Ten years ago, I sat down and started building something from scratch. At the time, it was simply a place to put my thoughts, feelings and experiences into words — a way of making sense of the world around me after being diagnosed as Autistic. (Looking back it makes sense)
I don’t think, even in my wildest dreams, I could have imagined where that small beginning would lead me.
Ten years later, this little corner of the internet has become so much more than a website. It has become a place for connection, understanding and shared experiences. It has allowed me to tell my story, to open conversations, and to hopefully help others feel a little less alone on their own journeys.
When I first started writing, I had no idea who would read my words or where they would take me. I certainly never imagined that so many people would come along for the ride, follow my journey and offer their support along the way.
For that, I am truly grateful.
To everyone who has read a blog post, shared a story, sent a message, offered encouragement or simply taken the time to understand — thank you. Your support has meant more than you probably realise. Every interaction has been a reminder that sharing our experiences can create connections that we never expected.
Of course, there is one person who deserves a very special thank you: Mrs Bob.
Behind the scenes, she has been my constant support throughout this entire journey. She has written, proofread, made phone calls, helped shape my thoughts and, most importantly, been my neurotypical whisperer when I’ve needed someone to help translate my way of seeing the world.
She has worked tirelessly alongside me, often without recognition, and I honestly couldn’t have reached this point without her.
Looking back over these ten years, I realise this website has been a record of growth, discovery and acceptance. It has captured moments of frustration, joy, learning and everything in between.
The journey hasn’t always been straightforward, but it has always been mine.
So, on this tenth birthday, I’m not just celebrating a website. I’m celebrating the conversations started, the friendships made, the lessons learned and the incredible community that has grown around it.
It’s one of those phrases that usually arrives just after something awful has happened.
Someone loses a loved one.
A relationship ends.
A diagnosis turns life upside down.
And almost without thinking, someone says it.
“Everything happens for a reason.”
I know it’s usually meant kindly.
It’s an attempt to comfort.
To make sense of chaos.
To reassure us that the universe hasn’t completely lost the plot.
But I’ve never been entirely comfortable with it.
Not because I think life is meaningless.
Far from it.
I think the problem lies in what we mean by reason.
If by “reason” we mean that every tragedy was deliberately planned by some higher power—that every child who becomes ill, every war, every act of cruelty was intentionally designed as part of some grand blueprint—then I struggle with that idea.
Not because I lack faith in mystery.
But because it asks us to believe that unimaginable suffering was somehow necessary.
I’m not convinced.
There’s another way of looking at it, though.
Perhaps “reason” doesn’t mean purpose.
Perhaps it simply means cause.
Everything that happens has causes and conditions.
A tree doesn’t fall because the universe chose that exact tree.
It falls because roots weaken, soil shifts, fungi grow unseen beneath the surface, and eventually gravity finishes the conversation.
Human lives are much the same.
Who we become isn’t usually shaped by one dramatic moment.
It’s thousands of tiny moments.
The family we’re born into.
The kindnesses we receive.
The wounds we carry.
The books we read.
The strangers we meet.
The mistakes we survive.
Each one nudges us ever so slightly until, years later, we look in the mirror and wonder how on earth we became this particular version of ourselves.
That’s not destiny.
That’s cause and effect.
In many ways it’s far more fascinating.
It also reminds us that our own actions become part of someone else’s chain of causes.
A smile offered to a stranger.
A harsh word spoken in anger, to the driver that cut you up.
A poem that reaches someone on exactly the day they needed it.
None of these things happen in isolation.
They ripple.
Sometimes far further than we’ll ever know.
Perhaps that’s why I try to choose kindness whenever I can.
Not because I think it’ll magically make the universe reward me.
But because every action adds another thread to the web we’re all helping to weave.
Life isn’t always fair.
Bad things happen to good people.
Good things happen to difficult people.
And sometimes there isn’t an answer that satisfies us.
But there are always causes.
Always choices.
Always consequences.
Maybe that’s enough.
So no…
I don’t believe everything happens for a reason.
But I do believe everything happens because of reasons.
And understanding the difference might just change the way we understand ourselves.
When I first started this website and began yelling into the void that is the internet, I had one dream.
Not a book deal.
Not a viral post.
Not thousands of followers hanging on every badly punctuated sentence.
Just one person.
If something I wrote found its way into the right hands, at the right time, and nudged someone towards hope instead of despair, kindness instead of bitterness, or courage instead of fear, then I reckoned the whole experiment would have been worth it.
That was the dream.
The internet has a funny way of making us believe that numbers are everything. Views. Likes. Shares. Subscribers. As though the value of a thought is measuredby the size of the crowd listening.
I’ve never been convinced.
