Discovering oneself can be a life-long journey, punctuated by profound moments of realization. For Madison Sasser, author and unguarded voice of the blogging world, that moment came at 23 with an autism diagnosis. Her story is one of navigating the murky waters of self-identity and professional life, a tale she recounts with raw honesty in our latest episode. Madison's narrative is a beacon for anyone who's felt adrift in a sea of societal expectations, providing an intimate look into the complexities of late autism diagnosis and the pursuit of personal truth amidst a career in writing.
If you've ever felt like an outsider in your own life's story, Madison's insights into the stigma surrounding autism will resonate deeply. She dissects her journey through the often unforgiving terrain of the writing industry, where she's juggled the roles of blogger, podcaster, and aspiring author. This episode peels back the layers of Madison's experiences: from the siren call of law school for its false promise of stability, to the strategy of diversifying income streams to sustain her writing passion. It's a candid exploration of the hurdles she's faced, underscored by a clarion call for acceptance and understanding within the autistic community and beyond.
Wrapping up our heart-to-heart with Madison Sasser, the notions of self-perception and career aspirations come to the forefront. We venture into the balancing act of maintaining a public persona while guarding one's personal space, particularly as a writer touching on sensitive topics. Madison candidly shares her blogging beginnings, born from workplace frustrations, and the subsequent sense of camaraderie and validation she found online. It's a conversation about overcoming obstacles, taking life step by step, and persisting in the face of adversity. By episode's end, Madison's encouragement for anyone on a similar journey is clear: embrace your path, seek support, and foster a culture of self-responsibility and mutual respect.
https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Discovering oneself can be a life-long journey, punctuated by profound moments of realization. For Madison Sasser, author and unguarded voice of the blogging world, that moment came at 23 with an autism diagnosis. Her story is one of navigating the murky waters of self-identity and professional life, a tale she recounts with raw honesty in our latest episode. Madison's narrative is a beacon for anyone who's felt adrift in a sea of societal expectations, providing an intimate look into the complexities of late autism diagnosis and the pursuit of personal truth amidst a career in writing.
If you've ever felt like an outsider in your own life's story, Madison's insights into the stigma surrounding autism will resonate deeply. She dissects her journey through the often unforgiving terrain of the writing industry, where she's juggled the roles of blogger, podcaster, and aspiring author. This episode peels back the layers of Madison's experiences: from the siren call of law school for its false promise of stability, to the strategy of diversifying income streams to sustain her writing passion. It's a candid exploration of the hurdles she's faced, underscored by a clarion call for acceptance and understanding within the autistic community and beyond.
Wrapping up our heart-to-heart with Madison Sasser, the notions of self-perception and career aspirations come to the forefront. We venture into the balancing act of maintaining a public persona while guarding one's personal space, particularly as a writer touching on sensitive topics. Madison candidly shares her blogging beginnings, born from workplace frustrations, and the subsequent sense of camaraderie and validation she found online. It's a conversation about overcoming obstacles, taking life step by step, and persisting in the face of adversity. By episode's end, Madison's encouragement for anyone on a similar journey is clear: embrace your path, seek support, and foster a culture of self-responsibility and mutual respect.
https://tonymantor.com https://Facebook.com/tonymantor https://instagram.com/tonymantor https://twitter.com/tonymantor https://youtube.com/tonymantormusic intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild Why Not Me the World music published by Mantor Music (BMI)
Speaker 1:
Welcome to why Not Me the World podcast, hosted by Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, usa, nashville, tennessee. Join us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will make you laugh, some will make you cry. Feel like people who will inspire and show that you are not alone in this world. Hopefully, you gain more awareness, acceptance and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to why Not Me the World. Today's guest is Madison Sasser. She's an author, a blogger, and today she's here to share her story of being recently diagnosed autistic. Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:
Oh, it's my pleasure. I understand you was recently diagnosed autistic what?
Speaker 2:
age was that. So I was diagnosed probably about 23.
Speaker 1:
Okay, so age 23,. You get diagnosed autistic. What were some of the events that led you to go to get a diagnosis?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I was always planning on going to law school. That was always my goal, and so and school. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was about 10 or about 12. All right.
