+ tailored applications and probably the same again in Easy Apply
8-10 HR screen calls & interviews
Half a dozen presentations and interview tasks
1 explanation of rejection

I’m in discussions with the job centre about getting IDM qualifications to fill gaps I might have, since marketing roles seem to be increasingly about specific experience rather than transferable skills (one job ad required 2+ years experience in a niche industry). But when my liaison asks ‘will this training get you a job’ how do I answer?

Without an explanation of rejection how do I know what needs addressing?

I had a 3-hour on-site second interview last week and the email (not phone call) I got two says later said “After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that on this occasion your application has been unsuccessful.”

I actually know why. Three hours is plenty long enough to know you’re not the right fit, but still, a bit of constructive feedback wouldn’t hurt.

I wrote the above on LinkedIn this week, in a fit of despondency that I’m no longer qualified to do my job because the requirements have shifted. Then, as I was folding laundry, I got to thinking about all the things I can do and have done. And posted the following…

Things I have done in previous jobs/life that I wish I could add to my CV:

I got a distinction for the final-year dissertation I wrote in ten weeks (of 10-hour days) on Russian History

While running an event during my first job out of uni, the CEO of GUS, Lord Wolfson, said ‘Ah, there’s always an Amanda behind the scenes’

I helped design, build, and train contact centre staff on how to use a phone-based gift finding service. In 1999

While helping run a hostel in NZ, I learned how to fold fitted sheets into neat squares
In the first month of a new marketing planning exec role, I presented plans to the South African Board
I ran a solo exhibition for my abstract art, finding out I secured it while still in hospital after the birth of my child

While raising my ND kids, I wrote and self published 12 novels, getting two long-listed for awards, and illustrating two of the ones written for children

I audio-typed interviews for the Compassion in World Farming CEO’s book 60 Harvests Left, learning so much about conservation and soil

I edited, and designed the cover for the autobiography My Life in Colour: From Bali to Brighton and Back by entrepreneur Paula Harward

As an invigilator, I walked the hall listening for sniffers, rocking desks, and pen tappers and fixed accordingly, to help those around them

I learned how to make and edit social media videos in Photoshop because a supplier wanted one and there was no resource

In two roles, I compiled a 30+ page Campaign Manager’s handbook, so future recruits wouldn’t have to figure it all out from scratch

In two years, with the support I could offer after leaving a job I loved, my AuDHD, MADD, ARFID, self-harming teenager secured 5 GCSEs, including two 7s, and is now a full-time hairdressing apprentice

Do I know how to use Hootsuite or Google Ads? Not yet. Do I have the experience to relate to all your customers and tell their stories? Absolutely.

And then, as you do at 3am, I realised I’d missed off the biggest achievement that’s really kinda relevant to marketing.

This blog.

Particularly in 2013, when I not only blogged daily for a year, but also wrote and self published Two Hundred Steps Home. All 285,000 words of it. Maybe when my ADHD assessor snidely remarked on my ‘excessive, rapid, and tangential speech’ we both forgot that that is a Strength.

I’m not really sure of the reason for this post, except to say, if you think the world is moving on without you, focus on the can not can’t.

AI stealing your job? Your words trained AI, learn how to use it as a tool. Everything now automated and programmatic? Software still needs intelligent input. And Hootsuite can’t talk round a Brand manager who doesn’t like your ‘Cheep Cheep’ pun, or get a print manager to fast-track a job because you’ve built up a rapport.

If computers are stealing your job, be something they can’t be: be human.

Etsy and Excuses

Picture shows a hotrod car parked on a gravel driveway — *Daughter’s prom carriage*

So, it’s been a while.

Yesterday’s post doesn’t count, it’s actually about a year old. I needed to add my blog to a job application, and realised half the photos were missing. Seems about right.

How to sum up the last 9 months? What’s the phrase, ‘There appears to have been a struggle’.

Menty Bs aplenty, not all of them mine. Lots I can’t discuss, lots I can’t remember.

Burnout. Brain fog. Bumpy roads.

Sounds like the title of a self help book, not that the world needs any more of those.

Things I can share:

I am Officially Autistic. As if we were in any doubt. 😂 But it’s affirming to know I’m not a crap horse, I’m a zebra.

