Are we spending our days hiding in a cactus like Tim the penguin? maybe….
‘If I’m too much, go find less.’
To jump on the TikTok trend (yeah, I’m down with the kids) based on Elyse Mysers’ video, I, too, invite people in my life to ‘go find less.’ But more than that, actually, I’m saying, if I’m too much, I’ll go find more because it’s not just about me removing myself from people and places where I’m too much, or them removing themselves from me. It’s also about finding spaces where my ‘too much’ can find more and can grow.
Myers didn’t invent this saying or idea, obviously, but it’s a good starting point for a lot of what I’ve been thinking about lately in terms of Autism and ADHD. I’m also currently consciously naming them because as much as personally, I prefer ‘neurodiversity’ in the same way I prefer ‘queer’ as an umbrella term for all that I am, I’ve noticed people are as afraid of saying ‘autism’ as they are saying ‘gay’. So we’re gonna name the damn thing. Because if my Autism is too much, go find less.
‘If I’m too much, find less. I’ll find more.’
If I’m too much, you can find less, and I’ll find more. If I’m too much for you, I’m just too much for you, I’ll find more. If I’m too much for this space, this place, this job I’ll go and find more and you can settle for less.
But let me say a few things before I go…
To the woman, who said my single-ness, my queerness was ‘too much’ for your married life. Who let me give up my new year’s to babysit your kids, but couldn’t include my ‘too much’ self in your circle of married friends? I say, you were not enough for me.
To my academic friends, who see my job-hopping outside of their bubble as ‘too much’ ‘too chaotic,’ I say you and your narrow worldview of the ivory tower is not enough.
To the friend I stood by through lockdowns and tough times, but who can never find me a moment now. I get it, I’m too much for the real world, to weird to be taken into real life.
To the ‘normal-job-since-uni’ friends or the ‘one-job-for-life’ who see my multi-faceted career as ‘too much’ who call me fickle, indecisive, who ask ‘what do you really want to do?’ while saying what I do is ‘too much’ I say, I’m glad for you, but one option for me is not enough.
To the choir, who broke my spirit and broke my heart, when my not conform to what the rest of you did, for whom my queerness was acceptable only if it involved a white wedding you could sing at. I was never too much, any more than it’s too much to hit a top C…you were just not enough when you couldn’t hit that note.
To those who say asexuality is ‘too much’ and a label too far, I cannot possibly be that. I say your heteronormative bullshit approach to viewing the world is not enough.
It’s not my purpose to make me easier for you
While we all must adapt to the world, to circusmtances, I should not have to break myself while others only bend.
It should not take someone who let me be me from the moment we met to realise how much I’ve been in hiding.
I should not be so unused to being myself in professional settings that a chance to talk about passions, myself, my work my life without censoring felt like a revelation.
It shouldn’t have to reserve my passions for when I occasionally get to teach a class. That shouldnt be the only time I remember who I am. What I am good at.
When someone let me talk with passion, who let me share my loves and hates and questions tumbling all out at once. I felt seen and safe in a professional setting in ways I realise I hadn’t in so long. Just like the old colleagues who may not have understood me, but let me be me. The simple act of asking questions, engaging, not recoiling when I had things to say. The people who take questions as a curiosity, not as attacks. Who considers different approaches as collaboration, not an offensive.
I should not have to spend my working days questioning when next I’ll be taken as ‘too much’...to questioning the status quo, too against the corporate grain, to (constructively) critical, too…rude. I should not have to spend days asking fellow ‘too much’ friends, ‘what did I do wrong?’ or ‘can I say this?’ ‘Will they take offense’. I shouldn’t have to make sending an email a collaborative process that takes a friend, an evening’s work, and a phone call just to avoid being ‘too much’ once again. Too much thinking, too much ‘not like us’, too many questions, boundaries, and other interests.
When I’m allowed in front of a room of students, to talk about the knowlege that I’ve emassed. To share the skills, or the information or just the outright passion that I have for something, it should feel like coming home, not awakening from the dead. It should be a thing I’m allowed to do, because I’m good at it, not because it’s my only chance to be me in a work envinroment.
