(Re)make myself.

A promise to no longer be my own worst enemy. A story about neurodivergence and acceptance in three songs.

I got my ADHD diagnosis last year at the ripe ‘old’ age of 36. In learning more about it, a LOT finally started to make sense. Why the life I was building for myself never really seemed to fit me. Why I never seemed to reach my own potential. However, there was still a puzzle piece missing. I got tested for both ADHD & Autism Spectrum Disorder at the same time. I had become so adept at masking myself, I did not get diagnosed as being on the spectrum. In subsequently talking to people, and reading up about autism and neurodivergence, I realised that diagnosis was wrong. I am both autistic and have ADHD. All those little quirks and difficulties I experienced all through life suddenly became one of two. The constant battle in my head between order and chaos was suddenly very clear.

My life was made of masks, one for every occasion. First I hid my true self away, out of fear of not being accepted. Of being seen as weak. Of being perceived as weird. Of being thought of as a failure. Of being known as difficult. I became the person I thought I should be, not the person I actually was. It was a recipe for disaster. I was a ticking time bomb waiting to erupt. Last year I finally learned why everything always seemed SO much harder for me. Life in general, school, work and interpersonal relationships.

But when I learned about, and started to accept and work around my (self)diagnosis as AuDHD, that became a mask in and of itself. I started to apologise for myself and my way of thinking about things and my way of doing things because of what those disorders meant to me. I have ADHD so I must be LOUD and OBNOXIOUS, SORRY. At the same time I am autistic, but because I am such a LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS ADHD’er, I didn’t feel like I had the right to claim the space, peace and tranquillity I needed. It was a constant struggle with myself and not in the least, with the people around me.

This year, right around the time I was rediscovering myself in the music and the words, I started group therapy in a clinic near me. I am so unbelievably grateful for having found that path. In the last three and a half months I have learned SO much about myself and moreover, myself in the world around me. It has been challenging and confronting at every turn. But I am slowly learning to understand myself and treat myself with the same compassion and empathy with which I approach other people. It’s a process with big ups and downs, but it is so unbelievably rewarding.

It really should not have come as such a surprise to me that I am my own worst enemy. I make life so much harder on myself by trying to do everything right. For myself, but especially for those around me. I adapted a mask very early on, hid myself away and pretended to be strong for years. Because I thought that was helping those around me, not having to worry about me and the dark abyss I was tumbling into. In reality, by pretending to be made of stone, I continued the fallacy that we should all be made of granite. That there is no room for us to crumble, even just a little.

I am now slowly learning that vulnerability is a strength and not a weakness. How it’s okay to not be okay. And how in showing and talking about my own struggles, others learn to find the words to describe their fragility and pain as well. There is beauty in recognition and unity in commiseration. We all struggle with things, why not struggle together? A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved. Because in sharing and commiserating, we can all grow together.

This blog started as a simple foreword to a piece about music. I was going to write about finding synchronicity in music again thanks to two shows by Gipsy Rufina & Kiel Grove. (Don’t worry, I WILL get to them!) How reconnecting with Ann, whom I met at the James Hunnicutt & Whiskey Dick gigs, led me to watch Coco again and what that meant to me in this dark September month. But the foreword developed a mind of its own and turned into this. It was meant as a sort of apology to all the bands and artists I promised my words to over the last couple of months. But in letting loose and just following the words, I realise I have nothing to apologise for.

There’s something to be said for continuity and following the precise sequence of events. It’s nice and neat and comprehensible. (Some might even call it Nice & Accurate!) It is expected. I’m usually a stickler for doing things by the rules. It brings order to my disorderly brain. But I keep losing myself in trying to do everything perfectly. In thinking more of what my actions (or inactions) might signify to others, than in realising how hard those thoughts are weighing ME down.

I am trying to break away from that to preserve my own sanity and build myself back up in the best way possible. So I don’t get burnt out from the thing that was curing my burnout. So for now I am done following the rules and promises I made in my head, because they were preventing me from telling the stories.

From now on the stories will be posted as they present and write themselves in my head. The stories recorded during this magical, musical summer (and beyond) WILL get told with all the love I felt while experiencing it. But in their own time, in my time.

