Get to know me

Hello, friend! ✿

I thought it might be a good idea to have a bit of an introduction post, so we can get to know each other a little! Well, you can get to know me, at least. I would love to get to know you too, so feel free to tell me about yourself in the comments. ˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶

Now, I’m here to answer the question “who the hell is this person and why should I read her blog?” Well, let me tell you:

This is me.

I live in a valley called Snertingdal, high up in the hillsides. We’re pretty much surrounded by forest here, which I love, but there is also a lot of logging, which I find depressing.

We’re known for bad roads and scenic landscapes.

I moved out at age 19, and have moved around a lot since. But where I feel most at home is in nature, or at least close to it.

This is me and my Dutch boyfriend. We met during the pandemic, and moved in together last year. He makes me laugh every day and I call him my emotional support husband.

I have five (5) cats, mostly on accident. They are the loves of my life, and acquiring pets was honestly one of the best things I ever did for my mental health :’)

You open your eyes in the morning, this is the first thing you see. wyd?

My hobbies include reading, drinking too much cinnamon tea, crocheting, gardening, doing my nails, hiking, roadtripping, watching horror movies, playing video games, and taking naps - usually with a cat or two on me.

When crocheting, it helps to have an idea of what the finished product will look like.

He loves books almost as much as I do.

My home is my safe place, and I like to be surrounded by all the things I love, preferably with many reminders of nature. My goal is always for the spaces I inhabit to be as cozy and inspiring as possible.

Autumn is my favourite season. It’s the time of year when I feel most like myself. The weather and all the colours makes me come alive! Halloween is my favourite holiday (I’ll take any excuse to dress up) and as an October baby, my birthday is also around the same time. It’s just the most magical time of year to me.

I am currently writing my first novel, a folk horror story loosely based on a nightmare I had in 2021. The dream stuck with me, and as I kept thinking about it, the story kind of unfolded itself from there.

This story feels like my baby, I’m very protective of it and I’m also very selective about who I share it with, for now. It’s too new and undeveloped to be fully out there yet, haha. If you’re a writer too, hopefully that’s something you can relate to.

Writing is a slow process for me, and more of the work happens in my head than on paper. Inspiration strikes in sudden bursts, and I have to pull over on the side of the road, or jump out of the shower to write right now.

That’s a pretty accurate description of how I function in general, actually. If there’s a window of opportunity to get something done, then I need to act fast. Wait too long, and the window might close, and who knows when I’ll be able to do it again. Could be an hour, could be a few days or two weeks.

I’m still trying to find a balance so I’m not rushing to get things done, but it’s hard when executive dysfunction can be so disabling - you just want to take every opportunity you have to do stuff.

I used to not consider myself disabled, but in truth, I definitely am. The steps required to do something, or just to live as a regular person, are often harder for me than for other people. That’s how you know you’re disabled - perhaps you can do the same things, but it will cost you more, require more (or a different kind of) effort. Plus, you might have less energy to begin with (you know, spoons and all that).

So, you’re automatically at a disadvantage. That says absolutely nothing about your value as a person, it just means you can’t hold yourself to the same standard as neurotypical, able-bodied society, because doing so is the fastest way to wreck yourself. Believe me, I know.

I love being autistic and wouldn’t change it for anything, but it comes with certain challenges, not to mention inconsistent functioning levels, which add a level of unpredictability to my days.

Between executive dysfunction and sensory overload (and other fun “side-effects” of being autistic), having PTSD, and getting frequent migraines, managing myself well is a full time job.

As I’m getting older, I’m understanding more and more the importance of rest and recovery - how vital it is to everything else. But rest, like everything else, requires practice to get good at.

For most of my life, I have struggled with emotional eating. That used to be something I had a lot of shame about, but now it feels more like a neutral fact about me.

We all use the coping skills we have available to us, and past me got me to where I am today, so how can I not be grateful for that?

I’m not where I want to be yet, but my relationship with food and my body has improved so much.

I like my body more with each tattoo I get.

I got the first one at 16 and the process of it felt strangely therapeutic and cathartic (my fellow self-harmers get it lol …sorry, too dark?)

And I don’t really regret my old tattoos that I wouldn’t necessarily choose again today, because they are a reminder of who I was, and that she is with me, the girl who got those tattoos and loved them. She lived in this body too, and she had a right to make her mark upon it.

During & after getting my most recent tattoo.

I love the night sky, the moon, stars and planets. Astronomy was my earliest special interest (aka autistic passion), and it’s one that’s stayed with me my entire life.

I could never feel alone when I’m looking up. Even if I’m really sad or stressed, there is something about the night sky that grounds me every time I see it.

Dark sky conservation is something I’m super passionate about. I think seeing un-lightpolluted skies is a human right, and not something we take seriously enough.

Comet hunting in the sunset on a cold January afternoon.

So, now you know a little bit about who I am.

As for why you should read my blog, I guess that depends on what you’re looking to get out of the experience. Maybe you want advice on PTSD recovery, or to feel that you’re not alone in it. Maybe you want to be inspired to spend time in nature. Maybe you’re looking for permission to be yourself, to be weird, to be openly autistic. Maybe you want to feel better about yourself. Maybe you can’t relate to me at all, and just want to read about another persons experience of life.

Those are all perfectly good reasons and I’m happy to have you here, no matter what yours is.

So get yourself a cup of cinnamon tea, and join me <3

The first post on this blog

Hello and welcome to my new blog!

I say “new” because this is not my first attempt at blogging - in fact, it is something like my fifth. Back in the mid-2000s, I had a LiveJournal (complete with “just got my first DSLR camera” photography) that nobody read, then for a while in the early 2010s I had a Norwegian blog, before transitioning to Tumblr, where I remained for many years.

