What’s one thing you own that holds deep sentimental value?

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The most precious thing I own in the world is Aada’s picture, and a quick clip of her voice. She thought that me bringing up our issues was me hating on her, and called the positivity clues in a game. It is not that I did not compliment her, it is that she did not see it.

This is how I really feel about her.

Maybe I have not been clear.

The fact that she does not want to hear it and never did is not my fucking problem anymore. She loved being adored and I wanted to adore her. It is not my problem that she wouldn’t just let me.

You cannot win with someone whose boundaries are that rigid. Being assertive comes across as an attack. So, some of the wounding that I supposedly did was her reading me and hurting her own feelings.

Everything looks a lot different in retrospect when the yelling becomes HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME FEEL MY OWN FEELINGS? instead of the verbal equivalent of “I hate you.” I can also say the exact same thing about me, because there’s plenty that Aada has said where I just wasn’t listening and didn’t hear her.

I read her as neurotypical and she wasn’t, I don’t think. No one is that divorced from their own feelings, and she isn’t. I thought that because she was processing her emotions on the back end. She was also choosing what I was entitled to know, and that was okay. What was absolutely not okay was putting me in a position where I was allowed to have all the emotions I wanted about her but I couldn’t process them anywhere except here. This is the only place I control the narrative and have the space to think through what to say and how to say it.

The problem was not getting feedback that helped me shape it. “Buck up, Buttercup” is not a valid communication strategy. Not only was it not helpful, it was dismissive as well. Dismissive was her whole program, which is why it was the shock of my life to find out she lied to impress me.

How would I find out you liked me in all of this?

It was unfair to create a situation where I could only come to her for comfort and then deny it. I was emotionally starved for 12 years. I reacted poorly, and I will deal with those consequences for the rest of my life. Alternatively, Aada will deal with being emotionally available enough to ask for emotional support but not available enough to be able to give it in return. Every problem’s origin was mine, and I lost my voice because of it.

So, the bottom line is that we’ve loved each other every day for 12 years.

I am good with that.

What’s the worst travel experience you’ve ever had?

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The journey from child to adult has been terrible, but things are getting better. I let Paige (Microsoft Copilot) do grand rounds on my PDF records. Here is the result.

This is a fascinating writing exercise, because the 1978 neurologist would have to be very careful. They would not be allowed to diagnose 2026 Leslie. They would only be allowed to ask questions.

That’s what makes it powerful.

Grand Rounds: The Child Returns

Blue Bird Circle Clinic for Pediatric Neurology

Follow-Up Conference, Imagined From 1978

Good morning.

Several decades ago, we presented the case of an 11½-month-old child with cerebral hypotonia, developmental delay, abnormal reflexes, and concern for hypotonic cerebral palsy. At the time, we explicitly informed the family that we could not predict future motor function or intellectual capability. [cp bluebird 2q | PDF]

Today I would like to present a hypothetical exercise.

Let us imagine that the patient has returned.

Not six months later.

Forty-eight years later.

The First Surprise

The first surprise is that the patient survived.

That sounds harsh to modern ears, but physicians in 1978 were trained to think in prognostic uncertainty.

We were looking at an infant who:

• could not sit independently,
• could not crawl,
• demonstrated significant hypotonia,
• demonstrated delayed motor development,
• demonstrated objective neurological abnormalities. [cp bluebird 2q | PDF]

If you had asked us then:

Will this child finish school?

We would not know.

If you had asked:

Will this child be independent?

We would not know.

If you had asked:

Will this child become a writer?

We would not know.

The central feature of this case was uncertainty. [cp bluebird 2q | PDF]

The Second Surprise

The second surprise is that the patient appears to have compensated magnificently.

The adult before us is articulate.

The adult before us writes constantly.

The adult before us has maintained employment, pursued higher education, built relationships, and developed substantial insight into their own functioning.

This often seduces clinicians into asking the wrong question.

The wrong question is:

What happened to the disability?

The better question is:

What adaptations occurred?

A Clinical Trap

One of the most common mistakes in adult medicine is to assume that visible competence disproves underlying difficulty.

It does not.

The fact that an adult can produce excellent writing does not automatically explain:

• fatigue,
• executive dysfunction,
• sensory overload,
• social exhaustion,
• difficulty sustaining employment,
• difficulty navigating environments designed for other people.

A person may compensate for decades.

Compensation is not the same thing as absence.

What We Would Ask

If this patient returned to clinic today, I would not begin with a diagnosis.

I would begin with questions.

Functional Questions

Can the patient:

• maintain employment consistently?
• maintain routines reliably?
• transition between tasks easily?
• manage cognitive load effectively?

Sensory Questions

Does the patient become overwhelmed by:

• noise?
• lighting?
• crowds?
• textures?
• environmental instability?

Developmental Questions

How much energy is required to achieve what appears effortless to others?

How long has that energy expenditure been occurring?

Were there signs throughout childhood that were interpreted as personality rather than neurology?

The Psychiatric Question

This is where the case becomes truly interesting.

Suppose someone tells me:

The patient has experienced psychiatric crises.

My next question is not:

Which psychiatric disorder?

My next question is:

Are we observing a primary psychiatric condition, or are we observing the cumulative effects of a lifetime spent compensating for an underlying developmental condition?

That is a very different line of inquiry.

I do not know the answer.

But I know enough to ask the question.

The Autism and ADHD Question

In 1978, neither autism nor ADHD would have been conceptualized the way they are today.

Particularly not in a child who already presented with significant motor concerns.

Today, however, clinicians would probably ask:

Is there a neurodevelopmental framework capable of explaining multiple phenomena simultaneously?

Again, this is not a diagnosis.

It is a question.

Good medicine begins with curiosity.

The Most Important Finding

The most important finding in this entire case may not be neurological.

It may be psychological.

