A lot has happened since my last entry.
Guess what I found out? I am neurodivergent. During lunch with a neurodivergent coworker, she shared her condition and what she experienced. The bells went off in my head: this sounds like me I thought. I got the name of her psychologist and got tested. In the second session, the person conducting another series of tests separate from the mental health workup said, “Oh, yes, you are definitely neurodivergent.” Cue the grief over what might have been with early interventions.
After the testing, the confirmation and working towards my current dosage, I found my focus at work. I felt less overwhelmed and had many tools for attention and emotional regulation. I check in with another psychologist as I work through this new frontier. Well, that’s not new. It was always there but named other things:
- Scattered
- Unfocused
- Impulsive
- Spacey
- “Emotional”
- Overly Sensitive
I have often told friends about a mask getting ripped off after the pandemic. It was second nature to put it on, trying to play an ill-fitting role. It’s a relief to finally take it off, and better now than never.
Changing Directions in Midlife
Can we retire the term “midlife crisis?” The vision of a guy taking up with a younger woman, buying a sports car, or doing something to recapture lost youth fits with people growing up in the 60s or earlier, but while there’s a crisis, it’s more changing directions by choice or circumstance. I saw a lot of circumstances during the pandemic. Many people retired earlier than planned, and I had a coworker leave years early. She enjoys time with her grandchildren, but sometimes the circumstances leading up to leaving do sting.
Speaking of people and midlife directions, I read Richard Armitage’s debut novel, Geneva. After suggesting it as a library purchase, I decided not to listen to it but to read it. Thrillers are not my chosen genre unless the book offers something like an interesting premise or an actor trying his hand at it. The novel was a fun read with a fun twist, and reading how Armitage squeezed in writing time on trains or other places motivated me to take up writing again.
I had another reason for the crickets. I went back to school, specifically an online certificate in adult education. I have a degree in education, K-12, but my work involves instructing adults on using the library and information literacy skills. I decided to enroll in an online program at a Canadian university and did group projects with people from around the country. Many work in corporate, and I learned a lot from their training proposals and lessons, especially the oil-and-gas worker training lessons. (It’s a University of Calgary Continuing Education program, so it’s no surprise that many oil industry employees take the courses.)
Something happened that was not fun, and many encountered it. Ageism has begun in small ways. After not getting a position, I went for job coaching. The person who did get it, actually she was appointed to it by someone who interviewed me, was younger and more fixated on wording than trying to come up with training or getting in with instructors. The position was a term until the posting came up again with some of the exact words. Under education, though, they included a degree in anthropology. What!? Oh! That’s right, this person has a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology. It stung but didn’t throw me off like it did earlier. The best part about getting past 50 is learning to not give a fuck anymore and assign those fucks to necessary things.
Oh, and also using the word “fuck” not more, but also when necessary.
Now that I know, my brain sometimes says, “Squirrel!” I can write more often on the blogosphere about fun things, thoughtful things, and everything in between.
Unpaused Life 