Today, I had an epiphany that's so tightly linked to my AuDHD (that's autism and ADHD) brain, it's almost ridiculous:
Neurodivergent creatives are known to think outside the box. There are no boxes for us, actually. All my life, I've been thinking box-less, and came up with solutions to problems no one seemed to think needed to be addressed. Or even existed, for that matter.
That's how I always end up smacking my head against the wall and running myself to the ground trying to:
- Convince scientists to dedicate a little effort to public outreach, a decade before research institutes widely adopted science communication for public outreach (and although my writing was featured on a National Geographic blog and Bill Nye followed me on Twitter, my then-bosses merely viewed this as "my funny little hobby"), and
- Build a regenerative farm network on Gotland that would include everything, from knowledge exchange to distributing produce directly from farm to table, and running two little farm shops on the island and in Stockholm long before there was EU funding available for such projects, and
- Build a safe and private online community for my readers away from Facebook a decade before creatives began to realise that focussing on community is more sustainable than focussing on production and sales.
These are just 3 examples of my weird ideas that died because they came too early. Which lead me to this realisation:
An idea that's ahead of its time is just as shitty as an idea that comes way too late.
And because I am (A) an introvert with shitty people skills, although (B) brilliant at problem-solving, but ultimately, (C) having zero resources (aka budget and partners) to get past the initial phases of an innovative project, my cool ideas almost always die a slow death of exhaustion.
And this is my recipe for failure. Works. Every. Single. Time. 😵💫
Do I regret it? YES! Will I ever change? NO!