Daughter sat some GCSEs and made it to prom. There was plenty of doubt that would happen, when we weren’t sure she had a school place for Year 11. I am indescribably proud, but also exhausted like I’ve been in labour for two years. We’re now at the start of a new – equally exhausting but also exciting and positive – chapter, as she starts her hairdresseing apprenticeship. Assuming we can find a college that doesn’t cancel its course and not tell us.

Just a wee bump in the road. 😂

I’ve started an Etsy shop. All those friends who told me to do it have finally won. I haven’t sold anything, so I’m running at a loss, but it looks pretty, and I have an excuse to paint and make videos for my Instagram page.

Expect to see posts of art and not many words for a month or two. All my words are going on cover letters and job applications at present.

Um. More positive news? My kids are mostly happy, we’re keeping pets and houseplants alive just about. I’ve taken up tame swimming (like wild swimming, but I pay to use a little lake, rather than risk E. coli in the local river!) I’ve read some great books. I’ll share a few.

That’s about it for now. Just checking in really. Waving not drowning.

How are you all?

Fancy a coffee?

Show Yourself

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I love a Disney movie. The stories are clear but still complex, the language accessible but not dumbed down. Relatable characters with flaws, and of course awesome belting songs. Not to mention a happy ending full of justice and redemption.

One of my favourite movies of more recent times is Frozen, particularly because the happy ending isn’t reliant on the girl being saved by a man. Even better, it cleverly turns the traditional story on its head with a twist that blew me away the first time I watched it.

Rather unusually, however, I preferred the sequel. If I relate to Let it Go, and really who doesn’t? (I even wrote a parent version), the song that hits me hard these days is Show Yourself.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Frozen story, the main protagonist, Elsa, was born with a unique and frightening power, and ends up hurting her sister because her family don’t understand it and so can’t teach her how to control it. She is told to “conceal, don’t feel, don’t let it show”. When that mask slips, she becomes an outcast, and only her sister doesn’t give up on her.

In the second movie, Elsa is content surrounded by the few people who love and accept her, but she still feels different. She still feels she could be more. She is pulled by a voice, a sense of yearning, but is scared she’ll lose what she already has.

In the end, she has no choice but to follow the voice. And in the song Show Yourself, Elsa finds the source of the secret siren she has sought for answers.

I can sense you there, like a friend I’ve always known.

During the song, the spirit of her mother shows Elsa that she herself is the voice.

Show yourself, step into your power,

Grow yourself into something new.

You are the one you’ve been waiting for.

I’ll be honest, I get goosebumps every time I reach this part, although I only recently realised why. I feel like it’s my song, and the song for anyone who grew up feeling like they didn’t fit. Like they had more to give, if only they were given permission, if only it wasn’t so terrifying.

And the discovery that I am (probably) neurodivergent is that moment where I feel, “I am found”.

The more I learn about autism and ADHD, the more I understand these “cold secrets deep inside” me that are different and powerful and frightening, that make me different and often friendless, but that can be harnessed to create amazing things.

The message in the Frozen movies is that love is what is needed to control and harness the power.

However, friendships are hard for NDs to make and keep. Self confidence, self love, is even harder, when “Research has shown that children with ADHD have often received 20,000 more negative messages about their behaviour than a neurotypical child by age 12.” [Source]

It might take a lifetime, but I am going to follow the voice I hear now inside me that tells me that, while I might be different, I am not broken. I am ready to learn.

I am ready to grow myself into something new.

Just a cold

The picture shows an apricot coloured curly labradoodle dog asleep on a brown sofa

It’s just a cold, why are you making so much fuss?

I think this every time anyone in my family is ill. And then I’m ill, and I remember this is a neurotypical view of the world.

When you’re ruled by sensory difficulties, executive dysfunction, rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD), it’s never just a cold.

Your body stops bodying properly. It feels wrong. There’s new pain to process and you’re hyper aware of it. You can’t control it or make it stop. You’re aware of the discomfort of dry lips, weird papery skin, pressure of blocked sinuses, achy fidgety limbs, torture headaches, hot then cold then hot (which actually you’re used to because your temperature regulation wasn’t all that great to start with). Your brain loops on a single lyric or you have lurid dreams until you don’t know if you’re more miserable awake or asleep. You’re maybe thirsty but your body cues have never been obvious and then you chug a litre in one go and feel sick but too tired to pee.