Speaker 2:
So it was something that I always knew I had, and when I was diagnosed, the professor on the diagnosis me told me I had to disclose it, not to ask for it the extra time that I was entitled to one exam, and so I always had the feeling of like knowing that I was smart and I, like my friends, were all the top 10 people in the class and yet I was performing so much lower than them, despite knowing that I was just the smartest of them. Right.
Speaker 2:
So it was kind of just like feeling that I had like I was an imposter. And then when I got into college, like all my friends were getting into like their top choices, I got waitlisted and eventually got an awful waitlist. So and I remember I was putting in my therapist's office in college and I was so confused that like I don't even need to be here. And she's like okay, you got into a school with a 40% acceptance rate and at the time I like I learned to overcompensate. So I worked a lot in restaurants and I did internships with different law firms to try to make up for the test scores that I knew I could make Right.
Speaker 2:
So I was always trying to find ways to boost my resume and make myself more personable, make better connection, so that they wouldn't look at my test scores.
Speaker 1:
Okay.
Speaker 2:
And eventually I started working in law firms and after I graduated during the pandemic, I got a job offer at this really big law firm or it wasn't a big law firm, but it was a very prestigious law firm. Okay. And after eight months I was eventually fired for an experience and I ran into some different things at the law firm that I felt like I was underperforming, but I also felt like I was seeing this in their spirit and I understand why. Right.
Speaker 2:
So I started going to therapy and I started like researching life learning disorders and then I found like non verbal learning disorder, which became like a form of autism, and then I saw about how many women were misdiagnosed and the more that, like I started researching these women and I started reading their accounts of what their lives were like I'm like, oh, this is me, okay, so that's when I decided to get diagnosed.
Speaker 1:
So once you got diagnosed and you realized that you are autistic, did you go through any emotions? What went through your mind at that point? Was there a sense of relief, because now you know what's going on, or was there a sense of fear, because what's going to happen?
Speaker 2:
For me it was a big sense of relief, but there was also a lot of grief. Okay, it was this grief of like I wish this would have been recognized sooner. Right. And it was also this like grief and this like conflicting emotion of like I went through a government agency and it took about a year for me to get diagnosed. Okay.
Speaker 2:
But because I couldn't find anyone who diagnosed with DEL, I couldn't find anyone that had a feasibility because, COVID, everyone was kind of like over resourced or they just they didn't have the capacity. Right.
Speaker 2:
And it's when you know something is wrong. And when you know something is wrong, everyone tells you to ask for help. It's your responsibility to advocate for yourself, right? So I was doing that, exactly like I was supposed to do, and then I was kind of met with resistance. I was met with a lack of resources, and I don't think it should take anyone a year to get diagnosed. Right.
Speaker 2:
Like I don't think that that's because that's the year that you are waiting, that you're kind of taking short term jobs to see what happens, like there's so many things that you miss because you're waiting for a year, absolutely.
Speaker 2:
It was just like there was also like when I was at the law firm and I was, since I do have ADHD and I had never really been on ADHD meds I went to get ADHD meds and then there was a shortage where I would have to go to three different pharmacies and then I couldn't tell you if they had it. Wow. Because it was kind of like a safety concern. So you're like asking for help and you're using the resources that you're supposed to use and then they're insufficient, and I found that really frustrating.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's a common thread that I hear is that it's difficult to get diagnosed. But it's more difficult once you graduate and become an adult to get diagnosed. So in that period of time that while you was waiting to get diagnosed, you had all these things going through your mind. How did you cope?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I kind of coped through writing and through like sharing my experiences, and so I blogged on medium and so I would use my medium blog and then I would share it to my Twitter account and it was kind of like it wasn't just about autism, it was about kind of like my entire life. I was reevaluating, sure, because, like when I was going to law school I had this like I was a very type A person, I was very on it. I was very like motivated, like I was someone who I thought Got things done, who is very ambitious, and when I kind of lost that, I had to find a way to get back that sense of my fault sure and Logging was a big way that I was able to do that because, like it was a very external way of looking and saying, look people, read my writing.
