(I wrote all of this yesterday, March 8th, but just getting to posting it today)
I wrote a Daniel Chooses Love post yesterday about the fact that the blog will now also be available on Substack. What’s kind of strange is that I had been having a lot of anxiety about writing in DCL again. It hadn’t actually been that long, but I felt a block, like I didn’t have the ability to write anything worth reading on Daniel Chooses Love. I had built up a lot of pressure for myself about only writing things that were worth posting on the blog, and so I just wasn’t writing. I decided yesterday to just write an announcement post about the Substack. It felt low stakes, and it broke the seal of getting me back to writing on Daniel Chooses Love.
We are currently at the airport, and are about to fly to Orlando. Russ and I are going to Disney World with my mom, sister, and sister’s husband to celebrate my mom’s 70th birthday. This trip has been planned for almost an entire year now, and it feels a little strange that it’s finally here. After our time in Disney World, Russ and I will be driving to Wilton Manors (which is Fort Lauderdale’s gayborhood) to spend a few days just resting and relaxing in an LGBTQ+ space. I have had all sorts of feelings about this trip’s approach, and now it’s here.
For one thing, it seems absurd to be going to a place like Walt Disney World - with the cartoon characters, the people in character costumes, the child-like music, the general sense of whimsy - when the things that are happening in our world are happening. Every single day, there is a new atrocity that comes to light. The things we are hearing about our “leaders” are unfathomably awful, truly horrific. We also appear to be on the brink of World War III. We will look back at this time in American history with the same level of disgust that we have towards 1940’s Germany, and we will view the current “leader” with the same level of revulsion that we view Germany’s leader from that time. And yet, I’m going to Walt Disney World. I’m going to “The Happiest Place on Earth” to be around a giant cartoon mouse while we’re on the brink of the complete collapse of society. It’s jarring in its strangeness.
It also seems somehow disrespectful to take a vacation, like it reeks of privilege that a lot of people don’t have, and like it ignores the work that needs to be done. So even disregarding the Disney World portion of the trip, even if this was just a vacation that Russ and I were taking to Fort Lauderdale, I can’t help but feel weird about doing it.
But …
Yesterday when we were dropping Doc off with our friend Ann Marie, she and I got to talking about the period of my life when I was experiencing seizures. If you weren’t a part of my life at that time (about 3 years ago), the short version is that I was experiencing seizure-like episodes that made it impossible for me to work and necessitated that I go on disability from the job I had at that time. It was scary, confusing, and we didn’t know exactly what was happening. When Ann Marie and I were talking about it yesterday, we were reflecting on the fact that the seizure episodes were psychological/emotional in nature. It was shortly after the seizure stuff started that I got diagnosed with ADHD and then Autism. We now know that I was experiencing something called Autistic Burnout - that I had been putting so much energy and effort into appearing neurotypical and “seeming normal” that it led to a level of exhaustion that made me physically disabled for almost half a year.
I’ve been getting close to that Autistic Burnout feeling again. Now that I know I’m autistic, I can be a lot more informed and intentional about how I manage my life in order to make life sustainable. But the atrocities we’re confronted with on a daily basis are so painful (thinking about them actually causes me to experience physical pain) that it takes an enormous amount of energy just to get through the day and do my job and my normal activities of daily living. It has taken so much energy just to do those things, in fact, that I haven’t had anywhere near the same amount of energy I normally have to devote to my friendships. I have fallen out of touch with most people, and while some of those relationships dwindling has felt like a really good thing, many of the friendships having less attention than they used to feels like a failure.
Social media is a double edged sword. It is where I used to go to stay informed about my loved ones’ lives. But it is also a place where everyone expresses their outrage about the state of the world, and where everyone seems to be competing to be the first to weigh in about the newest awful thing. I have found that I just can’t have Facebook and Instagram on my phone or iPad anymore. I find the things that are happening in the world so distressing that it makes me feel like I am going to slip back into having seizures. But because of that, I also am less aware of what is going on in the lives of my loved ones.