But it’s just a cold. And why are you always ill, you had a cold just last month?

You’re more prone to colds because ARFID means your diet is poor and vitamins only do so much. And you forgot to drink any water yesterday, and caffeine helps you control your ADHD.

Anxiety makes it harder to leave the house and get fresh air, and you’re on the edge of burnout so often that exercise can use the last bit of resilience and actually let the germs take over.

I’ve lost count of the times a new determination to exercise more has ended with a temperature and days in bed.

It’s just a cold, why are you so grumpy, get over it.

You’re all out of spoons and sensitive to your triggers. That’s noise for me, so things like husband snoring or dogs licking become physically painful until I have my fingers in my ears and I’m screaming at the dogs for grooming themselves (not proud of that). So I try to control the noise, but I can’t, so that increases my anxiety until I’m almost hysterical. Which funnily enough doesn’t do much for the headache.

Guilt is rife because if I’m finally taking to my bed it’s because I have nothing. But chances are I’m not the only one ill, so everything falls apart and certainly no one has spoons to check I have water or am taking my meds. Which makes me sad. Then guilty. Then mum mode kicks in and I have to go take care of them, which adds another day to me shifting the darn cold.

For my son, on top of the sensory horror is the loss of routine. His day is controlled by alarms, when to shower, eat, work out etc. A day of ill disrupts all of that.

My daughter’s is food. Eating is hard, drinking water harder. Feeling poorly makes it harder to do both, so hangry turns up followed by guilt and self blame.

It’s just a cold, you’ll feel better tomorrow, quit moaning.

When you live in a world of now and not-now, it’s hard to think past the headache and inability to breathe and imagine a time you ever didn’t feel this way. It becomes easy to catastrophise, to want to end the misery. Your brain, part of it, tells you to get a grip, but your whole nervous system is fighting you telling you it’s too much to deal with right now.

Then you’re missing commitments, school, work, life, so the RSD pops up and tells you you’re letting everyone down and they all hate you and you’re a pathetic human being because everyone says it’s just a cold. You should just get up and get on. So you do, and the cold lingers, and comes back, and so it all begins again.

Are you ill again? I never get colds, what’s wrong with you?

But it’s just a cold. Right?

Caution: Builder at Work

The picture shows the side of a house with scaffolding around the chimney

I’m on week four of my new job and just about hanging in there, juggling parenting and working.

Thankfully having teenagers in the summer holidays is mostly about making sure there is lots and lots and lots of food and driving them places. Throw in a bit of laundry, cleaning, and some body-doubling for my daughter, and that’s it. It will be more challenging when they go back to school, as they will need a lot more scaffolding.

If you haven’t come across the term scaffolding in a neurodivergent sense, it’s simplifying tasks other people find very easy, to free up spoons for the essential or more difficult tasks.

When I went to see my son’s head of year to talk about reducing his timetable, I was given a long list of all the reasons why he was thriving at school and didn’t need any accommodations: He turned up to class on time, he had all of the things he needed to learn, he remembered all the ingredients for his food tech, he was always smartly dressed. These are all things that I put scaffolding in place for, to allow him the spoons to get through the day.

He still comes home exhausted.

For an average teenager, I would be encouraging them to weigh out and label their own food tech ingredients, make sure they have ironed shirts or that their laundry has been done. I would tell them to find and polish their own shoes or put together their own PE kit. This would be ‘preparing them for adulthood’.

But the thing is, my son already knows how to do it all, but each tiny task takes spoons.

He also has his own scaffolding: multiple alarms to remind him to get up, shower, brush his teeth, and other things an allistic person might not even have to think about never mind be reminded to do. By the time he leaves for school, he’s used up so much of his capacity already, the least I can do is help.

Unlike the scaffolding on a building, this scaffolding may never come down. He may end up with an understanding partner, or he may need a housekeeper, or like me he might rely on AI (Alexa, Siri, and ChatGPT are my team.) These are accommodations for an autistic person in an allistic world.

