Neurodivergence, activism, and finding a path

Last month, I finally muted virtually all my Signal chats (for those who may not be aware, Signal is a secure messaging app). I was determined to finish my manuscript draft before June, and I knew I needed to cut out distractions. Signal had become a major one. Now that I’m done with my draft, in theory, I could reengage with some of those chats. Signal has been the primary way I’ve been connected to organizing and activism in my community and beyond, and was a critical tool in the fall when ICE was terrorizing Chicago. There was a time when my screen time reports showed I was spending upwards of two to three hours a day on that app, coordinating, responding, communicating, connecting.

Signal remains a critical tool, but now that I’ve taken a break, I’m resisting going back. In fact, I desperately don’t want to. I’ll go a whole day without even opening it, now. I’ll be so far behind on group chats that I can’t possibly catch up, or I’ll be that person who chimes in 24 hours later with a response to something people have long since moved past.

As someone with ADHD and a tendency to get sensory overwhelm in certain circumstances, now that I’ve had some distance from the constant ping of notifications, I can see clearly just how badly it exacerbated my ADHD symptoms. I can better recognize the pure exhaustion, mental and physical, that I felt powering through my days when I was working my paycheck job, writing my manuscript, writing this newsletter, and parsing through hundreds, or on really bad days, thousands of notifications about ICE activity, protests, local politics, and more (all while parenting small children). Even as I’m writing this I’m thinking to myself: how on earth did I do that? I’m not sure I can reasonably say I have any lingering trauma from getting tear-gassed or nearly arrested. I think I’m strangely well-suited to bursts of high-intensity activity (perhaps it’s the ADHD “hunter vs. farmer” hypothesis at play?). But I have a visceral negative reaction to the idea of reintegrating Signal into my life, with the implied expectation of ever-presence, knowing that, if I put my phone down for an hour, I could come back to 100 or more messages.

I’m never really sure how much of my experience of the world is due to my neurodivergence, and how much is just kind of a universal, normal reaction to a particular situation. I imagine anyone would feel harassed if they were getting hundreds of text messages a day. But I’m not sure everyone would feel quite as derailed, would struggle quite as much with task-switching and constantly reorienting from one demand to another, to yet another. Nor do I imagine everyone would have a weird social anxiety kick in when you can’t respond or catch up fast enough to a group chat and suddenly get left behind. Nor would everyone feel equally fried by being “on” and accessible all the time, even when you’re at home, or alone, or otherwise trying to have the quiet downtime that is absolutely necessary for you in order to regulate yourself. These might be the reactions of someone who is a bit “atypical.”

ICE has not left Chicago. They are, in fact, getting more active again. It just looks different than it did in the fall. I’ve been struggling to get myself back into on-the-ground work, and I’m feeling guilty about it. I’ve been more focused on writing recently and it has felt hard to juggle adding on-the-ground work back into the mix. And yet, I did it all in the fall. Nevermind that it definitely took a toll mentally and physically, and definitely meant I was spending a lot less time on my manuscript. I still did it.

It’s hard, right now, to fight the sense of urgency and the feeling of needing to always do more. I see footage from Delaney Hall and feel guilty that I haven’t been over to our very own concentration camp much recently. The protests are much more sparsely attended these days, and when I have gone, they feel less strategically disruptive than they once were. Which is, no doubt, the intended effect of the ongoing restricted “free speech zone” and continuous police presence (and brutality) that serves to shield ICE from protestors and lets them carry-on, undisturbed.

I simultaneously miss being in the fight more directly, and feel anxious about getting back into it. I want to do more, and I also want to just write. I always feel like I’m doing both too much and not enough. I can’t let myself off the hook because I have so much privilege and I have a responsibility to use it. But, I’m also aware that I’m not the only one in this fight, nor am I the hero that will save us all. At the same time, we still need so many more people in the fight, and so many more people willing to use their privilege and take some risks, so how can I step back at a time like this?

Welcome to my rumination brain.

We don’t all have to take the same path in activism; I know that. I’m sure you do, too. And yet, I feel bad about walking a path, and then not sticking to it. I deviate, take a turn and start following a new direction.

But, maybe it’s fine to bounce between things? Maybe I don’t need just one path? I probably don’t always need to be on-the-ground; I can refuel and get back out there when I’m ready. I don’t need to lead something forever; I can help get a group or project going then pass the torch. Leadership isn’t really my skill, anyway. I hate telling people what to do and I hate being told what to do (which doesn’t make me well-suited to organized groups of any kind, in any role, if I’m being honest). If I’m going to opine about how to do something, I’d rather do it in writing and folks can take it or leave it.

I suppose all this is just grappling out loud with the guilt I’ve had for wanting to disconnect from some things that kept me plugged into local organizing, but also drained the hell out of me. Writing and reading and leaning into imagination and creativity have felt better, recently, than being ever-present on Signal or hyper-vigilant on patrols. Part of me is worried the “feeling better” is about feeling safer and more comfortable. That may be partially true. But I’ve also pushed myself outside of my creative comfort zone in the past month, which I didn’t have capacity for last year, so I don’t think that’s entirely what’s going on.

I’m trying very hard not to think about prioritizing my own creative practice and respecting my own capacity as selfish, but it still feels that way sometimes.

Our society is, of course, not designed for neuro-atypical people, and that often includes activist and movement spaces. The tools, the expectations, the norms, the value put on certain kinds of work (highly visible, socially-connected and/or prominent, leadership roles, etc.). Many neurodivergent people have strong, visceral reactions to injustice and are drawn to this work. But it also takes a toll on those of us who struggle with the demands of work that doesn’t always look that different than the capitalist work that we’re trying to escape, which also tells us we urgently need to give everything, all the time, if we want to survive. Pushing ourselves to the point of harm for a corporation doesn’t feel that different than pushing ourselves to the point of harm for a social movement. Having to respond to your boss and coworkers on Slack all day isn’t all that different than being yoked to Signal all day.

I thank god, at least, that in my community we now have a whole group of folks who’ve stepped up in a variety of ways, and I don’t have to worry if I’ve deliberately left my phone in another room for three hours because if there’s an ICE sighting, there are plenty of other folks who can help handle the response. It doesn’t change my own feeling that I’m shirking my responsibilities and not being a good team-player. But, at least I know that guilt is my own to unpack; nobody else is sitting around thinking about what a jerk I am because I’ve been walking a different path in recent months.

I suppose, in the end, some of us are locked into our particular passions and skill sets, and some of us walk multiple, sometimes meandering paths. I’ve never been very good at being locked in. I’ve always been more of a jack-of-all-trades (and, consequently, master of none). As I try to assuage my guilt for not doing enough or not sticking to a particular thing, I keep reminding myself that walking these paths is not a race or competition. Because, as I wrote last week, there is no ending. It’s all just the ongoing work of trying to live a decent life and be a decent person.

So yes! (Cue pep talk to myself) There’s room for those of us who bounce between passions and interests, who need to disconnect, sometimes, in order to fill up. As a neurodivergent person, I’m still learning my capacities and limitations, and how my energy ebbs and flows and meanders. I’d be willing to bet that’s a pretty universal feeling, actually, especially for activists, organizers, and anyone else working to build a better world.

Sometimes I’m at the front lines with a gas mask on. Sometimes I’m at my desk putting words on a page. Sometimes I’m checking Signal all day long. Sometimes I’m ready to throw my phone out the window so I can reclaim my attention and find some time to think.

As long as I’m doing something, I’m on the right path.

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