Speaker 2:
Or like someone commented on it, or like, look at my following. Like I wouldn't have this if I was a bad writer, I wouldn't have this if I was a person with no motivation right so I kind of had to try to find ways to redefine discipline and Determination.
Speaker 1:
I had to kind of find a way to prove that I could still be that sure one comments read that I heard from a lot of People that are autistic, whether be young kids or adults, is that they tend to get very focused on what they want to do. Did you find yourself focusing and really being driven that way? Did that create any issues for you to focus on what you wanted to do?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so and that's kind of like what? Like writing has always been like a special interest for me.
Speaker 2:
It's always been something that I've been drawn to, okay, and a lot of like autistic people's rise by making their special interest a career right and so and obviously, like when you're a writer, you kind of feel a little delusional because you're like it's a really hard to get paid and even if you're a good writer and you're like, fine, getting rejected after rejected after rejection, a logical person would say, maybe don't make this like career right. And that's kind of why I decided that I would go to law school, because I knew a lot of good writers were also very good lawyers and I knew like lawyers were like a safe income Career that people would respect right sure then why I was examining it.
Speaker 2:
I was realizing that I'd go a hundred fifty thousand dollars in debt and then I'd have to apply to take a bar exam, and there were so many different barriers to making money even after you have All the debt yes, right and the starting salary for a lot of lawyers like fifty thousand dollars right. So I'm like looking all of that and I'm like that logically doesn't make sense sure.
Speaker 2:
So I started looking into writing and I'm like, well, if I have a blog that makes like, say, fifty dollars mark, and then I have a podcast and say eventually launch a podcast, but like make fifty dollars a month, and if you diversify your income between book sales and maybe a teaching position and All of these different revenues, you eventually build something profitable. That it's a state of all. Because of one force of your income sales, you focus on your other right, right, that's good plan.
Speaker 2:
So I know, I guess, like focusing on writing and like trying to make it work in a way that was logical for me, oh, if that makes sense, but yeah yeah, it does.
Speaker 1:
So it's been a year since you've been diagnosed. Yeah, do you see that is changed in that year? What's the difference between last year and now?
Speaker 2:
I think people are a little bit more understanding, but I also think that I'm better at articulating and explaining it, because once you have, like a label and you're like, oh, this is why I do this, right, you can kind of explain that to other people. And I actually wrote a blog about, like, how I feel about my Diagnosis a year later okay.
Speaker 2:
Reason, in a way, I feel about it is that I went to fit so many therapists trying to tell. Ask them to tell me it was wrong with me. Most people aren't self-aware enough to do that and they go through life making other people miserable because they can't address their own issue right so like Having a self-awareness. To do that, for one, says a lot about me.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely and the fact that so many people go through life and don't do that. It's actually very concerning and I framed it in a way that's like how I feel about a year later if we all have things that we struggle with right and I have more barriers because of the way autism is perceived right so. It's like how do I eliminate those barriers? And also like find a way to communicate and normalize autism as something that people are familiar with what was your mindset?
Speaker 1:
Did you see yourself getting depressed at all? Because I know, especially in females, it's well known that later Diagnosis when it comes to females, they can go through so many challenges and get depressed. Did you go through any of those situations at all?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I struggled with depression and I still do and it was actually like in my like psychiatrist knows they noticed that like my depression was actually Causing more issues than my autism life.
Speaker 2:
Okay and so and a part of that is, it's not how I feel about myself, it's about how other people feel about me and my autism and you're constantly deering with that Sure, whereas, like my family will say, like, can she stop saying autism? And it's like, okay, but that's the correct diagnosis, like people haven't really used the term asperger's in ten years.
Speaker 2:
Right and most people don't know that. And then you, they just hear autism and they're like, oh Well, you're saying you can't do anything and you can't and you're high-fives, right, and it should be a compliment. But because they don't know about autism and they don't know what they, they don't realize that they're saying all their own things.
