Being neurodivergent comes along with many challenges; a couple of key ones for me being difficulty managing my energy and emotional resources, and suffering from a lack of motivation that comes along with not getting enough dopamine to give me that much needed sense of reward to look forward to after a job has been done.

And so, mid-April of the glorious year, 2022, I found myself trying to work in my studio, and it dawned on me: “No wonder I’m struggling to work, my studio is a complete mess!”
You see, my studio had been in a transitional state since before Christmas when I had started redecorating, and didn’t have the energy to finish. I’d left it that way so long, that I forgot that I was even in the middle of decorating. I had come to accept everything in this room simply as the way that the room is. This included things that I need access to being packed away in unlabeled boxes, my vocal isolation booth being reduced to the function of a junk storage closet, bare walls where shelves should be, and many more things that were just impractical and/or unsightly.

It was time to make a change!

With the helpful encouragement of my girlfriend, I set about getting my studio back in order, starting with the wall shelves that I’d already bought and were just waiting for me to put up. Once the shelves were up, my enthusiasm for completing the redecoration project gained momentum, and by the evening of the 18th of April, I had finally got things to a state that felt homely, inspiring to work in, and conducive to the kind of work that I do.

Getting this done was such a mammoth job that I’d been putting off for months. Just sitting in my studio and looking around at what I had achieved gave me a euphoric high.

Is this what dopamine feels like?

Is this how God felt on the seventh day?

I was buzzing from the sense of achievement, and in that instant, I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night.

I had some acid in the fridge. Why not?

Drop time: 1:12AM on Tuesday 19th April 2022

At around 5 in the morning, it occured to me what day it was: Bicycle Day!!
On the 19th of April of the year 1943, Swiss chemist, Albert Hofmann rode his bike home after ingesting a psychedelic substance of his own creation, Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). This was the first recorded acid trip in history, and the anniversary of LSDs discovery is celebrated amongst the psychedelic community, and known as ‘Bicycle Day’.

I had totally not planned my own trip to coincide with this date. My decision to take the acid was very spontaneous. Could it have come from the seed of a subconscious awareness? Possibly. Could it be that everything in the universe is connected, and this was just a superficial manifestation of that underlying connection? Not ruling it out.

I decided to go out for a walk, as it seemed to be a nice sunny morning. As I left my flat, I passed my girlfriend’s bike that was in the hallway. I chuckled a little.
I considered borrowing it to go out for a cycle ride, just as a sentimental experience, to connect with my psychedelic roots. But I remembered that the bike wasn’t properly set up yet, and would require a bit of fiddling to make it safe to ride. Nope!

Along my walk, I passed many people riding bikes. Now I know that there are people out there riding bikes all the time, but under the effects of the acid, every instance of encountering someone riding one was made to feel somewhat significant!

I got to a particularly pleasant area, a boardwalk over a marshland. I noticed the ‘No Cycling’ sign at the entrance, and this also made me chuckle.

It was absolutely beautiful and serene in this area. No one else was around at this time in the morning. The birds were chirping happily. I felt oneness with nature.

I got home, and the urge took me to write some poetry. I have this antique typewriter, that just happened to be out on the table ready for me to get to it.
I put on some music (orchestral renditions of pieces from various Final Fantasy soundtracks) and sat down with a cup of tea to get started. I was feeling very peaceful, relaxed and happy as I typed away.

This is what I wrote:

And here it is in it’s edited/text form:

SEVERANCE

Silently drifting
Under the mechanism of Doubt
Triumphant rejoicing haunts the brazen sky
Following into remembrance, our pages cascade
Tumble shades and beating blades shimmer from the call
A wounded world licks its trophy
The glimmer-gold matrix marks the bounds of natural law
Assorted shreds of plastic animals
Beloved shapes of creation, reimagined as horrendous beauty
Swept up and dusted aside
Just an abstract blur or backing hue
Swirling past a more meaningful story
A collection of bones before the altar, trembling from internal bliss
Commitment and binding, a future of untold mystery
Sorrow and voices, black from the morning strand
Witches left alive only to stand before the enumerated force
There is no fight
For everything in this world is at peace
And at once, perfect
The sublime torment of love casts cruel comforts amongst the devoted
And time, idling by, mocks the notion of persistence
We count the clicks, falling back at every stroke
Choking on the rickety crown of history
As our lie gains enough momentum to give a convincing account of what actually transpired
And command us in self-assured conviction of righteous intent
To only be what has function in their eyes
Diluted now by the hazey sunbeams
On a lazy tuesday of crazy funbeams
Forgiving the virtues of a wavy state
Cubes of fortune, rolled to determine fate
This dog barks at heaven
This shark bites the number seven
This voice penetrates the divine
Leaving hollow, the dawn of spiritual breaking
Awakening from a different obelisk
Broken asunder, our bodies forsaken
Thousands of cracked shells for the pompous to circumvent
Or to callus their toes as scars of pride
Back to the altar now
Juliette is slurring her vows
A promise to her reluctant soul, to give herself away
To reject her own identity for the sake of simplicity
To give up the effort to live true
And to not have to hurt
To not have to hurt
To never have to hurt
Again

What does it mean?

Well, I think it was me processing some of the ways I seem to differ from other people, specifically in terms of personal values and intentions, as well as some of the frustrations and resentments that I have relating to society and how I am perceived and treated by others.
I think it’s about giving up awareness and potential as a defense mechanism. It’s about crumbling under the pressure of societal expectations, and giving up core freedoms for the sake of avoiding the pain and resistance that come with the territory of speaking your truth and standing up for your values.

I realized through writing this poem that I no longer see it justified to play the game by a set of rules that were created to favour players that have more common strengths and abilities.

I need to sever myself from those rules, and create ones of my own, that align with my values, and that give me a fighting chance of achieving the things that I want to achieve.

