It's the fifth Tuesday of the month, so it's time for a Blast from the Past post. The one I picked this time was part of a 30 day blogging challenge I did back in 2012. I've learned a lot about myself since then, and some things have changed. So I thought I'd have a bit of fun with it and point out where I was way off base with a few things and whatnot.

New comments will be written in green. Everything else is from the original post from January 7, 2012.

You can tell a lot about a person through their preferred art across the spectrum. Whether we are the ones to create it or not, aspects of our personality and thought processes influence the music, images, stories, and more we find ourselves drawn to throughout our lives.

I think we lose a lot when we remove artistic education from our curricula and skimp in areas where our children could explore the arts. Of course, there are arguments insisting different art forms can boost and bolster academic performance, but even looking beyond that, art and art education has much to offer kids and adolescents.

I don't intend to turn this into an autism or ADHD blog, I promise. However, considering how much of my life tracks back to this pairing, I can't exactly talk about my experience with writing without bringing them up from time to time.

Both "disorders" have the strengths and frustrations, and there is a fair bit of overlap between the two. Yet, when both are experienced by the same person, this combination creates some unique presentations that can complicate the diagnosis of both.

This is one contributing factor to the majority of us autistic ADHDers being found "late" on average. One in particular is behind the largest of my current frustrations and why I missed a couple of weeks last month.

One of the more frustrating parts of "flying under the radar" long enough to reach adulthood before your difficulties become apparent enough for others to see them is the arsenal of maladaptive or faulty coping skills built throughout your youth. Quite often, you can sense they are not particularly helpful, or outright damaging in some cases, but after spending your life depending upon them, they are almost instinctive.

For those of us for whom everyday life can become overwhelming quickly on a bad day, we can fall into these poor coping skills before we even notice stress mounting. And let me tell you, that is an extremely frustrating place to be.

Stories, mythology and fairy tales in particular, have been a consistent special interest of mine as long as I can remember. At first, I listened or watched, as many children do before learning to read. When I had the ability, I would watch a movie or show again and again until I could quote every line by every character.

My understanding of the world, emotions, and how people interacted and thought was informed through this. I understood family members and friends by relating them to characters, using the way those characters reacted to predict how the people around me would respond. I used those characters and interactions I'd watched ad nauseam to cobble together the scripts and the mask I used to navigate the world.

Once I mastered reading, chapter books and novels became constant companions. In them I found a way to escape the sensory nightmare that was the school bus outside of staring out the window and disassociating throughout the trip. I found hundreds of new characters to fuel my imagination and build understanding, and novels went further into their mindset and thought patterns than movies and shows ever could, bettering my understanding of emotion and social interaction.

Unfortunately, this newfound joy and source of information came at a price.