On page 216 of “Unmasking Autism” is a request to reflect on how your life is in accordance with your values.
This excercise isn’t included in the worksheets online for some reason, but I found it rather relevant anyway. Also, I wrote the draft for this before I revisited my values for the previous post, som my initial thoughts were quite oriented towards “being without concern” as the framing value. Also, I am not at all following the “instructions” for this, as it were, beyond using the headlines as a discussion starter.
Currently, my days are rather unusual, given I am on long term sick leave. There are tasks enough anyway. Children need to get to school, and get home again. Groceries and laundry and other household tasks are inescapable. They do have a purpose, though, and a relevance. Not going to work gives room to recuperate and reassess my life going forward (corny, sure, but also accurate).
Working full time in a high-stress job, I had precious little time to recuperate, and often had very low energy reserves when I got home. After family and household obligations, there was not very much time or energy to pursue creative endeavors. It is, naturally, easier to find time in my current situation; even if energy is less consistent.
It probably is part of existing in our end-stage capitalist hellscape; but most of my time is not at all my own; and what time I do have has many demands on it. My flesh suit needs some kind of attention, and I have many creative interests. And exercising or writing or drawing or photography or 3D modelling or homelabbing isn’t neccessarily decompression time. It certainly can be; but sometimes I also want to watch the cool show or read the dimension hopping wizard book or assemble a pretty puzzle.
I don’t really mind the doing of the mundanities of life, as stated above. I would rather not need to. Having fairy housekeepers would be nice.
I consistently look forward to:
Some of the mundanities can be front-loaded or outsourced. Meal prepping, frozn meals and take-out solve the food production is too much problem day-to-day (take-out isn’t economically an option very often though). Laundry can be batched, as can grocery shopping. A great deal more intentionality in when tasks occur seems neccessary. I don’t have a fairy house cleaning service; and cannot afford a mundane one. I need to let go of my own demands – I can only prioritize so many things.
The final step of the values-based integration journey begins. It is now time to tie it all together, and hopefully gain some personal insight.
But first, I must revisit the “Identifying Values” step. I deliberately held this piece of the puzzle somewhat wrong; which creates an issue. I only defined one value: the freedom to just be, without worry of how.
A quick rundown:
of the other writing related to the book)?
I need to do things that matter. They can matter to me, or to someone i care for and about, or go toward making the world less horrible. The care and nurture aspect of my work, or the personal project of knowing myself better, like all this writing.
Conversely, I can find it hard and/or frustrating to not have a purpose. I loathe looking up from reels on my phone and suddenly an hour or more have gone
I need ( to feel like i ) understand the why of things. I still remember a meltdown? I had when I was maybe 8. I was helping with chores, and using two rags to clean seemed excessive – and my mother couldn’t explain it better than ‘because thats how it is done’. I also quite prefer clear parameters for progress and success if at all possible.
Just being is a core value. Some people I can be around more easily than others, sometimes I need time alone to decompress.
Of course, If I overindulge in this impulse, I risk turning into a lonely recluse, even more than currently is the case.
I am almost through the exercises and worksheets in “Unmasking Autism”. Now we have come to communication needs. This is a topic of certain friction in our household, actually.
There was a whole section on “strawberry people” (pp. 203 onward in “Unmasking Autism”) that I found interesting. But also rather depressing, to be frank.
I don’t currently have strawberry people, and I don’t think I have had any for a long while. Outside of family, whom I see way too seldom. Could I hang out and play games and watch movies with my brothers more often, that would go a long way.
But many of the prompts in this section struck home., some from this year.
I am afraid people will abandon me, from bitter experience, some of it as recently as this fall. I thus don’t have many people I can reach out to.
I have discarded some relationships that were exhausting me, maybe a little prematurely. I don’t have much dead weight, I have nothing at all.
And that makes me hella sad. Fuck, I am actually very very lonely. I mean; I knew that. But typing it up does make it more real.
While not included in the worksheets online, there was a challenge listed on page 187 of “Unmasking Autism” that I’m gonna talk about.
Everyday unmasking. Be radically visible, or: let my freak flag fly.
How can I go about that, though? To say it with delicious deliberate alliteration; I am somewhat conscious of being conspicuous. And for some kinds of self expression there is also a practicality element to keep in mind.
But there are things I could do more of, or less self-consciously at least:
There was a collection of challenges that were along the lines of keeping social resources in check. This is more of a challenge. I have a family and am a father, so anticipating others emotions is kind of my job. It’s a hard job sometimes, mind. And when this also has been a central component of my jobby-job as well… there’s a lot of wear and tear.
I am working on just taking action. My wife also has some flavours of neurodivergence, and keeping some decision fatigue from her is actually helpful for both of us.
This turned out quite rambly actually. Masking in general has been on my mind a lot. How much of my behavior is actually me? This will be interesting to unpack, at least.
I am now out of the special interest week series of posts that were dragging me down slightly. Today, the exercise is a reflection on meaningful things.
Without further ado; but with some difficulty:
The way i met and made contact with my (very likely ADHD) wife is rather autistic coded. The story itself will keep, though.
