Hi friends

Picture this. It’s October 2024. The evenings are growing darker earlier. Some of us have begrudgingly turned the central heating on. The staff at Home Bargains are on their marks to change the displays from Halloween to Christmas before the cardboard cut-out policeman in the doorway comes to life and arrests them.

And I’m sat at home, in my bedroom, unable to speak or do anything. I’m just really, really burned out.

It wasn’t quite the burnout I experienced the year prior in 2023, where I had to take two months to myself to literally stare at a wall in a pitch-black room, but it wasn’t a fun experience by any stretch. Burnout is burnout.

Before October 2024, I had slid down the typical post-autism discovery pipeline like I was on the slide at Alphabet Zoo1 (exhilarating and slightly terrifying). I’d read everything I could get my hands on about being autistic, saying ‘Aha!’ every five minutes as I hit upon another person who had written about an eerily similar experience to one that I had gone through. I had started to feel less alone.

I’d even tentatively begun to unmask, with a degree of success.

What I’d failed to realise was I’d kept my life exactly the same as before I was given my certificate for serving AuDHD realness.

Do you know the saying: ‘Madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time’? This was me whenever I chose to ‘push through’ a big event without taking any breaks, or refused to give myself permission to accommodate myself in situations I find stressful, for fear that I wouldn’t come across as ‘normal’.

(In retrospect, lol, ‘normal’. Could never be me.)

Basically, I was still masking, despite my best efforts not to.

In October 2024, mind burned to a crisp, I decided to post a newsletter on Substack. I’d previously found community on Autistic Twitter2 and various subreddits (the least toxic ones anyhow, not the ones that are like ‘I’m afraid I’m going to need you to disclose your full medical records before I can accept that a non-man is autistic thank you very much’). I thought I might find a sense of community in this new online space.

Just like Pringles, I found out that with newsletters, once you pop, you can’t stop. I found community straight away, a group of people who resonated with what I had to say.

I surprised myself by sticking to a weekly schedule. I wrote my thoughts out like the terrible, cringey, millennial oversharer I am (can’t stop, won’t stop). Soz about my online journal. I’ve never mentally progressed from MySpace bulletins.

Along the way, over 900 of you have subscribed to receive my weekly ramblings. That, and I won’t mince my words here, is crackers.

I post and you respond. I have so many lovely comments on newsletters from the past year and a half. Lots of you sharing your own stories with me. Lots of you being generally lovely about the newsletter. You’re all really kind and I thank you for that.

This newsletter is called Wavy Thoughts. My thoughts; they are wavy indeed. It has been one of the joys of my life to find other wavy people out there in the ether. Wobbling together in our waviness asking each other “Errr… what the eff is this? Oh you too? Well, knowing that you also feel like that makes me feel a little bit better I guess.”

Yes, we had a detour at the start of this year where I made a lot of creativity based content and went a bit ‘Artist’s Way’ on everyone. An interruption in our scheduled programming because I’d got a bit overexcited by a few trips to Hobbycraft. Let’s be real, this change in direction for the newsletter went down like sack of spuds, but hey, you can’t blame me for trying to stretch my artistic wings. I see so many talented writers and creators on Substack who I hyperfixate on and it inspires me to start making things I’ve never made before like drawings of birds, poetry zines and mail clubs. (Smooth product placement there)

I hear you though, so I’m sticking to neurodiversity related content on this newsletter for the time being.

Oh and a year and a half on, I have yet to experience another period of burnout. Some of that is down to Wavy Thoughts and the happiness it has given me.

New Series on Patreon

I’m starting a new series for my £6 a month Patreon subscribers, which is called ‘Ren’s Notebook’. In it I’m going to share my ideas, plans and scribbles for projects I’m working on, and give more insight into my own creative process as a poet, scribbler, beige food critic or whatever it is I do. I have lots of projects planned for the rest of the year! You can check out the first Ren’s Notebook entry here. (There’s options to support this newsletter for £1 a month, £3 a month, or a one-off £3 tip too.)

Great Wavy Survey

Thank you to those who have completed my subscriber survey! It’s lovely to read what you truly think of my writing and how this newsletter can improve. If you’re interested in completing the survey, you can find it here.

Take it easy,

Ren