Let me explain how I experience myself.

I’m going to talk about what I experience, and how I experience it.

There are multiple ‘spheres’ of existence that I inhabit, but there are two main ones that I’m going to talk about here.

I do not experience them as literal geometric spheres by the way. The word sphere just feels like the right word to use.

First, there is ‘reality’. This is the material world that my physical body exists within. It is the world that you and I share, and it is governed by fundamental laws of physics, some of which humanity has come to observe and understand.

Hmmm, are physical laws a property of reality? Or is reality a property of physics?

Then there is my ‘identity’, which is a multidimensional world comprising of all aspects of myself, including my self image, my memories and aspirations, my values, my core functions, my programming, my awareness, knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and a whole variety of abstract objects that have been manifested either willfully, or as a product of things that I have experienced.

Imagine these spheres of existence as spacial dimensions, or maps that can be traversed and explored.
There then of course needs to be something that explores them; a vessel for experiencing what is there. In the sphere that I call reality, this vessel is of course my physical body, but even that is piloted by something more core to my whole. Some people might think of this pilot as a soul. I’m just going to call it my ‘pilot’.

My Pilot

Now I’m going to break this down a bit more. There are two main parts of my pilot. There is the part that is responsible for executing decisions, which I will call my ‘executive function’, and there is the part that’s sole function is simply to experience: This is the innermost part of my whole, the absolute core of my being; I call it my ‘ego’.

This is not to be confused with other psychological definitions of the word ‘ego’ such as that of Freud’s psychic apparatus model. It may not be the best word for me to use, but to me it feels like the right word (for now at least. I may change it, or do a complete overhaul of my own definitions at some point).

My ego is a constant stream of information/experience. Imagine a conveyor belt carrying everything that I’m picking up from reality through my senses, such as what I can see, sounds, smells, physical sensations, as well as everything that is being fed back to me internally, such as emotional textures, memories, products of the imagination, and my stream of internal monologue and dialogue.

My executive function oversees the ego conveyor belt and processes the information that it is receiving. It interfaces with and outsources information to other relevant functions.
My executive function doesn’t make the decisions itself, it simply executes them by sending activation commands to the relevant functions. Decision making is outsourced to specialised functions such as logical and emotional processing, and my executive function will only execute the decisions that it receives back from these functions.

As a whole, I visualize my pilot encapsulated as a glowing ball of bright white light with a slight pale blue aura.

As previously mentioned, in the sphere of existence that I call reality, my pilot pilots my physical body, which could be seen as a pointer on the map marking my current location. My current location informs my perspective and what I am able to experience from the map at any given moment.

For example, if I was on a boat in the middle of a vast ocean, my perspective would probably be limited to just water, and whatever is on the boat.

How I experience the sphere that I call my identity is very similar to how I experience reality. One of the main differences is that my pilot doesn’t necessarily have to be inside a vessel to experience this sphere, and so in some ways it is less limited in its movement around the map. My pilot can inhabit an avatar on this map, but rarely has a purpose to do so. Within the sphere of my identity, I (my pilot) can easily and instantly jump from one location to another, and observe an object from a multitude of different angles. I am able to simply observe what is there, which could be for leisure or for analytical purposes, or interact with it in some way. In this sphere, I can go on quests, I can search for things, I can explore, discover, and create. I can edit existing objects, or manifest new ones.

The things that exist within the sphere of my identity can range from whimsical and fleeting temporary structures, to towering monolithic landmarks with firmly rooted foundations.
Temporary objects are created, manipulated and developed in various ways all the time while I play with ideas and theories. For example, an unformed opinion might start off as an amorphous shape until I have gained enough information through experience to either give it detail or reject it. Over time, as an object gains definition, it may become so developed that it grows into something that I consider to be a core element of my identity, such as a core value or belief, and I allow these things to have influence on the functions that govern my decision making.
Some objects that I create may not end up having enough value or validity to stand out as core elements of my identity, but I enjoy on some level enough to keep them around; These objects end up forming things such as elements of my sense of humour and other creative ideas, and some of these even end up manifesting in reality through my art, or sometimes simply through fleeting expressions such as things that I say in the moment!
You may experience them as elements of my personality.
This whole blog is one of them!

My sphere of identity in itself could be seen as a giant complex of these abstract manifestations. I am aware of it being a world that I have created myself, which exists only within my own brain, but it is a very rich and complex world with spatial and time dimensions, it’s own ‘physics’ and natural laws, and it even has it’s own forms of life inhabiting it. It has it’s own history, and forms of culture. It has it’s own lore and mythology!

What I essentially have here is an ‘operating system’ for my brain, which I have programmed myself in order to aid in making sense of my existence and the reality that my physical body inhabits. It is a system that allows me to understand things on my own terms, in a way that is intrinsically enjoyable to me. Through this system, I have come to take a deep interest in myself, my personal identity, my place within the context of society and the greater universe and my potential as a living entity. I have come to genuinely love myself in a way that feels pure and nurturing. As someone who is neurodivergent, feeling constant clashes with societies systems, this is something that I don’t think would have been possible had I not have developed this complex inner world.
Perhaps it was born of necessity. Whatever the seed of its creation, I am extremely grateful to my past developing self, and carry forward this gratitude as an aspect of my integrity: to honour the foundations laid out by past-me in upholding its values and intentions, and to pave the way for my future self to transcend to new levels of awareness, understanding and experience.

‘About Me’ is going to be an ongoing series of blog entries running parallel to my other posts.
In this series, I plan to go into more detail about some of the specific elements that exist within the spheres of my identity and reality. I may eventually even venture to visually map out my identity.

Can you believe I originally intended ‘About Me’ to be an independent article, and thought I could cover everything all in one post! Ha!