Oh okay this is hard actually. Let’s see…
The topic for the final day of Special Interest week is examples of positivity in my life, derived from my special interests. Writing out the draft for this post was a little overwhelming. I might well do better to celebrate positivity more often.
In the introductory post, I mentioned a confidence in learning new things. “I’ll probably figure that out” has mostly turned out to be true. It is not at all that difficult to change brake pads on bicycle disc brakes, it turns out. Next I need to change gear cables on my son’s old racer, which will probably cost a bit of cussing and frustration. It will turn out fine in the end, I am sure.
Other examples:
I am also interested in dog training. My last dog was a Lot of Dog, which led me to meet many nice people on Instagram. I had 3 and a half years in that wonderful community.
My fitness fascination enabled me to lose a great deal of weight a few years ago, and also made it possible for me to do 170 kg 5x5 a few weeks ago.
So many cool role playing moments from my story affinity, and many exiting hours spent in Hogwarts, Middle Earth, the Seven Kingdoms, the Americas of the Gods, and the far reaches of space and time.
I started training around 14 years old, running and calisthenics. At 17 I switched to an athletically focused high school. I have gone deep into rabbit holes on periodization and other programming. Mostly, I appreciate how simple the principles are. Do more of thing you want better, it get better, for specific training. For general fitness, it is quite similar: Find some movement you at least don’t mind, and maybe even enjoy, and do it regularly.
And also the ‘tism likes to see number go up.
Simple is not at all easy, mind. And many peoples general fitness levels would be greatly improved by some more specific training exercises. Some pulling and pushing with the upper body, and some hip mobility, maybe even loaded.
This is an interest I share with my eldest son. And he seems to enjoy it for much the same reasons: Effort put in according to a plan gives predictable and consistent results. And we can both agree that many internet fit-fluencers are full of shit and need to stop overcomplicating things. To illustrate:
What is the optimal split? If optimizing for hypertrophy (not everyone does), probably 2-3 times/week for the same muscle group. But really, whichever makes it easier to be consistent. If that means every day for an hour, or once to twice a week where it can fit in, so be it. If going very frequently, be aware of rotating focus on consecutive days. If less frequently, stick to a program for a while, and keep intensity and/or volume high.
Until my current sick leave period, I made great progress training one to three times a week.
I have been fascinated by how and why people do what they do for a long while. Mostly I have been aware of this on a macro level. History and civics were fun subjects in school, and I still enjoy long historical videos on YouTube. And see also: my fascination with the Why? of Christianity. And I have a Masters in sociology, probably not at all incidentally.
This interest might also be on a more personal, micro level than I’ve consciosly realized. I kinda sorta backed into caregiving/in-home aid, helped along with a splash of nepotism. I rather quickly found out that I didn’t mind the work at all, and that I was good at it.
Maybe, perhaps, I’ve parlayed an above-average interest in Why People Do That into a career based on answering exactly that question. Answering it in a more narrow scope, mind, working with people with a rather particular and peculiar outlook on the world. People that have rather profound support needs autism in fact (this is an oversimplification of their challenges, but close enough for government work).
It isn’t for nothing I’ve put those Magical Moments that happen in this line of work down as examples of when I feel truly alive. Even now it is difficult to describe properly. There is a unity of existence that can happen when two people align like that.
Facilitating that alignment is hard work though. And it has worn me down over the couple decades I have been in the field. Currently been off work sick for 2 months; with 2 more to go; and my doctor’s word confirming I am not suited for caregiving jobs at the moment.
I would not at all mind utilizing my many years of experience in a related job. Consultation services such as VISO, or the quality inspection function of the field. I also would not mind a teaching position; shaping other minds in preparation for a stint as People Understander.
The topic for this day - collections - didn’t have a big “oh yeah that” thing I collect to serve as a headline. I have been, and am still, fascinated by collections of certain kinds.
Book series as I read them, preferrably the same print run, so the sizes and covers make a coherent whole. Did have quite a few CDs back in the day, but not in a very organized way. All this physical media stuff died off in our home quite a few years back, when we got into a “gaaah too many things kick” and gave almost all of it away. Rather regret downsizing quite so aggressively now though. Having physical representations of books in particular seems like it would be nice now.
I do have a NAS though, and have had one since I was… 17 i think. And digital collections are “free”, and can be as elaborate as desired. I have spent rather a lot of time collecting MP3s and making sure metadata and filenames are correct. Now, I mostly trust the management software to handle the organizing part; but there is still a certain joy in figuring out which versions I want, and fine-tuning the software to suit. I now have more music than I can listen to and more ebooks than I can read.
I almost enjoy the act of organizing collections as much as the collections themselves.
I don’t collect many physical items though. I quite enjoy a good mechanical keyboard, or headphones. I don’t see a need in getting more when what I have is quite adequate, though. I would kind of like a new keyboard, but that is mostly to improve ergonomics, with a more agressive tenting and a thumb sculpt-out. Mini Dactyl style.
There is an argument that I collect tools for hobbies. I have a full set of color pencils, and watercolor pencils, I haven’t used. I do intellectually want to learn to use these things. I don’t take much time to draw at all though, despite being reasonably good at it.
One proper, actual collection I have is my stack of journals going back to 2018. I keep them because I want to; and they might even be useful to a family historian at some point.