An Official Hiatus

I was originally going to start this post with a very ominous, one-line “Hello.” I have elected not to do so, so you’re getting one of my very rambly introductory paragraphs instead, which is honestly way more in-character for my blogging style. Truth be told, I have no idea how I should start this post— and I know we’ve seen that before, to a certain extent, with the various and somewhat entertaining ways I’ve chosen to open the blog posts of the past, but this one is particularly difficult to start. The title might clue you in as to why.

First, let’s address the elephant in the room: yes, it’s been awhile. I’m very sorry. I’m checking in on the blog for the first time in over six months, and I’ve broken the promise made by the me of the past, who solemnly swore on multiple occasions that she’d never leave you hanging like that again. I lied, and I’m sorry that I did. In my defense, I definitely was not intentionally deceiving you— the me of the past who wrote those promises never to take a long, unannounced hiatus had every intention of keeping said promises. She just also happened to be overestimating her own abilities to write as consistently as she would have been able to in an ideal world… and now we’re here. Many months later.

So I’m sorry, for the first thing. I want to lead with the apology. I know it’s been a long time since you heard from me, and it truly was not my intention to let the blog go dark for so long. I also want to apologize a second time, because the reason I’m writing now is to bear some news that’s not the most ideal. I want to announce an official hiatus from this blog.

But before I get into the specifics, I do want to say hi. The last time you heard from me, I was in a really difficult place, as evidenced by my long, slogging posts about how burnt out I was and my struggle with adjustment to life after college. I did finish out that semester, as I was getting close to doing the last time I posted. It was a long and pretty difficult summer, and an even more difficult fall, but I got through both of those seasons, and now it’s January. We’re now closer to the two-year anniversary of my college graduation than we are to the date I started graduate school, which is a very strange chronological truth to acknowledge, but a truth nonetheless. My final semester of my graduate program started last week, on Tuesday the 16th. A few months from now, I’ll officially have my master’s degree.

Anyone who has read this blog before would likely know that it was very much my intention to write consistently through my time in grad school. I know I had some ambiguous feelings around the time I finished college about what was going to happen with the blog in grad school, but there was definitely a time when I thought I could write consistently as a grad student. As has been demonstrated by my writing behavior, I wasn’t able to fulfill that hope— but the hope was definitely there. I thought it might be beneficial to the blog’s audience— whoever might be reading, whether it’s someone who knows me personally or someone who stumbled upon this content and wants to learn from my lived experience— to include grad school on the blog. Since this blog has always been a glorified public journal, featuring the occasional informational post that’s less personal, I figured I could add grad school to the blog’s chronological documentation of my life. It would just be a continuation of my college blogging pattern.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans. I wound up not finding the time to do things that way, and instead punctuated the first year of grad school with often-spontaneous posts, which sometimes took the form of life updates and profuse apologies, and occasionally focused on a particular topic (in the style of my college posts). The second year of grad school has been radio silent altogether, except for today’s post, which marks my first of the academic and calendar years. Seeing as Spring 2024 is my final semester, I’ve reached the point where it’s better to admit that I won’t be able to write consistently than to continue lying to myself (and to the readers) about future posts that aren’t coming.

Interestingly, the question of writing hasn’t been difficult as a grad student at all. You might remember that my autistic special interest is my own writing, the young-adult fiction that I write as a hobby, and I gave a little update on that circa last spring (AKA my most recent attempt at writing on this blog consistently). Writing, in the sense of my creative hobby, has pretty much been the only thing that has come easily in grad school. This has been extremely unusual, because— this will be no surprise to you if you know me— grad school has been extremely difficult on my mental health. I really have no idea what the brain chemistry or timing magic behind being able to write while in such a difficult mental place is, but as I’ve said before, I really don’t make a habit of asking questions of my own brain when special interests are going well— I’m just grateful for the creative joy in the first place.

So I’ve been writing plenty, and I’m so grateful for that. Writing has truly been my saving grace during the difficult mental health times of the past year and some change. I simply haven’t been writing on this blog. It’s definitely frustrating that I haven’t been able to find it in me to write a blog post for so long, and that the only reason I’m writing one now is to announce that I’m going to be taking a more official break from them. I genuinely enjoyed the schedule I held for myself in college, with weekly posts on a breadth of topics, and I’d love to get back to that someday— but more on that later. In the meantime, I want to be honest about where I stand with the blog right now. I’ll be taking a hiatus, and this time, it’ll be official.

I know that “announcing” a hiatus, as if I have some kind of following, seems a little weird— and maybe it is weird, full stop. I’m no stranger to the fact that this blog has never been popular, and I’m not in the market to become some kind of autism blogging influencer. Those actually exist now, and I feel like they weren’t very common when I first started the blog in 2018, my freshman year of college. I have a lot of thoughts on the way online conversations have turned when it comes to discussing neurodiversity, and those thoughts could likely make an entire, separate blog aside from the one dedicated to my own life experience. I might dive into that someday, but now isn’t the time.

