October 21, 2026
I’m slowing down a bit. The emotional repercussions of this work take their toll, necessitating me needing to take extended breaks. I don’t have colleagues in this work to lean upon for mental support, but that should be obvious by now.
I’m revisiting some old hobbies, like Japanese anime -boy do I appreciate the idealism expressed there. Lately I’ve been on a Lord of the Rings craze. I think I may even like those books now more than Harry Potter -I’d only ever watched the movies before, and the Silmarillion…whoa.
As an undergraduate I let my creative side flourish a little more, what with participating in a local theatre’s annual rendition of A Christmas Carol (I played the role of Scrooge in the last one I participated in), and I think I’m at a point where I need to balance my life out a bit more and do more of those types of activities, and explore novel avenues in the arts.
No promises on when my review of Flint et al. (2020) will be done.
The cold reality I have to remind myself is that…I don’t have to do this work. No one’s making me; no one’s requesting me; I owe no one anything in regards to this library, and I’ll work when I want to work.
While a sense of duty/dharma drives me forward in this work out of compassion and a desire to mitigate a future risk of autism via compiling various scientific literatures, I’m not paid with tax-dollars or other types of funding, after all, to look after your health. That’s supposed to be the job of U.S. Government-employees in their allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America via interpretations of it that are beneficial to the People of the United States of America -not beneficial to profits, jobs and employment, titles, misinterpretations of what “national security” means, etc.
So I’ll work when I want to work; and I’ll want to work when I work.
And that’s that.
Autism Librarian