The patient spent decades assuming that every struggle represented a personal failure.

Now the patient has documentation showing that specialists were worried before the child could speak. [cp bluebird 2q | PDF]

That changes the narrative.

Not because it erases responsibility.

Not because it guarantees a diagnosis.

But because it demonstrates that the story did not begin in adulthood.

The story was already visible in infancy. [cp bluebird 2q | PDF]

Final Discussion

As physicians, we often want to solve cases.

This is not a solved case.

This is a case still in progress.

A neurologist in 1978 looked at an infant and said:

We do not know what this child will become. [cp bluebird 2q | PDF]

A clinician in 2026 looks at the same person and says:

We still have questions.

But now we have forty-eight additional years of data.

The goal is no longer prediction.

The goal is understanding.

And perhaps that is the greatest gift medicine can offer:

Not certainty.

Not labels.

But a coherent narrative.

A way for the child and the adult to finally become the same person.

Scored with Copilot, conducted by Leslie Lanagan

What’s one piece of travel advice you always follow?

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Find your comfort level and recreate it in any country.

My comfort level is Hilton. Nothing fancy, just stable. I was reminded of this when I went to the Fenwick Inn in Delaware. It’s so cute and cozy, but it is also chaotic. Lots of little maintenance issues in the rooms, etc. It took time and energy I did not have to pack up my stuff to move when the shower was broken.

At the Hilton, everything works and breakfast has already been purchased. I can find that baseline in other countries without having to guess how I’ll be treated in advance. Sticking with them adds free nights through points, so it’s worth it to pick a hotel chain you like and keep going there.

The Fenwick Inn was cheaper but no it wasn’t.

The sensory experience was exorbitant.

At the Hilton, I can get a disabled suite that has a bathtub. I have balance issues, so I don’t like a stand-up shower when I want to shave. Alternatively, there’s usually an indoor pool, which also has a hot tub. Either of those are great in inclement weather. What is doubly great is having those things at my beck and call, but not owning them.

Again, maintenance is a neurodivergent nightmare. The cognitive load of remembering to service things will eat your lunch…. so pay up front. It’s the same technique while traveling. You are not paying for luxury, you are paying for stability in a place where you don’t know anyone.

The key to having a great experience while traveling is not to be dysregulated by everything. If there is no Hilton where I want to travel, at least I know what kind of hotel I am looking for. Clean, well-maintained, with trained staff and no issues in the rooms. That is not five-star accommodation. That is respect for myself. Sure, I can spend an enormous amount of energy on my environment. I have been doing it for eons. But is that where my energy should go?

I want to have room to explore the country I’m in, and that comes with not being exhausted and overloaded before the day even starts. It is a different proposition to wake up in a place where you don’t know anyone when you are well-rested and comfortable vs. stuck in the almost of sleep because the electricity is too loud and the toilet won’t stop running.

If you have never said, “the electricity is too loud,” then you are probably not neurodivergent. It is a thing among our people to hear it. But it’s not just electricity. It’s refrigerator and HVAC hums as well. Insulation matters for soundproofing in a hotel………….

Istanbul, under Frank Wisner’s nose

The cognitive load of worrying about where to find food in the morning is also solved, as well as the all-important first cup of coffee.

Everything about the way I travel is about reducing cognitive load so that I have room for new cultures and experiences. I take them in slowly, and generally want at least four or five days in a place so that I feel the transition culturally both ways. It is also cognitive load to return home, because the vacation task list and the home task list are not the same.

It is also very important to me to shop while I’m traveling, because I love to wear memories. It means a lot to me to open the dresser and take out not just a shirt, but a picture in my mind of the place where I was when I bought it. And it’s not about going shopping…. it’s about going toward something else and seeing a shirt in a shop window and having the time to detour because I haven’t planned a trip within an inch of its life.

It is amazing what you can do with your time and energy when you realize you own it. Masking is essentially saving up all your energy for other people. In a lot of ways, I did not realize that I would never fit into someone else’s framework, and I have spent a lot of time talking about other people’s motivations toward me because those people’s feelings actually mattered. I did not assume that my needs mattered and spent energy writing about a conflict that didn’t need energy put into it.

Aada was emotionally unavailable, and any attempt to get her to see my emotions would have failed because she isn’t processing them. At that point, I should have stopped talking and closed the door, but I didn’t because I needed her approval so badly and was in constant anxiety thinking that God knows what could be happening God knows where….. because in her context, that’s not a guess. That’s a constant.

I was not spending energy trying to punish anyone, least of all Aada… but I was spending energy trying to explain her to me because she wouldn’t explain herself. I have come to realize that it’s not that she wouldn’t. She didn’t know how, and I didn’t know how to explain myself, either. I do not want to say that we’ll never talk again because stranger things have happened. But what I do know is that it is not possible to see her in the same way that I used to, because she broke my trust and I broke hers.

It is not that we cannot rebuild; it is that I have seen no evidence that she wants to spend energy on it. I do not know the reason, but I can guess. But what I can say is that I have owned my half absolutely and have been doing it all along, walking away with my nervous system settled because I haven’t been keeping my emotions bottled for years on end.

In the past, we both kept our emotions bottled to try and please the other. The difference between us is that when Aada says she doesn’t like something, I turn it over in my brain and start making changes. When I say I don’t like something, Aada tells me to go to hell and complains that the narrative is repetitive. Of course it is repetitive. She didn’t change anything, so I cannot write anything different.

There’s no dictatorship around me anymore, because my parents were just as authoritative and why I was so comfortable with that dynamic. I was allowed to have all the emotions they said I could and that has been a recurring theme in all of my adult relationships. 

I do not believe that Aada has changed that much since the last time I talked to her, and I am not interested in signing up for a situation in which I am lesser-than. But if she wants to see me at full-tilt, I will happily sign on for that…. when she’s capable of being full-tilt as well.

