Someone very specific that I know will be VERY happy that I was (finally) inspired to cough this one up; believe me, it was hard going. As I write this brief intro, I’m still not entirely sure how I’ll be going about telling this story.

A more polished writer might choose not to get meta in their posts right off the bat, but if y’all have been reading my work for the last nearly 4 years, you know I’m not exactly conventional. I write like I wish I could speak if I could ever figure out how to get the words out coherently, and that means breaking the 4th wall, so to speak, in written form. So, y’all got that in there? Good!

As I have mentioned before, I try to write and post in real time, meaning that every post is set to publish immediately after I complete it. I also rarely edit my work or write drafts. This is because whenever I reread my work, I hate it. It was art that came from my hand and I can’t stand to read it through because I have struggled for years, even decades, with an abundance of hopelessness and self-loathing.

Before I was identified as autistic, I thought… rather, I KNEW that I was never going to feel the kind of dumb joy I saw other people expressing on the daily. I would witness someone, many people, laughing like idiots at something I didn’t understand, or didn’t care for the object of their humor, but I would play along and share their laughter, all the while wondering what that action SHOULD feel like. I would laugh every day at something that confused me simply to try to get other people to like me.

Turns out, most folks like fake people even less than they like nerds who ask questions rather than laugh when they don’t get the joke. It’s a hard one to win without a change of scenery.

Enter my identification as an autistic human in 2019, 6 months prior to a global pandemic… the timing couldn’t have been better.

Now I have to start completely over. Who was I? I could not have answered then. I only knew I needed to set a course for integrity AT ALL COSTS and for the rest of my life.

And I’m not sure I could answer that same question now with any level of confidence. A lot of the traits I see in myself, I come to through meeting and talking with other people and listening to them tell about themselves. I can immediately find common traits and differing traits in the two of us and can describe myself in those terms I observe. I also try to take in the authentic compliments I have been getting as I spread my wings and take off. I don’t remember another time in my life when I have felt this lifted and supported by others. I have conjured a community full of people who probably haven’t met me and may never meet me in real life, but have told me in no uncertain terms that my work matters to them and they would hold open any space they had to me for ANYTHING I wanted to do, at any time, because they know I would absolutely not only return the favor but I would give exactly what they needed to receive in the moment.

My gift is presence. I make time for each person because, ultimately, I love them, and time = love.

Time and love will never be replaced by AI. And they ALWAYS remember how you make them feel, right?

Back to the topic at hand, now. My struggles throughout my life have been tragic, unnecessary, and debilitating. They ultimately made me so fearful of my own failure to live up to the dreams my parents had for me that my risk aversion is off the charts. It’s a very good thing my brain has so much processing power in order to run all the calculations for every permutation of every possible thing that COULD go wrong in every setting and how in any scenario, I would ultimately sacrifice myself so that some other people or animals got to live on.

Because they were doing good in the world and I couldn’t figure out how. I consider suicide MANY times but never did it because I figured, if there was an afterlife in any way, I couldn’t bear to see the pain of loss on my family member’s faces when they heard I was no longer living. I didn’t think I could bear it to my soul.

I’m finally learning, from my interdependence and relationships with other people, that I could have a business. I could become a bigger part of the economy, directing money to others who need it more than I do, making decisions like I know how to, with extreme due diligence or not at all. And when “not at all” seems to be winning the argument, I have DOZENS, possibly HUNDREDS, of humans to motivate me and remind me, this has all been done before. I’m not the first or the only. I have true wise council backing me up at ALL times.

I shared at lot of my fears with my friend M. She’s a recently-made connection who I’ve known for nearly a year now, I think. Maybe less. What is time anyway, AmIRite?

M is a shaman, meaning, well, I actually don’t really know what it means, to be honest. And I don’t really need to. The terminology is not important, but her work is. I originally started following her because she was posting on LinkedIn in the form of coded messages. Very interesting, let’s see where this goes, following.

After a bit we connected and, on discovering we both loved in the same city, we decided we must meet, so we did. Now we’ve met up 3-4 times, spent time individually in our respective kitchens making holiday gifts for each other, and set up a 24/7 asynchronous telegram channel just for us to communicate ANYTHING we needed to share with someone (anyone) at any time. Timestamps are important, you know.

During our holiday week brainstorming session for our respective future businesses, she offered to check in with her spirits to find out what, in a previous era, might’ve happened with my ancestors to create such a fraught relationship with the very concept of business for me. And it wasn’t but a few hours after we parted ways that she started writing on the private channel. She asked if she could call me. If I recall, it was on an evening when I was in the house by myself, so of course I had a candy and was cooking myself a very elaborate vegetarian meal that I KNEW my husband would not enjoy nearly enough for me to try it offering it to him on a night he was home. I put her off a bit. I wanted to be ready to receive the news from beyond. Could I shed this weight that has haunted me for decades and keeping me underperforming in life?

Once we got on the call, she told me that all my issues in this regard were related to a generations-old dispute in a rural farm village. At some point in deep history, I had an ancestor who tried to pull a fast one on his neighbor by attempting to pass off a sick cow as healthy in a sale transaction with this neighbor.

In doing so, this ancestor of mine caused a ripple in the cosmic fabric of humanity. By knowingly taking more of his neighbor’s money than the cow was worth in its state of being, he set things in motion for my entire family and I have the chance to fix it, to set things right.

My requirements are really easy, actually. I wasn’t asked to perform any feats of strength or to wake up before 8am. What was asked of me was right in my wheelhouse. I had to be kind, all day without fail, for one full day, and state publicly to document that that day would be “given” by me in order to pay off my ancestor’s debt. I’m buying back the sick cow with karma.

So there you have it, the public announcement! M advised me, because I had MANY questions about how this was all gonna go, that I didn’t need to select a specific date or that the day didn’t have to be in the past or in the future, simply that I announce the dedication. The rest would take care of itself, and the unwinding could happen VERY quickly. So, I’ve been preparing, getting my ducks in a row for some big changes and big opportunities happening in the very near future.

You haven’t seen nothing yet! I’m feeling a lot like the character Charlie Baltimore in The Long Kiss Goodnight, except with less violence. 🤭

I have the power to make all off my dreams come true and all of my dreams are for the sustainable well-being for all living creatures on earth. Who wants to help me make it happen? Buckle up!