That’s me most of the time, if I’m honest. I usually start things with a plan, and then that plan decides it’s had enough of my brain and leaves. That leaves me having to wing it.
Which is precisely what I’m doing now – winging it. I did have an idea for an article, but as it stands right now, I’ve got nothing.
So really that’s what this article is going to end up being about: the random stuff that goes on in my brain when I just let it wander.
Strap in and hold on… you’ve got as much idea what’s about to happen next as I have…
So, yeah… this morning wasn’t fun.
I’m currently suspended from work for something that my union rep was furious about, and shouldn’t have been a suspension offence. Now with me being out of the way, the management have gone digging and found complaints and things I’ve done wrong, and now I’m up for a disciplinary. Thing is, having looked through everything, my mistakes are literally all caused by various ADHD symptoms, such as burnout, inability to sit still and the non-ADHD standard of being set a literally impossible task and blaming me when I couldn’t do it.
This all became very obvious when I wrote my Formal Response to the Investigation Report I was sent.
I had a welfare phone call from a nice lady from HR. I told her, politely, that the Employee Assistance Programme was virtually useless for people like me who are neurodivergent. It’s obviously been put in place for neurotypicals who are having a bad time. It uses approaches that don’t even touch the sides if your brain is wired up differently. It doesn’t work for me, but they don’t even offer CBT, just six weeks of having a bit of a chat. Which is nice in the short term, but then people like me just relapse and the cycle starts again until we can get some tailored help.
Getting the tailored help requires long waiting lists… but more on that later.
Anyway, I suggested that having the disciplinary hearing at my workplace would be a bad idea. For one thing, I was more than likely to have a panic attack before I’d even got in the building (called it a nervous breakdown because that makes it sound as serious as it actually is – panic attack summons up the image of just having to take some deep breaths and move through, whereas nervous breakdown means paralysis, shaking, crying… all of which I do when I have a proper panic attack). I also said, if it went badly, there’s no way that, even though I’m not (and have never been, touch wood) suicidal, I would be so upset that I wouldn’t be safe to drive.
So they agreed to do it on Teams. Which is safer for me. And I’m less likely to just get up and walk out or go non-responsive.
What else happened? Erm…
I’ve arranged to do an interview with Thorn Faustus, the “multi-skilled queer performer, fire artist, gore burlesque dancer, and event creator based in the UK, best known for her fierce stage presence and dark aesthetics, she also champions inclusive community building within the alternative performance scene”, to quote from her biographies online. I’ve also written interview frameworks for Rebekah Knight (musician, yogi and various other things), Six Feet Below (Yorkshire Tea-swilling Sean Bean enthusiast Metal band), and Mishkin Fitzgerald, the musician behind Cellar Darling and Crimson Veil.
Why am I doing these interviews? They’re for my podcast, The Wyrd Ways Rock Show, which is a long-running music show, styled in tribute to the The Friday Rock Show, whose presenter, Tommy Vance, was instrumental in forming the musical tastes of my good self. If it hadn’t been for TV (on the radio… Tommy Vance, the music vendor… and welcome to…), Alan “Fluff” Freeman and their producer, Tony Wilson (no, not the Mancunian one), I wouldn’t be who I am today. The good parts, that is. The parts that appreciate The Riff and The Dio Drop and a blazing guitar solo.
Anyway, getting back on track, the reason I’m doing THESE interviews (specifically the ones with Thorn and Rebakah) is that I’m putting together a series celebrating diversity in the Heavy/Alt scene, highlighting how women, LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and sex worker communities (including OnlyFans creators and porn performers) as well as fans, artists, photographers, designers, models and performers of all kinds have always been an integral part of the community’s backbone. And we, in the best situations, and some of the worst, are a community and we should be looking after each other. With the way women, queer people, BIPOC and sex workers are being treated at the moment, some need to be reminded that if you’re in the same queue for festival toilets, at the same gigs and in the same pit, they can’t be “other”, because the Rules Of The Pit (which don’t JUST apply to the pit) clearly state that if someone goes down, YOU GET THEM BACK UP.
Yeah… so it’s now quarter to midnight, I’m tired, but feeling a little bit lighter thanks to this.
Thanks for reading.
Talk to me. I don’t bite.
Unless you ask nicely.
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