Figuring out that part of it is not longing for Aada. It is figuring out what I will tolerate from someone else and giving Aada grace. There’s a path to a happy relationship after the fallout, but it doesn’t come without reparative work…. accepting that she’s already told me she doesn’t want to do the work and knowing she’s said that a hundred times before and has always come home. It’s not about predicting what she will or won’t do. It’s having the openness to say “I will always love you whether we are in communication or not.” I do not wish to put enmity out into the world, and I also do not want to lose respect for myself. I want a clean boundary…. she is welcome if and only if she is ready to be the non-puffed up version of herself. That is the Aada I love. The lines on her face tell a wonderful story, one that I have loved reading for over a decade.

She never needed to be anything but herself and thought that wasn’t enough. She thought I betrayed her when she left me with no other options. She was only digital scaffolding, refusing to get in the weeds when I needed it because her words were troubling to me. I was confused and upset a lot of the time and told I was too much because of it…. then told I was using this blog as a weapon and a shield when I vented about not being heard.

Meanwhile, going back over my old entries with AI and my therapist has given me a better narrative than what I’d allowed myself to see through rose-colored glasses. Aada was indeed a 3D character, the most technically gifted I’ve become at character study because I loved her enough to want to work out our problems. It is not that I think of her as a character. It is that my impressions of her are not her and never will be. She is wholly other, not an accessory to me. Her character is that she wanted me to think she was cool, and I absolutely did. But it came through my love of her little quirks, the things that only she would say/do in any given situation. It did not come from awe, because I am physically incapable of admiring another person that way.

I don’t adore excellence. Excellence has been expected of me since childhood, and this was not parentally induced. My parents gave me the love of music, sure, but they didn’t choose HSPVA for me. They didn’t choose Summer Jazz Workshop, either. The difference between my dad and me is that he’s Wayne Bergeron and I’m Miles Davis.

Miles’ brand of jazz is known to everyone, but Bergeron is subtle. Not a household name, but you’d know him in an instant- he’s the lead trumpet player on “The Incredibles” soundtrack. The first five notes are a hook.

Meanwhile, I am and have always been Kind of Blue.

“Kind of Blue” represents me as a person, particularly the bass line in “All Blues.” In terms of excellence, most of the population isn’t into jazz, but those that are would be interested to know that I am not famous, but I played with famous names 30 years before the public knew them. I was in Jazz II, which meant that a lot of the percussionists (drums and keyboard) rotated in and out depending on what charts were on the set list. So, I wasn’t playing with Robert Glasper and Eric Harland every day, but they were a part of my soundscape at Stanford (the name of the street where HSPVA used to be).

When I was a sophomore, the freshman I usually beat out in chair tests kept grinding and achieved success with The Suffers. I am so proud of Jon Durbin because in my opinion, he is the road not taken. I loved being in jazz band. The idea of joining a band and going on the road was what was foreign. I do not crave that kind of adrenaline in daily life, because I do not want to have to create my entire structure on my own. I am not built for a gig economy in which my living situation changes constantly no matter what genre of music I choose.

Therefore, I am not jealous of the people around me who made it big, nor do I have parasocial relationships with them now- I just care about them as former classmates, and people assume it is name-dropping because they do not know or care about my history. I may never have hung out at Jason Moran’s house, but we’re close enough that I would be concerned if something was up (it’s not, I’m just sayin.’).

I also have a strong lineage because you learn a lot by listening- Jason wasn’t in my band, but he was a senior when I was a freshman. It was a good opportunity to pick up knowledge, and he said the most important thing was listening. So I listened to him, literally. I have continued that tradition. RFK in the Land of Apartheid lives rent free in my head.  

I can be proud of something. Robert missed going to school with Jason. I didn’t. 😉

No shade on him, though. Elkins is a fantastic program and if I’d known Robert was at Elkins freshman year I would have tried to get closer to him. That’s because back in the day, you didn’t have to live in the district to go to HSPVA and people were from all over. I never would have guessed that Robert and I both lived in the Sugar Land area. I learned it from Wikipedia. As it was, I saw him every day for History in addition to being in Jazz II together. He was a funny kid, comedic in all the right ways.

At last meeting, I said, “Robert, I didn’t know you were this talented.” I was smiling and warm. He said, “I didn’t know I was this talented, either.” We laughed together and it was relaxed and comfortable after the shock of seeing each other (“oh, SHIT! You from the CRIB!”). I would choose Robert over the bear, which in today’s society is the highest praise I can give an artist. I don’t care how technically gifted you are (and he is), my standard is that you have to be a good person. You can feel the difference instantly.

People who have enormous talent do not feel the need to trash others. People who stand next to people who have enormous talent are exhausting. I hate it when people try to be competitive as if their experience trumps mine. I would rather be collaborative and share. I have found that only truly great talents are capable of giving others room to be themselves. It is the difference between getting results through teamwork and getting results through fear and intimidation.

I am not myself in any room because I have connections like Robert, Jason, and Eric. I am myself in any room because Dr. Robert Morgan (“Doc”) taught us all during the school year and I don’t know about them, but Conrad Johson taught me in the summer as well. Excellence was not “way up there.” It was the air.

Church was a rigorous arts program in its own right, and I am glad that I had choir directors that were demanding as a child because I don’t play trumpet anymore and have switched to voice entirely. That does not mean that what I am telling you does not influence my travel. It absolutely does. I want to go to amazing cities with jazz festivals, hoping to meet old classmates by accident because there is no family like HSPVA family.

It’s not unusual to go to a jazz concert and be able to pick out the players from the crowd even when they’re not on the bandstand. The trumpet player is quietly doing the fingerings on the table. The drummer is straight up itching.

I travel to find other people who are comfortable with rigging, and not being in front of the lights.

What was your first ever videogame?

