Should Be My Family’s Motto

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

–William James

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Outward Writing Thinking

I’m apparently writing. I ate some food late, and while I was cooking, I was pacing. I was thinking, I was writing. I seem to burning a little brightly right now; that may explain the frustration. I guess. I’m not sure about that, but maybe the burning somehow intensifies the frustration, the way it sort of intensifies everything. Not everything has to be written for print, but it is interesting that you have suddenly shifted that way. The wind has changed.

So I’m cooking, and I’m pacing, and I’m thinking while I’m pacing, and I’m writing while I’m thinking. I paced while I ate the bowl of noodles, thinking and writing. And playing with the cat. But still the thinking, it is writing thinking, and not just writing thinking, outward writing thinking. Thinking about writing that is meant to be read by others, as opposed to all this other writing which has just been for myself.

It is weird to be burning without the tension. I thought that burning brighter was related to the tension, that the increased energy was coming from all the stress my body was creating. But right now, my body isn’t stressed; I don’t feel tense, or I didn’t until I started to think about it. Pacing is pretty tense; not being able to sit down has been happening a lot lately. Maybe the tension manifests itself in other ways than a balled up gut and shoulders up past your ears, waking up in a panic for no reason. Maybe it’s pacing, and thinking, and thinking that turns outward.

The last time I turned outward, I was dating. And then things got weird, not with them, but with me. I started feeling possessive of my time, of doing things by myself. I don’t feel like the other person was asking for too much, and they were definitely someone who was willing to be flexible, willing to give me my space. But I wanted all of it, all of the time, all of the things. I didn’t want to go out and do things with someone else; I wanted to do things by myself, and it felt unfair to be in a relationship with someone if that was what I really wanted.

It was never a question of “if” I was going to start dating again; the “when” came sooner than I expected, but it went ok. It was actually going really well. So well that it was startling to realize that this nice good thing that was happening was not what I wanted at all. See, I wanted to write about this, and now it is happening. Let’s lay things out here.

I always wanted to be in a relationship, always wanted to be in love, but I wanted it for the wrong reasons. I was a creature of shame. My parents made me so ashamed of myself that I denied who I was and pretended to be a different person, tried to be the person I thought they wanted me to be. But if I could find someone who loved me, then I could use their love as a replacement for my lack of self-love. I could feel good about myself because they loved me.

There are so many problems with this situation, beyond the fact that you buried your true self in the basement when you were a toddler. You will be forever trying and forever failing to be someone who doesn’t actually exist as you try and guess what your partner wants or needs; meanwhile you will be denying your own wants or needs because you don’t want to step out of character, so the best way to do that is to be the wallflower, the shy one who has no preference.

It took a lot, a lot of hard work, a lot of writing that other people will never read, but I changed. I learned to love myself, to give up the shame. It didn’t hurt that there was no one left, either to love me or to be ashamed for. Embracing that child that I buried all those years ago started a healing process that ultimately allowed me to give up the shame altogether, to not live in a constant process of second-guessing whether what I was thinking or doing would be seen as good or bad, which then led me to be able to start unwinding and letting go of all of that anxiety. Anxiety my body still inflicts on itself from time to time, without reason or cause.

But through it all, the idea was to get to a point where I could take my show on the road. It’s one thing to embrace the child you were so ashamed of you hid them from the world; it is another thing to stand up next to someone and be confident enough in who you are, be enough in love with yourself that you don’t feel the need to change, to shapeshift. It’s one thing to say you’ve unmasked; it’s another to sit and meet a stranger and not change. And then I found myself dating, while I’m going through the seasonal tension that hits me every fall, a traumatic response ringing through the decades, and I find myself burning bright. But I didn’t shapeshift. I remained the same. I passed the test.

But something was making me upset. And this part I’m still teasing out; I’m not sure what the answer is, or what even the problem is. The problem may be autism, the difference in wiring. But as I tried to track down what it was that I did want, and what things I didn’t want, it seemed more and more like what I didn’t want to do was spend time with other people, that I wanted to spend time with myself. And then, like I said, it didn’t seem fair to feel like that and be in a relationship with someone, so we ended it.

But it was a radical shift for me. I loved being in love, though now that I think about it, I love when something has my focus and attention. All of the women I mooned over gave me tunnel to escape from the the world through. I never thought that I would hit a point where I’m not really interested in seeing other people. Any other people. But here we are.