The same is true in my new job. I have a reputation for being very organised, which always makes me laugh as someone with ADHD. What people don’t realise, but I’ve become much more open in discussing, is that the organisation is essential for me to have any idea of what I’m supposed to be doing on an hourly or daily basis.

I have links from spreadsheet to spreadsheet, I have bookmarks in sub-folders in folders. I have to-do lists and checklists and calendar reminders and even with all these things I still have to go through my notes every day to remember what I should be doing.

It is exhausting.

Like my son at the end of a school day, I have been crawling into bed early and sleeping late.

The analogy of the swan, calm on the surface and furiously paddling underneath, is a flippant image I use often. But imagine the swan is on an apparently slow-moving river with a very fast undertow: you would have no idea how exhausted the swan was just trying to stay in one place. Now imagine someone built a dam or a jetty to break the undertow.

In case it helps, here are my favourite tech/AI scaffolding tips:

Alexa shopping list
Alexa devices in every room
Calendar reminder to check Echo app shopping list
Alexa timers and reminders (particularly cooking pasta!)
Talking work problems through with ChatGPT
Smart watch linked to phone so I hear calls
Airpods to hear messages
Tile to find my phone when watch tells me it’s ringing
Alexa to find my keys to activate my tile

It’s so much easier for my husband, he just has Wife™. 😂

What scaffolding do you use?

Halfway there

The picture is of an unhappy toddler in a pink octopus suit. The centre of the picture has the label 'Marketers' and each leg of the octopus is labeled with marketing roles 'Paid Ads, Conversion Funnels, Local Markets, Events, Social Media Management, Content Creation, Email Marketing, Landing Pages' as a humourous reference to the number of different skills required in one role — *Marketing Job Adverts: Please do ALL the things*

I’ve heard it said that you need to apply for about sixty jobs before you find a new role. Actually, I’ve seen anywhere from 20 to 100, but sixty suits the purpose of this post, since it means I’m halfway there. [Cue a blast of Living on a Prayer. IYKYK.]

So, what have I learnt through applying for thirty jobs?

Firstly, job hunting these days is hard.

I mean, it’s always been hard. And I’ve always been rubbish at it. Before I knew I was neurodivergent, I thought I was just crap. Now I know I was trying to go through a ritual without anyone telling me the rules in a way that I understood.

Thankfully, there are now so many more tools available online, it’s actually been easier for me personally than ever before. Websites like this one, which not only tells you the questions you might be asked in an interview but also tells you what employers are looking for by asking AND suggests possible answers! Game changer. If only I could type my answers during the interview, so they don’t get garbled between brain and mouth!

But the market is hard. I’m looking for remote or nearby hybrid jobs, so I’m competing with a huge number of people. And, because marketing is the first part of a company to be jettisoned in an economic downturn, and often the least understood, some of the roles being advertised are bonkers (see octopus image above). They might as well say, “Please can you replace the whole brand and performance marketing and creative team we accidentally made redundant and then realised we needed, oh, but in a 40 hour week for a fairly average salary.” Er. No.

Joking aside, one of the skills I am honing is the ability to really understand the role from the job description, and then to judge it against my personal abilities. Not just, could I do that, but could I do that without hitting burnout in six months? I personally love variety in a role. I’m happy to become your email campaign/paid ad/SEO/landing page/adobe expert. But not if you expect me to have ten years’ experience in each of those functions, and not when you throw in expecting full analytics and ROI, event management, staff mentoring, and international travel. That’s just not feasible for one person.

Then the actual applications vary considerably.

The majority of my applications are through sites like LinkedIn and Indeed, and are straightforward – add CV, sometimes a cover letter, hit send. Unsurprisingly, those are the ones that get hundreds of applications.

I’ve been asked to do an online assessment, through LinkedIn as part of an application (not for an interview). Thankfully they only asked once, and I’ve been able to use the results for many more applications. Turns out, I’m Expert level on grammar, punctuation and fact checking/error spotting. Thank goodness for that, or I’m in the wrong line of work.

I was asked to prepare a short marketing outline for the application for Rewilding Britain (again, application stage, not interview stage). Being the overdelivering, out of work and bored marketeer that I am, I created a full webpage of assets, including video. It wasn’t looked at, as far as I can tell. But if you fancy a gander at what I can do, have a look.

