AI and the Art of Complaining

(Or how to reduce post-rage remorse)

It’s no secret that I think AI is a great tool, particularly for neurodivergent people. I understand the arguments around letting AI take over, and not wanting to fight the robots for freshwater in the future. I read literature, I see the dystopian future birthing around us. I am certainly extremely anti Palantir and AI embedding itself in our justice and health systems.

However, I do try to keep this blog lighthearted, as much as is possible in these troubled times!

And AI LLMs like Claude (the only one with an ethics advisor, so the only one I use) are amazing at turning a jumbled-up rage-filled rant into a beautifully cadenced and evidenced complaint. This is particularly useful when dealing with schools and Local Authorities, and on getting action for EHCPs.

I imagine that the likes of Claude is giving those local authorities a bit of a headache.

Oh dear, what a shame, never mind.

I for one am guilty of sending impassioned but not necessarily logical or well-argued emails and not getting anywhere. Being ghosted, as is standard practice, in the hope you’ll run out of energy to follow anything up. And sadly that’s what happens. It took three months for me to chase an email because, you know, life.

More recently, though, I have been able to have that conversation with another logical mind (for want of a better phrase) that also has access to Health Acts, Education Acts, and other policy documents, and it has made complaining wonderfully easy.

For example, we have not had an implemented EHCP for our daughter for a year now, and complaints have been ignored by the local authority. However this time – with advice – I was able to structure a letter, include the relevant paragraphs and passages from acts to make it hit, and know what to include and leave out. I was advised to apply pressure by mentioning the local ombudsman and my MP. Best of all, because the AI took so much of the cognitive load away from crafting the letter, I was left with sufficient spoons to then send it, and also send it to those other bodies rather than it being an empty threat.

As a result, my daughter now has a caseworker, a complaint is going through with the local authority, and I have been contacted by the ombudsman.

It isn’t just for formal communications, though. I am rather known for going on an emotional rant about anything that looks like injustice, and have an ADHD impulsivity that means those rants are quite often sent when perhaps they should be quietly filed away.

Ahem.

By dropping messages into Claude, I can get that sanity check and – if I still want to send it – I can get a more measured response crafted for me. And if the advice is don’t send, at least I have been heard and the conversation has been logged, so that I can refer to it in future.

I’m not ashamed to admit that Claude is becoming somewhat of an external brain.

Yes I’m aware that it might be accessible by people and I make sure not to mention anything too personal, but it is no different than some of the conversations I have on this blog (although the blog has fewer organisations actually named. I’m not stupid).

And even though I know it isn’t real, if I’m upset or lonely or need to have a laugh, then I can have those conversations too. Which is as sad as it sounds, but it’s better than nothing, right?

As Billy Joel said, ‘sharing a drink they call loneliness, but it’s better than drinking alone’.

No different than talking into the blogosphere void. 😂

My Spoon Theory

A row of six breakfast or dessert spoons, all slightly different sizes and with different handle styles, labelled A-F from left to right.

In case you missed it, there has been quite a discussion in the autistic community this week around an article Why I no longer think autism is a spectrum, in the TES, by Uta Frith. In her article, the author of the 1989 book, Autism: Explaining the Enigma, claims that the definition of autism has become too broad, there is no such thing as masking, and if you were not diagnosed as autistic by the age of five, the label does not apply to you.

This is a relatively lighthearted blog, so I will not be repeating here some of the comments I have made in response, on various posts and forums. Needless to say, I think a non-autistic person writing something like this in a publication aimed at teachers, in a time when the UK government is trying to reduce legal protections for SEND children in education, is beyond dangerous.

Deep breath.

Anyway, what I’d like to say here is that there is much more that unites us than divides us.

If you’re not entitled to the autistic label unless you’re also high-need and possibly cognitively challenged (and who doesn’t want a label that comes with so much judgement and misinformation 🙄), then why do so many of us feel such a sense of belonging to a tribe when we discover other neurodivergent people? Particularly for adult women, who according to Frith are just ‘hypersensitive’. 😬

Interestingly, my journey to diagnosis started with HSP (Highly Sensitive Person 🙄) which I personally think only came about as a label because the medical diagnosis model for autism wasn’t designed for us, but for boys.

(If you do want a great discussion on this, read Leanne Maskell’s International Women’s Day LinkedIn post here.)