And this is weird, as well, because usually my outward writing has been more seductive; I want to make the reader love me. I don’t anymore. Well, I don’t want them to hate me, but I know I have no control either way. But now I’m turning outward without looking for love, because I don’t need it. I’ve already got it.

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Blogapocalypse

It was a long bad day. I was going to write today. It had such promise at the start. Ideas were just bubbling through, and for some reason the wind has shifted. I write all the time, but it’s for me, for my journal. I have to fight to direct the writing outward and share it with the world. But not this morning. This morning the thoughts all wanted to be free. I usually dither about my “audience” which is really just code for what voice I’m going to write with, what mask I’m going to put on.

I mean, the first clue should have been when I knocked over the coffee maker trying to make a second cup, sending boiling water and coffee grounds all over the kitchen, burning my hand in the process. That should have been the first clue that things were not going to go as planned. Maybe I should have listened then, but I didn’t take it as an omen at the time, just shrugged and started cleaning. The thoughts were still bubbling through me, and I couldn’t wait to get my fingers on the keys.

Then I wrote the first piece, a throwaway thing about this game I’ve played for the past couple of days, because that was the freshest thing on my mind, and then everything went to hell, and I spent the rest of the day in the nightmare-fueled world of WordPress Customer Service. Which was exceedingly awful for the simple fact that they just don’t have enough customer service people to do the job, so even though you have “24/7” access to “priority” customer service, it’s going to take them six hours to get to your 30 minute problem. A problem which still exists in some form, but at least by the end of the day, I could post my crappy blog post about the crappy train game and be happy with it.

I’m actually not happy with it, but I’m happy that the basic function worked. I think I might delete it and repost it. Something weird happened to the Markdown. It used to be the markdown got converted automatically, but that shifted at some point. I remember going around this mulberry bush before, but I can’t remember what the solution was. And I’m locked out of the mobile app, or rather the mobile app is insisting on doing some sort of 2FA that doesn’t exist. And the little widget that used to float in the corner that I used to login into my blog is gone, and I can’t seem to bring that back. And for a while the stupid dickbar returned–I popped a blood vessel when that happened. The WordPress Happiness Engineer took care of that with a little CSS jiggery-pokery that I think may be against the rules, but I really don’t care at this point.

It’s really stupid for this blog, but I think I’m going to look into shifting to a different hosting provider. I thought getting it straight from WordPress would be the best option, but I was clearly wrong.

Now we’re back, though. The thoughts are still flowing, but I’m kind of worn out. I thought I’d sit here and write more, get these out and onto the page, but man, I’m just tapped. I don’t know when the Internet got this bad, but it’s really bad. Customer service is just a joke, and you can’t get decent answers from a search engine anymore. I was just trying to track down what some of the WP specific CSS tags might be, and I had to resort to the AI feature on the search page, because the regular search was not returning anything useful.

And it wears you out to be that frustrated for that long. I used to live like that. God, that was awful, to be like that from dawn to dusk, all hours of the day, upset at everyone and everything. I felt it creep up on me today; I killed my IFTTT account in a pique of frustration the other day. It makes me feel so awful, so out of control, but on the other hand, when something like this happens, I can’t let it go. The monotropic mind closes like a steel trap and it will not put the broken blog down and I’m just being super obnoxious for six hours until someone finally paid attention to me. Yuck.

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A Critter Carol

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Train Sim World 5

I’ve been playing this game for the past couple of days. It doesn’t look like I’m going to be playing it today. I might have drunk my fill. It did engage the monotropic attention tunnel for me, and what’s interesting is how little game it took to do it.

Train Sim World is a sim. You have to stretch to call it a game. I had to make a character and give him a name, and he proceeded to collect points for doing things which allowed him to level up, but what those points and levels mean, I couldn’t actually say. Instead, I can tell you that I am now familiar with the inner workings of the cab of a specific type of electric train used to ferry passengers in the United Kingdom. I know where the wiper controls are, and how to turn them on.