The reason I’m “announcing” a hiatus, then, isn’t necessarily to address the clamoring of the blog fans desperate for new content (hahaha, can you imagine?), but to be honest to myself and to you. When someone clicks onto the front page of this blog, they see my most recent post on display. I don’t want my most recent post— and, therefore, the thing that greets visitors to my blog— to be the me of last April, promising you more content soon. I want to be transparent about my own abilities at the moment, and I’ve decided that it’s best for me to take an intentional break from this blog.

As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, I’m about to finish my master’s program. It will likely not come as a surprise when I tell you that it’s been extremely difficult— and much more difficult than I thought it would be. I’m being tasked with writing a “reflection paper” as I finish up my degree, something required of every student who finishes my program at my school, and I have no idea what I’m going to say. There’s definitely a lot that I could say, but I’m not sure how to summarize how difficult my time in grad school has been without sounding like a downer. I think I’ll come out on the other side of this program a little wiser, and definitely a lot more educated in my field— but I think that reflection paper might wind up sounding a lot like one of these blog posts. If I find it fitting enough for this blog once I do write it, I might consider posting it here. It’ll probably do a much better job of summarizing my feelings about completing this grad program than I could do in any post dedicated to the subject.

Make no mistake: I am glad that I did this master’s program. We’re just about at the two-year anniversary of me finding out I got in, and I can still remember how happy I was the day I got that call. I wouldn’t change the way I did things, despite how difficult this has turned out to be. This was the right decision for me, and I’ve learned so much in my field of study. I’ve gained new skills, met new people, and grown from my experiences, and I’m looking forward to putting all of that to use when it comes time to decide how life looks after the program. I think my difficulty in grad school has had much less to do with grad school itself, and much more to do with what it means to “grow up” or become an adult as an autistic person. I’ve felt permanently stuck in the growing pains of “becoming an adult” since I first went off to college, and every time I think I’m getting the hang of it, something else comes along to complicate things all the more.

Despite not having written much while a grad student, there is plenty I could be writing about. This is part of why not writing has been a frustrating process; I know that there’s content for the blog coming out of my own experiences, but I can’t seem to find the right words to make something meaningful or educational out of them. All of my energy has been spent enduring those things, rather than reflecting on them in a self-referential way (the way I often did during times of crisis in college). The jury’s out as to whether the former or the latter strategy is better for dealing with tough times, but I’m sorry that I haven’t been able to document these things. I genuinely wish that I could have.

But there may come a time in the future when I can, and that leads me to where I want to finish. I want this to be a hiatus from the blog, but not an ending. I am hesitantly optimistic about the idea of writing on here again once I finish my grad program this coming May. I’ll be working after graduation, and I’m excited about new opportunities. I’ve finally identified an area where I feel I could really thrive professionally, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to find work in that field, so that I can put my skills to good use.

Spoiler alert, though: I’ll always be writing. Whether it’s on the blog, in my fiction, or in my professional life, writing is definitely what I do best. I’m hopeful that I can return to this blog once I’m done being a grad student. The original intention of this blog was to document the autistic life in college, and I think it would be a really neat exercise to apply that same methodology to documenting an autistic, adult life in the “real world.” I’ve written a lot about “the real world,” and how that can be such a nebulous concept as an autistic person. Anticipation of entering “the real world” has caused me an immense amount of anxiety and anguish over the past year and a half. I’m starting to realize that it might be easier to process these big changes if I think of “the real world” less as part of my future, and more as somewhere I already am.

But there’s a lot I haven’t done yet— like moving out, and having a full-time job, and existing as an autistic adult outside the comfort zones I’ve always known. Some of those things are so daunting to me that I’m becoming anxious just by writing them out, but they’re things I’ll have to deal with one way or another. Whether they’re in the near or far future, they’re going to be part of my life— and they’ll definitely be hard, but maybe that’s why it would be a great idea to write on the blog about them.

This is definitely not goodbye from me, so please don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll never hear from me on the blog again. It would make me extremely sad to leave this blog behind permanently, and I hate endings and goodbyes anyway. This is simply me putting official words to the hiatus that’s already happening. After I take an official break from blogging to finish up my grad program, you’ll hear from me again. I’m hopeful that I’ll have a lot more to say.

Obviously, I will leave all my posts up. This blog is meant both as a personal venture and a resource, and I want people to be able to read through my post history, whether they’re curious about my informative posts or looking to get a bigger picture of my experiences. I’m really proud of the fact that I wrote so consistently in college, and I hope that readers use those posts however they see fit.

And now, if you’re still reading: thank you so much. Thank you especially if you’ve stuck with me through the many years of posts on this blog. I firmly intend for this not to be the last. I can always be reached on social media— I don’t use Twitter anymore, but my Instagram and Facebook are active— and through the contact form on this website.

Thank you so much for reading.