Finishing a big project, particularly one that has been a long and difficult process, leaves me, a day or two later, with a sudden sense of mental space. Like some sprawling shitbox of a structure in the middle of a field has been demolished overnight, and suddenly I can see the trees and hedges and the horizon again.

My brain combats this unexpected sense of well-being by looking for something to get tangled up in again. I must have lost an hour on Thursday to thinking about marketing and PR — I have no access to marketing resources, and have never had a PR working for me, which never used to matter, but with the churn of media news online, and the loudness and the calcification of the social media scene, and jesus have you looked at comics websites lately, most of them look like Geocities pages, and then you end up talking to a journalist acquaintance about how of all people Kanye West has reinvented broadcast and engagement is a historical artifact now and you have dinner with a friend and she tells you how her literary agent in New York calls her every day and what is that even like and then you discover that it’s somehow become Saturday afternoon and all you have is a completed call sheet and a clear inbox and this journal entry.

Even us neurotypical types have brains that discover new ways to express their hatred of us, every day. All tangled up.