I think I’m a perimeter train enthusiast, or maybe a former train enthusiast. This software is definitely written for the train enthusiast. If you are someone who has dreamed of driving a passenger train in England, oh baby, are you in luck. If you are not, you will either become one, or find a different game. As near as I can tell, the game is that you will sit in this driver’s seat for the next hour, while you drive this train up and down the line in real time. There is no music; there are no mobs or power-ups. Each map has a rudimentary set of collectibles that you can wander around on foot to find, but these really feel arbitrary, as if someone told the developer that they needed to put something resembling an actual video game in their game.

But learning how to drive the train was interesting. It’s not hard. It’s a train. You can’t steer it. You make it go forward, faster and slower, and sometimes, but not often enough, you get to go backwards. Otherwise, it’s about learning to read the signals and the speed limits. The signals are either green, yellow, or red. Green means go, and since you just drive the train and don’t have to handle the dispatching or switching, most of your signals ahead should be green. Yellow means be prepared to stop, and red means stop. In the game, if you pass a red signal, the run ends and you have to start over. What was interesting is that despite each engine having a detailed tutorial so that you will know where the wiper controls are, there was very little information about speed limits and signals, which made this harder to learn.

But that is the game. Sit at the station loading passengers. Shut the doors once you get the signal to, and leave the station. Keep the train under the speed limit, and slow down properly at the next station to pull up to a stop nice and gently, and open the doors. Lather, rinse, and repeat for the next hour. That is the game. Did I mention there is no music? The in game ambient sounds are pretty well done, but I really found myself wanting a radio to listen to after a while.

Needless to say, it was a very stress-free experience. Going down the rails at night was almost meditative. Eventually, though, it got a little boring. The base game comes with three maps, a UK one, a German one, and a USA one, each with different trains. Like I said, the game was made for the train enthusiast. What it really reminded me of where these videos we found when the kids were little. I think it’s popular in Germany, but these were videos about super detailed miniature and remote controlled construction videos, and the miniature environments that had been built so that people could do miniature construction with their miniature construction equipment. It’s the verisimilitude that’s important, the level of detail in recreating the real world. I was taken how nice the interior of the cabs looked in the UK compared the American trains. Even the newer American trains had beat up, dingy interiors, while the UK trains were neat and tidy.

I started playing it because I was looking for something that was low stress, and this definitely fit that bill. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough frame for me to hold onto. While you can switch hats and be the conductor for a while, and you can ride the trains as a passenger and then walk about the stations looking for the aforementioned collectibles, that’s about it. You can purchase a huge variety of maps and trains from the store. I think the idea of the game is that you find a map and train set that you like, and then you play it over and over, because the game is getting to drive the train. For some people, that’s enough to make it fun. For me, it was interesting to learn and explore, but I think I’m done.

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What a Day That Was

You feel like talkin’ to someone/who knows the difference between right and wrong

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I saw the younger version of you shopping in her pajamas at the grocery store today The post appeared first on dorkFarm.

I saw the younger version of you shopping in her pajamas at the grocery store today

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Cloudy with a chance of grief

There was a moment there, while I was cooking, a moment where grief crept up on me. I wasn’t expecting it. It was suddenly very unfair. I had done all of this work, I had endured all of this pain, I had corrected myself, but I still lost it, lost all of it. It made me very sad. The shadow says that’s the price. You don’t get out of hell without a sacrifice. You can’t look back. You can’t go home again.

So then it’s our old friend grief, once again, gracing our kitchen, causing me to pause and pull my hanky out of my back pocket to wipe my eyes. I missed it all, I wanted it all back, and it hurt so much that it is all gone forever. And because grief is an old friend now, I know to sit with it. Gently cry with it, rub its back, slowly and gently as we mourn.

Because grief shows us the worth of what we lost, makes us see how beautiful and valuable it was, and yes, it seems cruel, and yes, it is painful, but it’s a good reminder. It was worth something. It did have some meaning, or we wouldn’t be crying over its loss now. And as you work the barb of the hook back out, maybe you can honor that by simply appreciating it, even as you miss it.

Grief doesn’t stay long. We’ve learned not to overstay our welcomes. Grief has cleared the table and done the dishes by the time you sit on the couch with your boys, and you can authentically smile as they hand you your controller for the game. Because there is worth now, there is meaning now. Sometimes a little grief can help you see it.

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No Illegal People

Once you label a people “illegal”, that is exactly what the Nazis did to Jews. You do not label a people “illegal.” They have committed an illegal act. They are immigrants who crossed illegally. They are immigrants who crossed without papers. They are immigrants who crossed without permission. They are living in this country without permission. But they are not an illegal people.