Speaker 2:
And it's so frustrating because I do still see myself as achieving, I do see myself as motivated, as capable, but people hear autism and they assume that I have this view of myself, that I don't right and so, like you're trying to build ways To support yourself and to support the way that you work and you know, maybe like a 40 hour work week, maybe that's not the best for me, or like maybe working from home is easier and you're trying to make all of these changes that make your life better. And people see these changes and they're like oh well, maybe you're too crazy or maybe you're just this, and I find, like writing through the stigma of what people think autism means is more exhausting, that actually happens.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I was talking with a lady just yesterday that has an autistic son. That was the one thing that she brought up is that people just don't get it, and my slogan for my podcast is Autism, awareness, acceptance and Understanding. And the reason why I put in understanding is because I felt that was one word that they've left out because people can be aware of it. So how do you deal with that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's something Usually. I write about it and I try and like it's been very helpful because I have a lot of people in my life that aren't autistic, so they kind of say what they observe about my autism from their lens. So like I'm trying to like meet people where they are and what they understand about autism, because when I was diagnosed I really didn't know anything about autism and I had a perception of it that was wrong. So it's kind of about finding ways to communicate that in a way that other people understand. Yes.
Speaker 2:
And in the autistic community there's a lot of pushback about using like labels like high functioning or, you know, like autistic and different things like that. And like as someone who people don't see as autistic unless I told them I am autistic, I want to make room for the people who experience more symptoms or who people look at and immediately, oh, they're autistic. Like I work in a restaurant and a lot of people find restaurants over stimulating, even if they are autistic. So it's a place with like a lot of triggers and we have this one customer that comes in. He orders the same thing every time and he's very visibly autistic. Like people kind of know that he has it and it's not something that he can hide. Right.
Speaker 2:
And the people, like the other service, they make fun of him. They're like, oh, the autistic guy is back again and it's like okay, and I like told them. I'm like, can we like say something about him? It's not about his autism, like can we talk about his shirt color or can we identify something about him? That's not that he's autistic? Right.
Speaker 2:
And I know that those people are going to have a very different experience of autism than I am, and so it's weird, because I want to make room for their experiences and their perception, but I also don't want to say that stigmatize them further, right? And they're like and that's what a lot of people feel about functioning labels Is it stigmatize this further, right? My experience of autism is going to be different than his experience of autism and I want to make room for that.
Speaker 1:
Exactly when you look at yourself and you kind of self diagnose or self evaluate and what you perceive of yourself. How have you found that that's different as your friends perception of you. Does any of that meet together where the perception of reality is the same, or do they have different outlooks than you do when it comes to yourself? How does all that line up?
Speaker 2:
Well, I think a lot of it lines up with society and what we expect people to be as a functioning member of society and I put that in there, okay and a lot of it comes back to your idea of work or what it needs to be an adult Like is having a job where you work 40 hours, you commute an hour, you do whatever your boss says and you don't complain, and then you go home and then you go to the gym Like is that your idea of being an adult? Right? And like part of being a writer is knowing that your career is going to look very non-traditional. Right.
Speaker 2:
You know I like serving in a restaurant because I can come home and not think about it. I work for maybe four or five hours. I make the same amount of money as somebody who has been working here eight hours. What I made. And I come home and I write until 3 am and that's my life. Okay. And for me that works. Okay. But it's. But my other people see somebody going to bed at 3 am Writing all night. I like is that healthy Like right.
Speaker 2:
You should have a schedule that functions like everyone else. But it's also some things that when you're someone who works night and you work weekend and it's kind of not great to say that, oh, because you work these jobs that other people don't want to work your own for being a member of society. Right.
Speaker 2:
Because we all do things at this time. So those are some of the biggest like criticisms that I face of like the way that I function or the way that my schedule looks like, and they not work for someone else, but it works for me, and one of my biggest priorities right now is focusing on my writing and trying to build a writing brand that eventually leads to a book deal or a blog that brings inconsistent money. Okay.
Speaker 2:
One of the problems of being a writer is you have to have resources to create things from the ground up. You have to be able to pay your rent and write without worrying about your rent being paid. If you're producing a podcast, you have to be able to edit sound and you have to be able to book guests and like. There are a lot of things that would take time, money and resources that you don't have. Right.
Speaker 2:
So I've kind of had to be very strategic about where can I get my time and my resources to Go, like kind of what can I do with the lease? Sure, and I did eventually apply to grad school. I haven't found out if I've been accepted yet.
