How do you manage screen time for yourself?
I am obsessed with screen time and I have no plans of changing any time soon. We have covered why, that I communicate more naturally via SMS and e-mail/messaging than I do verbally. However, I know that not every conversation is appropriate to have via text, as well. I draw the line at text message breakup, which is why I have been so pissed at The War Daniel and Sam. It hadn’t been long enough for me to say I was in love with either of them, but it had been long enough that I knew I loved them. Even Sam, at three weeks, I knew I loved her with an intensity I hadn’t felt in a long time, but intensity was all over the map. If she wanted a bestie, I was there. If she wanted a wife, I was there. If she wanted to date other people so our relationship didn’t move too fast (the goal when I didn’t break up with Zac), I would have been there and I know that because I was.
She didn’t want to become the lesbian U-haul couple, but didn’t want to do anything to prevent it, either. I didn’t want to be the girlfriend that anticipated her needs from day one, so I didn’t read between the lines and break up with Zac, anyway. It wasn’t that I lied and cheated. It was that her ex-husband lied and cheated, so the further she got towards reality, the more she realized that she thought something was happening to her that wasn’t. She felt the emotions of him cheating and wanted to lock me down, and the bitch of it is that she could have. She just insisted from the beginning until she broke up with me that she’d gotten too involved with a female ex and they were living together within a year and it was a disaster. She thought she could be cool, and as it turns out, she likes being in a relationship and pouring everything into one person. She found another person who also does that. She just didn’t realize it because I took her at her word.
I also think she thought she couldn’t handle my neurodivergence because she already had an autistic kid, and even if I’m wrong I’m not. I don’t know how it would have been to be the partner and mom of an autistic person simultaneously. That’s because there are times when I know I would have gotten overwhelmed and had a meltdown, and she shouldn’t be expected to survive my burnout sessions when she’s already got so much on her plate. What if her kid and I were in burnout at the same time? How would I handle autistic rage in a teenager? Having done it before, I know I’m solid. This is because I (and all autistic people, frankly) get calmer when other people are in trouble.
We have the bravery to do for others what we cannot do for ourselves. When we are out of our minds because our environment is threatened, we fold into ourselves because we have been pegged as “problematic.” Neurotypical people don’t have that jump scare at a changing environment, but we will watch it happen- their discomfort- and all of the sudden the mama lion comes out. We will risk losing social masking, function, and start stimming if we have to because someone is going to pay attention to the fact that our friends are in trouble. I would be Karen on a stick to get Bryn some ketchup, but I would enjoy mine plain to avoid a social interaction.
We lose the ability to care about what we’re putting out there when others’ safety is threatened; we feel the disaster that occurs within us and try to prevent it happening to others. It’s watching for meltdowns that don’t occur in neurotypical people, essentially having an autistic person’s back because we’re used to it and unable to realize other people don’t need it.
Autistic computer programmers seem like the most narcissistic assholes on earth, because all of them mansplain and people look at female “IT Guys” and see autism. They look at men and see “mansplaining.” That’s almost certainly the biggest disconnect in IT. Autistics of every gender are attracted to IT because they’ve always worked there and adjusted their environment to fit. For instance, I have always been the kind of helpdesk person who prefers to sit with the coders. I should have stayed in web design, but I got out when databases entered the picture. That’s because I had to jump from design to development in a hurry with no ability for logic to that degree. I know this because I took Logic in college instead of math and had to take it twice before I got a D, so I might want to take it again before I decide to take on Python. I’m even shit at MySQL when it comes to complex search terms. Logic is just not my wheelhouse, because I’m a monotropic thinker. Programming would be easy if you could write a program as “one thing happening in sequence.” In coding, you have to understand everything, everywhere, all at once.
This realization hit me this morning and it stopped me where I live. In terms of autistic people being programmers and having a tendency to isolate (like in their mother’s basement) and hack or code, making fun of it is severely ableist. “Comic Book Guy” is at the same time hilarious and tragic, hopefully the point Groening was trying to make. But it’s not a sad life because he can’t talk to people. It’s that few people are willing to ignore his accommodations and see him as more than his exterior….. in effect, getting a gift and focusing on the wrapping paper.
I am a writer in coders’ wrapping paper because I can have the personality of a helpdesk person as long as it’s the sensory environment of the server room. Better yet, I am talking to them in stereo headphones that block out everything else if I’m expected to write down what someone is saying while I’m listening. The good thing is that if those conditions are met, I type 90 words a minute and can take down everything they say down to the punctuation. Even then what I cannot do is sit in a room full of people who are also on the phone. That’s how 99% of helpdesks are set up to save space and encourage collaboration, which is great for 90% of people, maybe more. ADA accommodations are critical, which makes it harder to get a job because special does not equal valuable.
My screen time is dictated by the fact that I’m not Comic Book Guy, but I’m not not him, either. I have to fight through a system that was not built for me, and I just have to be okay with that. I have to work through autistic meltdown and burnout while people see me as defective and I also just have to be okay with that…. in relationships, at work, and in my own mind because nothing will ever get better in my lifetime and I’ll die mad about it.
Things like meltdown, burnouts, and demand avoidance are disabilities, not laziness. Our brains just aren’t built to accept it because we have no executive function. Asking a request of an autistic person will immediately cause loss of function. The best thing you can do is try not to spring things on autistic people because they have to prepare their environment to accept a demand in the first place. Failing that, writing everything down and giving us concrete steps that we can refer to later is key, because we can’t retain information verbally as easily as we can in text, and repetition is key, thus rereading the instructions.
The only way you can get things done quickly is if their excitement lines up with yours. For instance, I would have strength to go to the International Spy Museum easier than I would have the strength to stomach a rave, even though both are supposed to be fun (at a rave, I do a drug heavily called “caffeine.” It’s really fun. Look into it. 😛 Kidding, I don’t drink when I party because those are the experiences I want to remember the hardest. I don’t get many dancing and lights memories. Although I had a couple of beers at the Charlotte Cardin concert because beer and Canadians go together like “peanut butter and ladies.” The concert was at Union Stage, where they make beer in-house and it’s very good. I’m glad I branched out. The difference in preparing for that environment is that I didn’t go alone and I got notice a month in advance. Lindsay was with me and it made all the difference. Home became my environment and the club was superfluous. It reminded us very much of going to see Ben Folds Five at Numbers in the ’90s, about the same size club without the contact high. I also didn’t lock my keys in my car and we didn’t have to wait for our parents to come and bail us out. Charlotte Cardin didn’t wait with us until they got there, either, but Ben Folds did. I was 19 and looked younger. Lindsay was 14 and looked older. However, neither one of us looked like adults. I loved that he felt sorry for us because he was a dad long before he had Gracie.
One of the reason that I don’t get sensory issues about going to the Kennedy Center and The Reach is that Jason Moran and Robert Glasper both play there, which is the same feeling as my sister being with me because I’ve known them since ninth grade. The second is that Ben Folds is the artistic director for a concert series called “Declassified,” so it’s another feeling of home even in someplace unfamiliar. The best part is that there are a lot of artists that make me feel this way, because I’ve either sung with them, we have mutual friends, or we went to school together, and even Beyoncé is on that list. I’ve stood in the same room with her, but we’ve never met. She falls under the mutual friends category…. as does Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) because he was on tour with Robert the last time around.
I told Robert to tell Yasiin that he was my favorite alien (he played “Ford Prefect” in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and walked away realizing I’d lied because The Doctor is actually first. But oh, well. If they run across this, I’m so sorry.
If they do, it will be while managing their own screen time.
Stories That Are All True 