Rewilding Britain also made a point of asking that AI not be used for CV, Cover Letter, or the marketing outline, which I found interesting. Because I’ve been using ChatGPT a lot.

There are lots of discussions online about the use of AI in job applications. But, as one person pointed out, if you’re a Plumber (say), then crafting cover letters is not your wheelhouse, and ChatGPT is just a tool. Particularly if you’re applying for the recommended 10-15 jobs a week.

I don’t have that excuse. I’m a wordsmith. However, I am also neurodivergent, and cover letters are another one of those areas that don’t come with guidelines. Do you want war and peace? Do you want me to pick up every part of the job description that I can do and give you an example? Isn’t that what an interview is for? So, I drop the job description into ChatGPT and ask it to provide a semi-formal cover letter up to 500 words. You have to say semi-formal or it sounds like a nineteenth century novel. And then – and this is the important bit – you REWRITE it, with your own experience and in your own style.

Similarly, I did use AI for my marketing outline for Rewilding Britain, despite being told not to. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t make the interview, perhaps they could tell. But I don’t have personal experience of promoting an environmental charity, and I didn’t have a week to research it. (I might have spent that time making videos about soil. Oops.) The lovely AI bot gave me brilliant ideas in about 30 seconds, that I was then able to build into a meaningful plan. It’s a tool, people, not a monster.

I have at least managed to get three interviews so far, which is well within the 8% success rate of application to interview, so that’s encouraging.

The interviews I’ve had have all been very different too. We won’t mention the one that triggered the bout of depression, as least said now is hopefully soonest mended. But of the other two, the online one was far preferable to the in-person one. As I said in my last post, it’s much more neurodivergent friendly. And even though I didn’t get the job, I felt I performed better by being more relaxed.

That was also the first interview where I received the interview questions in advance.

This is the positive of the whole process so far, for me. Being able to own being neurodivergent (even without a diagnosis. No one has asked for evidence. And I do have a diagnosis for Anxiety, which also counts as a disability).

Thanks to creating a wonderful echo chamber of neurodivergent-friendly people on LinkedIn, I feel comfortable asking for accommodations now, whether it’s if a job can be hybrid when it hasn’t been advertised as such, or asking for the interview questions in advance. For the latter, I would say that that’s just common sense. I was able to give much more meaningful answers to the competency questions by having an hour to think it through first.

Anyway, I didn’t meant this to be such a long post, and I’m not sure it’s interesting to anyone but me (and my husband, who I am now also applying for jobs for). I think it’s just useful to see how far I have come.

It’s easy to get discouraged, particularly when I had a job I loved that I had to leave and that wouldn’t have me back. But I do believe that everything, even the shitty things, can have a positive outcome.

Hopefully this one will be a meaningful job that I can do in all my ND weirdness. Preferably before the money runs out!

Music for Mental Health

The picture is of a playlist barcode from Spotify, and four album covers (Alanis Morrissette, Noah Kahan, Gabrielle, and the soundtrack to Cinderella featuring Camila Cabello)

So, rather ironically, I missed mental health week due to a recent bout of quite severe depression.

I’m still recovering but I can feel myself slowly coming back to life. Something that has always helped me do this is the right playlist.

One of the most amazing modern inventions for me is the ability to carry music in your pocket, from a walkman to an iPod and now on my phone. And, thanks to online streaming, I can create a playlist for any mood without tape-to-tape faffery.

Being a word person, finding a song that speaks to me, to the place I’m at, is massively supportive of my mental health. This time my depression was caused by something quite specific and I hoped that I would, I knew that I would, survive it. But it has been one of the worst attacks in recent years.

And music has been really important.

I put together this short little Recovery playlist, that starts with feelings of abandonment, through realisation, finding the fighter, rebuilding a glimmer of hope, and then celebration of self.

So I thought I would share it.

I’m still not in a place to put together clever words myself but in this slightly belated mental health week post I encourage you to find the playlist that puts you on your own path of recovery.

Who Wrote the Rules?

A gold statue of lady justice holding a pair of scales

One of the hardest things for autistic people to get their heads around is injustice.