Speaker 2:
Okay but if I were to be accepted then it would pay for my housing and it would pay for my master's, so like it would be a consistent income that would allow me to focus on writing and also build a career as a teacher is like a second form of income.
Speaker 2:
Okay so I know you have to get really creative and you have to Be able to say you know, I don't care how this looks, I care how this feels and I care about my goals and how it builds my future, not what somebody else wants and see it's success.
Speaker 1:
So, with what you're doing now, where do you see yourself five years from now? What's your short-term goals? What's your long-term goals?
Speaker 2:
So my short-term like goal is I want to write an awful and get a traditional published, okay, or maybe build enough following that I can help publish and be successful and have a consistent readership, okay. So right now I'm working on a manuscript. That can take time, especially as you're a new writer trying to figure out, and I Want to have a new writer. But I'm a young writer and it takes a lot of time to work through you when you're writing. So I want to finish a manuscript and I want to find an agent and those are kind of like two big short-term goals. Okay, and like, my long-term goal is I want to be a writer that has multiple books. I eventually want to watch a podcast. Like I would love to adapt Some of my novels and screenplays and like very fascinated with the production of media and how books can go to Podcasts and go to audio, books can go to screenplays and how each different format right is a different way of telling a story, but it's still the story that drives each format in this blog.
Speaker 1:
So is that telling your story, or do you put other things in it? That encompasses the world, so to speak, or you're part of the world.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so it is kind of my part of the world. I started it when I was working at the law firm and I was very Frustrated about how young people were being treated in the workforce and I was reading all of these blogs about how Gen Z was ruining the workforce and I thought that was really funny, because everyone I know has three jobs and they still can't pay the rent. No, I kind of felt like people weren't Representing our concerns and they weren't giving us opportunities to succeed. So I started the blog for that reason and it kind of Evolved into, like my autism diagnosis and my examining of what success success would mean, how work norms kind of play into that.
Speaker 2:
I'm kind of in a stage right now where I'm like reexamining my brand and trying to decide how I want to afford, because when you choose to write under your own name and not a pen name, it can impact your career prospects, it can impact your family and your friends and I like they're all in this. I would have known what I know now. I might have choose, but I probably would have, because I like standing by my word. So I'm trying to decide how I want to move forward as far as like the articles that I want to produce, and as much as I like to talk about autism and I like to normalize it, there are a lot of other things that make up my identity that aren't my office. So, like I don't want to be known as the autistic writer, sure.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely makes sense.
Speaker 2:
So I'm trying to decide how do I want to address and when you're like a writer and you're off the ring about your romantic life or you're writing about your job life and All of those things are going to impact your real life, I'm trying to find how, and so I recently had a conversation with a friend where I wrote this like feminist vlog about like how hard dating is, and I realized that it's a writer, that it's a lot of it, like writers I admire with pin names would have published, but because I'm not using a pin name, I don't feel comfortable putting that much out of myself in the world and letting people judge those ideas.
Speaker 2:
Right so I decided to maybe repurpose it for a novel where I have a character that's a blogger and it's the blog that she would have written. So it kind of gives me some distance. So I'm trying to decide, you know, like, what are articles that like, I'm okay, like standing by and saying this is what I believe, and also articles but I'm okay with attributing to characters that are a little more controversial.
Speaker 1:
Sure, have you found a good balance within the autistic world, the real world and your blog and writing world, to where you can Get out there, put some of your time to each one that needs to be given the time and then, at the end of the day, you sit back and have that inner peace to where, yeah, this, this is what I want to do.
Speaker 2:
I I wouldn't say I've found it, but I've done step towards a cheat hit. Okay, so I recently like moved back to my rural hometown so I could kind of save a little bit of money and like put more money into my writing and into my time into my writing, so I'm not so worried about my finances right.
