Burn Out Blues

Or why I have not had the wherewithal to post anything in two months!

If January and February 2024 were marked by a cataclysmic string of illnesses, surgeries and the loss of loved ones, then this January and February have been marked by extreme lethargy and the inability to get going. I’ve barely had the energy to think, never mind write, and have repeatedly considered abandoning this newsletter enterprise altogether.

Welcome to AutCasts, a free bi-weeekly newsletter exploring neurodivergence through cinema’s oddballs, misfits & rebels!

I’m assuming this is burn-out, the culmination of 5+ years of a pandemic, PhD and moving stress, seemingly endless and overlapping personal crises, and an extremely hectic 2024 with wonderful highs (wedding, graduation) tremendous lows (illness and deaths) as well as lots of life happening all at once (moving back to Ireland and new job).

And that’s only me. We are not even two months into the Trump presidency and with every executive order and declaration of war I can feel the fatigue of constant outrage and despair creep in.

Having said that, I have managed to get some writing done, just not here. Some highlights from the last few months include:

A book review…

I published a long read on Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo, with

Alice Wong

’s wonderful Disability Visibility Project, provocatively entitled: Rain Man for Millennials and Other Adventures in Ableism with Sally Rooney.

Rooney is unusually concerned among fiction writers for citing her sources, many of which are included at the end of the book, but there is a marked absence of citations relating to disability and neurodivergence. Just as Rooney seems to ignore three decades of queer theory and crip theory, which challenge the notion of acceptable and possible sex beyond hetero-able bodied norms, she seems to ignore, or is ignorant of the revolution in how we understand neurodivergence or the existence of the neurodiversity movement which, among other things, is intent on challenging the persistence of the Rain Man stereotype.

You can read the full article here!

---

A book launch…

I’m delighted to share that I have a new essay coming out in Wired Our Own Way: An Anthology of Irish Autistic Voices. My essay, ‘Ticklish Brain’, explores the intersections between autism and epilepsy, something I also discussed a few months ago in relation to Young Frankenstein and monstrous neurology:

Abby... Normal?

You can order a copy of Wired Our Own Way directly from Dubray Books to read some fantastic writers such as Nuala O’Connor,

Naoise Dolan

, Liam Coulson, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan and others! For those of you based in Ireland, Wired Our Own Way, will be launched next Thursday, 27th of March at one of my favourite Irish bookstores, Hodges Figgis, Dublin:

Isn’t this just the most lovely cover ever???

---

A new short story…

While I try and get back into more regular writing here, I’ll leave you with my latest short story, that just came out with Ireland’s newest and most exciting literary magazine

Frazzled Lit

!

You can read the full story, along with many other fantastic short stories, poems and essays, here:

Here We Go Again: A Listicle

Thank you once again, gentle reader, for sticking with this humble newsletter.

I’ll be back shortly with an essay on one of my favourite children’s movies, The Never Ending Story, and musings about school bullies, reading as escapism and the nothingness that is 2025.

In the meantime, I’d love you to share what’s been keeping you going through the nothingness of the first few months of 2025? What have you been reading, or writing, or watching that has given you joy?