If Hemingway was #ActuallyAutistic

"A bottle of soda, lukewarm, unopened"

Anyone have any experience with the so-called « migraine glasses »? I can’t play indoor sports because the rest of the day is ruined by migraine, I’m suspecting the harsh indoor lights are to blame, and I’m looking for solutions other than sunglasses (which I’ll try at some point, odd looks be damned).

@actuallyautistic #ActuallyAutistic love being accused of "blowing up" an employee message board by a neurotypical…

…and the accusation was made behind my back to the board moderators to boot …

…i reiterate a shortened version of the below quote from the other day:

One day, some poor bastard is gonna force you to make a scene. And when that happens, tell you what… I would not want to be the motherfucker on the other side of it. —Teri Rogers-Collins, Paradise

I once chanced upon this conversation starter card thingy, you know the ones I'm talking about, the ones you're bound to find at places where peer support groups gather. It was a black and white drawing of a cat sitting on a roof, looking into the horizon, thinking "Somewhere there is my home". I might've cried a bit when I saw that.

My apartments never feel like homes. Not even the one I technically owned for a while, it still wasn't my home. They're storage boxes, holding cells, lodgings, a roof and four walls, somewhat of a safe harbor or whatnot. But they haven't been homes. I can't remember that last place that felt like my home. Some have felt like someone else's home, that I happened to exist in, but not mine.

And I mean, there's prolly lots of people who feel the same. You think those rich bastards feel like home in whatever you want to call those places they pretend to live in? But then I see someone's place and it's just... Yeah, this is their home, I can see it, I can feel it, this is them existing in this continuum from them outwards, extending to this place. Everything here says it's them.

I wonder if there's a place like that for me too, somewhere.

Taxes are like a signal jammer on my brain.

Abuse Culture project is on hold, mid-transfer of notes from Mastodon, which is just insane that I decided to start that when my accountant needs my tax paperwork in like a week. Trying hard to put a pin in that in such a way I'll find my place again.

(I've decided not to tax strike because, well, Idaho is holding my health insurance hostage. I can't even file an extension under threat of unaffordable medical care. Drat and I was all ready to go back to my Taxes Are Theft libertarian roots!)

Head is full of static now and I barely even got started gathering receipts. There's no noise here baby, it's all signal. But it's 15 HAM operators, two industrial and dubstep stations, and the NOAA weather report all talking on the same channel.

Anyhow, clocking into paid writing work now where I don't even know what what

I feel like talking about being #ActuallyAutistic

First, I want to make it damned clear that several things can be true at once:
1) Some of me being autistic is 100% an *advantage*
2) I'm still disabled, because there's a lot of it that ... isn't

I'm actually really smart. I can see patterns that a lot of other people can't, and it's served me very well as a developer, because it means I write better code, more readable code, and I have been told on multiple occasions that I'm a dev that people like inheriting projects from. This is part of me being autistic.

I'm a decent writer, and what people compliment me the most on? It's all directly related to me being autistic (how I experience the world with different senses, how I connect things, how I treat words and how important I find the *right* word)

I picked up crochet with lightning speed. Within a month, I could do advanced patterns.

I also tire easily, especially when I need to deal with people.

I am seen as very good at talking (and I am), and I'm the one mainly doing phonecalls at home ... but if I don't know what to expect, I have a *really* hard time doing it. Especially if I've done something they might be chiding me for.

Things needs to be in a very narrow band of "not too challenging, but also can't be easy", or I *can't* do them. Not "doesn't want to". Not "I just need to work through it". Can't.

Starting things? Almost impossible without external urging, and if the urging is too much I'll shut down because it's now too stressful.

And that's why "high functioning" or "Light ASD" or whatever the latest fad for dividing autists into "put in homes" vs "doesn't need help" doesn't work: you can be extremely good in one (or more) parts of life, and still need a lot of help in others.

ok maybe i should give yall a proper intro on me #introduction

i'm alex, i'm a kitty ​​ who moved from poland to netherlands (living in Utrecht as of now) in september 2024 kind of by force

i speak polish and english, as well as trying to learn dutch (with little to no results though)

at the time of writing this i am no longer a neet woohoo ​​ i got a job

i usually draw things in my free time or endlessly scroll the internet for no reason. i collect plushies and keep them on my desk, as well as collect pokemon TCG cards.

i also gamed a lot, but nowadays i am trying to find motivation to boot up something else than osu from time to time

if i get the inspiration i work on static websites, most notably my personal site, dokokashira.nl (that needs to be updated asap because of how many outdated things there are

still morphing and trying to discover myself now that i have a proper environment to do so

i'm a trans gay guy and started my HRT on february 8 2025 ​​

i'm proudly disabled (HoH, AuDHD, C-PTSD, BPD et al) and i wish for a better world

where else to find me on fedi:
@kaaskop - art account
@alexander - private account for friends
@kaviaar - AD account, only for people i know that are 18+

also @nugget from time to time when i test something on wafrn

as always, tag spam for reach and topics:
#furry #artistsOnFedi #pokemon #ActuallyAutistic #vocaloid #AuDHD #indieWeb #disability #hardOfHearing #LGBTQ #transmasc #ftm #queer #videoGames #digitalArt #netherlands #utrecht

The "Square Hole", but spoons

Today were eating soup with... yay, a spoon!
Then we're eating mash potatoes with... yay, a spoon!
Then we're eating steak with... yay, a spoon!
Then we have a salad and we eat it with... yay, a spoon!
Rotisserie chicken? Yay, a spoon!

