Tag Archives: authenticity

Call Me Womble: Art as Life, Life as Art and the Individual as Artist

There is no archaeological Wayne waiting under the sediment. I make the work, the work makes me, and I have never seen a good reason to keep those jobs in separate rooms. This is an essay about selfhood as a practice rather than a possession: life as material, the individual as artist, and why “find yourself” is looking in the wrong direction. Identity is not recovered. It is made through thought, action, contradiction, failure, and a kind of individuality that does not ask the category what to do next.

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The Hidden Costs of Masking: What Research and Autistic Voices Reveal

This article explores the hidden psychological, physical, and social costs of autistic masking, drawing on current research and lived experience. Combining academic insight with personal anecdotes, it examines how masking impacts wellbeing, identity, and burnout, and argues that masking is not an individual adaptation but a response to structural neurotypical norms and inequality embedded in modern social and professional life.

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The Problem with High-Performing Autistic Masking

This reflection explores the psychological and emotional toll of high-performing autistic masking, the survival skill that demands total authenticity in artifice. Drawing parallels to method acting and philosophy, it considers how masking can blur identity itself, offering insight into the lived experience of neurodivergent authenticity and exhaustion.

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