History is full of quiet conversations that changed lives, while the loudest voices were forgotten before the ink had dried.
Over the years, I’ve had a few messages from strangers. from people who stumbled across a poem, or one of my rambling posts at exactly the moment they needed it.
“Thank you.”
Those messages mean more than you’ll ever know.
Because every single one reminds me that words still matter.
Not because they’re mine, but because honest words have a peculiar habit of finding the people they’re meant to find.
If anything I’ve written has helped you laugh when life felt heavy, think when the world demanded outrage, or believe that tomorrow might just be a little brighter than today, then you’ve given me something far greater than any statistic ever could.
You’ve allowed this grumpy old poet to live beyond his original dream.
So thank you.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for sharing the journey.
And thank you for reminding me that even when it feels like we’re all shouting into the void, sometimes the void quietly whispers back.
Not because I have a wall full of certificates, or because I’m forever signing up for courses, but because life has a habit of reminding me just how much I still don’t know.
The older I get, the less interested I become in being right all the time.
I’d much rather understand.
That might sound like a small distinction, but I think it’s an important one.
Learning isn’t just about collecting facts. It’s about allowing new experiences to reshape old opinions. It’s about listening to people whose lives are completely different from your own and being willing to admit they might have something valuable to teach you.
Some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned haven’t come from classrooms at all.
They’ve come from raising children.
From loving someone.
From making spectacular mistakes.
From living with autism long before I understood I was autistic.
From photography, where standing still and really looking at the world often reveals beauty everyone else walked straight past.
And, of course, from books.
Books have introduced me to worlds I’ll never visit, people I’ll never meet, and ideas that have quietly changed the way I see life.
One of those ideas comes from the Buddha.
Whether you see Buddhism as a religion or simply a philosophy, there’s something deeply refreshing about the idea that we’re all works in progress.
The Buddha didn’t really teach that life should be comfortable.
He taught that it could be understood.
The Four Noble Truths ask us to look honestly at suffering instead of pretending it isn’t there. The Eightfold Path isn’t a quick fix or a self-help slogan. It’s a lifelong practice of becoming a little wiser, a little kinder and a little more compassionate than we were yesterday.
I like that.
Not because I expect to become enlightened.
Let’s be honest—I still lose my patience when technology decides today is the perfect day to update itself.
But because it reminds me that growth isn’t a destination.
It’s a direction.
Too often we think learning stops when school finishes, or when we retire, or when we reach a certain age.
I think that’s when the real education begins.
Every conversation teaches us something.
Every mistake offers a lesson—assuming our pride doesn’t get in the way.
Every challenge asks us whether we’re prepared to adapt or whether we’d rather stay comfortably wrong.
For me, lifelong learning isn’t about becoming the smartest person in the room.
It’s about becoming a slightly better version of the person who walked into it.
If I can go to bed tonight knowing something I didn’t know this morning…
If I can understand another person’s perspective just a little more…
If I can show a little more compassion than I managed yesterday…
What’s one habit that has improved your life the most?
f I had to choose just one habit, it would be meditation.
Not because it gives me all the answers, but because it helps me stop fighting battles that only exist in my own mind.
For a long time, I held onto anger. I replayed conversations, revisited old hurts, and carried resentment far longer than I probably should have. I thought holding on somehow made me stronger or somehow proved I was right.
It didn’t.
It only hurt me.
The people or situations I was angry about often carried on with their lives while I carried the weight. Looking back, it seems like such a waste of energy.
Meditation changed that.
It didn’t erase the past. It simply taught me to observe my thoughts without becoming trapped by them. It reminded me that I always have a choice: hold on or let go.
Most of the time, letting go is the better option.
Not because what happened doesn’t matter, but because my peace matters more.
These days, I still get frustrated. I’m only human. But I no longer give anger a permanent home. I acknowledge it, learn what I can from it, and move forward .
That small daily practice has made me calmer, more patient, and far more present.
Funny really. I started meditating to quiet my mind.
What I discovered was that the greatest benefit wasn’t learning how to be still.
It was learning what was never worth carrying in the first place.
Stay Safe
Bc
Ps here’s a scribble I wrote on this subject some time ago
What’s a chapter of your life you’d title “The Hard Years” — and what got you through it?
If you’ve read my books or been following this blog for a while, you’ll probably know the answer before you’ve finished the question.
Roughly twenty years ago.
That was the chapter.
It was the point where it honestly felt like life had looked at me and thought, “Go on then… let’s see how much this bloke can actually take.”
I was on the verge of homelessness.
I was fighting to have a relationship with my daughters.
My PTSD was running riot.
I was autistic but had absolutely no idea at the time.
And my mental health?
Well… “shot to shit” is probably the most accurate medical diagnosis I can give you.