Lately, I’ve been feeling the itch to write again. I don’t think it ever really went away, I just ignored it and wrote in the notes app on my phone or in the many notebooks scattered around my house when the need to get the words out of my head overcame me. But I keep wishing for someplace to unite it all, someplace to have my thoughts, experiences and progress gathered, if only to have somewhere to look back on it all.

But I would be lying if I said it was only for myself. For as long as I can remember, I have had a need to reach other people. To connect based on shared experiences, feelings or thoughts. To be the person someone needs at a certain time in their life. To provide the words and perspectives that will help someone when they need it the most. That is also why I choose to write in English instead of my native language - because it means being able to reach more people with my words. (I believe that what is meant for you will find you, but why make it harder than necessary?)

This blog was created as an outlet for my thoughts and to have somewhere to write about the process of healing from PTSD, life as a late-diagnosed autistic woman, and what it’s like being autistic in a neurotypical world. I also want to share my passion for nature, animals, evolving as a human and the beauty of our shared existence (something I spend a lot of time thinking about). And anything else I feel like sharing. Because I’m a real person, and real people have more than one side.

I have many hobbies and passions (don’t we all?), and robbing yourself of the pleasure of sharing them with others is a specific kind of self-torture. I don’t think everybody can relate to this, but - I mean when you’re holding yourself back from sharing certain sides of yourself and your life with others, even though you want to share them, just because it doesn’t fit in with the niche others expect you to stay in, or what you expect from yourself. “Staying in your lane”, and all that. And you find yourself thinking “I wish I could share this with people, but it wouldn’t fit, it would be too random, no one would be interested too see that from me”.

But this is what we are told to do. It’s almost like we’ve been conditioned, at least over the last decade, to “pick a niche”. If you want your work (whether it’s writing, photography, making videos, etc.) to reach your intended audience and succeed, then you need to pick a category and stick to it. Make yourself predictable enough that people always know what they will get from you. If you stray too far from that, it will be too chaotic for anyone to follow.

Personally, I don’t think that’s true.

It doesn’t work for me, and it doesn’t seem to work for most other people. People do not easily fit into boxes, and I don’t think it’s good for us to try too hard to do that, either.

Whenever I have tried to make myself fit into any kind of category, it just makes me want to rebel against those limits, however self-imposed. It fuels a fight in my own head: “But if I do or say that, then it won’t fit with what others have come to expect of me, but if I don’t do it then I’m not being true to myself”. This can go on in endless circles until I have exhausted myself. Pointless, you might say, and you’d be right.

I think there is a growing desire to see real, multidimensional people with varied passions. People sharing themselves with the world in a less filtered way, not worrying about if their next creation will fit into the same neat box as their previous work. Letting themselves evolve however feels natural and right to them, even if they confuse others in the process.

That’s not an easy thing to do; being okay with potentially disappointing others (and potentially getting negative feedback!). But it is necessary for true growth, and like anything else, it’s a skill that can be practiced.

One of my favourite photographers (not sure if I should name them because I’m about to critique their work?? But okay I will, it’s Andrew Kearns) radically changed up his style some years ago, and I was disappointed. This was a photographer whose work I had been following and admiring for years, and who ended up becoming a big influence on me.

I remember laying in my bed and watching his vlogs on YouTube, longing to be out in nature myself, driving up a mountain, hiking, taking photos, coming home to edit, feeling happy with the outcome of the day. This was in 2016-2017, a dark time in my life. Some days, Andrew’s vlogs and work (along with the work of other photographers I admired) were the main force that got me out of bed and out of the house.

If it wasn’t for their unintentional reminders that I had something to live for, I would have stayed in bed. And the days I got out into nature, even just for a short while, kept me sane enough to handle the days when I didn’t. For that, I feel a lot of gratitude towards these people I have never met. They made a real difference in my life, and in the lives of many others too, I’m sure.

Subconsciously, I had expected Andrew’s work to always stay the same. Evolve, yes, but not into a different style altogether. Not into something I no longer liked. Until his work changed, I wasn’t even aware that I had this expectation that it wouldn’t.

I stayed a follower throughout the years, continuing to be inspired by his older photography. Whenever I saw something new had been posted - and subsequently didn’t like it very much - it still served as a reminder of how his work had affected me, once upon a time. And how now, hopefully, it was serving the same purpose for someone else.

I’ve been liking his recent work again, he continues to evolve and is an incredible photographer. But my opinion of his work doesn’t matter.

These people who inspired me don’t owe me anything. Maybe I’m the one who owes them, for the difference they made in my life. The least I can do is accept that they won’t stay the same. And I can hope and believe that when their work isn’t for me, it will be for someone else. And it will be the thing that gets them out of bed. It will be exactly what they need.

But I wonder, did Andrew experience the same internal struggle as I have, before he decided to change up his work? Did he worry about his audience being confused or disappointed, about losing followers? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. But it seems that he felt that this change was necessary, and went with it.

When you have a desire inside you to create, whether it’s with words or pictures or something else, it’s like having a voice in your mind that can’t be silenced. It keeps talking to you, and it gets louder and more insistent when you aren’t creating and fulfilling your visions. At least that’s how it feels to me.

You can try to ignore it, but there is a constant restlessness that gnaws at you, and the visions of what you want to be creating never stray far from your thoughts.

The same is true when we are ready to evolve, to take next steps, to go in a different direction - this need for change will keep making itself known to you until you go along with it, and tell yourself “What’s the worst that could happen? Let’s give it a try and see where it takes me.”

We are under no obligation to remain the same; our only obligation is to be true to ourselves.

This blog is my journey in doing just that.

It is my hope that my writings will reach those who need it. If you are here, then this is for you ♡