Weekly Thoughts #9: New Year, Same me – Except Everything has Changed

My 2023 wasn’t off to the best start, to put it humbly. I’ve had a lot to reflect on in my online absence, and I have to say that I am somewhat comfortable with my thoughts about moving forward, through what I feel is a more rounded perspective – for the time being, at least.

You often hear that travel is a great way to expand yourself. Well, in fact, having achieved as much travel as I have, I feel confident in saying that traveling has allowed me to set my sights on new horizons.

In any event, I’ve learned to avoid the toxic positivity and idolization that have swept travel spaces across the internet. Life really is a rollercoaster, and sometimes it’s hard to keep up the pace with what has been happening around you – especially if you are engaging in a solo-traveler lifestyle. I’ve been wanting to focus on travel ever since I left my last full-time position (ironically), and I am truly grateful for all the experiences I got to have abroad since that fateful day I said fuck it and left a city I hated with a deadend job that was unable to give me what I both wanted and needed, which ultimately left me feeling void and unfulfilled. Then the pandemic happened, and sent my life on an entirely different trajectory (by far from a good one), but that’s a whole other story. One thing I am eternally grateful for, however, is that it gave me time to focus entirely on myself and what I want and need (of course it didn’t give me the means to that though), and allowed me to devise the basics of what would become Autism Adventures Abroad.

From May 2021, it was where my life really began again after living 13 months in a deep depression. I’m glad of the choices I made for my own physical and mental wellbeing following this point, but it hasn’t been easy. I will always remain indebted to the wonderful places I’ve gotten to travel to, the amazing people I have bonded with and befriended since I went on the road again, and how much I pushed myself out of my comfort zone without bringing myself to breaking point. However, as an autistic adult, there are 4 main areas I feel my life is still suffering from; jobs, money, immigration, and intimate relationships. Unfortunately, these 4 aspects are critical to anyone’s happiness, health, and security. They are all deeply connected, and unfortunately, being autistic makes a lot of them a lot harder (and that’s not to say these are not already hard for allistic people). While continuously fighting to improve – for lack of a better word – these areas of my life, I have been working extremely hard on bringing Autism Adventures Abroad to the reach I want it to be at. Simply put, I want it to reach a point where people are coming to me with paid work without much effort on my part – and it isn’t quite there yet.

I came back to California to find the purpose I felt I was lacking in Europe, to search for the passion for life I felt I had lost for so long while living in a place I hated because of legal obligations. It was the right decision, things are now moving faster than they were in Europe in terms of business. Yet, I still haven’t found my happy medium (particularly with regards to the 4 areas mentioned above), and I am constantly feeling overwhelmed.

I know things have to change soon, and a refocus is imminent. The unknown is scary, but sometimes you just need to take a step back from things; from traveling, from being busy, from whatever it is that’s causing you to feel overloaded. I would like to believe that there will always be a time for exploring and wandering the globe, but now my focus is finding a base to settle down on to focus on my existing material and work solely on Autism Adventures Abroad without distractions, and without worrying about those 4 evils I previously mentioned. I realize this is wholly unrealistic, but I want to focus on finding the pathway with the least amount of compromise.

A lot of my success lies in the hands of others, and that’s not an opinion that is a fact, as the success of Autism Adventures Abroad as my mainstay is very much a 2 way street. And that too is scary for someone who craves freedom and independence. I have a lot of big plans and ideas, with little or no means to make them happen at this stage – which makes me sad, but also more determined to get past my current fix.

I think the saying that ‘money can’t buy you happiness’ is one of the biggest cons we’ve sold ourselves in the capitalist societies so many of us now involuntarily find ourselves in. Sure, money, in essence, doesn’t make us happy, but we sure as hell need it to survive at a basic level unless we want a life of destitution (or to go completely offgrid). We focus so heavily on work as it is taught that it brings us purpose and meaning in society, but what happens when you are one of the 85-or-so-percent of autistic adults that are unemployed? Adults who have little to no chance of succeeding professionally and financially due to a capitalist system that was not built with us in mind. I have fought hard to do the things I’ve done up until this point, and I don’t owe an explanation to anything as to how, but the fight has had a heavy toll.

I am living my life without any stability. I imagine most people hearing that would ask why don’t I just quit in that case? Well, the truth is I can’t. So long as I keep hold of my lust for life, I cannot stop fighting. I love my tenacity. I think it’s one of my strongest merits that I directly attribute to my autism. Unfortunately, it does leave me constantly feeling exhausted when I’m taking on things as heavy as this.

At the end of the day, we as living beings, are all tiny dots in the grand scheme of things and think the best we can possibly do is try to live our lives in pursuit of the pleasure principle – in a way that is truly authentic to ourselves. There are no guarantees of what is around the corner, and I don’t intend to simply ‘exist’ while being conscious of that fact.

If you liked this article and would like to support my work, then please consider clicking on one of the buttons above to donate a little to either buy me a coffee or support my business initiative. Your generous support enables me to keep creating new and better content, as well as cover business development costs. Please only do this if you are financially able to do so, as these are challenging times for us all – Thank you!