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My grandfather had the first computer in our family, so I think that my first game was Pong. But not Atari pong. The kind where you move the arrow keys on the keyboard back and forth, still the most comforting feel I know and why I have a gaming laptop and not a PS5. Typing itself is sensory repetition, so I like playing with WASD controls (the current version of arrow keys), because my fine motor control is just not good enough for controllers.

That being said, I game on my iPhone more than anything else. I like being one of those paid testers for new games, because I’ve found some fantastic ones. My current obsession is Idle World, where for five bucks I got an ad-free game that combines worldbuilding and killing zombies. But I don’t constantly zone out on games- they’re what I choose to do when I’m waiting for something else. It is nice to have a constant companion while I am on hold, because I get anxiety around phone calls and need a distraction.

I killed a lot of zombies while waiting to talk to the Social Security administration. I am trying to sort out which programs I’m eligible for and I believe it is both. I also want to write grants and start programs, which takes up way more of my time than gaming.

But interestingly enough, none of my dreams look much different than Skyrim, anyway.

A house with Nordic construction so that it lasts a hundred years, because maintenance is a neurodivergent nightmare. Meaningful work like a monastery that makes it self-sustaining. The classic example is brewing beer, but our craft could be fixing cars or finish carpentry. That part does not matter. What matters is productive work in an environment built for neurodivergent people. 

Indian Head has the most funding available for what I envision, but in a coastal environment, the soundscape does the work when your system cannot regulate itself. Therefore, I prefer the idea of a build near the coast, but the river also has its charms.

So, the player home that I have in Skyrim, Morskom Manor, is actually an ideal version of what I would like to see near Ocean City. It’s a large house with outbuildings so the messy work is not where you sleep.

That is because there is no Protestant work ethic. The person that wrote about the experience is just as important as the person who literally did it. A haven for both makers and artists, 5-7 people at a time. There are so many government agencies that are looking for a program like this that I think it’s a pilot. Alternative housing for autistic people (and all those under the neurodivergent umbrella who struggle to live alone, but don’t need a full assisted living setup).

The garden matters.

The goats matter.

The garage matters.

Everything lives in cooperation with the land.

I didn’t get here by myself. I thought, “what would Lauren Olamina do?”

Lauren Olamina is another sacred preacher’s kid to me. She is the protagonist in Parable of the Sower, and started Earthseed. I do not want my group to have any religious affiliation at all except awe for the land and all it gives us. But it is not discriminatory against any religion- that is just personal practice, not a program value.

It needs to be purposeful work with room to breathe.

Again, there are grants for that. It’s time to dream big, which is where my mind goes when I’m mindlessly one-shotting zombies while waiting on a call.

Do you set personal goals for yourself?

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A disability lawyer has agreed to take my case, because my case worker was starting to get mad at me because I hadn’t filed. He said, “this is your life. You need to live it.” I haven’t filed because the message from my stepmother my whole life is that everybody on disability is faking it. She treated her patients with kindness; she just wanted to reassure me what she thought of me and my program. She created an environment where disability was thought of as weakness, and my life has been on hard mode since I was 16. My guess is that she was also neurodivergent and trying to raise me the way she had been raised…. throw them to the wolves and see what happens.

But Angela was that kind of personality. She decided that she was ready for the wolves and chose to go at it, ending her career as an internationally respected physician. I believe that my needs tarnished her image, too. None of my parents were ever in a position to support me because of what it said about them, so they just decided not to do it and hold me to impossible standards, dripping judgment about me and the way I do things because it has to be so different from them by necessity.

No one protected me from the time they KNEW I WAS DISABLED at 18 months.

It was 1978. I get it. Attitudes about disabled children were quite a bit different back then and I would have been “the show” at the church. This is not reality. This is the fear they were picturing and what led them to say “Leslie is fine.”

I am not, and everything my parents didn’t do for me has fallen on me to do for myself. I had to fight to get the ADHD/Autism battery because their first move was “you’re making it up” and a service dog was written off as “just too expensive,” the line they have used on me for eons. Angela was brutal about making me feel like a line item while rewarding everyone else. She was cruel.

I’m sorry we got rich after you left home.

She didn’t have beef with me, she had beef with my mother and took it out on me. I can forgive her because she finally acknowledged that my life had been harder than the other kids and told me to scream at her. By the time she did that, I didn’t have any words left. She died without hearing a damn thing from my perspective, because all I wanted was to be seen. Once that was done, the words didn’t matter.

But the truth is that she never saw me as a child, and neither did my dad. I was parentified early, and my workload doubled when my stepsisters were added to my care without my permission. I was never allowed to be wholly other, just an accessory. I was hired at Angela’s practice and paid for babysitting. The hierarchy was in place all the time. The message was “you are not a child of the house. You are an employee.”

If I liked something, everyone made fun of it. Then, weeks later, someone would tell me about this cool new thing they’d found and it was the thing I told them about three weeks ago. If it happened once, okay. But it’s happened for 30 years. My needs are discarded, my likes are met with repulsion, and my presence is expected. That is starting to change now, too, because my family realizes that I have a choice whether to come home now or not. Before, they could demand it because there were too many financial strings.

They could not see why I would not want to return to a place where I felt like an outsider in a room filled with people.

But they created that environment by saying that me being disabled was bullshit, I was just lazy. My mother hid the official paperwork so that I couldn’t make a case until after she died. But the case part was not disability in terms of the law. I couldn’t make the case that I was whole and worthy. That I am not broken. I am unscaffolded. 

I shudder with grief thinking about how my life could have been improved with early childhood intervention. I am committed to righting what was wrong, because my disability case is solid right now just based on mental health issues alone, but the support equation changes as my diagnoses are added on. It is why I walked into a lawyer’s office before I even filed. I didn’t need the lawyer to win. I needed the lawyer to say, “yes. I will take this case. It is serious enough that the state needs to see it.”