Speaker 2:
And so I'm on a path to achieving that. We're in a couple of two, three months I'll be like comfortable financially where I don't feel guilty for spending that time Okay. And I'm also like starting to read things like what kind of blog start when I post it, what kind of wants to and not right. And so I'm writing some blogs about, like, working in the restaurant industry and what I've learned about my mental health through the restaurant industry and different things. That, and that's kind of why my writing became so popular, is because so many people feel Like they're overburden and like there's so many demands that they can't meet through their jobs, through their finances. And so we're all kind of asking the same question of like why is it like this? Why is it this hard? So finding blogs that write that professional tone in that professional examination but also aren't just aren't quite as personal of putting my Myself out there, because sometimes, like when you're having a really bad mental health day and you write about it, everyone's like are you okay? Very good right.
Speaker 2:
And I want to kind of eliminate some of that where I don't look unstable.
Speaker 1:
How do you feel? I mean, you say unstable. Do you feel unstable much, or is this just something like anybody else? You just had a bad day?
Speaker 2:
I would say it's just like someone else where you have a bad day but because of like the way that your emotions go, like when you have like childhood trauma or when you have like a brief that like You're just never going to get over it, sometimes things trigger it in ways where you're like you always go back to that point and Like it's kind of having to recognize that that place isn't real and those feelings like while they're real feelings, they're not an accurate perception of reality. But I've had to kind of come and realize that feelings kind of come in waves and you kind of have to like to sit there and kind of let them Do their own thing and just kind of find ways to cope, where you're okay was just sitting in them and fully pass sure that makes sense.
Speaker 1:
Now let's expand on your blog a little bit. What led you to start it?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so when I started blogging, I was just fired from my job at the law firm and and I kind of started just tweeting out like what was going on in my life because I didn't feel like I had anyone I could talk to and that's like in the tweets that were just really wrong, vulnerable, like I just had this like awful fight with my roommate where the tweets that Really started to get attraction and to get attention or to get attention, which all Commitly led to building a following of now almost 16 dollar followers that I built over two years. And so it was just this experience of like sharing my life with people and getting that support that was really helpful to me but also very validating, because it reminded me that I was still Dispersion of myself, that I thought I was okay.
Speaker 1:
Do you have a community of autistic people that have reached out to you Because you're writing things that they can relate to, and is that created some friendships or good communication?
Speaker 2:
It has, for some reason, medium the sites that I blog and that's a lot of Autistic vloggers. So I find we read each other's writing and we, like kind of comment, support each other that way and obviously my Twitter has kind of reached out to a lot of autistic people who have reached out to me and they're some people that aren't comfortable letting people know that they're autistic right and they let me know that.
Speaker 2:
You know, like the fact that I am comfortable doing that Gives them the courage to kind of take on their everyday life, which is always really good to hear well, the thing is you're writing about your life.
Speaker 1:
You're writing about things that might happen to you. Your thought process, all that together Creates you. By putting that out there, you're putting it out there so other people can relate to it, and just by that you might be helping others. Without knowing you're helping others, and then, if you get response back, it helps you evolve to a higher level as well. So you're helping others, but you're helping yourself, because every day that you get up and write something or do something and you look at things a certain way and then somebody might say something you change your mind on it. You're continually evolving to something that's hopefully better.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I've had that situation a lot of times where there's people who have responded in a way that was really hurtful or that just didn't understand, and it is very isolating and that's kind of like the biggest thing that I struggle with is I'm still the same person I was before I was diagnosed, but now that I am diagnosed, people see that and at one point, like someone had said, you know, like sometimes I wish you would write less about your autism, because I don't want them to see your autism. I want them to see you but, like, I am still me and it's something that you just like want to see that people yeah, did you.
Speaker 1:
Once you got your your writing out there and your blogs and your tweets and everything, did you start getting people that that kind of followed you, that that was kind of going the same path as you were and they were feeling your same struggles.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I did, and that's kind of why I realized I was sitting on so many different niches, cause obviously I was working in a restaurant at the time and it was during COVID where we were really examining employment and why we work and what our work should expect from us and what we should expect from work, so and everyone was feeling burnt out and exhausted and I realized that I hit so many different niches and that's not even meaningful, like it was almost like unintentional, but I kind of wished it was intentional.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah, that's good and I think I think you're doing good. You know what I mean Considering, considering what you have to take and evolve to what you want to evolve to, and considering what you have to put up with to get where you want to be, and then the misinformation that people have about what autism is. You know it's a challenge every day for you, but you seem to be handling it very well.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, exactly, I had a conversation with my therapist about it and she kind of put it in a sense of you've just got to focus on eliminating obstacles. So just take one obstacle and maybe, if it's finance, focus when we got like getting your finances better. Right. And then, if it's content, maybe it's to down play not better content and write better content. Right. But kind of like just taking it one day at a time, one step at a time and just focusing on okay, what can I do today?