I noticed it first when my son was at school and he came home angry that his sports team lost a game because others were ‘cheating’. My own outrage matched his, and it took a while to realise that the cheating was in fact what I guess is called gamesmanship.

Gamesmanship is the use of dubious (although not technically illegal) methods to win or gain a serious advantage in a game or sport.
Wikipedia

The problem for autistic people is that there are so many shades of grey in this kind of behaviour, and our brains are more black and white.

In the classroom, my son would end up in trouble for insisting loudly that a classmate adhere to the rules. My son would be seen as the disrupter and get told off. The injustice of such an accusation would be awful, combined then with a feeling that he had somehow broken a rule. It was my first real indication that he might be autistic.

My daughter struggles with the unfairness of teachers breaking a uniform code that is inflicted on children because they need to be ‘ready for the workplace’. So much wrong with that! Autistic people tend not to recognise hierarchy, so one rule for teachers and one for teenagers isn’t fair. And then there’s the illogical idea of an imaginary workplace that isn’t in fact where teachers work. Or her parents. In fact, noone she knows still wears a tie to work and can’t have jewellery.

I used to think my need for fairness was a Libra trait. I am learning that it’s probably a bit more than that.

Discovering I am (probably) autistic – and how glad will I be, like my daughter this week, when I finally get my diagnosis – makes so much sense of why I have struggled to find and keep an office job.

Firstly there’s not understanding hierarchy: turns out thinking ‘if you’re wrong, you’re wrong, whether you’re an admin assistant or a chief exec’ isn’t a popular view point. 😂

Then there’s following the rules. What rules? Who made them up? Where is it written that I wear heels and don’t swear and don’t tie my hair in a messy bun? It doesn’t affect my ability to do my job. Same with laughing too much, complaining about noise, or not wanting to eat lunch with the team.

And fairness or things making sense? That’s just a minefield. Challenging that something shouldn’t be done just because it’s always been done that way is hugely unpopular. But if you do what you always did you get what you always got.

Needing to know WHY is another no-no apparently. But if I understand why a project is urgent, where it fits in, I might be able to deliver it quicker and change a process so it’s not urgent next time.

Right now, all these things are very much in my mind, for reasons I can’t discuss. It’s making me very sad, and I need to move on. But a combination of injustice and something just not making sense has caught my brain in a loop, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

It’ll pass.

In the meantime, if you have an autistic person in your life, and I hope you do as we’re pretty goddam awesome, try and appreciate their strengths even if it makes you uncomfortable. They might just fight for you with everything they have to make your world a better, fairer, place

Channeling Energy (or how to sneak up on your brain)

A photograph of the multi-faceted dome from the TV series Crystal Maze

One of the things I’m learning as a neurodivergent is how to follow the flow of energy. When it’s right to rest and when it’s actually better to move, do something, anything, and how to sneak up on my brain if it’s resistant.

I was raised to see rest as idleness, self-care as decadence. It’s taken a really long time to even begin to deprogram myself from that. I also realise, with hindsight, that I pushed those values onto my husband. He used to understand the need to sit and just be, was an expert at it, but I saw it as laziness. Sorry, husband 😔

In my defence, it wasn’t just upbringing. Our whole Western culture celebrates productivity. We are told to “fill the unforgiving minute | With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run”.

From infancy, our worth is defined by our achievements. You spoke! You walked! You can count to ten, you passed your exams. What a clever girl, I’m so proud of you. Haven’t you worked hard.

The message is never that it’s okay to just be. That the world is somehow better with you in it, regardless of whether you win awards or die trying.

When I was working, Monday morning chat filled me with dread. “What did you get up to this weekend?” caused my truthful autistic brain to stumble. Somehow, “I slept and did laundry” wasn’t the answer they were after 😂

But weekends were for rest and recovery, ready for another week of work. Harvesting energy, so I could pour it into my job. Which is why it was fortunate that I loved it (most of the time). I was excited by Mondays, revved and ready to tackle the challenges and test my brain to see what it could do.

Without that, under-employed as I currently am, (I won’t say unemployed, because there is still a house to run, a family to feed and clothe), managing my energy is so much harder.