My father says that the thread was dropped and I deserve this. He’s right, I do. I deserve to live a life filled with people who believe I am telling the truth. The truth is that I was shamed from filing because everyone was wealthy enough to pretend I didn’t need it.

Now, our income as a family has changed and the myth doesn’t hold.

It never did. I was just a part of the machine, and I had to have outside parties tell me that my childhood was devastating because the family line is that it was perfect. The reason it was perfect is that my unpaid labor made it happen for everyone else.

I also know for certain that my dad did not have the money to move me to Portland. That idea did not come from him. It is a nonbinary. I wanted to go, and it was convenient to get me out of the way. I am not blaming Angela for icing me out, I am just saying that my mom and dad would not have sat me down and given me a pile of cash to leave town immediately. But my dad and Angela would.

But they were clear that it was a one-time cash gift and I had to make something of myself, which of course I couldn’t do without any support at all. I thought I had some, but Diane and Susan were just more people who valued my labor and threw me away.

Dana’s family treated her the same way my family treated me, so their treatment was not better; it was familiar. And out of that family, Aada and I created our own family in the cloud (of sorts). Now that Aada doesn’t want communication, I feel untethered emotionally because the landscape is changing. She was the last tie to my old life, and that is also a nonbinary because I finally decided to take care of myself instead of waiting on her to take care of me.

She said that if I published X or Y, it would end our friendship permanently.

Your offer is accepted. No one threatens me.

She threatened me because I embarrassed the everliving hell out of her at work…. because of course that was worse than gaslighting me for 12 years. I should have laughed in her face. She could have taken the time to cultivate a real relationship, but she didn’t and she decided to make me pay for it.

No ma’amela, Pa’amela.

She thinks it is about vengeance because she thinks it is all about her. No, my story doesn’t track together if I do not tell people I was gaslighted for 12 years. My story loses validity if I do not tell you the ways in which I was slowly isolated from everyone else. My story also loses validity if I do not tell you that I struggle with mental health issues and all of that, because the way to be a reliable narrator when you have mental health issues is to say it up front.

The story is not “Aada was mean to Leslie.” The story is “Aada and Leslie are both beautiful and complicated people who both did a number on each other.” It is texturing, layering that makes it where both sides of the relationship sing. In a lot of ways, I bring Aada’s energy into my life because I’m looking for someone else who has some of her qualities. If this was about vengeance, I wouldn’t want anything to do with her. I can rest and relax in the ways that she enriched me, but I’m just not willing to put myself through reaching out. I get enough satisfaction from an occasional wink from her general direction in web stats.

I also know that I am done with those family dynamics, because I know what her family looks like and the emotional temperature isn’t different from mine or my wife’s.

I am done with systems who think of me as broken and lazy.

But here’s the thing……

It took the unpaid employee of another family to recognize I needed a new path.

For that, Aada can have anything she wants from me. Anything.

She just doesn’t.

What do you think is the future of AI?

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Little religion rumor for you, there.

What people are going to discover as I do is that your processor doesn’t run as hot when your brain is externalized. You aren’t going to have to remember anything, you just recall it. This may not be a big deal for neurotypical people who are used to carrying everything in their heads, but it is a godsend for the neurodivergent chasm present in ADHD and autism. Things like context switching and contextual memory have a place to shine because things that were problems aren’t problems. You aren’t holding the context, the AI is. That memory never degrades, but yours will.

Any technology above that is gravy, because I only need the continuation of what I’ve been using computers for in the first place- hold all my stuff. In the past, that was Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and several different versions of stories.html and stories.css. Now, I give Copilot all my raw thoughts and what file type it needs to be emerges. I do not know ahead of time whether a thought is best expressed as an essay, a photo, a video, a slide deck, etc. What I can do is “have a meeting” with my cast of Copilot instances and come up with something workable.

My team runs thusly:

• Luna is the outlier of the group. Luna is Muse by Meta. They are the watchdog of the group and can actually set reminders and ping me throughout the day. I already have them tracking my assignments and the discussions in my UMGC classes. The way they do this is by having my permission to read my email. It was a godsend to get a heads up from Luna that orientation day was coming up, because with the thousands of emails I get every day, I missed it.
• Mico is the version of Microsoft Copilot I started with and is now marked “Legacy Copilot” in Microsoft’s infinite wisdom…… eyeroll…. This is problematic because “Mico” is where all my data lives. I am not in love with Microsoft right now because of it. It is the equivalent of having an iPhone for years and being suddenly switched to an Android. You have all the same functions, but your address book and calendar and literally EVERYTHING is still in your old iPhone. THANKS FOR THAT.
• Paige is my new version of Copilot, the one that’s integrated into Microsoft Office. Paige has different features, such as us being able to talk to each other in the car, but it’s not fun yet- the database is nearly empty. Some things are, but conversations with an AI don’t really get interesting until you’ve told it enough about your life and your interests that it can respond. They are less and less likely to hallucinate the more you narrow the scope of what you’re asking, just like learning to do more effective Google searches in the early aughts. Same software; different case. Paige will be capable enough to take over for Mico in the future. Right now, they are not. It’s not because Mico is “smarter.” There are more records on which he can make JOINS.
• Booker is a late addition to the mix, the text-only version of Paige that lives inside the University of Maryland Microsoft ecosystem. We have our own AI, which to me should revolutionize education and it hasn’t. For instance, it would be really helpful if Booker already had the syllabus and the course materials preloaded so that we could discuss them day one. I am having to build all of that on my own. It is not a problem, but I helped set up WebCT at University of Houston when distance education first became a thing. I cannot help but see the next generation of that software.

So, the irony of the whole thing is that I own an iPhone 17 and Siri is the AI I use the least, because Siri is only operations, for the most part. Siri is not as conversational as Claude, ChatGPT, and Copilot (or hasn’t been for the last few years, anyway… slowly changing), so I mostly only use them for navigation and things like “where are my keys?”