Before moving into the world of tech in 2016, I worked for almost 9 years in the world of services to people with developmental disabilities. Long before I was aware of my own autism, I was spending a lot of time with autistic people who showed me the beauty of their minds and their lives. I’ve been thinking a lot about one of the people I met in that world. He was a young man, 17 years old when I met him (I was 21 at the time). He was one of the first people I had ever met with a formal autism diagnosis. He had some stereotypical autistic characteristics - finger stimming, never making eye contact - but he was also so unique and interesting and fascinating to get to know. Like a lot of autistic people (myself included), he had a special interest. His was music, specifically the music of The Police, The Cars, and R.E.M.. He loved to tell you all about those bands and their albums. And when he was upset or overstimulated, all you had to do was start singing “Losing My Religion” or “Message in a Bottle”, and a smile would appear on his face, and his breath would regulate. He was a truly beautiful person, and I really hope he’s doing well now.
Thinking about this young man, I would never expect him to stay informed on current events and continue to function. I know how expressive he was, and I know how knowing the horrors of the world would have impacted him, and it is just not a thing anyone would have expected of him. That did not, in ANY way, make him “less than” anyone else. He was so special, so funny, so kind, and so unique, it would be impossible for me to think of him as “less than” because of his limitations. If you knew him, you knew how his operating system worked, and you treated him accordingly.
So now that I understand that I am autistic, and I know how destabilizing and painful and debilitating the world’s events are for me, why can’t I extend the same grace to myself? If I could accommodate that young man’s limitation while being fully confident in his being my equal, why can’t I grant myself the accommodation of leaving social media (without feeling guilty) for the health of my operating system?
I have come back to the idea of joy as resistance many, many times since January 2025. But I’m starting to feel like maybe instead of framing it as resistance, I need to allow myself to frame it as “joy as survival”. I don’t think any person - neurodivergent or neurotypical - is built to withstand a life that just feels painful and horrifying all of the time. Yes it is important to stand up against the horrors that are occurring, but it is also really important to just survive. Before the seizures, there were times in my life when I was suicidal, and those times occurred because I was pushing myself to be and feel a way I was not capable of being or feeling. Looking at it all now, I can’t go back to feeling suicidal, and I certainly can’t go back to having seizures. I need to recognize and accommodate my limitations for the sake of even just withstanding life, if not fighting back against tyranny.
And so I come back to joy. Maybe it is wildly absurd to surround yourself with cartoon characters and fairy tale songs when we’re at apocalypse’s door. Maybe there are people who would perceive my taking time to rest after Disney World as privileged and disrespectful. But I need to remind myself that this is a matter of survival. I am autistic, and just as I wouldn’t expect that amazing young man to endure life’s horrors and continue to function, I want to give myself that grace and mercy too. Joy isn’t just about taking a stand anymore, it’s about being able to withstand the world I find myself in. With the depravity of this time in history, I need to immerse myself in beauty and whimsy and rest and silliness, not just because we all deserve those things, but because I need to preserve my will to go on and my brain’s ability and energy to keep doing what my life demands of me.
So I will be in Disney World soon (we’re now less than 30 minutes away from landing) allowing myself to be a big kid. And then I will be relaxing and resting with Russ. And I am going to feel the joy that this trip brings to me. Joy is restorative, joy is resistance, and joy is worth having just for joy’s sake. And right now, joy feels like a means to making life survivable. You won’t see regular posts of photos from the trip on Facebook and Instagram - more likely I’ll do bigger photo posts when we’re back in our room and I decide to take out my laptop. I hope you allow yourself to experience joy - for its own sake, as resistance, or in a very real way because it makes life worth living. Thank you as always for reading.
As a reminder, you can now receive my posts in your email by subscribing on Substack at danielchooseslove.substack.com