I shouldn’t have to make myself smaller, my life less diverse, just to fit in. I shouldn’t have to diminish or hide that my life is not one thing. I cannot be boiled down to one job, one label, one thing. It shouldn’t be too much to be many things. To want more, to keep pushing for more. I shouldn’t have to hide my ambitions beyond the thing in front of me or risk being too much. Too full of herself, too self-important, too arrogant.
When I’m allowed to put words on a page, or speak to a classthis should be part of what I do, who I am, what I can offer. Not just another indulgence, a hobby to hide away. A part of me hidden in those spaces only. It should be me. More not less.
‘You didn’t used to be too much.’
Maybe I just used to hide it better. Not better for me, better for you. Maybe I spent all those years hiding who I was, trying to get ahead, fit in, be normal. Maybe normal wasn’t enough, maybe normal is my less. Even if, for you my normal is too much.
Maybe I was always afraid. If I was too much everyone would leave. Guess what? They left anyway, and I wasted time trying to be less for them. So why not be too much and happy with myself with who I am, and risk it, than try and fool us all?
I’m done watering myself down
I will no longer be less because it makes others comfortable.
I refuse to be less passionate, less enthusiastic and occasionally less loud (I’m not even that loud) just to accommodate what others think I should be.
I will not scale back on my interests, my passions or work for other people. I will not make myself less ambitious for my own work just to serve others view of what I should be. I won’t stop pursuing my creative passions or the things I’m good at because others have been afraid to do that themselves and think I should limit myself too.
I refuse to pick a lane, to concentrate on one thing, one career, one job, one purpose because in trying to do more than one thing others think I’m too much. Because maybe they have not been enough for themselves.
I will not stop doing what I love even if what I love is foolish to you. You think it’s too gay, to silly, not serious enough, a waste of time, a waste of a life…fine. It’s not your life; it’s not too much of mine to waste. To give.
I refuse to stop loving what I do just because for others, that passion is too much.
I’m done pretending
I am going to continue to be fiercely passionate about the things I love. Because these things make me whole, these things bring me the people who don’t think I’m enough.
I don’t care if it’s a silly toy penguin, a hockey team, or a musical. The people who share those loves don’t think I’m too much.
I am going to keep talking about hockey even if you think it’s too much, too silly, too late to have a new passion too weird for the arts kid to like violence on knife shoes.
I don’t care if you think the Sad Penguin is silly, too much for a grown adult. He brings joy. He’s real to me and to others and who cares after all it’s a penguin toy who is it hurting but your sense of what’s ‘too much.’
I am going to be that musical dork who talks passionately about the song, the actor, the staging the singular key change that brings joy, because life is too short not to grab onto joy.
I’ll find more
I’ll find the job that lets me be me but recongises it’s not all of me. I’ll find pieces of the puzzle that go together and let me be passionate but have other passions (not just marriage and kids, the only acceptable work distractions).
I’ll find that jigsaw of jobs, projects, creative passions that don’t think I’m ‘too much’ for all at once, but rather asks ‘what next’.
I’ll find the people in those worlds that say ‘whoa that’s cool’ when told the long list of other things rather than ‘why are you doing that?’
I’ll find the friends who don’t mind an essay after the phrase ‘let me tell you a thing’ who don’t mind double, triple quadruple messages, who send the same in return.
I’ll find friends that understand a penguin, pumpkin or book photograph out of context and think ‘yes this’ not ‘god she’s so much, too much.’
I’ll find friends who share the passions. Who want to scream at sticks on knife shoes and key changes with me.
I’ll keep hold of the friends who already do. Or even if they don’t would never say a passion for sticks and ice shoes and key changes and penguins and books and dance and weird tv and Taylor Swift lyrics is too much even if they don’t understand, because they would never call me too much. They are the friends who are too much to other people, who have been other people’s ‘too much’ but for me, for us are so so much.
If I’m too much, you can find less, and I’ll find more. If I’m too much for you, I’m just too much for you; I’ll find more. If I’m too much for this space, this place, this job I’ll go and find more and you can settle for less.
May you all be as much as you like, from the sad penguins.
::applause::