'Oh God, do I Have to Travel?'

I promised more on my experience of the Sonic Rebellions conference in Brighton so here we go...

'Oh god, do I have to travel?'

I hate traveling. In her TED talk Hannah Gadsby speaks about how, as a neuro-divergent person, things which terrify others leave her untouched but that otherwise day-to-day things fill her with terror. Most things that are boring fill me with terror: going to work, meeting someone for coffee, speaking to friends and on and on. My sister told me recently that as a child I went through life frightened of everything, I still do but curiously not when these things are what others would find terrifying but I had to travel.

I don't travel well. I was panicking on the bus to Haymarket Station, I was panicking on the platform waiting on the train to London. I panicked on the train then when I got into London I panicked afresh, not sure I knew how to get from King's Cross to Victoria (for those who have not done this journey a million times you hop on the Underground for a few stops.) When I got to Victoria I panicked while waiting on the train to Brighton. I stood on the concourse muttering to myself and stroking the handle of my umbrella. When the platform was called with two minutes to spare I ran across the station trying not to scream.

I don't travel well.

When I Stand Up Everything is Easy.

I presented on the second day of the conference. The only thing that bothered me was that I may have forgotten my presentation so I buried my USB drive deep in my jacket pocket beneath my phone and triple checked that I had copied it correctly onto the desktop before sitting down to hear Markus Hetheier's talk on the Manchester DIY Electronic Scene.

It came my turn to stand and address a packed room and suddenly everything was easy. That's the odd thing, waiting on a connection in Victoria Station is terrifying, delivering a theoretically complex presentation to a room of upwards of thirty people is easy.

So What?

I wanted to take the time to talk about my experience of being an autistic scholar attending a conference so far from the things that ground me and help me cope with the daily pressures of an neurotypical world.