I survived a trip to the funfair, this time with my parents-in-law, my wife and the kid.
My father-in-law loves funfairs. He doesn't go on any of the rides (because nobody joins him). He just looks around, has some food and discusses the stalls and rides. Maybe he's reveling in childhood memories.
My mother-in-law and my wife don't give a shit about funfairs. They just want everyone to be happy. I didn't vote against the funfair – because it was a small-town funfair, so I assumed that we'd be done in half an hour, and mainly because I didn't want my wife to manage a potential conflict between her father's preferences and mine.
It was doable. We spent more like 45–60 minutes in the vicinity of the stalls and rides. Music was blaring. Lights were flashing. We had mediocre food at slightly elevated prices. The kid gave a high five to some poor person stuck in a costume.
I don't know why this is called a 'funfair' rather than a noisefair, but there are worse misnomers …
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 239 , Sunday 23/06/2024
Got a decent nights sleep last night Geoff behaved himself which was nice.
Up initially around 4am , had a chat with a dear friend & then managed another hour or so snoozing , finally getting up around 8.
On the whole not a bad day.
So I get loads of notifications on Mastodon because I like to interact with as many folk as I can, it can take hours to catch up sometimes. I have the time most days so this is not a problem. Sometimes though it is hard for me to do more than just answer with a hug or a smile because it is hard for me to formulate answers that will not offend or seem glib or cutting.
My autistic mind makes me blunt, it makes me say things that lack social subtleties , it makes me see over familiar or too distant. So when I cannot come up with response that I feel will be acceptable I fall back onto smiles & hugs to show I care hopefully.
Also there are only so many hours in a day , when one has 200 toots to respond to then sometimes brevity is required.
I was criticised for being too brief today, all I can say is I’m sorry ,I’m only a small squirrel of Pooh bear like intelligence & I try my best.
Final Thoughts.
I was playing around with Mona (the Mastodon app I use ) today & have managed to lose all my user notes that I used to keep track of time offsets & nicknames , birthdays etc. Very frustrating because they were crucial;l aids for one such as I with the memory of a concussed goldfish!
Hey ho.
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@actuallyautistic#actuallyautistic Another vent incoming about this faculty training course:
The instructions for everything are SO VAGUE! And on top of that, the tutorials for using the programs in Canvas, like SpeedGrader for grading assignments, don't even match how the programs look on my own laptop. I am, quite literally, floundering. Aye, aye, aye... :blobugh:
Interesting reflection on annoyance as a flag for recognising changing norms, & what it can tell us about our threatened privilege.
Feeling mystified by & out of sync with the norms of our culture & exhausted by trying to understand & navigate them is a daily & lifelong experience for those of us who perceive & process information differently. Rather than navigating social spaces effortlessly we labour to identify & articulate social norms, then analyse them in the light of other information & our personal ethics. Sometimes no matter how hard we try we are completely unable to behave as expected.
(How unsurprising it is that so many of us see norms around gender expression as consumerist cosplay scripts that serve the interests of some while demonising the experience of many. And that we cannot bear to work in organisations whose actions do not match their stated aims. Acceptance & defiance can be equally high cost, for us. Hallo #AutusticBurnout.)
An outsider perspective that requires us to identify, articulate & analyse dynamics that are to many folk invisible, can make us, of necessity, excellent social scientists. #ActuallyAutistic@actuallyautistic
@actuallyautistic#ActuallyAutistic at a very large choral concert to support friends in the chorus and every time i attend one of these, its extremely draining — good thing i have Monday off
I really hate it when it takes a few text messages to articulate a thought, but my friend responds to the first message without context of the next two messages which would completely change the response, but they clearly have put their phone down somewhere because they must be doing something because now that the thought does need a timely reply because it's in regard to a change of plans which would be better started earlier than later..... they're now not reading their messages and you've trapped yourself in waiting mode hell.
@actuallyautistic#actuallyautistic Do y'all know if it's an autistic trait to be super skeptical of stuff? Like, for example, my parents watch some questionable "health" people on YouTube, and when they show me a video from said people, I can tell IMMEDIATELY that they are grifters in it for money. Idk what gives it away but it's like a flashing warning sign in my brain.
I wonder if it has to do with social influence and the effects of charisma/agreeableness that NDs might not fall for.
So, two winters ago I couldn't find what I did with my favorite red coat. I searched everywhere for it, and came up with nothing and was very sad that I had lost it.
For some odd reason, I decided to open the coat closet that's in the basement that we never use, it's just where old coats go to be forgotten... Guess where my coat has been for the past two years. In that closet that I totally forgot to look in.
