Maaaaaaaaan, was 2022 interesting. Granted, 2022 had an amazing start for myself, given the hard work I had put into applying myself with my digital illustration work, my website (though I started that before 2022, it still applies), and working for a better job. Especially a job/career in using my talents and skills (that I enjoy). And it paid off. 2022 started on a good note for me and though I definitely wouldn’t call the year a cake ride - I’ve been greeted with my challenges, welcomed and non-welcomed alike.
With a career set job as a graphic designer, I still find my challenges. (And that isn’t that hard, given I’m an anxiety riddled individual that has been diagnosed (FINALLY) over the last two years with ADHD and Autism. From the age of seven, I was told I was ADD. Attention Deficit Disorder. Fast travel 30 years later and you have me floored and furious in my diagnoses in being ADHD and not ADD. Add being autistic, I’m beginning to see my trouble with so much - especially after researching and being given the proper guidance into being nuerodivergent.
FUCK.
A good part of me is even more livid at the school system I was forced into and how much they made me worse with their blind ignorance. No measure of understanding what a child goes through when growing up being told I was different, that because of that difference that I would be slower (yes, that is how the GA school system in the 90s would treat it), and pretty much putting a social target on a child’s back for even being in the “special education program”. I was thrown into classrooms with kids with severe autism and down syndrome. From seven years old until adulthood, I had “RETARD” “STUPID” “DUMB” and so many more nearly socially imprinted onto me. I was denied access to certain classes throughout grade school until finally legally withdrawing from the program at 17. I had to. One of the mandatory classes I had to take all throughout high school, because I was in the special education program, had me in “Study Skills”. Which was pretty much a free period to do homework…or work at the school store. That’s right, my school system used the “Special Ed'“ kids to run the school store. My parents taxes hard at work.
So yeah, when that program tried to deny me from intro to art - INTRO TO ART - I withdrew from it. I was done being labeled because society would only see ‘neurodivergent’ people…as retards. I was done being called stupid. Because I wasn’t.
Neurodivergent people make up your “geniuses” in society. Einstein couldn’t tie his own shoes but he succeeded in so much in his brilliance. You can’t judge a fish for not being to climb a tree like a monkey.