Repository for Thoughts and Writing About Writing: Rethinking the Hero Psychology Blog
Rethinking how I want to use this blog. I am a longtime fan of blogs and have been blogging regularly since 2005. Someday I may collect them all. I have been journaling regularly since 1993. I have a fantasy project of collecting all of those for some kind of grand retrospective character study of myself slash memory. Maybe an autoethnographic look at...something. I don’t know...a longitudinal autoethnographic study of how I've narrated and re-narrated myself across different life transitions.
I kind of love that, and it's very hero psychology-ish, but I'm going on a tangent.
This blog space has mostly been just a second repository for the newsletter posts I have been doing, but that seems dumb. Why put the same content in two places? It is also potentially confusing for readers.
So, the newsletters will be more formal essays about hero psychology things, and this will be more about the things I am writing and thinking about related to my newsletter, my dissertation, AuDHD issues, and other writing, as what I write about continues to shift and evolve.
I want to develop the notion of hero psychology into more of a thing. My dissertation first, but maybe that will be my next project. Also, fiction is and has always been my biggest love. I have so many unfinished stories, and plenty of finished ones. I’d love to revisit, finish, polish, and put them out there.
So, this is what this blog will be: a running record of the things I am thinking, writing, revisiting, and slowly turning into something more.
Today...working on revising Chapter One of my dissertation based on my committee chair’s feedback.
I’ve submitted my first three chapters, but I have pretty badly delayed working on it. It’s a shame. I was ahead of the game, and now I am behind.
But it is what it is.
I changed my ADHD meds. The old ones left me extremely tired in the evenings.
These new ones don’t do that...so far. That honestly might have been most of the problem, if I want to find excuses. But...
You know...in respecting the whole point of what it means to be autistic and ADHD, I need to respect the effects of that on me and my experiences as a neurodivergent person.
And minimizing it as just an excuse is perhaps part of the problem.
Doing anything after work felt like an extraordinarily heavy lift. And now, after changing meds, it no longer does. This may even be an important piece to include in my autoethnographic dissertation in some way.
The old meds impacted me. Badly. And hence important projects that impact my career have been delayed by a year.
This is the very kind of writing that will help inform my dissertation, my understanding of autistic leadership, and my understanding of myself as an autistic leader. Because that burnout piece, which I haven’t even really explored much at all yet, is real.
So, another reason for this blog...thinking through things as I am writing, which is honestly the best kind of writing.
But anyway, back to my agenda for today:
My dissertation revisions, like I said.
My newsletter for this week. I have a semi-draft. Something to do with autistic leadership as a form of activism. Not fully developed. But the pieces are there.
And things for work tomorrow.
So, the new direction for this blog: a space to think through thoughts and ideas about Hero Psychology, writing, autism, my dissertation, and whatever else may eventually become something more. Pretty simple. But I think on the nose.