Here’s to chaos and anarchy. Here’s to doing things my way.

RESIST. UNLEARN. DEFY.

An aside about the songs: The three songs in this blog are by a band that has a very special significance to me. Remember that message board I wrote about in my last blog on Terry Pratchett? Well, it was called Incuboard and was dedicated to Incubus. Sort of, anyway. I met some very special people there and I still remember that period very fondly. I lost track of the band a little around when they brought out Light Grenades. But I will never lose track of their previous albums and songs. They helped make me who I am to this day. They ring as true now, as they did back then.

I subconsciously chose three songs off the same album Make yourself. This was not planned, even though the title of this blog was inspired by the title song from that album. Synchronicity I guess. In threes, as always. The cover picture is inspired by a lovely art book the singer made, called White Fluffy Clouds. His art very much inspired my own. The piece below was my vague interpretation of the cover art of his book.

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A post shared by Clumsy Crane Studio: Polexia 'Julie' Miller (@clumsy.crane.studio)

16/09/2023 0

Rounding off the Edges

A project and post in progress

The drawing series ‘Rounding off the Edges’ is a work in progress, much like this post. I am still filled with ideas on where to take this, but I figured I should already give an overview of the process for prosperity. Waiting until I decide it is done (it might never be) or even when the hyperfixation ends (if it does, it won’t get posted here anyway) is never the best strategy, so here goes.

Editors note: I am planning on photographing all drawings in the series and add them into their own gallery chronologically and then add to it as it evolves. That in itself might prove a huge project so in the meantime, I’ll show you a few not-so-great shots from my phone I made while drawing. Note that not all drawings are 100% finished, some still need some detail work.

It all started one sunny afternoon while browsing Instagram. My friend sent me this video and I was immediately triggered. Seemed like a chill way to spend an afternoon doodling. Found some paper, markers and set to work.

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A post shared by Julie (@_joocrane_)

I started off exactly as the video suggests. Just drawing random intersecting lines on paper and rounding off all the corners where they meet. Started with black marker and pens and did a few versions like that.

After that, my ADHD brain excitedly started screaming all sorts of ideas at me on what I could do next.
What if I used my colour markers? (My mind always goes to ALL THE COLOUR!)

Not happy with how the colour versions turned out, but maybe if I can find the right markers that resemble the standard acrylic black markers I used for the black & white ones, it can be done. I have however already spent a small fortune on said black pens, so I’m tabling the idea for now and going with black and white.

Rounding off the Edges - first drafts — *Rounding off the Edges – first drafts*

Then: What if I used symbols like the ampersand or anarchy sign? What if the lines themselves weren’t rounded? What if I used intersecting circles? What if I use letters and WHAT IF those letters were words?

What if I define a specific shape (hexagon) in which the lines are contained on the paper? Which letter(combinations) and words get the best results stylistically?

What if the words were short sentences? What if I used the words to a short-ish poem? What if I designed unbidden cover art for my band friends The Rabids? What if I use lyrics? What if I don’t just write down the words and have them intersect, but actually put some thought in placement before the rounding?

Rounding off the Edges – Rounding the edges of Anarchy – Number 13 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – jagged line testing
Rounding off the Edges – Everything moves in circles start – Number 8 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Everything moves in circles – Number 8 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Hex boundaries test – Number 16 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – H is for Hilary – Number 12 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Hyperfocus – Number 18 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Rounding the edges of Anarchy pt. 2 – Number 32 in the series

What if I draw the regular lines again, but try to find/form a creature with them and highlight that?

Rounding off the Edges – BlubFish – Number 30 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – The AmperSandmand (Second of the Ampersands)- Number 31 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – Pokhen – Number 29 in the series.

What happens when I digitally fiddle with the colour levels of the original artwork to bring out some sort of colour? (Yes, I can table the idea, but the colour somehow always seeps back in.)

Rounding off the Edges – BlubFish v2 – Based on Number 30 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – The AmperSandmand (Second of the Ampersands) v2- Based on number 31 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – H is for Hilary v2- Based on number 12 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – first digital test
Rounding off the Edges – Everything moves in circles v2- Based on number 8 in the series.