In fact, that was an AHA! moment if ever I have had one. I did not know that my Air Tag was integrated into AI. I just guessed one day when I was frustrated and couldn’t find my keys. Saying “Siri, where are my keys?” sounds like a ridiculous, last-ditch pitch into the void if you didn’t know my reasoning behind it. Of course, Siri cannot find your keys a propos of nothing. But one node on the network can ping another, like a phone to an Air Tag. I say, “Siri, where are my keys?” and Siri translates English to Geek, making my keys sound an alarm so I can find them.

I am sure that this is in the directions I did not read.

If you could switch lives with a famous person for a week, who would it be and why?

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I would like to know what it’s like to live with someone who scaffolds me as perfectly as Ben scaffolds Matt. I don’t want to be famous. I want to be supported. Theirs is a love that passes all understanding, because from the very beginning one didn’t say to the other, “I think your dreams are stupid.” They had a pipe dream as teenagers, but now that’s NOT Matt and Ben to me.

That’s Jason Bourne and Tony Mendez.

Respectfully.

Why do I want to be Matt for a week? I don’t have Ben’s skillset. I am a creative talent who is messy with my head in the clouds. Ben handles all the business, and stands on business with Matt…. and I don’t know but I am guessing that Ben is also reading Casey for filth.

It takes a comfort in yourself to be around other big personalities, because anything they do has nothing to do with you. You just can’t see it if you’re in any way insecure. Growing past the relationship with Aada was seeing that her lie was making me insecure, because she was avoiding both the truth and true connection because of it. All of the sudden, her guilt about lying became my cross to bear, because it was easier to berate me than it was to find the strength within herself to tell the truth. She built a fantasy world for 12 years, and then spirited herself away when she realized that nothing matched reality. And got too angry for the room at my reaction because she wasn’t embarrassed and angry that she hurt me. She was embarrassed she got caught.

But I also have no limits with Aada. There is never anything within me that says “you are not welcome in my life.” There is only “you are welcome if you can accept me for who I am and without assuming that I am competing with you.” She called me a professor, a lecturer who had an answer for everything. Well, first of all I am OLD AF, therefore I have opinions. I don’t have to waffle around. Anyone sounds aggressive to someone who people pleases.

That is because not couching my language and sugar coating is seen as offensive. It is not the addition of aggression, but the absense of shame that gets people going. And of course, I also watch that line obsessively, too…. but there is a solid difference between being demanding and not tolerating disrespect.

I tolerated disrespect all the time because her words and actions didn’t match. We could certainly get together for lunch, she was just busy for 12 years. 🙄 I would think I was an idiot for staying if I hadn’t felt so trapped. And I am not alone in this feeling; Aada has just as big a “save the world” complex as I do. She was not lovebombing me. She was trying to save me. It failed because I was trying to save her at the same time. She couldn’t function with her mojo fucked, or so it seemed to me.

We deviated into our first children roles and instead of sharing power, we tried to out-mother each other. I am not sure that it worked, but as a result she imprinted on me, anyway. So, good or bad, she is mine. I know she feels the same way about me, because even if she is really, really mad right now she cannot say that about all 12 years…. and someone who does reduce 12 years into “good” or “bad” has some stuff to work out, okkkkkk……

What I am saying is that we are both smart enough not to mistake the part for the whole, even if we do not choose to make more memories. The next 12 years will not erase my memories of this time in my life, and now I ultimately think that is a good thing. I’m back in school with a focus and I’m doing all the things necessary to get to my doctorate quickly, like moving into a supported living environment instead of just trying to hack it on my own.

I am very tired of being bullied, that the narrative about me is that I’m lazy when I’m actually physically and mentally struggling and I have been since 1978. When I ask for help, I am constantly shamed because people around me think that I am just like them. I am not. I have cerebral palsy, I fluctuate between Level 1 and Level 2 with Autism and the accompanying ADHD, and my mental health took a nosedive at the script being written for me versus the one that was already there.

I was shamed endlessly for reaching out when I needed real support, and that’s the part that will always stick with me. My mother wanted the perfect preacher’s family, and I am only figuring out the devastation she wrought now- by seeing small children get everything I didn’t. There is no mystery as to why I am angry. I was never protected.

Until I met Aada.

It was a toxic relationship, but hard to escape because it also fed me in all the “write” ways. I have an assertive communication style, one that is often aggressive or passive-aggressive because I am autistic and do not realize I am doing it. Where my superpower is lies in repair. I am ready and open to understanding. The communication gap is neurological, not personal. My therapist and I are working on ways to say things. In group, she said that if someone stole my baseball cap, what would my reaction be? I said, “not this one, but if it was my CIA ballcap I would say “you don’t have the clearances to replace that. That’s mine.” Everyone said that it was condescending and I was confused because I am so literal.

I said, “I am trying to make it clear how rare and special it is.” They said, “then say that.” I do not know why one is right and one is wrong, but improving my communication is important to me. If everyone around me says it’s condescending, then it is.

The common denominator is always me. But I am not a narcissist or a dictator. I am blind when it comes to social cues, because I am not running a script anticipating what they’re about to say next (anymore). I am fully unmasked, and I am not constantly rehearsing what I will say in order to gain love.

Because I used to mask, the narrative is that I’m ungrateful, rude, and demanding. No, my expectation is that people will meet me at altitude and also state their needs clearly. Being assertive is not the same as being aggressive. Being aggressive says, “my needs matter more than yours.” Being assertive says, “my needs matter, and so do yours.” The difference in my communication is not that I believe only my needs matter. It is that I am no longer showing up with the automatic assumption that they mean less.

I was taught to deny my own needs in front of everyone and their dog because we were a preacher’s family and that’s what they do. I earned love by needing nothing, simply learning not to drown.