Let’s unpack that.
After a relationship ended, I found myself with nowhere to live. My family couldn’t help, so I ended up sleeping on the sofa of an old wrestling mate. It wasn’t glamorous, but it beat sleeping rough again.
Eventually she moved in with her boyfriend and we came up with what seemed, at the time, like a sensible solution.
I’d stay in her little council house and carry on paying the rent.
Yes.
I know.
Subletting.
Not exactly legal.
But when your choices are breaking the rules or sleeping rough, morality suddenly becomes a luxury.
While all that was going on, my daughters’ mum had started making contact as difficult as humanly possible.
I’d turn up to collect the girls.
“Oh… we’ve gone out.”
“They’re not here.”
“They don’t want to come.”
The excuses changed.
The result didn’t.
Letters from my solicitor about parental responsibility went unanswered.
Phone calls rarely got through.
And when they did, the girls were apparently never available.
It was only last year that I found out some of the things they’d been told about me growing up.
One of them was that I’d wanted my youngest aborted before she was born.
I hadn’t.
But lies have a habit of hanging around long after the people telling them have moved on.
Looking back now, I understand why I was falling apart.
Back then I just thought I was broken.
Everything piled on top of everything else.
The housing.
The court stuff.
Missing my girls.
The PTSD.
Trying to make sense of a brain that worked differently without knowing why.
So I did what a lot of blokes do when they’re drowning.
I reached for anything that promised five minutes of peace.
Drink.
Drugs.
Self-harm.
None of it fixed anything.
It just delayed having to feel it.
Then came the moment that genuinely broke me.
The council discovered I was living in the house.
I was told that if I cleared about £400 of rent arrears I could take over the tenancy.
I worked every bit of overtime I could.
Paid every penny.
Walked into the meeting convinced I’d finally caught a break.
Instead, I was told I had four weeks to move out.
When I reminded them about what I’d been promised, I was told I’d have to bid on the property along with everyone else.
I’d basically paid someone else’s rent arrears for nothing.
That one hurt.
For the next month I bid on every property I could.
Nothing.
That’s when I hit rock bottom.
I tried (for the first time) to end my life.
I woke up in hospital the following day to two police officers asking why I’d done it and telling me how selfish I’d been for upsetting everyone.
Different times.
Thankfully we’ve moved on a bit since then.
Recovery wasn’t some magical Disney montage.
It took years.
Hospital admissions.
Medication.
Counselling.
Learning how to exist without constantly wanting to disappear.
Then, during one of my final stays in hospital, a member of staff suggested I start writing down how I felt.
I nearly laughed.
Writing a diary?
Really?
I’d grown up believing men dealt with problems by getting on with them.
You certainly didn’t write about your feelings.
Still…
I’d tried almost everything else.
What was one more roll of the dice?
Those first pages weren’t poetry.
They were just chaos.
Anger.
Fear.
Grief.
Questions I didn’t know how to answer.
Slowly, without me really noticing, those pages started changing.
Sentences became verses.
Verses became poems.
Poems became something that made sense of everything that didn’t.
People often ask me what saved my life.
It wasn’t poetry.
Not at first.
Poetry came later.
What saved me was finally giving myself permission to be honest.
The poetry simply gave that honesty somewhere to live.
Without those notebooks there probably wouldn’t have been books.
There wouldn’t have been performances.
There wouldn’t have been conversations with complete strangers who’ve quietly said, “I thought I was the only one.”
There probably wouldn’t be this blog.
So what got me through The Hard Years?
My daughters.
Even when I couldn’t see them, they gave me something to keep fighting for.
Pure bloody-minded stubbornness.
I’ve never liked being told I can’t do something.
And somewhere deep down, underneath everything else, there was still a tiny voice saying,
“Don’t let this be how your story ends.”
Turns out that little voice was right.
Life isn’t perfect now.
It never will be.
But I’ve learned that the hardest chapters aren’t always the end of the book.
Sometimes they’re just the part that explains why the rest of the story matters.
What’s a lesson you’ve learned recently that shifted your perspective?
I’ve realised recently that it’s far easier to give up on someone than it is to find a way back to them.
Walking away is easy.
Rebuilding a bridge? That’s the difficult bit.
A little while ago I had a serious falling out with a family member. They’d been rude, self-obsessed and, to make matters worse, £75 disappeared from my bank account. It would have been a lot more had the bank not stepped in. Whether they took it themselves or knowingly allowed someone else to, the trust I’d placed in them vanished overnight.
I confronted them.
They reacted.
I reacted.
Two adults behaving like stubborn children, storming off in opposite directions, both convinced we were in the right.
Now, before anyone starts polishing my halo, let me be perfectly clear.
I’m no saint.