For example, it was raining a lot today. I went for a walk in the forest under the rain. It was very peaceful with nearly nobody. You have small streams of water on the edge of the paths. With everything that the streams could carry, it went to small dams creating 'tiny lakes'.
What I like to do since I'm a kid is breaking the dams to see the water flowing, building some rudimental embankment to redirect the flow.
I was there in the forest walking. I stopped and broke some dams and built some embankments. I had a lot of fun and #autistic joy.
This is a good thing to remember to let go, do what we like and give us joy.
Family gathering today, nice to see everyone again in one place but my social battery is draining quickly, they can't quite understand why I'm inside watching the Euros football on television instead.#actuallyautistic@actuallyautistic
So, it's cool enough that I finally have the urge to put on my zippered hooded sweatshirt again. Part of my #Neurodivergence involves being comfortable with fabric against my skin -- and not having that (and having to wear short sleeve shirts) has been unbearable. That means it's way too hot for me. #ActuallyAutistic#ND#SkinSensitivity
cc: @actuallyautistic
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 237 , Friday 21/06/2024
Geoff was a good lad last night , the fact that he was medicated into oblivion might explain why 😆
Up at around 6am to find Friday was a glorious day !
Loads of sunshine today had the patio doors open right up to the moment when Mrs S. decided she was going to bed at 8pm (her usual time) & closed them. Seems my enjoyment of the sounds of nature and the lovely evening air are not a factor. 🙄🤦♂️
Finished the migration of MAJ1 to Beige.Party by shipping across the followers list , this all worked fine & there are just some pending follows outstanding.
I did a few little tasks today nothing too extravagant. Made best use of the bright sunshine by running the clothes washer thru a maintenance wash amongst other things.
Final Thoughts.
I would really like to go to the coast, but herself is too busy (reading) & Geoff would object at the moment, maybe later in the summer!
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
#ActuallyAutistic folks in the UK - have you ever used a "guaranteed interview/assessment" scheme for a job application, and ended up getting the job?
I'm weighing up "don't disclose anything until you have a job because it might put them off even if they HAVE to give you an interview" with "do everything you can to get to the interview stage then hopefully you can really impress them".
Last night, I thought I was going to have two video chats with dating prospects. The chats did not happen, and I don't know why. It could be as simple as a miscommunication.
The anxiety, however, is real. I've been cast aside by so many people for dubious reasons that even when things are going well, I think they are going badly. :holdthepain:
Last night, I had a dream that I was at some sort of event. I was with a group of friends. There was a crowd, and we had to make our way through the crowd.
The group got ahead of me, and eventually lost me. There I was alone in the crowd, with no one wondering where I was.
I don't think it was a coincidence that I had that dream after my two video chats did not happen.
This essay somehow resonates in me. Since I can remember, I never understood genders. It's simply not a thing for me. Why should we be restrained and oppress ourselves with a binary choice? It doesn't make any sense in a world of diversity. It's a purely social construction that doesn't feet my view and who I am. We are all humans.
“Autistic people aren’t being fooled into being nonbinary. We see past the binary that fools you.”
"Others have proposed that individuals with autism are more prone to reject ideas they perceive as flawed or logically inconsistent (Kristensen & Broome, 2016), such as social conditioning and social norms (Ansara & Hegarty, 2011), and this facilitates 'coming out.'"
@Oggie@Autistrain@actuallyautistic@neurodiversity
It sounds as if your experience is similar to mine, but I've always framed it differently. What I'm about to say is meant to complement what you and the article have already said, rather than contradict it.
As #ActuallyAutistic people, we're conditioned by the neurotypical world to see ourselves as failures at this baffling but centrally important game that everyone else understands but no one ever explains to us. So we're used to seeing ourselves as being bad at certain things without understanding why people do them or how they're done. And sometimes we respond by deciding that we've tried and failed so many times that we're not even going to try any more.
I've never thought of myself as gender-divergent, and I still don't. I'm a cis het male and I love it. Testosterone is the best drug I know. It's just that I have no interest in sport, I'm not going to pretend to enjoy lager, I'm hopeless at DIY, and I'd rather form meaningful relationships than endlessly compete with people as men usually do. I've always thought of this, not as gender-divergence, but as having the masculine confidence to shape my masculinity around my character, preferences and needs. Being hopeless with a hacksaw doesn't make me gender-queer. 😄
Again: I'm only talking about myself here, not trying to invalidate anyone else's experience.
@nddev @james@DoomsdaysCW@Autistrain@actuallyautistic@neurodiversity
Intriguing. Realizing that I was demisexual (by coming across the word, no less!) was a close second to having been diagnosed as being “on the spectrum”. Pieces didn’t really know existed fell into place.