About 36 drawings in: What if I go from vertically placed A4 pages, to horizontally placed A3 ones?

Rounding off the Edges – Voicemail to Jill pt. 1 – Number 36 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – Guided by Angels pt. 1 – Number 37 n the series.
Rounding off the Edges – Voicemail to Jill pt. 2 – Number 38 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – Peaches – Number 39 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – And then my brain happened- Number 41 in the series.

What if I used a piece of existing art and work on that one?

Rounding off the Edges – Forced Collaboration – Number 52 in the series.
Rounding off the Edges – Forced Collaboration – Number 52 in the series. Detail
Rounding off the Edges – Forced Collaboration – Original artwork

Having not even completed that last one: What if I join The Rabids while they’re recording in the studio and do a series in a series based on the songs they are recording for their EP?

Editors note: More on that great weekend later, I’ve written a play by play for when the band releases their EP. So bookmark this page to be the first to hear all about it!

Rounding off the Edges – Series in a Series – The Rabids @ Riverside Studio Antwerp- Number 45 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Series in a Series – Free Land- Number 46 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Series in a Series -Clarity- Number 47 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Series in a Series -Rocksteady Beat- Number 48 in the series
Rounding off the Edges – Series in a Series -Enemies Everywhere – Number 49 in the series
I will only annoy them a little – Series in a Series -Enemies Everywhere – Number 50 in the series

Anyway, about a month after I started, I now have some 53 drawings ‘done’. Most of them were made in a trance-like state of finding the corners and losing the big picture, which is what makes doing these drawings so fun. I can listen to some music, podscasts, conversations or nature sounds and just zone out. I let my hand do the work and try not to think too much about what I’m doing.

It is SUPER relaxing, so much so that it might end up to be a form of fidget toy thing for me. My mind is free to listen and come up with ideas while I do the ‘menial’ work of the rounding.

My brain finally shuts up and does what it does best when not impeded by rational thought: be creative!

29/05/2023 0

On the road with Jack Kerouac

As a 36 year old, I finally understand why my younger self gravitated towards this sentence. Which is why I finally visualised it.

I was so rattled, entranced and inspired by this one line when I first read it, I may have completely forgotten to read the rest of the book. (#adhdproblems)

Then again, it has been with me now for over 20 years, wandering in and out of my consciousness. It acquired new meanings along the way but was always a beacon of recognition.

Anyway. Understanding yourself and your place in the world is so important. Just paying it forward. To whom it may inspire ❤️

I used Canva and Snapseed, but don’t ask me to repeat this proces.

20/05/2023 0

Circle in a Square Puzzle

Living with Neurodivergence

I am a person. But not like the others. I don’t fit the mold. I’m a circle in a square puzzle.

Yes this sounds dramatic. I’m too old to care. It feels like I am not the same shape as other people. I myself am coming to terms with that. A part of me LOVES being neurodivergent. I see SO much so many other people can’t see. But I also FEEL so much other people don’t feel as deeply. Which can be both amazing and awful, even at the same time.

Because everything is too much all at once and the world doesn’t fit my circular mold. I have to mold myself into a square to fit. And I cannot. I can tell the odd fib, though I’m admittedly bad at it.

But it is impossible for me to hide my true self, however much I may want to be the mysterious person at the back people are intrigued about. I just leak out. As soon as I feel I find my people, I stop putting on that mask.

And sometimes it is okay and I find understanding and it’s like magic. Other times, it places me so much outside of things, I forget where I’m supposed to be. And it takes me a while to notice that ‘my people’ are just ‘tolerating my presence’, not so much as actually accepting me. And when my brain does finally come to that realisation, it fucking hurts. Physically as well as mentally.

People see neurodivergents mostly as ‘unfeeling’. Autistic people don’t have emotion or empathy. They’re an AI like ChatGPT that just reasearches and mimics human behaviour. Fuck ALL of that. All the ASD people I have encountered, interacted with and read about were the exact opposite. They FEEL SO MUCH they don’t have the words to articulate just how much goes on inside.