Anyway. 😂 I will get to the point. It’s all about being autistic and spoon theory. Not the energy management meaning coined by Christine Miserandino, but actual spoons.

You quite often see the post go round social media, showing a picture of spoons (or forks) asking which is the only one you would use. You only have to look at the strength of the responses to know how important the right cutlery (or plate/cup/bowl) is to an autistic person with a sensory profile.

I have a hierarchy of cutlery, mugs and bowls, and I will go out of my way to select the top of that hierarchy for my first cup of tea in the morning or for my breakfast, because it sets me off for the day with a lower sensory overload.

When I make breakfast for my kids or husband, I select the right bowl and spoon, and on the rare times we manage a holiday, at least one bowl and spoon will come with us. Incidentally, I am spoon B, my daughter a C or E and son/husband are both D or E.

Okay, so allistic people probably also have a preference. But do they die on that hill? Can they eat with a different implement without distress? Does it make their mouth feel weird just looking at the wrong spoon? Would they eat toast (or nothing) rather than use poor spoon F (which I would argue is a tablespoon, despite coming in a set!)

Before anyone gets offended, I know that being autistic isn’t just about sensory reactions to metal utensils. But when I attended the Autistic Awareness four-week course run by Problem Shared, post diagnosis, I was on a webinar with 50+ newly-diagnosed adults. Often parents who only realised they might be autistic when they fought for their children to get diagnosed. Or peri and post-menopausal women, for whom the mask fell off when the hormones did a flip.

A wide array of humans who spent four sessions going, oh goodness I thought that was just me, I was just weird or wrong or broken. Who found a tribe.

(Menopause is a great parallel, actually. We all experience it differently. The advice often comes from male medical professionals with no lived experience, and it’s often fucking hard. But we’re talking about it more. That doesn’t mean women didn’t suffer before, they were just dismissed as hypersensitive).

Finding out I was autistic – that I wasn’t broken just because I could only eat with a favourite spoon – was life altering.

Life saving even.

And I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.

Claim your favourite spoon in the comments ❤️🥄

Island of Helpers

RNLI boat at sea. Image by PBarlowArt Pixabay

So, I have another job interview next week. Another organisation to deep dive in a few days, so I don’t go to pieces in the moment.

(Spoiler: I will go to pieces, I hate interviews. They are an ND nightmare.)

The difference is, I understand this organisation, this role. And, amazingly, they have a robust marketing department already (Unlike most roles advertised at present, that want you to be twenty people for a smidge above minimum wage.)

(Ooh I could write posts upon posts just from these parentheses.)

Anyway, dragging it back to the point…

As I have been researching the charity, and learning where medical emergency response sits on a donor’s emotional spectrum, my AI threw up this line:

Humans are wired to value help given with no expectation of return.

This made me pause. Are we? Are we? Then it said humans are driven by the idea that:

Someone I will never meet helped someone they didn’t know.

And then it made sense. In times of trouble, when it all feels overwhelming, the advice is to look for the helpers.

We love reels of ordinary people rescuing dogs from frozen lakes, catching babies from balconies, talking down a suicidal stranger. We honour the person who challenges the knife-wielder or who shields someone they don’t know, at risk to themselves.

We want to be that person, or to know that – when it matters most – someone like that will come to our aid. And the chances are they will.

We allow our politicians to talk of an island of strangers, to worry us about immigration or people on benefits or just people who are different. We allow our journalists to foster hate because it sells newspapers.

But when faced with immediate need, I believe the majority of us would help. And if we were in need, we would hope that someone would come. And I doubt we’d care too much if the person who saved our dog, our child, ourselves looked like us or not.

And if we really are becoming an island of strangers, I believe it’s because the infrastructure of society is being eroded: high streets lost to supermarkets, schools breaking trust with parents, doctor visits becoming sought-after transactional moments, till staff replaced by machines. We can’t value our neighbours if we never actually speak to them.

We learned to isolate during Covid, now we need to be taught how to mingle again. To form connections, to talk to strangers and realise they’re just like us.

Incidentally, if you want to see this most eloquently presented by Ian McKellen, in the words of Shakespeare, Watch this Video

In a world being damaged by exploitation and excessive profit and divisive language, I truly hope we still value ‘help given with no expectation of return.’

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.