End of Year Thoughts

Last updated on November 26, 2023

Here we are on December 31, 2018, and many of us reflect on the past year and make plans for the coming year. As readers know, 2018 has included all the elements of this blog since 2007 — and the cyclical nature of my life since at least junior high and high school.

When I went to buy a tree for our house, the lots were empty. I had spent so much time on my teaching duties that I had missed the start of the holiday season. Holidays are always tough for me, but I wanted a better holiday for the sake of our daughters.

I began 2018 reflecting on my failure to market The Autistic Me and myself as an expert on autism and neurodiversity. Nothing changed during the year, as the podcast proved a difficult expansion of the blog. We have invested a lot of money to create and distribute the podcast, so this is something of a disappointment.

The podcast finally began in March 2018, but I didn’t manage the weekly schedule necessary to build an audience. I’m going to keep at the podcast, because I know it matters to my future.

Plans to finally revise A Spectrum of Relationships fell short, once again, too. The book has to be updated, yet I never get around to investing the time and energy in the project. There are other books, other experts, and I have a lot of self-doubt about my ability to craft something better than what exists. I need to do this, and I need a routine schedule to accomplish the revision.

There was a miracle (or not) in the summer of 2018 when I was hired for my current full-time teaching position. I had given up being a professor and assumed I’d use my time for this blog, the podcast, and various other projects. At the end of April, I wrote:

The last, final, end of this journey, but extremely polite, emails were received this week. And, in keeping with my promise to my wife, the higher-education academic job search has concluded.

I might substitute somewhere, someday (K12), but Professor was not meant to be my title.

Tonight, I’m editing another podcast episode and released a half-dozen blog posts. I’ll be updating some old book manuscripts, some plays, and who knows what else. I’m going to take the cameras out for some photo safari days, and I promised the little ones some Art with Daddy days during the summer.

I wrote about the sudden job offer in August:

While we were in Monterey at a city park during our California adventure, I received a phone call offering me a position as a full-time writing instructor at a university not far from our house. It’s a one-year, contract, not tenure-track, but it is a full-time post. I accepted, because this will help us finish our house and pay down some debts.

The job has not been the hoped-for miracle that filled a year until I could return to the tenure-track job market. The job has interrupted the blog and the podcast. It has forced me to set aside family time, placing extreme demands on my wife to raise our daughters. For me, it is the subject that is a mismatch to my skills and my family life. Teaching English composition was a serious mistake that has led to emotional and physical burnout.

My classes were too large and will be larger in the spring. The amount of reading required to grade students was beyond my dyslexic abilities. Slow readers should not grade thousands of pages written by students in need of guidance. I worked past midnight too many nights. I worked on weekends. I read, read, and read some more while trying to plan for classes and. It was too much for me, and I admit that I needed more time to properly prepare for the course I taught.

This spring might be better since I have a few weeks to prepare. I also recognize that I have to set limits on how much I dedicate to any job when I have other commitments and needs. Universities expect too much of adjunct and part-time instructors. They hire and reward too few people with tenure-track posts. I compared my hours spent working to my paycheck: $6.30 per hour. That’s insane for 60 to 70-hour work weeks.

I began The Autistic Me while studying for my doctorate to teach. I have had three full-time posts now since 2018. Each job was full-time one year. I also taught part-time for three years. I did not teach for two of the years, though I used that time to complete my MFA and deal with some personal health issues.

This study-teach-write-other… study-teach-write-other… cycle is something I keep vowing to change. I thought I had changed it in 2018, before taking another teaching post.

To make 2019 better, I need to stick to some plans for once…

My family comes first, which includes waiting out the foster-adopt process and being the best parent I can be until our family is a “forever family” legally. Then comes my wife’s need for some time that doesn’t involve work, caring for the girls, or helping me tackle the insane workload of teaching. She spends a lot of time helping me dig myself out of holes.

After my family, I need to do what I want to do, including this blog and the podcast. Accepting a teaching post I was unsure about was a mistake and now I know that unless I get to teach media production or media business, I need to say “No!” to teaching offers. I should teach what I enjoy… and I do not enjoy academic writing or reading.

I wasted my adulthood. That’s a lousy feeling. Looking ahead, I need to accept that I’m stuck in my 50s with no career prospects. I’m too old for the job market. I do need to make my own path. The Autistic Me is what I have to build upon for the future. It’s not a future I would have chosen, but choices are limited.

To make 2019 better than 2018, I need to accept that 30 years gone. I have to create a future from where I am now.

I love our daughters. I love my wife. I don’t feel good about myself. That has to change.