Speaker 1:
Right, right. So is that what you do? It's kind of like baby steps. I'm like I'm going to do a list of things. Okay, I want to work on this today, or I want to work on this tomorrow, or you have a list and then you might have it planned out that I'm going to do this today, but then all of a sudden, you wake up, you're feeling different and you decide I think I'm going to do number five today instead of number two. Does that happen a lot?
Speaker 2:
Yes, sometimes I write things down, sometimes it's more of a mental list and like the thing about working in the service industry is like sometimes you work live days straight, sometimes you have like four days off in a row. Then you're working like how do I like admin a block this whole week off where I'm just picking up shit and then I'm going to crash the next week and pay the bill off that I really needed to pay. Right.
Speaker 2:
Some weeks where it's like okay, I know that I want to publish an article this week, so like what can I repurpose? And then you write and you're like this really isn't happening and you kind of have to give yourself grace, because sometimes things come up or like things don't always go the way you want them to. So like you kind of have to take advantage of what you have when you have it. Right.
Speaker 2:
And like when you're writing and you get into a flow state and you can write like maybe three articles and one go, you kind of have to write three articles and one go and do it.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. I get that. So do you have a feeling of fulfillment, or is it you still have some hole there that you need to kind of fill?
Speaker 2:
I would say that I have a sense of fulfillment, but I often do select.
Speaker 2:
It's a hole, because I want to really be taken seriously as a professional and as a writer and as a person.
Speaker 2:
I wrote this blog because I the man who fired me ended up as a restaurant guest at a table I was serving about a month ago. And I'm like he was looking at me and he's like, oh, she's just some angry kids with a blog, like nobody cares what she thinks. And I'm talking to my therapist about it and I'm like I'm looking for agents, I'm looking for this, but like he's kind of he'd be right if you were to say that about me Like I'm just an angry kid with a blog. And my therapist is like okay, don't own it. You're an angry kid with a blog and you have 15,000 followers and you're just getting started. So and that's kind of what I have to remind myself is that writing and publishing is a long game and careers are a long struggle. So where I am today is building on where I'm going to be 10 years from now, and you just have to build the little steps and take fulfillment and stop.
Speaker 1:
That's so correct. There are so many musicians that I've worked with that have been overnight successes in about 20 years, so you're spot on there. So if someone wants to follow you and check out your blogs and your Twitter, how do they find you?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, cause my blog is on mediumcom. It's under my name, madison Sosser. I'm most active on Twitter. My Twitter handle is like M-A-D-I-I-I-3-I-O-3. It was something I made in high school that now I'm running with because I have too many followers to fix it. I've also wanted to read as Madison Sosser and on Instagram is Madison Sosser.
Speaker 1:
All right, good Now you've covered a lot of things. Is there anything that you'd like to leave the people that are listening to your story with something that you just want to tell them? If you're standing in front of a hundred people right now, what would you want to put across to them?
Speaker 2:
I think the biggest thing about autism is obviously understanding, and it's also a lack of resources. And I think people are sitting there and you're seeing autistic people and you're seeing autistic people struggle and you're like, well, I'm struggling with this too, and I think we're all struggling and we all deserve help and we all deserve to address our problems so that we're not continually projecting them onto other people. So I think it's mostly just a self-responsibility of knowing that you deserve help and knowing that you can ask for help and being able to access that help. I think those are the most important things that obviously we need to do, but we also need to fix so that it's easier to do.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's great, that's well put, well put Well. Again, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, and my pleasure. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know anyone that would like to tell us their story, send them to TonyMantorcom Contact then they can give us their information so one day they may be a guest on our show. One more thing we ask tell everyone everywhere about why Not Me the world, the conversations we're having and the inspiration our guests give to everyone everywhere that you are not alone in this world.