#People talk about sleep being vital for memories but I've had a bad memory for my own life as long as I can remember. No pun intended. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pbandjesse · 1 year

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Today was a pretty long day. With a lot of moving parts. But it wasn't a bad day at all. I am just very tired.

I slept okay last night. I didn't get woken up as much but I did wake up with a little bit of a sore throat still. I had been very cold at one point and ended up . But I was pretty cozy after that. I think James slept a little bit better. But they emotionally were not in a great place this morning. Honestly they weren't a great place emotionally for the entire day.

They told me that a lot of the day they were reliving the accident. Which was making them feel very bad. And I felt really bad that they felt really bad. And I just don't think anybody was having a good time.

But we tried to be there for each other. I appreciate that I got to sleep in until 7:30. And I got dressed and we made sure that we had all of our paperwork for the doctors and we headed to the museum.

James wanted to get everything set up before we left for our appointment. So I dropped them off and I went to get breakfast. And then I came back and I ate in the back while I talked to my co-workers. We have a new person, her name is also Jess, and it was very nice meeting her. We also got all the table set up and I did a little checking in with a few people before all of a sudden it was 9:00 and me and James had to go. We'd be back in a few hours.

The appointment was great honestly. Doctor's office was a little in need of update. The lights were a little yellow. They weren't very modern. But everyone was a very nice. We didn't have to wait very long. We filled out our paperwork and we handed them the folder with all of our information. And they were very nice when I had questions because I had never had someone need to request medical documents from anywhere before. Or at least I've never tried to do that in my memory.

Oh man I just noticed that my earring is missing. I had to take up a few minutes to find back. The only ones I seem to have are very tiny. It's not a huge deal. My piercings never close up. But it is annoying.

James have their appointment first. And the doors were pretty thin. Because I could hear a lot of the conversation. And in my opinion James was not telling them how much pain that they are in. And that frustrated me. But the nursery took me back to to my vitals and stuff was really sweet. And when I went back to the doctor he was really nice too. I choked that I have a whole list of ailments but doctors only ever want to handle one or two. And he agreed once we got through the whole list. But we also both agreed that me going to see a rheumatologist is the best course of action. And that hopefully whatever they fix will help fix the other stuff. Not perfect system but it's something. And he wants me and James to come in to do blood work on Tuesday. And he also asked if I had considered being assessed for bipolar disorder or depression. And I told him I would consider it. Though I don't think I'm anywhere close to some people in the manic and heavy mood swings. But it's definitely something I thought about.

So we're done pretty quickly honestly. And we were back at the museum before 10:30. But it was not in time for me to jump on the tour I was supposed to have gone on at 10:00. It wasn't a big deal. Jessica had done my role of watching our new guy, Jim. And so I went and checked in with Del and talk to James for a little bit. And then it was time for the kids lunch so it wasn't like a huge deal at all. It's pretty chill honestly.

And my two programs that I had after lunch were excellent. I was like on a roll. I was very funny. And I spoke very clearly. I was training Jim and I think I did a good job of explaining different ways you can do stuff. And the kids seem to have a great time. We started with balls and track. And they built their roller coasters. And there were lots of laughs. And I've gotten better over the years of not worrying too much about rushing. They just want to build and have a good time and that's important.

And we finished exactly on time once they were cleaned up. And then we went across the hall to go to the assembly line. I was alone with them then. I mean the river like 10 chaperones but there was no other staff members. And we had such a good time. They definitely got a little louder towards the end. But I think they did great and they made all the cars and they were all very proud of themselves. During the video one of the parents asked me if I had training as a teacher. And she said that I was really good at my job and that made me feel awesome. I really did feel like I was on my A game today.

I took him to the bathroom and then said goodbye to them. They were all very sweet and saying goodbye to me.

Back to the break room to do some checking in and a few supplies. There's a lot of lively conversation back there. And then me and Jordan would go out to our car so that he could give me the rest of his mom sewing stuff. A lot of it's going to go to summer camp. I'm hoping that we can do quilt squares again this year. And some of it I'll keep for my own projects. But I really hope that Jordan's mom's memory can be honored through the projects that will make. It was really nice of him to give me all that stuff. Though it did fill up our entire car and it was very heavy.

And then I went to sweep the assembly line and got my rollers to work on the next set of Christmas cards with museum. Which took me about an hour and a half to do. A lot quicker than the other day. And they went pretty well overall. I found a little bit of a better way to do the two color prints. But it wasn't perfect. I'm getting better every time though so I'm hoping that as we go on they will just improve and improve and improve.

