To my island

I thought long about what exactly I would write and what exactly I would explain. Because, as you know, Bonairians love information. And I don't mind giving all the details, but I didn't really know what would be wise. To prevent problems that could have been prevented. At the same time, I don't want to ask for help without explaining why the help is needed — because to receive what I have to offer, you have to understand what I need.

So here it comes. I'll first explain how I experience life, so you can then understand why the whirlwind was actually a storm. And what I have to do now to get better, and how you can help with that.

Autism and ADHD

I thought long about the best analogy to describe myself. And I noticed in Bible reading and in conversations with people that one of the things they find most confusing about God is actually something I could use to depict myself.

In the Bible, God is described as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — a Trinity, as they call it. And that's actually a really good way to describe myself. Because every day I'm dealing with the interplay of who I call "I".

The first part: soul. That's what I call "I".

The second part: my brain. It can think and decide on its own, and bring forward certain things that I — the soul — am not on board with. So then I say stop. And then the brain stops thinking about it, for example.

The third part: the body. The body actually listens to the brain. Not to me, not to the "I", the soul. It always has to go through the brain. So if there's a problem in the body, it takes a moment before I — the soul — understand it. Because it has to be translated by the brain, which is sometimes too busy to translate anything. And during all this I don't know what's happening. So I can have feelings of panic or depression without knowing why. Often I figure it out from what's going on. Why am I still in bed? Depression. Hands or even my whole body trembling? Tension. And then I don't know what's happening.

My daily life is a kind of balancing act between these three parts of me. And I say "three parts of me" because they all feel like me. I also feel responsible for everything that comes out of those three parts. So there's no split personality in the normal existence, without the storm.

But as soon as I'm out of balance — and when it has to go really far — the relationship between them can get disturbed. An example: everyone knows the term piekeren (ruminating). Sometimes you go to the psychologist and say "I'm ruminating", and then you get CBT or whatever to ruminate less. For me, ruminating is something different — it wasn't until I was 30 that I came to understand I'm autistic, so I've been able to put a name to many things "with retroactive effect". For me, ruminating is: when the brain keeps thinking and won't stop. Even if I say "shut up", it keeps going. And then I hear and see all kinds of words and images in my head. I want it to stop, but I can't. That's because the balance is disturbed, and the brain wants me to understand that something is off, and to take action to change it.

Because all three of these parts need something to feel safe. For the brain, it's mainly structure, order, and truth. No ambiguity, no lies. Nothing that changes if it was said it wouldn't change. For the body, it's mainly calm — not too much noise, not too many different things happening at the same time. Because as you may know: autistic people pick up on everything. The more that's happening, the more the body is busy taking it all in. And at a certain point it just says: I can't take in any more. Shutting down. And when that happens, it's already gone too far.

Because I — the soul — know what my body can handle. And it's my job to keep myself in balance. That's actually my biggest occupation throughout the day. And in between I have to do my things: eat, work, hobbies (there aren't many), sing, work on the kunuku. Every day is a kind of delicate balance to stay within the parameters.

And that's a bit what the autistic life is like. I have to listen when something crosses my limits. If I try to gloss over it or hide from the truth, it comes back delayed — in the worst case, through the body. Then I start either running away from situations, or pulling my hair, or wanting to bang my head against the wall. Those are all the things you see in autistic children. And they're still there in adults. But we've learned how to keep everything in balance. And it's not something you can do alone — it also has to do with your environment. And a changing environment brought forth the storm.

The whirlwind

The storm was a combination of different situations that made it so I could no longer manage to stay in balance. I fell asleep out of balance, and I woke up in the morning out of balance. My mind in panic from the moment my eyes opened. The whole day I worked to push myself back into balance. But I didn't manage.

As I said: truth is very important to me. Also because I notice everything, and everything kind of gets registered — like hey, you were there, so you should be here now. And when that doesn't match up, my brain first starts to find the situation strange. Then I ask questions, and when those questions aren't answered truthfully — or aren't answered at all — distrust for the situation grows. It no longer feels safe, because of the unexpected or unexplainable changes.

