I think winter starts on Thanksgiving, but since I live in Southern Indiana--it was 65 on Christmas, and the winter solstice is December 21, and then it's the holiday. So I don't know when to send this letter.
WHAT I DID POORLY was taking care of myself and my family concerning my new job. I'm frequently exhausted and often don't get home until after dinner or bedtime. This has been hard on me, but it doesn't bother my kids much. It just means more TV time.
WHAT NEEDS ADJUSTMENT: I need to present my reasonable accommodations for my job so I can best manage two things that are the roles of a healthy person. More and more, I think of my writing life not just as a way of processing the world or a healthy coping skill but as a career and not a side hustle because one thing has become clear to me in 2023: the 9-5 daily grind is not for me. It only took me twenty years to realize that. So I will make this letter and its stories paid by spring. The other thing is developing a copywriting business to be my own boss. I think the working world is not built for me to do well, so I will internalize my professional life to something I can control, something I'm actually good at, and support my family.
WHAT I DID WELL THIS YEAR: I got a new job, which has boosted my self-confidence and developed some resilience training in becoming more & more unmasked as a neuro-divergent person and what that means for me and how I relate to a world that doesn't really want me around at all. To a certain extent, it never did, and this sort of ties into what I'll talk about below and whether I want to stay with Substack to house my newsletter.
That has to do with the controversy that John Warner talks about here. But really, what I did well was understanding my limits and the rhythm of burnout in my life, which means I'm in for another one, probably this summer. I hope this isn't a foregone conclusion, but it does seem like autistic burnout hits me every three years and a hit of burnout that happens every year for about a month. I'm hoping that with some adjustments to my daily life (and my working life ), hopefully I'll be ready for it when the time comes to weather that storm this summer.
WHAT NEEDS ADJUSTMENT is gaining further self-control, gaining more wisdom on my neurodivergence, and assenting to the reality that burnout has been and will be a part of my life, so trying to avoid it or prevent it may be an unrealistic goal. I am really just doing my best to set myself and my family up to understand burnout to help me through it when it does happen and hopefully come out of it quickly and at least be able to maintain my responsibilities when I am going through a season of burnout. That's probably the best gift of what I've learned this year is that it's temporary and that I will get through it.
Writing Life
I managed to write the memoir's first draft this year. The next step is to get that stuff organized and rewritten, but...given that I have inattentive ADHD, I have a lot going right now, and have about five pieces in progress.
An essay on John Hughes's Second Brain
Two pieces for Stories from the Spectrum, which will run here in February and March
And for kicks, I’m trying to write a screenplay with Highland 2 since we just got a new family iMac
A feature article on ABA therapy for a big publication
So, I will spend January finishing these things in my backlog. February will start the new stories, the revision of the memoir, and plugging away at the screenplay to switch it up.
Fuel
Novel. I think I've said this before, but I loved Permanent Record by Mary HK Choi because her voice in both her fiction and her podcast on mental health (she was recently diagnosed with autism/adhd) and creativity— Hey Cool Life are just like the voices I hear in my own head. Now, if only I could get that to happen on the page.
Nonfiction. I read a lot about autism this year but those were probably not my favorite books I read this year. My favorites were books of philosophy, specifically How To Live by Sarah Bakewell, Breakfast with Seneca by David Fideler, and Journal Like a Stoic by Brittany Polat. The latter always got me to reflect on my mindset on a regular, daily basis and work out a solution. I can't wait to read what Brittany does next.
Comic. Once again, I didn't read a lot of comics, because a lot of what's out there did not interest me. I'm behind on Saga and pretty much all of my indie comics, like Ice Cream Man. The comics I did read and liked were all illustrated by Dan Mora. Specifically Once & Future, written by Kieron Gillen. I know I’m way behind on this series. This seems tailor-made to scratch the itch of the dead Injection series, and Mora's DC work with Mark Waid, especially World's Finest. That book reminds me of Waid and Samnee's run on Daredevil. It's pure fun. Waid is easily in my top five favorite comic writers, so if his name is on it, I'm going to read it.
TV. That's easy--it's Fargo, season 5. The third and fourth seasons were not my cup of tea, but this one is the definition of smooth. I love the cast; writing and direction are flawless. Juno Temple is the polar opposite of her character on Ted Lasso. Jennifer Jason Leigh and Dave Foley are perfect. Jon Hamm is Don Draper gone bad and is an insurrectionist. I can't imagine where or how it will close with all the threads series creator, executive producer, and head writer Noah Hawley has woven. I definitely prefer his TV work over his novels.
Film: My favorite movie of 2023 had to be Barbie. It was gorgeous, beautifully directed, hilarious, and socially critical. It was exactly my thing. My favorite movie I saw this fall had to be The Pigeon Tunnel, a bio documentary of David Cromwell (the spy novelist John Le Carre) by Errol Morris, a complicated portrait of a complicated writer. I have the book by Le Carre in my queue to read after I finish The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
Podcast: The aforementioned Hey, Cool Life by Mary HK Choi is great. But my favorite is Happy Now? by Dave and Kristin Finch. Dave Finch wrote one of the best books on late-diagnosed autism and navigating a neurodiverse relationship--The Journal of Best Practices. Some of the references from the book are dated, but he makes strides to correct and edit it that in the podcast to show how his knowledge has changed since he wrote the book almost ten years ago. The podcast takes each chapter of the book one at a time and Dave and his wife Kristin talk and give his neurotypical wife's take on their relationship rather than just his (which is what the book covers.) I think the book and the podcast are excellent and still really funny. They are the antithesis to my common problem with a lot of the autistic content out there—the prevalence of victim and all-or-nothing thinking that it's other people who have to accommodate us when, in reality, it's a collaboration and that's what the Finches get that a lot of autistic content creators could learn.
Music: Here is the playlist with all of my favorite tunes from 2023. Probably my favorite album of the year was Instrumentals by Darlingside.
From my Notes
I took a lot of notes this year. I just check my library of notes— over 500 individual notes created between Bear and Evernote. Four reference journals. 17 pocket journals.
I've decided to turn my Instagram to a bookstagram. I might do a monthly reading from one of my favorite books that month and that's probably it. I refuse to spend too much time on my social media following because someday, it will all go away. That being said, what was my favorite note of all of them?
Probably this one:
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to sending you some short fiction this year!
Cheers,
Dave
Listening to “Blood Orange” by The WLDLFE