–Elie Wiesel

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Tryborgs

I went looking for a word to name the Donna Haraways of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a word inclusive of cyberfeminists and transhumanists, a word that captures the theft of cyborg identity, and mocks the thieves a bit. I call them tryborgs. They have tried to be cyborgs, but they are stuck on the attempt, like a record skipping, forever trying to borg, and forever consigned to their regular un-tech bodies. They are fake cyborgs. They can be recognized because, while they preach cyborg nature, they do not actually depend on machines to breathe, stay alive, talk, walk, hear or hold a magazine. They are terribly clumsy in their understanding of cyborgs because they lack experiential knowledge. And yet the tryborgs – for reasons that I do not understand – are protective of cyborg identity. I often find my bio re-written by a tryborg: ‘She claims to be a cyborg’ or ‘she calls herself a cyborg’. Imagine if they said this about my other identities: ‘She claims to be a woman. She calls herself white.’

Common Cyborg | Jillian Weise | Granta

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Comment on Other People by kiyote23

In reply to Laina Eartharcher.

Thank you. It’s only been five and a half years for me since the diagnosis, and I still have to remind myself that I’m not the person I thought I was on a daily basis. It is getting easier, and I do think I’d be farther along if the last couple of years hadn’t been so harrowing. It’s just that it’s lonely work, but then I’m scared about what I’ll do to myself to connect with another person. But thank you for reminding me that I have made some great strides, and I have found some cool stuff underneath. I need to hold onto that.

Comment on Other People by Laina Eartharcher

I’ve been in a similar place, friend. Denying who I was and acting a part for others, to package myself into a more socially acceptable “me”. Then realizing what that had been doing to me all those years and working up the courage to dare let the mask slip. And then re-discovering who/what was really underneath. Lotsa processing involved. In my experience, I’m grateful to be able to say that things have gotten easier, but I’ve had 8.5 years thus far to figure things out and get used to it all. You’ll get there. There’s cool stuff underneath. Promise 😊

Comment on Sometimes these prompts make me laugh out loud by D. Murphy

laughing over here, too.

Comment on An Imaginary Life by Menteyvida

Well yes, but not everybody

Comment on Comrades Make Community by Othered – dorkFarm

[…] people of the world were not my comrades, and I very quickly felt like I was different than everyone […]

Comment on Marvel SNAP by Now – dorkFarm

[…] SNAP (iOS). Wrote a longer post about it, but SNAP has become my go-to time waster when I have a few minutes to […]

Comment on Family Goals by kiyote23

In reply to MyAutisticJournal.

You’re welcome. I’m still struggling with how to make something like this work, but it has at least caused a shift in me in not only how I view my present family, but also my childhood.

Comment on Family Goals by MyAutisticJournal

Wow. This is as profound as it is timely. I may share with my family. Thank you for sharing.

Comment on Language is not what you think it is – Absolute Negation by Absolute Negation

Thank you for the astute observation! Gödel is indeed an opening onto Derridean post-structuralism. It was at a time where the refutation of naive realism a la Russell and the early Wittgenstein opened up the so called linguistic turn in philosophy. The obsession with symbolic representation is thus not only meaning “language” in a literal sense, but for Derrida “language” is rather a more all-encompassing definition of any-symbolic-system-whatever. Also, as a consequence of the symbolic turn, “word games” are more and more considered as ‘games’ (as in chess) than mere communication.

And finally, there is no escape from the notion that meaning is always contextual, always contingent. Meaning always refers to the context in which it is found. And that, in turn depends on how it arises and how people interpret it. There’s no such thing as “meaning in itself”.

Potential explication of the incompleteness that leads to a new vision of language from Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation: Bubbles: A set of ideas that are similar to each other, often with related implications, that is sometimes connected through their relation to an idea that has been expressed before. Bubbles are often connected by thin strands of contextual, meaning-game induced organization, but never can they coalesce into a “one true center” (a la Eiffeltower; as one of the philosophers famously said: “I chose to sit at that table so that I never had to look at that damned thing again”).

If you have questions or comments, please feel free to get in touch. It is always great to see fellow enthusiasts in terms of language and philosophy.