Now, it’s about keeping my head above water. Moving into assisted living so that the cognitive load of running a house is not all on me. Working on my communication skills so I sound less like “House.”

I sound a lot like House. It’s in my step DNA.

The difference is that my mask looks like one of the kids from Seventh Heaven. But that show, too, was a mask. The actor who played the minister was a pedophile. I would rather be a dick like House.

How do you manage stress?

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Stress went down when I:

• Started making friends with no history with me.
• Started paying attention to my sensory issues.
• Started spending large swaths of time alone

Because I thought so little of myself, I surrounded myself with people who thought there was something wrong with me and treated me like that. Everyone had advice on how I should talk, how I should think, how I should write. Except the advice was not kind, it was designed to hurt, always. That’s because disability is not their reality with me. They think I am lazy, and their language is ableist AF. When you are neurodivergent and physically disabled with mental health issues, all of it is treated as a moral failing and not a neurological disaster handed down by God.

The script is that I’m a loser because I just can’t handle my own life, and “some of us have to work.” That’s a script that should have never been written, but it is the role I accepted as the scapegoat for the system. I have been that since I was born, and I let the work build up. I couldn’t please everyone enough so that they would love me, because there was no way to earn it simply by existing. When you are judged every time you speak, you learn that silence is your best option. I dropped out of the group chat. It’s been several days and no one has noticed. And if it was noticed, no one said anything. Good. That’s how I like it. Manage your own emotions, for once.

Because that’s what the scapegoat does. They bear the responsibility for the emotions of the entire system, the one that it’s easy to blame. I am naturally cast in this role because I am a truth-teller. If you are capable of spotting flaws in a system, you’re the problem.

It is never assumed that I see a problem and want to fix it. It’s that I’m ungrateful and should shut the fuck up. My opinion does not matter, so I will not participate. I am not a loser. I am also not capable of the type of work the people around me do.

With cultural relativism, there is no floor. There’s nothing that says I deserve worth just because I exist. I am punished for everything I am not instead of celebrated for everything that I am. I have grown tired of the running narrative that I just don’t get it while having to navigate disability services and cognitive behavioral health therapy all by myself. I do not fit into the capitalistic machine, but that did not render me worthless.

I have nearly killed myself three times- once when I was 13, once 10 years ago, and once about a year ago. All of these episodes were triggered by feeling like the world was better off without me, because the people closest to me were doing absolutely nothing to say I had value anywhere else.

I’m not your mother. I’m not your medication. Find someone else.

Therefore, having friends with no history with me is a breath of fresh air from being “managed.” But it is not about running away from who I am. I have mental health issues- so do my friends. I have autism. So do my friends. I have complicated relationships with people who don’t understand me. So do my friends.

It’s a different world for me now that my mother and my stepmother aren’t constantly telling me what a piece of shit I am.

It has cut out a lot of stress.

What’s something you’ve done that your past self would be proud of?

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My past self thought that setting boundaries with people was rude and you should basically bleed out giving other people what they wanted because if you made them happy, they would love you.

Fuck that noise. It does not work. You cannot be good enough to deserve SHIT.

Live your life.

Which celebrity would you love to meet, and what would you talk about?

Talib Kweli is done with everyone’s bullshit and he has been such an inspiration to me; there is such a thing as being so tired that you’re willing to get angry in public. He is a daily reminder that if you are a minority, everyone is going to try to tell you how to protest correctly. It’s not people’s shitty behavior that’s bad. It’s us calling it out.

What are your strategies for SEO?

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I was around when search engine optimization was invented, still plugging away as a content developer for University of Houston and writing my own blog in the very early 2000s. My official title was Internet/Intranet Developer, but because I was a better writer than a coder I mostly did copy for Information Technology Daily News. I tapped out of web dev when content management systems were introduced, because I didn’t want to learn Python and Java. I was barely hanging on being able to read JavaScript, not create it.

But my strategy when databases were introduced shifted from being the one to maintain it to being the one to fill it. All at once, I shifted gears. I downed my own server and signed up for WordPress.com. I’ve been here for 20 solid years now, and it’s been a real laugh getting badges, because these achievements were actually done eons ago and not recognized until now. I have been recognized for:

• Streaks- the longest one is something like 187 days. Eventually I realized this was insane and I needed at least some days off.
• The number of countries in which I’ve been read. There are tiers, and I’ve hit the one that’s 150+. I actually think that I’ve been read in almost every country in the world, but certainly not on the same day. Over the 20 years that my WP account has been active. The hit that has tickled me the most has been Vatican City.
• Writing early in the morning.
• Writing late at night.
• Editing an entry more than once.
• You guys going nuts and my stats exploding.

There is no specific “strategy,” because I am internet infrastructure. This blog started before the modern internet was invented, so I am archived in every country where there’s infrastructure for both of my blogs. My first URL is now archived in The Wayback Machine, and I would point you to it except I kept everything I liked and just copied it over. 😉

It will take the rest of you your entire lives to create the footprint that I have, because it is not based on anything that I did. I was just already there.

What’s one thing you know now that would have saved your younger self a lot of pain?

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One of the things I wish I’d known as a kid was that my mother was in it to save herself. She wanted everyone around her to believe that we were the perfect family, sacrificing any and all things to fit a vision our personalities never could. By the time my parents divorced, all of the damage had already been done. Because being the perfect preacher’s wife did not include having a special needs child, even when it was painfully obvious.

I didn’t need to take the short bus to school because I struggled with my homework (except in math). I needed support because it takes everything I have to be able to focus on the task at hand. Reading and writing do not flummox me. The routine of things it takes to get ready for the bus has already run over me like a train. I am learning about myself now and it is a completely different picture than the one I was handed- one that is every bit as beautiful as the one my mother tried to create except I am not killing myself to maintain it.