This is the storm described in the most generic sense. It went on much longer than it actually needed to, because I'm not capable of seeing certain things when they don't fit within the context they're happening in. An example: I'm at a police station. I would never expect that if I lost something there, it had been stolen by a police officer. Because by definition, a police officer doesn't steal. So when I lose something at a police station, the thought maybe it was stolen would never cross my mind. And if it had actually been stolen — I would never find it, because I would never look in that direction.

That's a bit the situation I was in. Only it wasn't at a police station, but just at home. And I didn't really know how to deal with it. When I did get the right help from the right people, I couldn't really cope with what I had to do to help myself.

That was the storm: a new way of seeing everything and experiencing everything. New motivations to wake up — things to wake up for. Everything had to become different, and I had never seen it coming.

Honestly, I still don't know how I'm handling all the different things. But day by day, it seems to be getting better. So we stay the course.

Why am I asking for help now?

For a while now, I've been noticing that during my current work (for a company in the Netherlands) I get restless. Not because I don't enjoy the work, or because the colleagues aren't nice. It has nothing to do with the work; it's actually a really nice workplace. But working in this setting (so, at home, behind my computer) feels incredibly unsafe. It's unjustified, because the consequences my body wants to protect me from have nothing to do with this work. But the association has been created, and I have to accept this and deal with it. It's a bit like PTSD, where a sound or smell can take you back to a traumatic event.

Since I don't have the luxury of not working, I force myself to work. From experience, I know this isn't going to end well. I'll become less productive in general, because I pause everything "to be able to work", which then doesn't happen either.

And yeah, if I'm not working I can expect it won't be long before I no longer have to work either.

To prevent that I have to find something else to bring in income, so I can take a long vacation from my usual work and reset my body, so to speak. So that's the ultimate goal: to create space to heal and build new structures.

The plan I have is to offer Commerce and B-Checked for a certain monthly fee. Only I don't know what that monthly amount should be. I'm only looking at what it costs me to keep it online. But the real value is in what it saves or earns you, as potential users. So I need help with that too, and that requires a lot of honesty from you. The forms on the applications ask, among other things, what you would be able to pay for this per month. Through that I can get a general idea.

What I've made

On the homepage you actually see everything I've built — it's all sorts of things. What all these applications have in common is that their goal is to take repetitive work away from people and to automate processes. So that people themselves have to work less and hopefully have more time to spend on themselves — or even better: on their yard or kunuku.

The second reason: here on Playa Grandi I'll never get anything delivered to my home — it's too far. That's why something like Shiloh Market needs to be introduced. The idea of Shiloh Market itself is also a big motivation to continue with Commerce, because for that vision to become reality enough businesses need to go "online". And in the work toward that, all those other things came along. How exactly I never remember — but that's ADHD.

The third reason: I don't actually enjoy working all that much. The nicest thing I can imagine would be to just spend all my time on things I enjoy — that seems to be something everyone has. But because I can build systems that can help businesses, I also saw the opportunity to create a certain level of financial security for myself and my family. That was also a motivation to work on these applications.

In the meantime, that motivation has come to nothing. But I still would like to have a certain future — and of course time to spend with my son. So that's also a goal in itself.

To you

What I expect is that you go through the things. Look around, pretend it's a museum. Read what I've written, see if you get excited about it, and if you are — get in touch with me. Then we can see what we can achieve together.

I'd like to help Bonairians not only be more productive, but also more efficient with their time and resources. To be able to see and flag things faster. We're good at reacting, but maybe we can get better at preventing. And sometimes an app can help with that.

So mainly look around — and share it with other people, especially merchants you know would like to have an online presence.

I have a lot of hope that I'll receive from this what I need. The most important thing has already been done. We're a people known for supporting and helping each other in times of need. And in the darkest days after the storm — my island was there ❤️. It's nice to be part of a people like this.

Masha danki,

Calvin