AoA: Self Expression

This week's post under the Anecdotes of Asperger's heading is less an anecdote and more an observational essay about how my mind works and coming to terms with it.

In many ways, I am a frustrated artist.  It seems like for my entire 43 years of living, I've been seeing these beautiful images in my head, but have been struggling to find a way to make them external... to share them with others.  If I try to draw, my hands can't seem to re-create what's in my head accurately enough.  Asperger's people tend to have problems with coordination.  That strikes dance off the list as well.  If I try to write, I get bogged down in details... in doing it the "right" way.  Or I get overly technical, dry, and descriptive.  My knitting patterns are a disaster in over-explanation.  My novels never get off the ground, because I'm too busy drawing up floor plans for locations that we spend only five pages in, because how can I describe them to others in a way they can understand if I can't see them myself?  And I can't see the location unless I've created the whole thing right down to the wallpaper.

Basically, my whole life has been like this...  I see this in my head:

 

But my hands draw this: 

So what do I do?  I keep trying new mediums, new methods of expression, until something works.  I haven't found it yet.  I also have the impossible combination of perfectionism, and impatience.  I want the expression to be accurate, but I also want it to do it in a hurry.  So while creating a giant bead tapestry one dot of color at a time may please my perfectionist side, placing color pixel by pixel, it is extremely slow and time-consuming.  Wire sculpture I get bogged down in how the color of solder doesn't match the base metal, and the expense of the materials. I tried Computer Aided graphics, but the software either changed a lot as I was working with it, or the controls were so counter-intuitive that I would get frustrated and quit.

The latest obsession in my head is an image of a woman... glacially beautiful, with a mane of hair flying in all directions, viewed in profile.  I have actually been wondering if I could create this image by crocheting a doily.  Yes really.  In my head I have been plotting lines of stitching, hook placement, and various design elements.  It will probably amount to nothing.  I will hit a portion that simply cannot be done because of the laws of physics, and I will dump the idea.  And then continue my search.