More Transitions… or… “How Much I Hate My Life”

Fall is beautiful, here. The colors… the explosion of yellows, reds, every shade imaginable… is almost indescribable.  I wish I was watching it from my window, because it was also 34 degrees for some ungodly reason the other day. I’m house hunting again; something I hadn’t planned on doing until well after this upcoming Winter was over; but here we are. Here we are.  Houses, apartments, 90% of what I’m looking at… are virtually unattainable. What’s left are, basically, dumps.  Still, there are options that I can explore that hold a measure of security. If I can only tell my brain that when I lay my head to a pillow. Mostly, it seems to run on overdrive from dusk to dawn, and shutting the noise off… can be challenging.

They say it takes a village to raise a child.  It seems to take a team to maintain those of us on the spectrum.  I have a team. My wife… my life partner… plays a very definitive role, just by grounding me, and still loving me, even at my worst; but I am also fortunate enough to have a personal assistant that doesn’t answer to the name “Alexa” or “Cortana”.  Lisette helps me talk through things… mostly talking me down from the ledges in my mind… on the days I can’t function well.  She also helps with some things I can no longer physically do.  She gets me to appointments… she does a considerable amount of driving, scheduling, making sure the way I process things doesn’t interfere with my quality of life as much as possible. She reluctantly endures my work in the studio… just because she’s stuck hearing the vast amount of mixing that I do because she has to. I’m sure if she had her way, it would be Hip Hop or some other form of nightmarish “music” that she would play over the mains. What a waste of superb technology. Lately she’s been getting me to all these apartment rental viewings.  I don’t like leaving home. She makes sure I do, whether I like it or not.  And she gives me loads of shit when she feels I need a kick in the ass. It’s a good working relationship… but, more importantly… she’s a good kid… and has evolved into an indispensable buddy and confidant. Go figure.

The upside of being on the autism spectrum, I suppose… is a phenomenal ability to hyperfocus in a studio setting; The complete absorption factor when learning new techniques or nailing a mix. When I worked for the state… I spent years being unable to do my job for 12 minutes without extreme distraction. Now I sometimes spend 12 hours (or more) making sure EVERYTHING is perfect on playback.  And I know it when I haven’t peaked, yet.  What I don’t know… is when I’m pushing the envelope too far. That’s when I need someone to pull me back… or tell me to lay the fuck down.

Very soon, things are about to change drastically in my life, again. While some people get excited about these things… this always turns into a “holy shit” moment for me. I don’t do “change”.

Time for bed;  For all the good it’ll do to lay there and count the cracks in the ceiling all night.