Jack was training the new people, and Becca, to do all of the machines on tour. And after they finish doing that Jess, the new girl, came back so I could talk to her all about the linotype and just about museum stuff. She wants to go back to school to get her master's degree in museum studies. And we just talk shop a while. About how not working at ships was probably her dodging a bullet and just some of the weird stuff about working in small museums. The not even political stuff but the weird decisions that they make. And she's really cool. I hope that she stays a while because I enjoy her company.

I want to meet James at the front. But they had to stay for a few extra minutes because there was a meeting that an artist was coming in to talk to Paula about the gift shop. But she was supposed to come tomorrow and she accidentally came today. But that was fine I wasn't in a rush. We were planning on just stopping at the Walgreens in the shopping center before we went home to get James's prescriptions and some new gauze and medical tape.

But then we got up to the shopping center the Walgreens was closed. Like they took the store away closed. I wonder if it's because the grocery store just opened. I'm not really sure. It's very strange because that was a nice Walgreens.

So we went to the one in our neighborhood. But the medication was out of stock until tomorrow. Thankfully James has enough to get through tonight but that was very annoying that they didn't tell us that. So we just got the gauze and medical tape and a tube of Pringles. And we went home.

James made pasta bake for dinner. And I would spend a good amount of time coming up and down the stairs bringing stuff inside. I am not strong enough to carry everything so I had to make a whole bunch of trips using our IKEA bag. And that was fine. I did run into someone who just moved across the street whose cat apparently got out while they were moving in. And I feel horrible about it. Really hope that they find them. And I'll keep an eye out for a stripey brown cat.

Once I came inside I was excited because me and James have two Advent calendars to open. We've only done one so far. We're going to open the other one after they finish their broadcast. And it was very good chocolate. The other ones going to be jam. I'm very excited to do Advent calendars.

I worked in the studio for a long time. Organizing all of the fabrics and notions that Jordan gave us. I decided what I'm going to keep, what's going to go to puhtok, And what I can store for now to decide later. And I'm pretty happy with my choices. And so I decided since I was on a roll to start cutting fabric for a quilt that I want to start working on. I want to do a quilt dress or some other wearable. So I wanted to pick colors that I thought would look really good together that I would definitely wear. So I worked on that for a bit but my back started hurting after like an hour of cutting. So then I just put things away and I've been hanging out since then. I had a bowl of cereal. I watched a video. I worked on my felting for a while. I added lions to my other shoe. Very excited about it.And now I'm going to go take a shower.

I am going to go to my parents tomorrow. I'm going to have dinner with Joanna and I'm going to see Jess on Saturday. I am a little nervous about leaving James but James says that they will feel worse if I don't go. Which I understand not wanting to change my stuff but I also 100% would stay home if they want me to. I just have to trust that they are telling me the truth and that they will reach out to friends if they need someone.

I hope you all have a good night. Stay warm. It really is starting to feel like winter consistently now. Sleep well everyone.

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radicalposture · 2 years

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Hi! That post u reblogged about writers having a tiny dissociated piece of themself analyzing their emotions and the things they're feeling you tagged as also a symptom of autism, can you elaborate a little? It's very interesting to me

yeah no problem! (twas this post, for reference)

so in my experience and from what i see of others experiences when you're ND and especially if you're late diagnosed there can be this phenomenon where you overcompensate for your 'natural deficiencies', as it were, by developing an extreme competence in a skill that's not exactly the same but runs kind of parallel and does the same job, if that makes sense?

for example, my adhd makes me extremely forgetful, so to counteract i've become an incredibly organised person (colour coded schedule, reminder apps, to do lists, etc.) and people say wow you're always on top of things! but its an 'artificial' skill. its something i learned and not something i naturally am. being a good organiser and having a good memory are not the same thing. i have a terrible memory, but the learned skill of being a good organiser does the same job and achieves the same result. similarly, because i'm autistic i am terrible at reading people and all that general social interaction stuff. but to compensate for that i've become very good at understanding psychology. so while i literally cannot tell when my boss is joking with me or how to respond to a normal question from her, i could tell you exactly how her brain works, why she acts the way she does on certain days, what went wrong in her marriage, how to word a request so i always get her to agree with me... its not the same skill, but it does a similar job and most of the time covers up the fact that i have this glaring hole where my social skills are supposed to be.

so to get back to the writer question. some autistic people really struggle to name and describe their own feelings (sometimes called alexithymia). i especially struggle with this. the best i can describe it is i feel like theres a missing link somewhere? like for normal people i guess it goes like

an event happens to them > it creates a feeling > the feeling has effects

so like idk. they have a fight with their friend (event). they feel sad/frustrated/embarassed (feeling). there are side effects, like maybe theyre irritable or they cant sleep or lose their appetite (effects).