I shouldn’t have flown off the handle. I was angry, hurt and betrayed, and those emotions rarely produce our best work. Looking back, I probably should have left it alone for a couple of weeks, let the smoke clear and the dust settle, then reached out with a simple question.
“Fancy getting the tools out and rebuilding this bridge?”
Maybe the answer would still have been no.
Maybe nothing would have changed.
But at least I’d have known I’d tried.
Life has a habit of reminding us that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. I’ve promised people I’d see them again, only for life to have other plans. Those are the moments that stay with you, and I’d hate to repeat that mistake because pride got the final say.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Some relationships are genuinely toxic, and walking away is absolutely the right thing to do. This isn’t about putting up with abuse or pretending betrayal doesn’t hurt.
It’s about recognising that not every argument deserves a permanent ending.
Sometimes people make terrible decisions.
Sometimes we say things we wish we hadn’t.
Sometimes we’re both waiting for the other person to make the first move.
The lesson I’ve learned is that forgiveness and reconciliation aren’t signs of weakness. They’re often far harder than anger.
So if you’re in the middle of a row with someone you genuinely care about, perhaps let the dust settle before deciding the bridge needs demolishing.
Because when the emotions have cooled, it’s worth asking yourself one simple question.
In the cold light of day, is this really worth losing someone over?
A good night’s sleep is incredibly important, and I’m sure you’re already aware of many of the benefits. Quality sleep helps bolster your immune system, protects your cardiovascular health, balances the hormones that regulate hunger, and makes it easier to maintain a healthy weight. Mentally, it’s just as important. Sleep consolidates memories, clears waste products from the brain, and improves emotional resilience, helping to reduce stress and anxiety.
So, how do I improve my sleep?
Like many autistic people, I love a good routine, and in this case, I think it has definitely worked in my favour.
About ten or fifteen minutes before I want to go to sleep, I stop whatever I’m watching or doing and put on some calming meditation music. I actually have one particular track on YouTube that I’ve been using for years. Those few minutes allow me to unwind and mentally let go of the day’s frustrations, confrontations and negative thoughts before I even get into bed.
Once I’m feeling more relaxed, I’ll climb into bed and read a few pages from my latest QI Book of Facts. Reading something enjoyable—but not too stimulating—helps signal to my brain that it’s time to switch off.
When it’s finally time to sleep, I ask my smart speaker to play white noise. Personally, I find the sound of heavy rain works best for me. It helps block out background noise and creates a familiar environment that my brain now associates with sleep.
I’ve followed this routine for many years. Is it perfect? No.
I still occasionally wake up screaming or experience night terrors, but I can honestly say that sticking to this routine has reduced both the frequency and severity of those episodes by around 85%. That’s been life-changing for me.
Will this exact routine work for everyone? Probably not. But it’s certainly worth experimenting until you find something that suits you. Sleep isn’t one-size-fits-all, and sometimes the smallest changes make the biggest difference.
The other thing I’ve found incredibly beneficial—and the science backs this up—is keeping a regular sleep schedule.
Going to bed and waking up at roughly the same time every day helps regulate your body’s natural circadian rhythm. Research has shown that consistent sleep patterns can significantly reduce the risk of depression compared with irregular sleeping habits. In fact, maintaining a regular routine is often just as important as getting the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep each night.
For me, good sleep doesn’t happen by accident. It’s something I prepare for.
A simple routine, a calm mind, a good book, the sound of rain, and a consistent bedtime have all helped me sleep better than I ever used to. If you’re struggling with sleep, don’t be afraid to try different approaches until you find your own routine.
Sometimes, the best night’s sleep starts long before your head hits the pillow.
Every morning before the sun stretches itself across my window, before my coffee tastes like anything but bitter, happiness hides.
She’s crouched behind the blinds, folded into the corner of yesterday’s pillow, laughing quietly at me as if I don’t know how to look for her.
I try.
I try like I know her favorite hiding spots, like I know the exact way she breathes when she’s shy, like I can coax her out with half-empty mugs and songs that smell like home.
But she moves.
Slips under the fridge, slides into the cracks of my bathroom tiles, hides in the sound of my keys clattering like she’s daring me to follow.
So I do.
I follow.
And sometimes, just sometimes, she peeks out like a shy smile from a stranger in a crowded street.
For that moment, my chest remembers what it’s like to be full, and I swear I hear the echo of her saying,
you found me again.
Then she disappears.
And I swear I’ll find her tomorrow.
Because happiness isn’t something that knocks politely.
It is a professional hide-and-seek champion, undefeated for as long as I’ve known her.
And me?
I am the kid counting with my eyes closed, hands over my face, promising the dark that I’m still playing.
The Ramblings of Bob Christian 