As per usual allow me to set the scene. I drive a salvaged vehicle, a FrankenMini if you wish. It is a manual and a finnicky one for that matter. One fateful day I was stuck behind a swanky big automatic on a very long hilly stretch. The car in front of me would move every few seconds by 5 inches and I resented it so much! “Don’t you know it’s a hill start for me?!” I muttered in despair. For them moving a little bit uphill was as easy as pressing on the “go” pedal while for me it meant a whole lot of “admin” for not a whole lot of gain. It felt dispiriting to risk rolling backwards a dozen
times over while most people didn’t have so much as to think about it.
Sometimes I compare my brain to my manual Mini. There is a certain manual quality to it. This is especially prominent in a traditional corporate setting where employees are expected to enthusiastically (or at least with minimal complaining) to undertake new tasks and switching between existing tasks. A more typical neurotype much like the automatic car I mentioned earlier, in that it is owned by a majority and is purportedly a straightforward way to get places. Whereas some neurodivergent folk report needing to shift gears. This may look like oppositional defiance to an onlooker but to the person experiencing it, it is a frustrating hill start. I remember feeling disheartened when I’d be carrying out a task in reverie to only have my shift leader interrupt me with a “I have a job for you”. I’d invariably reply that I already had a job thankyouveymuch, the one I was doing. That did not earn me any endearment.
And then there is a matter of fuel a.k.a. motivation. Have you ever misfueled your diesel with petrol? Vice versa? Neurodivergent brains get topped up with the wrong fuel all the time. Our motivation comes mostly from the interest we take in the subject. We have an interest-based nervous system. When that interest isn’t there… well, it’s like flogging a deceased donkey to win the grand national. And we get grief while carrying that proverbial donkey over the line too. I remember crying over a menial task at work because doing it felt like wading through marmite. My boss just plainly told me that it was my job and that was that. The brains of typical people don’t become desperate when confronted by a boring task. They can “just get on with it”. I certainly couldn’t. Still can’t. In that respect my brain car only runs if it’s fuelled with the right stuff and the route is interesting to the car.
If you are still reading you may begin to suspect that I think about driving a fair bit. And yes, I do. Primarily because I have to be thinking about driving while doing it. I don’t have a feel for the car. I don’t know how to read other people’s motivation. I don’t intuitively change gears. I have to drive through my head. I do many things through my head. Walking is one of them. Running is one of them. I am an inhabitant in my body, not the embodiment of me. I live in my head, and honestly, I love it there. When I am given a chance to pursue my interests without interference I fly! My brain car is nippy. And it continues to be nippy even when it’s stuck in traffic of other cars. Your brain is agile when it hits the open road. Don’t appraise its performance on doing hill starts in a queue of other stuck cars.