@actuallyautistic

Much of the difficulty in realising and accepting that we are autistic much later in life comes, in part, from the fact that we have been exposed to so many ableist stereotypes of it through our lifetime. The rest from the reality that much of the information we may have, is either outdated, or such that we struggle to see ourselves in it. It means that we have to spend a considerable amount of effort both in digging out and dealing with our internalised ableism, a somewhat ongoing process for many of us, and also educating ourselves on the reality of what autism is.

Such education quickly reveals that what it mostly is, is a spectrum of difference. It really is true that no two of us are alike. It may only be in the difference in which something affects us, its intensity, or the degree to which it affects our ability to function or cope. Or it may be in the aspects that we experience that others don't and vice versa. We also have to realise that whilst autism is often described by the way that it manifests, in terms of the various traits associated with it. That doesn't mean that you have to manifest all those traits to be autistic. Nor does it mean that there is one and only one way that those traits can look. Each of us, in this, really are different.

To further muddy these waters. The older we are when we begin this process, the longer we've obviously lived. In other words, the longer we have lived with what being autistic meant for us. Not by name obviously, but in terms of the ways we've learnt, as often as not the hard way, what we can and can't do, how we struggle, when we don't, our strengths and our weaknesses. And we haven't just ignored this, as much as possible we've built our lives around it. Obviously not ideally, we didn't always have the knowledge to be able to set the right boundaries, or the paths we should, or shouldn't walk down, regardless of what others wanted from us or even how we thought we should be. But still, as much as we could, we walked a path that was a reaction to what we were. That meant that over time we could learn to hide and compensate, to try and take advantage of our strengths and fear our weaknesses, adjust and compensate. In fact to continually layer the products of false awareness and understandings, of guess work and trial and error, over our behaviours, like papering over a crack, until the original could hardly be seen any more and we could at least get by.

This is why it can be so difficult to realise that you are autistic and everything about it now. So much of what is described is the cause of our behaviour today, but not the behaviour itself. And seeing past that to the root of the behaviour and the way we are and that it can still be different from how others are, is the reason why it takes so long and why so much of it, is still an ongoing process.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic

I'm finding it hard to hear people today and I'm sure it's auditory processing difficulties.
#Autism #autistic #neurodiverse @actuallyautistic #AutisticBurnout #ActuallyAutistic

Imagine trying to learn something that requires very precise reproduction of minute visual details and you have like level 4½ aphantasia...

'I am' and 'have' changes how we relate (and what makes grammatical sense) to our autism/neurodivergent/ADHD like:

I am autistic
I have autism
I'm ADHD
I have ADHD
I am neurodivergent
I have neurodivergent

Or
I'm AuDHD
I have AuDHD

Which ones do you use the most to describe yourself?

#ActuallyAutistic
#ADHD
#AuDHD
#neurodivergent

@actuallyautistic #ActuallyAutistic an interesting comment was made to me recently about using Facebook Groups, similar to this group, as a form of self care.

i personally have significant trust issues with all things Meta since the Cambridge Analytica debacle and minimize use of their services.

so i'm curious, how does everyone else feel on which is better for our community. feel free to choose as many as apply.

Being AuDHD, there's always the tension between organized organization and organized chaos. Trying to clean up my apartment today, and it's going as well as expected, given that I'm typing this instead of, say, putting away the assortment of miscellanea I have to reach my hands around to actually do this said typing.

So, normally I would organize the doom drawer of general junk I might need on daily, or at least weekly, basis, which would take maybe just an hour for a drawer that small. But, why bother? Instead, I'm gonna just let it be. It'd be back to its obviously natural state of chaos by tomorrow anyways. I'll just declutter my desktop so I can clutter it with some new and exciting miscellanea, the drawer can just be as is. Small accommodations to myself, small victories, couple of spoons saved.

This made me cry.

@neurodiversity
#ActuallyAutistic

‘He nails it on the first take’: how the Beatles helped my autistic son find his voice https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/mar/15/how-the-beatles-helped-my-autistic-son-find-his-voice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

My last three (3) braincells attempting to decide what I’m doing today.

One of them is autism, one of them is ADHD, and the other is the desire to not do anything productive at all. I think the dogs that are fighting are autism and ADHD, and the woman screaming is my desire to not do anything productive at all. The woman just wants to sit and watch more trash TV until some form of inspiration hits, and then she’ll do something. Except there are two huge dogs going goblin mode in front of her

This is my current mood. I’ve been resting a lot because my guts still hurt off and on, and honestly watching TV that I like is helping my brain rest and get more inspiration for my writing in the long term. Plus, as Laz has said before, it’s nice to be able to be a fan of things again. It’s been years since we’ve been able to do that.

Aside from this post and talking to people, will I get anything else productive done? I’m not sure. But I’ll do my best if I’m so inspired.

-Allēna