but for me its more like

an event happens > ????????? > ahhh i can feel the effects.....

so because theres this void where the 'appropriate' feeling should be im missing the vital signpost thats supposed to indicate to me how good or bad the event was, or the sequence of events that led to a behaviour, or how im supposed to respond or whatever. for example last week i was in dublin and i was really excited to go to the gallery but after lunch i'd suddenly lost all interest in going and i was like huh? what happened there? so after talking it out with my sister i figured out like ohhhh it was really crowded when we got lunch and i got really overwhelmed because we looked up the menu in advance and decided what we'd get but THEN when we went in they had a COMPLETLEY DIFFERENT menu and i was too shy to ask what was up with that so i didnt really enjoy the food we got and they had a weird self serve system and i got really self conscious and and and. and now im exhausted and thats why im suddenly not interested in going to the gallery anymore. BUT. and heres the crucial thing. at no point did i FEEL exhausted or overwhelmed or sensory overloaded. i had to INFER how i was feeling from context clues without ever actually feeling the actual feelings myself. what makes it doubly annoying is that i do know what feelings are 'supposed' to feel like because sometimes it'll be like oh no! a sad thing happened! i feel sad! and then i cry. but thats only like 5% of the time and the other 95% im like crying and i have no idea why, time to go on a detective quest to understand what the hell it is this time. which is exhausting.

so to get back to the topic at hand!!! sorry for the long and maybe irrelevant sidebar!!! but here's why i think the post is relevant to autism (broken down into points bc i think theres a few reasons and they maybe overlap)

because we often struggle so much with understanding and identifying our own emotions we often develop a hypervigilance around them. we end up with this constant monitoring and checking and analysing to see if we're doing it 'right'. NTs (apparently) just feel their feelings. they feel happy. they feel sad. they feel angry. and they just feel them and act on them and don't think that much about it. but because i so often feel the 'wrong' thing or more likely nothing at all it becomes this constant stream of 'ok I'm feeling kind of angry but like. is that appropriate in this situation? am i too angry? am i not angry enough? am i expressing it right? do other people understand what i mean?'

the performance aspect is so interesting to me bc literally everything feels like a performance to me... when i was getting diagnosed i said to my psychologist 'when im around other people i always feel like ive suddenly been pulled up on stage and told the plays about to start and im like WHAT PLAY and the curtains suddenly gone up and everyone's looking at me but i didn't get a script and they all know their lines but i didn't even know there WAS a play much less that i was supposed to act in it and also I'm really bad at ad libbing so i cant even fake it i just stand there getting more and more panicked' and she was like 'that's autism babe <3'

in addition i often feel like i HAVE to act or exaggeratedly perform to get my point across. especially when i was younger but even now, like for example when im sick ill be 'ok family today i feel really sick im going to call in sick to work and stay in bed. goodbye.' and then i get the hmm you dont LOOK sick and its like? i told you i was sick what more do you want. so sometimes i feel this pressure to like put on an act like i have to do all the croaky voice COUGH COUGH ooogh im sick bleggh etc etc and then people go wow you look sick! you should stay in bed! like i TOLD you that was that not enough. and the line then becomes really blurred like am i performing these actions because that's what's natural in this situation or am i pretending to go through the motions in order to perform the socially acceptable signals to communicate my intentions because that's what people expect but left to myself i never would... you have to not only deal with your own feelings but also read your audiences mind to figure out how they would best receive your message and then translate from your native tongue to theirs because you know they can't speak your language and won't even try so you have to be fluent in their language or you get ignored..... exhausting!

tangential but this post on r/aspergirls yesterday struck a chord: "I’m tired of having to be sugary sweet, bubbly, and happy in order for people to not feel threatened by me. I feel like because I present feminine as well, people need me to coddle them like little babies in order for their egos not to be bruised."

on the other hand because i am so divorced from my emotions its so much easier to be a kind of objective outside observer exactly as the post described. because my actions so often feel/are fake or performed i can consciously analyse them BECAUSE theyre conscious choices im making and not spontaneous unconscious actions. and even when they're real i can also be very detached from them. past experiences in particular i can analyse them very objectively and not feel the feeling over again. i feel like my past emotions are in little glass cases and i take them down and examine them and then put them back.

but going back to the original post, people might say 'but thats just a writer/artist/actor thing' ya and why do you think people are drawn to those careers... people are drawn to career paths or interests because of the kind of people they are, they are usually not made into a certain kind of person by a career or interest. once i said something like 'ha ha sorry im being really detailed about this i guess my classics degree turned me into a bit of a pedant ha ha', to which my sister responded 'has it never occurred to you that you did a classics degree because you were already an insufferable pedant' which shut me up pretty fast lol. what i mean is people are drawn to these things because of the kind of brain they have and the particular bent their minds take. im not saying all autistic people are like this or that or that NTs cant be writers or actors or whatever. but so many ND people are drawn to these kinds of things and we're often so so good at it too.

