This is what I should have been doing last Wednesday.
I made a mistake last Wednesday. I was supposed to release our weekly writing prompt on Wednesday and then today (Sunday the 21st) I was supposed to release the first episode of This Week on the Autistic Culture Podcast Network our new weekly “TV Guide/TV Pages” style show where we preview everything you can hear this coming week on the Autistic Culture Podcast Network, but I was dysregulated and I messed up. Which, of course, is what happens.
It wasn’t a terribly big deal, but it was a reminder that I have to lay on my couch a lot to maximize my productivity. This goes against everything I was raised to believe and I want to tell you the story about that mistake, but first, I’ll just point out that you can hear the episode today if you have missed it and you will be right on time.
Lying in silence with my cat instead of hitting publish when I was all worked would have been the better choice but I was excited to share the episode.
A quick summary, in case you skipped it: each week we’ll be releasing this show on Sunday so you can make note of the episodes you want to listen to. For now, we are releasing about 10 to 15 episodes by Autistic creators for Autistic audiences, and we want you to know what’s available on the network. Nine brand-new shows are coming out tomorrow, so you can see why I got excited and jumped the gun.
What you might be surprised about is what happened next. I co-founded this network with Simon Scott, and as soon as I hit publish, I told him I had messed up. I wanted to get his feedback and advice, but I also wanted him to know I knew I had made a mistake. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I know it was in line with the shared values we have for the network and our partnership: generosity.
We have learned to be transparent with each other and also to extend more grace than either of us is used to getting at work. We really do assume positive intent, and we just move forward. The other thing that’s amazing is that we can help each other see perspective. I was so freaked out because it’s called “THIS WEEK,” but these shows were debuting “NEXT WEEK,” and I was stuck in this pedantic loop about that fact being wrong, which, of course, is very bottom-up Autistic thinking.
Simon, however, was not a dysregulated mess when I reached out, and he assured me this was not a big deal and to just move on.
“As you were. Nothing to see here.”
It’s so challenging for me to stay calm and realize, oh wait, a podcast came out four days early. Who effing cares? But in this case, it’s really important, not just for my own well-being, but for the organization we are trying to build, or rather, the organization we ARE building.
Most organizations are organized under neuronormative capitalism. In some ways we are too because, well, we live here now and operate in this space. But sometimes we try to operate as if we lived in a land called Autistica. In Autistica there is so much grace for being late or early, talking too much or staying quiet, keeping your camera off, and posting things on the internet before they are ready.
In neuronormative podcasting, you don’t make mistakes with launch dates. You commit to doing a podcast, and it comes out every week even if you have no voice. In neuronormative podcasting, doing your best means camouflaging how you really feel and never admitting to making mistakes because you might get fired. In neuronormative podcasting, little white lies that allow people to save face are encouraged, and napping with your fluff ball of a cat midday (or going on a walk with your pudge-ball of a dog, in Simon’s case) is absolutely not.
We are natives of that land. My former podcast co-host Matt Lowry called it Neurotypicales and I so love that name. The Emperor of Neurotypicales likes work to start at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m., even if you woke up early and knocked out four hours of work before 9. Sometimes Simon or I catch ourselves apologizing for missing a deadline or just, like, forgetting to do something we said we would do.
Our own credibility with ourselves gets blown when we violate the terms of employment in Neurotypicales, and we have to remind each other, “No, mate, this is Autistica. We just share where we are at and move forward from here without wasting time judging or being judged. It just is what it is. We are where we are. What’s next?”
At the end of May I said to Simon, “I have looked at our list of things to do in the next four weeks, and it’s a lot, but it’s not too much. If we put staying regulated FIRST and just work every second we have the actual units of energy to work, we will finish it. We just have to stay calm and keep each other calm.”
It can be hard to remember to just take one step at a time. I knew we could do it, though.
Sure enough, at 3:46 p.m. on the Friday before the launch, I got this message from Simon:
“All shows are programmed and green in the contract status doc.”
He had done it!
Running a podcast network has so many interdependencies. I had to make a website, but to link the shows I needed the RSS feed links. I couldn’t do the landing page for the launch until I had the website, and once I had the landing page I needed to program the emails, but the emails needed to link back to the RSS feeds. We could have hired a team of Six Sigma Military Grade Logistics Guys and still been overwhelmed by the details.
Truth be told, I didn’t finish my tasks until early this morning (Sunday morning) at about 1 a.m., when I sent the last press release of the pre-launch campaign. But we still have 22 hours from when I write this before we launch, and dare I say we are ready!
We are ready and happy and calm because we made the number one rule of our productivity: rest.
Rest as resistance against the insane rules of Neurotypicales, which do not work for us. But also rest as our A #1 most Atomic Habit.
We don’t want to just publish podcasts that talk about Autistic culture. We want to live as if we are in an Autistic culture instead of a neuronormative culture that triggers our trauma of not being good enough.
It sucked that I published the wrong post last Wednesday instead of this one, which has the weekly writing prompt below for our paid members. If you were waiting for this week’s prompt, I apologize and ask for the grace Simon extended to me.
I messed up.
I’m being transparent and accountable while also keeping in mind that the world is still spinning and I am just one Autistic person doing my best to get a lot of tasks crammed into the few hours a day I can work without kicking off a health-and-wellness cascade of problems.
This is the way in Autistica.
We prioritize staying regulated. We respect our need to stay regulated. We remind each other of that value. We forgive ourselves and others when we forget. And when we are in a place where we can, we model it.
Tomorrow is our launch party. We’d love it if you could register to attend live or get the recording. You’ll hear some trailers, meet some creators, and get the chance to support a project that we think is very much needed.
We will use the numbers as evidence in the grant applications we are putting forward to help pay for the editing, design, and marketing of the shows on our network so our creators don’t have to. This is why, even if you can’t come, registering and posting on social media about the event matters so much. These metrics could determine whether we get a grant to support the project or not.
The live version of the party is at 4 p.m. London time (11 a.m. ET) on June 22, but you can listen anytime.
In our first Neurodivergent Narratives writing prompt for June, editor Genya invites us to use writing to go deeper into reflection.The writing prompt is below. Paid members will see it. If you don’t see it, either you are not a paid member, or you are logged in to the wrong account. If you are not a member, you will need to subscribe to have full access and to see the prompt below. If you would like a free subscription for June, just reply to this email, and we will get you a free trial month.
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Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of Dr. Angela Kingdon.
