I’m 33, British, non-binary. I’m also autistic. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 28 and while it explains a lot, it doesn’t actually fix me. Even four years on I’m still not doing great. I never understood why I had trouble with stuff so I just blamed myself for not being able to step-up like everyone else. It’s proving very difficult to stop and to forgive myself instead. I still feel like I should be capable of doing regular person stuff, even though I’m not and I’ve never been, but that’s the standard I hold. So if I’m weird, or excessively frustrated, now you know why.

Anyway, this blog has been active since 2012 and naturally in the past seven years many things have changed. When I first started I thought this would be a World of Warcraft/Star Wars: The Old Republic blog but I have a lot of interests so I did opt to branch out. Basically I like rambling about stuff I like! Reading those early posts can be amusing as I was adamant that I would never be a raid tank … fast forward just a year I think and from Mists of Pandaria time onwards I have been nothing but a raid tank. However, some things have remained the same. I did take about three years break from Warcraft (in two pieces) but I’m pretty committed these days. I joined a new guild mid-BfA and have been raiding with them since then.

In May 2016 I joined tumblr and that turned into my primary blog really. For my more ‘structured’ posts I still write them on here but for my rambles I use tumblr. When tumblr had a major shake-up I decided I wanted to archive my rambles and ported them over here intending to curate them, and sort it all out. I have not done so and I don’t know when or if I ever will so they are hidden.

Also in the past decade I moved house (twice now!), went back to university and then had to leave again due to ill health, wrote an awful lot and then (thanks to the aforementioned university experiment) completely forgot how to write. I’ve discovered lots of amazing TV shows, fallen in love with characters and pairings which inspire me massively. I got really into Lego and have thus far amassed a collection of over 50,000 pieces, and I decided that I wanted to learn how to draw – that too is very much a work in progress.

I hate that I’m in my thirties now and I don’t feel like I am any further forward (in fact I feel like I’ve gone backwards) from when I was 18. The only constant aside from my steadily worsening depression and anxiety has been writing. Telling stories is my passion. That’s why I like Lego really because of what I can create and why I like trying to draw – to make the images in my head real. It’s a struggle, a constant battle against the demons. Why bother? I’ll never be good enough. But those stories are mine and I need to tell them. I need to try.

The steps you take don’t have to be big: they just need to take you in the right direction.

Jemma Simmons (Agents of Shield)