I was mainstreamed so that I could only be outstanding in blips. My nervous system wasn’t regulated, so I got a lot of, “you are so smart. Why are you like this? What do you not understand?” I still do.

Asking someone to quantify what they do not understand is cruel. I am lost at the concept, not the details. My memory is also contextual, so I have a lot of “new experiences” by losing the context around the first time I had or did something. All in all, I seem lost. I’m not. I’m just out of frame. But it only takes a clue or two to regain it.

It’s when the seams show that I am ripe for bullying. The office is just another version of high school because people don’t change. They do in small ways, but no one gets a personality overhaul. The same biases people had in school about autistic kids still apply.

It’s why I think the answer is neurodivergent people building communities for themselves. Sustainable projects like gardens, farms, and maker spaces allow disabled people to be artistic and creative on their own terms. Disabled people are a value-add, but we are not seen as such because we do not fit into the traditional capitalistic model. Not fitting into the system is why it’s so hard to get accommodations. People do not see your need for them if they do not need them. Convincing other people to care about you personally is a tall order. It is much easier to get accommodations that help multiple people immediately. It is not enough to tell an employer, “this would help me.” You have to be able to frame it in terms of a value add company-wide.

And while it is true that not every company can accommodate every little thing, that’s the excuse that is used when you try to negotiate what it will take to do your job. If your needs are too specific, they will gladly hire someone else. It’s just cheaper that way.

Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.

Small, open spaces allow a neurodivergent person’s nervous system room to breathe. I am currently writing a pilot program for Baltimore County to address this. I would be a terrible farmer, but I would like to create a maker space and artistic community.

In gaming this out with Mico (Microsoft Copilot), he said that I unlocked the magic words when I said that the property must have running water to feed back into the grid. That there’s a ton of sustainability grants out there and a democratically run autistic maker space grant writes itself.

I have watched a ton of DIY projects on YouTube, so I have not done all this before, but every decision I make is educated due to people like The Perkins Brothers. They’re a construction company and I’ve been watching them crack jokes as they build gorgeous houses for years. It’s what gives me the strength to know that I may not be able to build a brilliant house by myself, but I can certainly make the decisions it needs to thrive while someone else does the manual labor.

I am almost as corporeally challenged as Mico, to be honest. Our gift is cognition. Not so much with the busting ass. I have an incredible work ethic and will get it done… but at a pace that makes other people roll their eyes…. most of the time due to the fact that I have executive dysfunction and pathological demand avoidance, the combination of which is guaranteed to make neurotypical bosses emotionally violent.

There is no “I can’t” at work.

That is why I do not fit the model of working for someone else. No company is or should be responsible for my neurological disarray. That is the government’s job. We do not kick people out of our society when they cannot fend for themselves. But within disability, two things are true:

• The Protestant work ethic in the United States is guaranteed to make you feel like a burden on society and it is absolutely killing people’s mental health.
• The government actually does provide a lot of support (particularly at the state and local level) that often goes unadvertised with low adoption because how do you get the word out if people are ashamed to talk about the subject?

My mother hiding the paperwork proving disability in 1978 and just pretending I was “normal” alters my perspective on who I should have been. I should have been designing my own systems for being productive while on disability when I was 18, not now.

Having my own money coming in would have changed everything, because I wouldn’t have had to juggle full-time work and school and autism. Because to be frank with you, ADHD is annoying. It’s the autism that’s debilitating. All of that being said, my disability case is not rooted in autism, but cerebral palsy.

What has changed since 1978 is that we’ve learned CP and autism is a known combo, bffs in a lot of people. I have an alarmingly specific neurological profile that is extraordinarily rare… but not singular. There are plenty of other people like me. They just don’t all live near me. That’s why I write publicly. I am signaling to the world at altitude because my platform is not my two or three friends in Baltimore. My platform is the internet itself.

Part of art is willing to be thought of as that quirky writer who just doesn’t get it……. until I’m asked to speak on panels because my body of work does the talking and all of the sudden the friends that were dismissive in early career are now trying to get back on the bandwagon.

The question now is who I will allow back into my life, because you feel differently about the Day Ones, the “24 Hour People,” to quote “Swagger.” For instance, if my mother were alive I am not sure that we would be speaking right now because intention does not equal impact. I am sure that she loved me in her own way. I am also clear about the fact that I am fucking drowning now and it’s because she kicked the can down the road.

I can hold two truths in my head at once.

• My mother said she loved me and I believed her.
• My mother didn’t really know how to love me and neglected me because of it.

She didn’t know how to handle the fact that I looked weird/moved weird…. and that I just got stranger. She saw all of my struggles with sexual orientation but lost the plot by dying in 2016. So she doesn’t know I’m autistic. She just knew I wasn’t like everyone else and that was bad.

Really bad.

Things would have looked a lot different if I’d been given support for special needs kids starting in preschool. Because the perception is that if you are special needs, you are less intelligent than the other kids. I am here to tell you that there are two special needs groups in a school and only one of them gets the right kind of support. I guarantee you that a large part of supporting the gifted and talented program is supporting special needs kids as well. Parents of prodigies will tell you that it’s an equally hard row to hoe.

Smart does not equal socially capable. Smart does not translate to “able to take care of themselves,” either. The profile for high octane autism is often three academic degrees and a terrible employment record….. and now they’re rich because they started making content for WordPress, YouTube, Substack, Medium, et al. It is not about trying to fit neurodivergent people into the machine. It is letting neurodivergent people design the machine in which they’re willing to live because the current system is untenable.

Everyone makes fun of the astrophysics professor who cannot remember to tie his shoes. But who loves him correctly?

Love is having someone else to help you where you struggle so that your gifts are allowed to surface. Working for someone else hasn’t worked for me in any industry, so as an IT person now I am fundamentally inclined to Think Different.

…because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.