Lessons learned from an autistic child 
My daughter Thais is autistic. Over the years, as we’ve worked with her to try to help her overcome her condition, my wife and have have experienced as many highs as we have lows. But in that time, Thais has taught me a lot. And what I’ve learned can be applied to my freelance writing career, or to any freelance endeavor.
Things take time
Therapy for an autistic child is slow and repetitive. It takes up to 200 repetitions of a task or a concept before it sinks in. While this is going on, you don’t see much discernible progress. Then, one day, the change in the child is obvious. I can’t think of how many times this has occurred with Thais.
Most of us want instant results. Unfortunately, overnight success takes a lot of time. You need to savour all of your small successes (however many or few they are) and build on them. Progress, at times, may seem slow. But you’re building your portfolio, your list of publications or clients, you skills, and your reputation. If you’ve done things properly, you’ll notice one day that you’ve actually got a pretty decent career going.
Don’t dwell too much on your last success
Every success that my wife and I have had with Thais — whether getting her eat by herself or to speak in full sentences or to become just that much more self sufficient — has been wonderful to behold. And it’s easy to rest on those laurels, and not push Thais to do more, often because we’re all spent by the efforts taken to reach that last milestone. But to linger on that last success doesn’t do Thais any good. We all must move constantly forward and tackle the next obstacle.
The same goes for writing. You always get a good feeling in your gut when you crack that one market that’s eluded you. You’re ego becomes slightly fatter when a piece is published and you’re praised by editors and readers. But you need to move on to the next challenge or the next market. It’s part of your growth as a writer, and the growth of your income. You can’t become too reliant on one publication or client, and you can’t rely on a single skill or type of article to keep you going. You need to constantly expand your ecosystem and push yourself to try new things.
Hard work alone isn’t enough
Musician Robert Fripp once wrote that you’ll never get rich with hard work, but you’ll never get rich without it. Hard work is one key to success, but it’s not the only one.
In Thais’ case, the progress that she’s made hasn’t been just a matter of the work my wife and I, and especially Thais, have put in. The support of our family and friends, and of a diverse group of talented and dedicated people ranging from day care workers to autism specialists, has been invaluable.
If you want real success as a freelancer, you need to take advantage of your support system. You need to work with and learn from other writers. You need to network. You need to run your ideas, hopes, and dreams by others who are in the same boat as you. You need to seriously consider their advice and answers and criticism. Not only will doing this help you grow as a professional, it could lead to opportunities somewhere down the line.
Sweat the small stuff
People tell my wife and I that we tend to focus too much on the little things in Thais’ life. Things like some of the idiosyncrasies in her behaviour, her misuse of prepositions or verb tenses, or the fact that she doesn’t always look at or respond to people when she’s talking. But correcting these seemingly little things now will have an impact on bigger problems later on.
In freelancing, you really need to sweat the small stuff. You need to keep track of every expense, of the time that you’ve spent on a project, on when and how much you’ve earned, and on when you’ve submitted work to an editor or a client. In the end, it all adds up. You know exactly where you stand, financially and with regards to work that’s done and in that’s in the pipeline. You’ll be better able to set hourly and project rates. All of that contributes to your bottom line and to your productivity.
Take your job seriously, but don’t take yourself too seriously
I sometimes feel like my wife and I are focusing so intently on helping Thais that we’re not letting her be a child. Therapy and homeschooling take up a lot of her time, and there are times when I feel that we’re not letting her have enough fallow time to listen to music or swing on her rope ladder or to run around outside or just look at a book. The work that we’re all doing is important, but I can’t express how happy my little girl is when she’s just doing nothing and having fun.
Writing is a job. It’s not a holy chore. You do it because you enjoy it, because you’re good at it, and because you can make some decent money doing it (I hope!). But you definitely need more in your life. Push yourself away from the keyboard and take time to just read for fun, play with the kids, spend some time with that special someone in your life or with your friends, go for a walk or a bike ride, listen to some music, or just lie on the floor and look at the ceiling. Get some distance from your writing and be a person, and not just a writer.
Summing up
It’s cliche to say that your children teach you. But it’s one cliche that definitely has more than just a small ring of truth to it. While I wish that Thais wasn’t autistic, I’m grateful for the lessons that she’s taught me. I somehow doubt I would have learned so much from Thais if she wasn’t autistic.
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I wonder why you’ve never come across my radar before?
Wonderful post especially the point about dwelling on the last success and not pushing forward.
Best wishes