ND people are often drawn to fiction because it just makes our brains tick a certain way. my brain in particular loves sequences and putting things in order and im also really good at taking huge amounts of seemingly disparate information and compiling it into a coherent whole. we can also be amazing at finding or making connections between things that seem to have no connection at all. and aren't these things the very basis of all fiction? isn't that what a story is? one event and then another one after it, and seeing things that are different but that can be grouped together to be put in the same narrative? isn't that what a metaphor is? you take two things that are not the same but you find out how they could be the same and you hold these two entirely different things next to each other and say see? here's the ways they're similar. here's how you can sort them into the same category. here's the lines you can draw between them. and as ursula k leguin said a story is just one big metaphor. the novelist must express in words what cannot be expressed in words.

ND people are also often drawn to fiction because its a condensed or simplified or hyperreal version of real life. you can read a novel or watch a film or tv show and watch how the characters behave and talk. they describe how they're feeling inside. you can see how one event or action leads to another. its a way to learn how the world works so you can copy it. it teaches you how other people think and it teaches you how they feel and how to feel yourself as well. which is kind of the entire point of fiction anyway but autistic people seem to have a special affinity for it. also we are always right.

EDIT: autistic people especially learn by copying or mirroring. often we learn a skill especially a social skill by copying someone else. when i go into an unfamiliar shop or social event i take time to watch what everyone else is doing first so i can copy how you’re ‘supposed’ to behave. fiction is so useful for this because you can do it in the comfort of your own home and you can pause or rewind or repeat as many times as you need. and so often it’s unconscious as well! it’s not like i said to myself ‘i have no idea how relationships work so i’m going to read pride and prejudice to find out’ but i did learn from these books first and not like. my ‘intuition’ from the world around me. we naturally seek to learn what we don’t know even unconsciously

‘classic’ literature (which most people use to mean victorian novels) seems to have a particular draw for some autistic people as well and it definitely did for me. i think it’s because the preoccupation of the novel in the nineteenth century was with human behaviour, relationships, psychology, social questions etc. especially the ‘novel of manners’ or the ‘social problem novel’ types, austen and dickens etc. there’s less focus on melodrama, unreality, it’s very much a genre that deals with real people in real situations. i soaked it up like a sponge lol. i think this is where the weirdo austen obsession comes from also. you know the kind of people who r like ‘ooh i love jane austen everyone had such good manners in ye old days’ girl you are just searching for a world with discrete social rules that make sense. ALSO i’m convinced this is where weeb/koreaboo/anglophile/any other fetishisation of another culture comes from. obviously an interest in another culture is nothing bad in itself but can so easily tip into creepy fetishisation. if you take japanese culture for example there’s very strict ‘rules’ that seem to apply to that culture that an autistic person might latch onto as easy to follow eg. honorifics & associated dynamics, bowing, etc etc. obviously japanese culture is just as varied and complex as our own but from the limited/xenophobic perspective of the western weeb it becomes kind of like a game. there’s such a temptation with autistic people where you kind of go ‘well i don’t fit into my culture but if i went to this other culture which has very clear rules that i could follow i would be happy’. which is obviously a temptation which must be resisted because it’s a) untrue and b) usually racist

also why autistic people are especially drawn to fandoms! every fandom has its own rules and lingo and once you learn them you’re good to go! and because a fandom is a very small and closed system focused on one thing it’s like a little mini world with very few rules that is easy to navigate. and the people in the fandom have the same interest as you so they’re not going to reject you and you always have talking points

CONVINCED this is why kpop has such a grip on people here lol. compared to western artists the kpop system is so structured like there’s a limited number of companies, there’s a very specific pipeline the band goes through, there’s very specific roles within the band they’re supposed to adhere to, success is measured by specific awards or streaming goals. it’s kind of gamified and you KNOW how gamification is euphoric to the ND brain. also autistic people love numbers and stats so i can see why some people on twitter are obsessed with that kind of thing. have more to say on this subject but that would expose me as Knowing Things About Kpop 💀

wow that was long and a lot of its not really relevant but ig these are just some thoughts it inspired. again not all of it applies to all ND people and it might apply to some NT people, but this is how my brain in particular works and i've seen enough that it seems to be the case for a fairly big proportion of other ND people too. thanks!

#sorry abt the delay too -_-#sorry i’m adding as i think of things #brain tag

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