brain – JenEric Designs

Hello Friends, Family, and Fans;

The past few months have been hard for me. I made a mistake with my migraine meds and then the new ones don’t seem to be doing anything.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my past and my health. It’s amazing how everything seems connected. The three big pillars are Migraines, Allergies, and Neurodivergence.

All three mean I have sensitivities to smells, foods, and nature but the big thing is that all three lead to burning out.

During university, I would catch a major cold every year and a whole bunch of little mysterious ones that lasted a day or two. The major ones were the regular flu, cold, etc. But the little ones I now see as my body/mind giving out.

University was hard and I wasn’t particularly good at it. I loved learning but I worked 3 jobs (30+ hours), did several clubs (Choir, Improv, and TV Zoom), and I had 4-5 classes. I also tried to be social and spend time with friends and family.

I see now that part of it was the exhaustion from masking, the fatigue from allergies, and the drain of migraines.

As I got older, I started noticing more effects like getting really fatigued and clumsy, pain from tensing my muscles, and my migraines getting less silent. (I assumed a massive headache per month wasn’t that bad.)

Now that I know what causes these things, I’m getting better at balancing my schedule and my needs. With unmasking and trying to be kind to myself comes less burnout and less symptoms. Unfortunately, it also comes with a lower tolerance for stimuli (Is it lower tolerance or me not being as good at shoving it all down until I collapse?)

I’m obviously still trying to get everything under control. I have a meeting with my doctor next week to discuss my migraine meds and possibly ADHD meds to try and make my life easier.

The great news is that work has finally approved my working from home. Because of my migraine and autism triggers being so hard to isolate, they decided it was simpler to let me be at home. Hopefully, we won’t need another full set of medical notes every year.

I hope you’re all doing well!

Stay safe and be kind,

Éric

Hello My Imaginary Friends,

We went to Geek Market this weekend and it was a lot of fun. It’s an incredibly well run event with some of the nicest staff and volunteers. Sales were ok for us, but nowhere near what I’d expected. We still made our table and got to hang out with Renaissance Press and all the other awesome people who were there.

Two highlights of the weekend are the Blush Kickstarter making its first stretch goal and my awesome wife winning the Fantasy Short Story Scholarship contest. She worked really hard on both Blush and the story, and I couldn’t be more proud.

Between Geek Market and all the other things I’ve been working on, I was completely and utterly exhausted last night. I should have easily fallen asleep… My brain had other ideas.

How Well I Sleep by Fowl Language Comics

As I lay awake until 1 or 2 in the morning (I stopped checking at 12:30), my brain kept running an idea for a Webcomic through my head. Over and over, I kept thinking of what it could be and the story and the tone. Sigh.

Suffice it to say, I was even more exhausted this morning. I still couldn’t get the idea out of my head. So I spent this morning writing it out. I’ll pitch it to a friend who’s interested in drawing more and we’ll see what happens. I mean I really don’t have enough to do.

I don’t want to spoil anything and the comic would be a collaboration so things will change, but I can give you the working title: “Joust a Windmill”.

What sort of things does your brain keep you up with?

Later Days!

Éric