Hi. I'm Terrified, Creatively Constipated, and Existentially Angsty as Fuck. And I'm Judging Every Word of This Post. And It's Not What I Want It to Be.

07 April, 2025

Hi. I'm terrified.

Writing the first post for my website carries the existential weight of life or death for me. Almost everything in my life seems to carry the weight of life or death—especially communication.

I want my writing here on my website to remain as raw¹ and authentic² as possible. I want to avoid the layers of hyper-filtration/consideration/analysis and preemptive editing that have led to a nearly-fatal case of creative constipation over the last few decades.³

It (the creative constipation and abject fear of failing to communicate) hasn't always been as bad as it's become,⁴ but it's always been with me.

As a one-year-old, despite my mother’s persistent encouragement to “use my words,” I insisted on pointing and grunting at things that I wanted. Not because I didn’t know the words—but out of fear of saying anything at all until I could execute a full sentence and do so "correctly."

It’s only now, decades later, that I’ve come to understand that my hesitation and careful forethought prior to speaking—and the pressing need to further study the appropriate parameters and protocols of human interactions—was not the presumed neurotic perfectionism I’d spend the greater part of my life trying to shake, but rather a survival instinct.

While this may sound like an overly dramatized reflection on a childhood anecdote, it’s a common survival mechanism in Autistic children—especially girls. We⁵ become—by necessity—child anthropologists.

Nothing instills the gravity and sheer power of language quite like the inability to effectively navigate the dominant method of communication. Just ask any traveler having to simultaneously navigate a foreign language while carefully attending to cultural considerations of nuances in body language, gesture, and tone.

Okay...I feel I’ve gotten off track here. Let's re-focus.

Hi. I'm Creatively Constipated.

As I mentioned in footnote 4, (this is assuming you went to footnote 4. If you didn't, you're presumably super lost right now. Or maybe you like the sense of disorientation. Hey, if that's how you want to live your life—eschewing footnotes like an adrenaline junkie—I respect it. I would normally put this entire parenthetical in a footnote, but I'm keeping this one in the body for you devil-may-care readers out there.) the "full story" behind my nearly-fatal level of creative constipation will take another post (or 69⁶) to cover.

While I feel compelled to cover everything within this inaugural post on my website, I know it's impossible.

So without all the details and context: I am artistically and creatively backed up.⁷

I'm stuck. And I have been. For a long time. (I've feared intractably so.) But today (as I write this) is my birthday.⁸ And I decided I refuse to let another year pass without making my personal website space and putting something—anything—on it.

Hi. I'm Existentially Angsty as Fuck.

I've been trying to make a space for myself online for more years than I would like to admit. But the more time I took, the more "precious" and life-or-death it became. I needed to hand-code the site from the ground up. Make it a work of art itself. Figure out all of the logistics for a newsletter, feeds, (social media presence?)⁹, etc. so I wouldn't be screaming into a void.

Then there's the verbiage. How to describe myself. How to frame myself. How to....brand¹⁰...myself. Depending on which "framing" of myself I choose (artist/writer/speaker/educator/etc), and the intended "purpose/audience" (professional presence online/personal blog/artistic statement/etc), I behave and present like an entirely different person. And I limit myself to that frame and purpose. To the erasure of all the rest of me.

I know I’m not alone in the experience of self-erasure-through-curation. We all filter and curate ourselves to a degree. But the way my brain works, it seems to reach extremes. I eventually can't see out of the framework I created. It can take years for me to claw my way out. I lose sight of myself. The whole of me, at least. It's almost like cult deprogramming. But I'm my own cult leader. It's me. And trying to un-brainwash yourself from yourself is...challenging.

I'm Judging Every Word of This Post. And It's Not What I Want It to Be.

Look. This post is a mess. I'm trying something so counter to every cell in my being by putting this out into the world. I would typically spend weeks to months writing this. But I gave myself today—my birthday. (Side note to you mavericks of footnote eschewal: maybe I can again try to re-tempt you with footnote 8 about my birthday? No? I respect you sticking to your principles.) And I decided I'm going to launch the site and this post in the state they are in.

Because if I don't find a way to start, I will be intractably stuck.

This post isn't what I want it to be. But it's here (which is more than I can say for all the grand ideas I have that are still locked in my brain). And it's okay...enough.

Hi. I'm Emily.

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