The Ideal Blog Post

I’m drowning in perfectionist tendencies. Even when my intended goal is to produce something imperfect and fleeting, I get half-done, become frustrated with the imperfections, and then I just stop. I’ve been trying to write blog entries, and I have five or six two-paragraph false starts. I’ve been writing songs and recording some demos, but I get to a point where I really don’t know what’s supposed to come next, and even when something feels right, I’m nagged by internal questioning: “What if this isn’t the IDEAL melody/harmony/chord/instrument/key?” Complicating that frustration is my logical half leaning in and murmuring “John Paul, you know that nothing is ideal, right? And you can also go back and edit things if you really feel you need to…” And I know that logic is sound, but it doesn’t change anything.

So I’m going to start making blog posts every Friday. They’re going to be disorganized and imperfect, and will likely ramble into numerous side-notes and tangents, and will rarely convey a coherent thought when taken as a whole. However, I am not writing theses, these are BLOG ENTRIES. I’m pretty sure they’re supposed to be fleeting and imperfect. Also, I’m going to start posting songs every Sunday. I have enough stuff done (or close enough that I’ll finish over the next two weeks or so) that I can stick to this schedule, as long as my equipment holds up, which is seeming less and less likely as time goes on.

Today’s topic on the Real Frogs blog is: AUTISM. This is what I’ve wanted to write a blog post about for a few months now, but I have been terrified to discuss this too openly, and terrified to write an imperfect summary of my thoughts on this subject. But it’s happening right now.

I suppose autism seems like something of a non sequitur as a topic for my blog on my little music site, so I’ll offer up my explanation: A few months ago I became extremely fascinated by autism and determined to understand as much as possible, so I spent most of my free time reading about autism spectrum disorders, and eventually I started reading first-person accounts of what autism is like subjectively, which was the thing I was most curious about, and most wanted to understand. Reading these first-person accounts was somewhat perplexing at first, because most of the autistic thought processes seemed completely normal to me, but the more I read, the more specific quirks of my behavior and thought process were mentioned, and I had that grand bizarre moment of uncanny realization: I’m autistic. Just a little bit, of course, but it’s there. If I presented myself to a knowledgeable psych-professional and asked to be evaluated, I would probably be diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (though I prefer “mildly autistic”). I’ve spent months overanalyzing this now, for fear of coming off as some sort of fraud, as I haven’t been diagnosed by an Official Health Professional, but I’ve done boatloads of research and I’ve also lived inside my head for twenty-six years and I know everything that goes on inside of there, and it’s funny to replay memories in my head with this new knowledge, like the flashback montage after some unexpected twist in a film, because all of a sudden SO MANY THINGS, so many perplexing things about my experience and my existence now make sense because they have been placed into their proper context.

People who know me personally will likely scoff at the idea of me being autistic, but that is mostly due to misperception of the condition itself, and partially due to one of my lifelong obsessions being human behavior, which strengthens my theory of mind and my ability to “act normal.” Thus in face-to-face social situations with neurotypical adults, I probably come off as a big strange and bouncy, but that’s all. Inside my head, though, it’s usually a whirlwind of near-overload, trying to land upon the right thing to say. Social interaction is mostly at least challenging and usually stressful, and sometimes I have to avoid it as much as possible in order to stay sane. I do a ton of post-processing of my social interactions, and this lasts for hours, and usually leaves me feeling stupid or inadequate and completely misperceived. I can always figure out how I should have acted in order to properly communicate, but I can’t do it in the moment, and this has ALWAYS been frustrating. One would think that this would make communication a lot easier through email or facebook or what have you, but I’m pretty sure I’m even worse at those; there are so many doubts that fly through my mind when I even think about writing someone I haven’t talked to in a long time, doubts about what to write, how long the letter should be, how personal, how many questions to ask him or her, how to communicate how much I miss people without seeming overaffectionate or creepy or something, etc. Obviously I end up never writing or calling or anything and I seem self-important and kind of like a jerk, and believing myself to be perceived this way by old friends has been extremely painful, and yet I do nothing, because I am frozen.

This grand freeze also applies to me promoting Real Frogs, as I feel like even asking anyone to “check out my site” or something like that is annoying and egotistical, and if I am perceived as annoying and egotistical (as I believe I often am by those who don’t know me well), said person is much less likely to be interested, and I will have miscommunicated entirely. I suppose that’s why I’m starting to write blog entries, in the hopes that more content will generate more traffic and more people will hear what I’m doing. If I’m writing and posting things, there’s an imagined audience to me, even if no one is reading or listening. I just have to stop imagining myself as having to perfectly please some imagined ideal audience, or else I’ll never get anything done.