Not necessarily because autistic people are inherently stupid as is often a stereotype. Far from it, more like. We see and feel the world differently. It is why ASD is often misdiagnosed as hypersensitivity. (Hello, my name is Julie and I am one of those misdiagnoses.) Yes, we are hypersensitive to our surroundings (Combine that with ADHD and you might just feel like you just dropped acid and the world is all COLOURS and DISTRACTIONS, but anyway.) which means our brains take a LOT of time and effort to take in a random sequence of events.

A neurotypical brain will ignore all the bits are usually deemed unnecessary/not relevant. An ASD/ADHD brain (Talking from experience, possibly other types of neurodivergence et al as well.) processes everything all at once. It is LOUD. It is messy. It is confusing. We get scared and overwhelmed.

Temple Grandin referred to it best in ‘Animals in Translation: The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow.’ She states that she feels people with autism (or maybe even neurodiversity in general), in her experience, seem to relate well to animals. In the sense that they both get overstimulated by a world that feels unfamiliar and in response react erratically to it, when seen from the vantage point of the people whose world they ‘inhabit’. I understand the woman who thinks like a cow and both adores and understands cows. (See: my Google Photos archives for reference. So. Many. Cows. And you don’t even know how many cow accounts I follow on all the socials. Cows are THE SHIT. They deserve their own post. Anyway.)

So, I feel that I am cattle. Not in the conspiracy theorist ‘You’re all sheep man!’, but in the sense that I am in a world that isn’t familiar to me. And that it doesn’t react the way I anticipate it to react (to me). I sometimes feel like a scared cow, driven from (what I at least assume was) my herd, anxious because someone also left a glaring yellow glove on the fence and I don’t recognise it. You’d have to really read the book to get the full comparison.

In short, cows in one of her facilities reacted frenziedly to some stimulus that in the end turned out to be a yellow glove on a fence, because the yellow makes it look different and scary to their dichromatic eyes. Another story was about the contrast between the bright sunlight versus the perceived darkness in an entryway when trying to get them in for shots for instance. Combined with her recommendation for people with autism (I believe it was in ‘Thinking in Pictures: my life with autism) to try rose tinted glasses for better reading/viewing, it made me draw the comparison. (By the way, I also now wear rose tinted sunglasses and it has seriously been a gamechanger. I kept having the issue that my sunglasses were too dark to see properly in most cases, but if I didn’t wear them I would be blinded, even by limited sunlight. Now I can wear them all the time without being visually impeded. I also no longer have any issue going from the sunny garden into the darker house, huzzah!)

To any other person, it is a stupid yellow glove they ignore because it is not important in the grand scheme of things. But to me it is an eyesore that starts infiltrating my every being. It is out of place, it is wrong. MOO MOO! And the herd manager, or whoever is in charge of the cows, will say, ‘oh that cow is unruly, don’t mind her, she’s the worst of the herd’. Whereas the poor creature is just scared of the unknown. The glove. That bright yellow thing on the fence is moving in the wind and taunting her.

I’ve learned a lot about myself in the last year since my ‘half’diagnosis. For fucks sake, I read a book by Peter Vermeulen on autism that felt like my own instruction manual I had somehow always lost. How are you, with you dumb ASD test still designed for (probably cis, white male) kids, going to tell me that I am not on the fucking spectrum. Mostly because I mask so well my own partner saw me as a different person I truly was inside because I didn’t know just HOW much I was masking. I thought I took it all the way off for the people I felt safe with. Apparently I could not even manage that.

What I learned most is that I can THRIVE. If allowed. If encouraged. If understood. I had a few mentors that subconsciously tapped into that. I could be the best person, employee, friend, whateverthefuck, if they just understood. Or not necessarily understood, but at least understood that that force inside is so great, it only needs nurturing and safety.

I leave you with a quote from Peter Vermeulen. ‘You are not difficult. You are just having a difficult time.’

Small note concerning the image. That line popped into my head while working on my series ‘Rounding off the Edges”. This series and at least on of its subseries will be highlighted on here soon. You can find bits and pieces of it on the clumsy crane studio Instagram account if you’re curious.

20/05/2023 0

Tag: ADHD