Firstly, there isn’t much challenge in laundry, so it isn’t all that exciting. Feeding a house of ARFID is challenging, but in a tax-return sort of way that’s pretty fucking miserable, I won’t lie. My newly-freed-from-work husband is doing All. The. Things. Decorating, landscaping, renovating. Wonderful stuff, but it’s not where my energy is currently at.

So I read and apply for jobs and try not to panic.

And I learn about energy.

I’ve learned that my energy flows best in an empty house. Which is a bit of a bugger at the moment. I’m back to hanging out in coffee shops for solitude and cake. My waist is expanding at an alarming rate 😉

I’ve learned that I can sneak up on energy, like a skittish horse, if I pretend to be resting and then suddenly leap up, put running clothes on, and get stuck into a task before my brain’s caught up.

I have remembered the power of a playlist. Metallica blaring through headphones got me through periods of post-procrastination panic-productivity at university, enabling me to write a term’s worth of essays in a sleepless week. I don’t recommend it, but if you must, then diet coke and …And Justice for All are what you need. Just don’t forget the headphones.

I am also learning about creative energy. It’s like trying to catch a Roborovski hamster. Or like the end of Crystal Maze, grabbing the gold tokens flying around. The clever contestants waited and gathered them as they landed rather than snatching at air.

Take this post. It’s weeks overdue, and the third I’ve started in my head. But today I waited until the ideas started to gather, then grabbed at them as they pooled in my mind. I started at 5a.m. The Notes file on my phone is full of 5a.m. thoughts. 😂 I had a slight side-quest, trying to find an image of a Crystal Maze contestant grabbing at tokens. I couldn’t, but am learning to limit these perfection-searches where I can. That way danger lies. (The same reason I can’t have Instagram or TikTok on my phone.)

My brain, when under-utilised, is like the Crystal Dome all the darn time. Ideas flap around me, all shiny, but I can’t get hold of them. Or I grab randomly and get a hodgepodge that I can’t sift through. Since leaving work to look after my daughter I’ve knitted, cross-stitched, crocheted, made a book trailer video, redesigned a book cover, drawn illustrations, updated my website, and come up with a dozen crazy ideas for new projects.

But having to job-hunt is depleting my energy, because it’s all the things I hate. It’s trying to believe in myself and sell myself, it’s trying to say what recruiters want to hear, in cover letters and interviews. It’s searching, and reading through the job-speak trying to understand what is actually expected in a role.

And it’s waiting.

Waiting is ADHD Kryptonite. A 4 o’clock appointment will kill a day.
Add to that a daughter who is still in recovery and a hyper-productive husband doing ten projects at once, and managing my own energy is getting really hard.

So I read. And rest. And sneak up on my brain, holding a chocolate bar and a coffee to tempt it to submit.

And I wait.

My Creative Life

So, one of the things I haven’t wanted to talk about recently is my husband and his team being made redundant. It didn’t seem right to talk about it when it was so emotive and raw. Nine years is a long time to work somewhere to then find out you aren’t wanted. Aren’t needed (although we’ll choose to disagree on that). The problem with talking about it is that it’s the same place I worked, and hope to return to. And his team were friends, and they were all treated badly.

All the feels.

But in some ways, my husband leaving that job is a good thing. I’ve said for a long time that he needed a change. A break. A chance to rest and rethink. To do All. The. Things. It isn’t fair that I got to heal from burnout if he doesn’t as well.

It also means that I might be able to return to work sooner. Maybe to the same place if they’ll have me. If I’ll have them. But it feels like a betrayal to consider going back, even though it’s a big company and, stressful and spoon-depleting as it was, I appreciated being in a neurodivergent-friendly team.

But it makes me feel selfish to leave husband and daughter and hustle back to what I want to do, so that’s a not-to-talk-about-for-now.

Part of my stay-employable strategy, though, while I support my daughter, has been to improve my adobe skills and build a portfolio page. I’m doing a video-editing course with the OU, and playing with animation in Photoshop and Premiere. Not the best software for it, but it’s what I know.

What I didn’t expect was how healing it would be to review the things I’ve done, the lives I’ve lived and places I’ve been. To remember I’m more than a mum. I heartily recommend it, if you’re in a rut or need a confidence boost. In the end it was more than practice or a portfolio piece. It was an affirmation. With an irritatingly catchy bit of music 😂

So, here it is: my creative life: