Charlie McCarthy

November 18, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The reason I write stream of consciousness all the time is that I need a sounding board, and it can’t be me until I have had some distance from a problem. I can pick out my own problematic behaviors if I’m not in the heat of the moment. It’s the main reason I know I’m autistic and not a narcissist. I have pure motives, my social masks did not until my emotional abuse stopped. I only knew how to react from a PTSD perspective because since I didn’t think I was abused, I never bothered to look up trauma responses.

Therefore, the trauma bond transferred from the emotional abuser to Supergrover. It’s not because she’s a narcissist and I needed that pattern to repeat. It’s that we both laid our guts on the table emotionally and that had consequences beyond our control. In terms of my writing, nothing is under Supergrover’s control, either. That’s because in her absence, I spend time with her character because the lovable things about her are my new social masks, matching my values to my vision.

When I first lost my rose-colored glasses, my behavior regressed to that of the age I was emotionally abused, 14. Now, 10 years later, I am finally 11, the person I was when I met her. I am not yet 46 because I do not know enough about myself to be comfortable in my own skin right now. I am 21 at best, because emotionally I can be a fully-functioning adult. Logically, not so much. I have to tailor-make every job to me, so far unsuccessful, not due to effort. Due to every pattern I’ve had while working. It’s trite, but “I wasn’t born to fit in, I was born to stand out.” It’s what people always say when they’re fucked six ways to Sunday.

Burnout wears on you.

What restarts the fire is adding new kindling. The example I just thought of as a “spark” is finding out there are hackers who originally thought about sending me a SQL injection and changed their minds because “she knows the command line. She’s good.” This has never happened. I just think it’s funny considering how many hits I get from Eastern Europe (speaking of Eastern Europe, the new season of “For All Mankind” has dropped……….. #intelligence #iykyk). It’s an image of GRU, Mossad, NSA, etc. that doesn’t scare me. Considering how much hacking I’ve studied, I love espionage enough to know that I’ll never be off the grid. Cameras all over London are nothing compared to developing for the web……. and yes, I have seen people dumb enough to put a web cam on an HTML/DB server. It’s a special kind of stupid.

I don’t cover my web cam with a Post-It because I’m not interesting. I don’t even care if pastors use my sermon illustrations in their own without credit, because when you hit a home run, nobody cares about the brand of the ball. That is only my personal opinion; with other writers YMMV.

In some ways, being trained as a web designer taught me that it was like being trained as a sharpshooter. That respecting Internet privacy was every bit as crucial as respecting the business end of a scoped shotgun. There are consequences for content far beyond your reach, as Karens have found out recently and minorities have known for centuries.

Burnout wears on you.

It’s easy to rail on neurotypical, straight, white, cis people because they need it, frankly. Having the majority claim oppression is too fucking rich. Because whites own so much wealth, they are literally rich from ruining legit everything. Reaganomics wasn’t the best idea they ever had. When things were supposed to trickle down, the rich asked for and were granted bigger cups. It didn’t work, and we’re stuck. It was the equivalent of “let’s tell the poor to fuck all the way off.” Meanwhile, the rest of the world is looking at us like we’re crazy because we absolutely are.

It’s easy to say things like this when I’m not in front of a crowd- that my words have more impact because they flow easier and aren’t compromising with others’ stories because it renders me a weak narrator. People get onto me for creating my own narrative. Of course I do. What else am I supposed to do? Should I be beholden to anticipating your every need?

That has been paralyzing, because it’s always meant “I love your writing and you are entitled to your stories as long as you never mention we know each other.” Everyone likes reading my observations about everyone else. They are not going back and looking at their actions in third person omniscient like I am…. and not positing why I would do what I do in reaction to them, either. It is never their behavior, only the paragraph that triggered it.

When I acknowledge my inner angel and asshole, it doesn’t seem that others are brave enough to do the same. No one in the history of my blog has ever apologized for their behavior when they stepped all over my ass and got pissed when I stopped apologizing for my words as well. I also would never say anything behind my friends’ backs that I wouldn’t say to their faces, and sincerely dislike friends who do otherwise. If you have a problem with me and talk to everyone else about it, that’s on you. Nothing will get better by telling other people the problem, and clearly you are more in tune with those friends than you are with me, so please go ahead.

Your services are no longer needed because I cannot solve a problem if you do not tell me what it is. I will disconnect immediately from people like that because it doesn’t result in being able to shrug things off easily. The quicker the dump, the better. I waffle between holy terror meltdown and incapacitation; I’m done with those kinds of swings. I’m not going to pass out over anger anymore, because I don’t do much but self-soothe and my echo chamber is a hot mess.

I don’t disconnect quickly from people because I don’t like them. I disconnect because when people are angry, my echo chamber turns everything into “you’re the worst person who ever lived.” I can work on turning down the volume, but I can’t pretend a little bit of it won’t always be there because internalized homophobia and hatred of my processing disorders/mental illness is ever-present. Society reinforces it by people confusing autism with Down’s Syndrome… which I believe is the root cause of the phrase “you don’t look autistic.” Autism doesn’t refer to genetics. It refers to the way your brain processes your environment, logic, and emotions.

Logic is more disparate over the spectrum because of differences in executive function. I could be a therapist better than a programmer because my EQ is so much higher than my IQ. If there’s a MENSA of EQs, I’m certainly in it. I’m the Stephen Hawking of human behavior. I’m not the only one. Most autistic people are like this because they have to study neurotypical people so hard to social mask them……. because acting like themselves leads to “problematic behavior.” It’s not the behavior, it’s the context I got from what you said, which, if you’re neurotypical, will hardly ever match what you meant.

What I mean about logic being a spectrum is the difference between STEM autistic and creative autistic. Creatives don’t process things like scientists. Creative autistics have problems processing a process, essentially. STEM autistics have problems processing their feelings about a process. That’s a spectrum, too, and varies because so many of us also have ADHD. Autism in women is not generally caught when the person has both processing disorders. Their ADHD makes their interest vary so much that doctors tend to downplay their experiences.

If someone does not believe that I am autistic and low functioning in terms of logical processes, I don’t have anything to prove. You can see it in my life everywhere you look if you want to find it. If you don’t, you won’t. Neither of those things are my issue, I just respond to you the way you respond to me. Saying “you don’t look autistic” or “everyone’s a little bit autistic” is just dismissive of a devastating process. Your entire life changes from the moment that light bulb goes off. It’s better knowing than not. It’s debilitating knowing that in a lot of cases, it does not get better because it’s not all up to you.

People often like reading/writing about things they love and cannot do themselves. I was attracted initially to being a spy or a diplomat (or “both”) because I studied international relations and political science at University of Houston. I left UH (early, but not by much- if I went back, I could graduate pretty quickly); I wanted to travel the world, and working for the government was the easiest path since I couldn’t get into the military. I didn’t follow up on civil service because by the time I was rejected, I’d moved on from traveling because my autistic side showed up more and more as I aged. When I first moved to DC in 2001, I don’t think I left my house for six weeks due to meltdown and burnout from changing so much, so fast. I was not dissatisfied, I was exhausted.

I actually tried to join the military before I graduated from high school because I wanted to be in a jazz band that came to HSPVA called “The Airmen of Note.” Speaking of them, I once heard the joke that the Air Force is a group of people who stand next to the military, which is basically recycled from the “fact” that drummers are a group of people who stand next to musicians.

I am not an arrogant asshole out of the bandstand and kitchen, but I can damn well “play it on TV.” Being a dick on the line is child’s play next to being the only woman in the absolute cesspool of humanity that is top brass, and we’re not talking about the Air Force anymore.

It remains to be seen whether I’ll ever take the Civil Service exam, because I’m having trouble conceiving of being anything other than a writer, because I can shed light on things without having to work inside them as long as I do the research. I very much learned this from Rachel Maddow. She’s not a spy, a diplomat, a soldier, etc. She’s just an observer to all of it, painting her feelings as fact because she’s taken the time to read them all and digest, imparting what she understands based on what she’s read, not because of a pathological need to be right.

The moment I moved here, I started searching for a job as a cub reporter and found out quickly I was too old for the job because no one would look at me. It’s not the job I wanted, it’s the job I thought I could do. I already just pull the string and 3,000 words will come out. Deadlines are every bit as solid as ticket times, and you’re reacting to what’s happening rightthefucknow rather than having to sit on a story for weeks until you get it perfect.

I am glad I continue to train myself like a journalist, because my other works are going faster now that I “work out” before I get to them. Writing is a muscle, and my emotions feed it. I decide whether I like the feel of my craft or not, and what styles advance me, what doesn’t.

Being a wishy-washy storyteller is boring to other people, I am not a dictator over my friends. That’s because I don’t have a lock on our future. I have a lock on my reactions to our past. I’m never going to be nosier than you’ll let me.

It’s just hard to be curious and have people think it’s nosy. In my relationships, I want to know what makes those people tick. Them not telling me those things makes me feel rejected, because I don’t mean any harm and yet have caused anger. I genuinely care or I would never ask you anything.

I’m not going to stick around if my curiosity is intrusive because I’m autistic and I’m not going to walk on eggshells or change. It’s impossible. It’s not my personality, it’s my disability. You can deal with it or you can’t, and that’s not my bag. I have become better about seeing the people that show up instead of wanting people who don’t.

It’s only when I’m truly alone that I want Supergrover whether she wants me or not. It’s too powerful to grow through the thermonuclear war to not pay attention. I learned who I was, who I didn’t want to be anymore. I learned who I love and how. I made a list of what’s wrong with me and why. I don’t apologize for the things over which I have no control anymore, because I absolutely don’t believe I “should have known better” in front of people who don’t talk. They will never know how my responses would have changed if they knew how I felt and weren’t brave enough to ask.

In some ways, I write everything here to push through rejection sensitivity disorder, meltdown, burnout, demand avoidance, impulse control, etc. I could keep naming symptoms that suck for quite a while, but writing gives me structure I don’t get elsewhere. I don’t have demand avoidance over things I understand intimately. I also use my writing as a jumping off point for conversation, so people already know how I feel before I see them if they’re fans, and don’t if they don’t want to know. Their choice. Being a fan is not a requirement, but you’ll get more of me if you are. Full stop. This is because the autism doesn’t mix well with conversation. It is even easier to have a conversation through chat than verbally. A lot of autistic people process through writing to cut down on social masking, so I am very much not alone in this trait.

I’m admitting that I am not the person I thought I was because it makes me feel better about myself. That I am finding solid answers about working around limitations rather than being ignorant of them. I am also not using autism for anything but a Google or YouTube search term. It’s not an excuse, but it is very much my responsibility to let you know so that you do not hold me to neurotypical standards, which harp on a neurodivergent person’s greatest weaknesses. It’s a trap (Zoidberg gif)!

It feels like my only choice is to do this by myself, because even if people are dismissive, that doesn’t make it untrue or less difficult. You only have to study how much AuDHD and ASD is missed in women for five minutes to understand that what I’m telling you is not bullshit. You only have to spend another five minutes to know why so many people avoid an official diagnosis. It’s expensive and intimidating, leads to more discrimination at work. An official diagnosis can help you stay employed at some companies, get your resume left in the dust at others. It depends on how the culture of the office views neurotypical people as a whole. If you are any combination of the neurodivergent disorders, you have problems keeping track of important things because sensory issues impede your comprehension. Having an open office plan for every employee is like picking on kids for being fussy eaters. They’re both neurodivergent traits that result in neurotypical people saying “get over it.”

Autistic people can be astronomically talented and unemployed because they cannot “get with the program.” If you have a policy that I must be able to write, talk on the phone, and listen to everyone else’s conversations just because other people can do it is insane. People want to have hired neurodivergent people. They do not want to work with them. We are HR window dressings like all the other minorities.

There are two sides to every story. I also understand why having neurodivergent employees with needs so highly specialized is problematic. You cannot provide enough space to block out noise for me, and even if I wear headphones my eyes are tracking an enormous amount of activity. All of that matters in terms of performance. How many things am I expected to keep track of at once, knowing that the very same things that limit me at work make me the most frustrated at home. Guaranteed. I don’t dislike those things about myself any less than they do. I’m just tired of feeling like a failure, and see promise in my writing because it’s helping me. I have the attitude that it doesn’t matter if readers show up for not, because I do my bit in asking people to read without being obnoxious. There’s a difference between building my audience slowly and actively trying to be the center of attention. I don’t want to “go viral.” I want people to know my name when shit hits Amazon.

I ask for donations, you don’t get a paywall. To me, that’s enough. A few ads aren’t that obtrusive, and I know that because of my stats. People wouldn’t stay if the design wasn’t easy to read, and ads in paragraph breaks are mostly fine. I honest to God do not want to be famous. I want to be respected. I am, among a very small audience (small being relative for the web), and am growing every day. Life is small ball. You don’t hit a home run every time you’re at bat, or at least, I don’t.

It’s just so much different understanding the rules, and how they’re different in the National and American Leagues.

Life is Like a Full Time Job

November 14, 2023November 14, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I ran across a post on Facebook about looking for friends. They said they were an enneagram two looking for another one. I had no idea what the hell that meant, so I took the test on my own. I am a four, The Individualist. Apparently, this is the INFJ of enneagram, because it had all the traits of a healthy four, and all the negatives. It was fucking brutal. Enneagram is one of those tests where it comes off like psychological “data” indicating what’s wrong with you and why……. through a web form, so that’s legit.

The good news is that my personality is as rare as I think it is. The bad news is that my personality is as rare as I think it is (before the ADHD/Autism/PTSD/Bipolar enter the chat). INFJ in Meyers-Briggs–speak is about leadership and finding yourself in order to find others. Four sounds like they want to make the world revolve around them……. but, of course, they do this while also giving examples of great “narcissist” fours in history- Jesus, Rumi, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr………. and Leslie Lanagan.

Ok. I get it.

Amazing people, enormous flaws (even Jesus, die mad about it).

I believe that Meyers-Briggs INFJ is more accurate (kinder?) for me than Enneagram Type Four, because my personality does not lend itself to narcissism. My personality lends itself to being able to look at a situation from more than one angle and people believe I am two-faced. When life is a spectrum of possibilities, two things can be true at once. More than two things can be true at once.

I cannot control anything but me, and I don’t try. I, like the INFJ/healthy four I am, have retreated into the silence to regroup. I’m learning what I can about other people who are also like me, beginning the vamp to “Take Five,” and we started in common time.

With an enneagram, you lean more toward one number than the other in terms of lower and upper limits. For instance, if you are a four who also has characteristics of three, you would be a four wing three. I am a four wing five, which means that I am just as inquisitive about the rest of the world as I am about me. It seemed to be one of the few bright spots in which the results didn’t focus on telling you why you were fucked as a human. The only other bright spot is that I learned which enneagrams I’m most compatible with, so at least if someone asks me where I fall, I don’t have to pretend I know what they’re talking about…… At the same time, I also believe “four wing five” would translate to 4/5 time, not 5/4, but Dave Brubeck didn’t write a chart in 4/5. 😉

It seems to me that enneagram has a lot to learn from “Ted Lasso” about being curious and not judgmental…. because essentially what it says is that we’re some of the most unique people on earth and also have to let everyone know it….. when people don’t respond, we’ll isolate and say “I liked it better that way, anyway.” I am sure this comes out in autistic rage, but even if behavior comes across that way you can’t always attribute underlying emotions.

Because it’s a spectrum, I know that other people are going to read different interpretations into it, but I feel that Individualists/Idealists fall into the trap of alienation and have to cope. We’re not begging for attention and the description makes it feel like we are. There’s no narcissism to it, there’s only handling a lonely world for neurodivergents. What are people supposed to do when they feel lonely besides pretend they like it?

There is a strong correlation between neurodivergence, four, and INFJ; however, the enneagram four copy was very much like getting a performance review at HR where they list all your worst characteristics to your face because they can’t just say “autistic.”

Language around “INFJ” talks about the good things in your life- that you’ll love one or two people intensely (perhaps three, but no more than a partner and two friends at a time), but shun more superficial relationships. INFJs are all about relentlessly trying to understand themselves, and the enneagram does not speak kindly to this. The description makes you feel like a loser, because it seems like extroversion is an ideal.

The enneagram will straight up tell you that if you don’t make friends, you’ll have a tendency to make being alone your personality, that individualism is the point because we’re too unique for the unwashed masses (Jesus would like a word). All personality types have their good and bad sides, and it isn’t wrong as long as extremes aren’t overrepresented. They often are. That being said, I was relieved to find that I have a lot of healthy four traits, and the enneagram does tell you what they are. It’s just that the list is a lot shorter, because apparently people like hearing how awful they are in great detail.

The biggest of the positives about a four is their ability to laugh at themselves. The trap in being a four is thinking that you’re such a special little snowflake no one can possibly understand or love you. Again, the wording of the enneagram is harsh and I do not like it. In my opinion, it is ableist.

Most creatives are coming from a place of deep pain, and autistic people score four/INFJ in droves. Therefore, the population of INFJs is already a group of people who have been led to believe that they’re lesser than. There is no need for all that because we can whip our asses on our own time.

When you’re autistic, getting out of bed and leaving the house takes work. No one is making us dive into self-pity except for hearing people talk about disability as if it’s an excuse. The world is designed like that, not us. Telling you no one is listening and nothing changing is par for the course; neurotypicals put the onus on the disabled person to fit in and this is proven, not my personal opinion.

If you’re an INFJ and autistic, you probably love personality tests. It took me a while to figure out why, though. Learning ourselves in-depth helps us figure out social masking easier, because when we find out how we fit into the puzzle, it’s easier to see where the other pieces go. Output can be dangerous if you don’t know yourself well enough to know what applies and what doesn’t. It’s not an exact science, and there’s no way to score it accurately (what is true today might not be true under different circumstances later).

Reading your enneagram, to me, is like reading “What’s My Toxic Trait?” porn because then you can compare how awful you are to other people. If you have mental illness, the trap is not feeling sorry for yourself. The trap is entering the pain Olympics. I’m going to be the best at therapy by proving I’m way more fucked up than you. It’s especially gratifying to see your therapist realize this is, in fact, her first rodeo.

Part of the reason I’m such an intimidating case is that in medicine, everything combines into comorbidities. In psychiatry, if it’s not one thing, it’s your mother. 😉 When a therapist is deciding how to work with me, they’re doing a lot of processing on the backend. What they get with me that they don’t get with most patients is that I want to understand me as badly as they do, and I can speak their language. I have not done enough reading to diagnose anyone including me, but I have read enough to be confident discussing my own body and treatment. I come into therapy already more self-aware than most patients, and this is not something I’ve said about myself. This is what every therapist I’ve ever had has told me after I let them read a few blog entries. They joke about “what do you need me for?”

Technically, they’re right. I don’t need them. I want them to provide feedback on what I’m learning about myself, but therapy cannot be my only outlet for my feelings because it’s harder for me to process while speaking than writing. It takes the energy of having to social mask away, when in therapy I’d be trying to balance the energy in the room. I’d notice the therapist’s discomfort and change tacks, fully realizing that’s their job. I am not a very good patient, just like I’m not a very good parishioner. The struggle is real.

I tried “Better Help.” Perhaps it’s just that I didn’t get the right therapist, but she told me that the way it worked was that I’d write and she’d respond. The problem was she didn’t. I’d write just like I do here, and I’d get a link to a Google document about something and no actual treatment. I think their therapists are overloaded and I didn’t get the right one for me. Doesn’t mean I feel inclined to go back. I will find something- a hybrid.

What I know is that even if this isn’t the answer, it is an answer I didn’t have yesterday. Autism is a new and frightening world, because so much of it makes sense in the context of feelings and issues I’ve had since childhood. So much of it is new in terms of not knowing how far behind the eight ball I’ve been in not having a diagnosis. I have never learned coping mechanisms for rage and burnout. I didn’t know I was social masking, I just felt alone. Alone and overwhelmed with no ability to do anything except cry in frustration. You can’t get it right, you’ll never please your boss, and you can’t clock out.

With autism, you don’t have to get a job to know hard work. Life is like a full time job.

All of ‘Em :::southern accent engaged:::

November 11, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What podcasts are you listening to?

Podcasts are so sophisticated that they’ve turned my attention away from music. I enjoy conversation, so interview shows are essential.

My friend Wade introduced me to my current favorite, a CBC show called “Writers and Company.” The host is retiring, so I don’t know if she’s going to be replaced or a new show is going to be made instead. Through that show, I’ve met so many people like me. I’m not the same level of writer that they are, particularly for people like le Carré, but I identify with the creative process. I like hearing how people work.

In the unedited version of “On Being,” Krista Tippett always starts with asking the guest what they had for breakfast, and I’m like, “Krista…. thank you for asking the real questions here.

Pete Holmes (You Made It Weird) and Marc Maron (WTF) compete for my attention week to week based on guest, and if I have time, I’ll get involved with the show more regularly because keeping up with every show is how you keep up with Marc and Pete. They both have what I call the “Craig Ferguson effect.” They can both talk for an hour and it will be fabulous. Craig could have hosted The Late, Late Show until he died, no guests, and I would have been glued. I was devastated when he didn’t want the job anymore, but genuinely hope for his happiness and success because he’s another person I feel is a kindred spirit. He’s an alcoholic and I’m bipolar. Both rabid Doctor Who fans. Same software, different case.

I don’t think Craig has a podcast, but I have genuinely enjoyed listening to him when he’s been a guest on others. Sometimes I just need to hear “it’s a great day for America, everybody.” And when I need to, I can hear him say it on YouTube.

I love “SpyCast” and have been on it a couple of times, because I’ve been in the audience and thus the recorded Q&A. I haven’t always asked questions, but when I laugh, you always know it’s me. I got into it because of the interviews with Tony and Jonna Mendez in the archives, but stayed because I really liked Vince Houghton’s interview style (and later Andrew Hammond’s).

It’s cool to hear people like John Brennan when they’ve got five minutes on Conan or whatever, but they’re amazing when they’ve got 45 or 60. Spies are personable, yet not trained for television, either. It takes more than five minutes to find the rhythm in which they’re comfortable opening up, and that’s true of everyone who doesn’t work in television. Hell, even people who do work in television. I love long-form interviews with actors as well.

It’s not technically a podcast, but The Hollywood Reporter funds roundtables where actors, directors, and writers interview each other. There is a moderator, but for the most part the actors talk amongst themselves. You learn more about the craft than you ever would by watching TV.

In terms of writing roundtables, my other favorite podcast is “The Writer’s Panel.” You’ll see a list of guests and not recognize a single name, turns out they were on a team that wrote five of your favorite shows this year. And it’s always a random assortment, like “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “Schindler’s List.” Not a real example, but on brand. Work is work. I particularly want to hear from black writers, because their voices are more authentic to mine than whites given my sexual orientation. The Writer’s Panel is the first place where I’ve met a lot of black TV and movie writers at once, and even more importantly, all talking to each other. That’s the kind of “creatives talking about business” I need because they have the same limitations I do in working for a system that’s not built for them. Hearing multiple people come at the problem from different angles gives me solid information on which to reflect.

I have loved news since I was a child, so now I listen to it in Rachel Maddow’s voice whenever I can and Alex Wagner’s failing that. I listen to everything Rachel does, and I’m particularly wrapped up in her podcast series (multiple). I like how she weaves history into the present and I think that’s what makes me sound like her some days. I used to have a picture of Rachel sitting in her office as the background on my laptop, and my housemate asked me who had taken that picture of me. We look alike, we think alike, we have the same interests. I believe that I remind people more of her after we speak than before, and I’m her archetype everywhere in the world with my genderqueer schtick.

Before Maddow, people pegged me as kd lang. They probably connected me more easily to her because not only do I sing, she’s the lesbian who resembles me and other people know who she is. If I looked like Melissa Etheridge, people would have told me I looked like her on multiple levels….. and I know this because “you look like kd lang” has all sorts of connotations depending on tone of voice. Rachel and I probably both got called “kd lang” as a kid, because I can’t remember who’s older, but it’s not enough to be memorable if there’s an age difference. Therefore, I feel very tender toward her even though we’ve never met. Another person with whom I could set a date, step off a plane, give her a hug, and go for beers. On the surface, we are the same person, and not because we actually are. We are holding the same banner at the same parade. Rachel is one of those people that I think “I’d be happy with her.” It guides me as to who I actually want to date because not only do Rachel and I not live in the same city, she already has a partner and they’re so happy it’s impossible not to be happy for them. It is cool that she works here sometimes, though, because if we ran into each other I think we’d have fun. She could certainly introduce me to women I’d have never met otherwise, the reason I came to Washington in the first place. I didn’t want to be a Texas writer. I came here to play.

And with Rachel, it wouldn’t be about meeting women in terms of dating. It would be walking down the hallway and Hillary Clinton stopping us for a second. I wouldn’t have any business with Hillary and I wouldn’t care what their conversation contained. I would just be honored to hear something like that. It wouldn’t just be Hillary Clinton, either. Rachel knows everyone. She’s so powerful she probably knows we’re talking about her right now.

I am sometimes one of those women who likes murder podcasts, and always someone who likes “dark history.” Bailey Sarian covers both my bases with two shows available on YouTube and as a podcast. “Mystery, Makeup, and Murder” is a long form lecture on a murder while Bailey is applying her makeup. I love it because it’s so informal, and very much like reading one of my own blog posts because she just lays it all out there like we’re sitting there having a drink. She is also an outstanding makeup artist, and reminds me of Kevyn Aucoin with her style. I flip back and forth between MM&M on YouTube and audio because even though I am not into makeup as a general rule, she is so gorgeous that sometimes I just want to watch her in a not-creepy way for when I do decide to get “all nellied out.” The new foundations that are coming out are like magic. You can basically PhotoShop your whole face in 15 minutes flat. For the uninitiated, “all nellied out” is queer for someone looking extraordinarily femme and comes from Nellie Olson in “Little House on the Prairie.” I don’t do it much anymore, but that doesn’t mean I’m not good at it. But really, when it comes to Bailey, I’m more attracted to the murder. She is just the wrapping that comes with the murder. It’s an excellent package.

When MM&M became insanely popular, a company asked her to do a second podcast called “Dark History.” These are long-form lectures that translate just as well on audio because she’s not doing something else. There are obviously dark episodes, like Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, but also things that most people don’t think about, like the war over pineapples and sugar. The child labor in chocolate and coffee. It’s just fascinating and I recommend it both because it is interesting and so is Bailey.

Indirectly, Bailey changed the direction of my media-watching habits because for the last, I don’t know, year or so? I haven’t really watched TV. I’ve watched YouTube. Finding MM&M and Dark History led me to watching other long form lectures, which in effect, sent me back to college. I haven’t seen all the latest shows because I’ve been thinking about the Roman empire. 😉 No, seriously. I watch lectures by college professors on history- military and CIA particularly because that’s what I’m researching. Right now, it doesn’t matter what era of military history it is, as long as we’re talking about WWII forward.

That’s because before then, we didn’t have an official intelligence service (and my novel focuses on both defense and intel equally). We had “Wild Bill Donovan,” America’s one-man traveling Langley. He had few friends in this town. Any mystery and cool factor over CIA that exists today isn’t based on them, I assure you. Military hated intelligence at first because they weren’t helpful, they were a threat to their authority. Americans love CIA because Ian Fleming charmed them into it. George Tenet knows this better than anyone else. He knew that CIA needed a win, so he was the one that declassified the operation so that the story of the Canadian houseguests could be told.

That’s because he knew Britain was in love with James Bond, and so was America. What if it was provable that CIA has a spy who is just as lovable? It has to be a good movie if my heart goes a little squishy every time I see Ben Affleck and it’s not because of “Chasing Amy” (I do not know a single bisexual girl who didn’t become absolutely 100% obsessed with that movie….. maybe I’m less bi than I thought or something.)…. and honestly, it’s exciting thinking about who I’d like to play Jonna if “The Moscow Rules” is also optioned (and she’s told me that there’s interest, but nothing has come of it- no ink). Kristen Stewart might be a good choice because she and Jonna both have the same vibe- feminine and rough and tumble. Same for someone like Megan Fox, Mila Kunis, etc. It would have to be an actor about Friends-cast age because if I was Jonna, I’d want Ben to play Tony in TMR, too (I’m just thinking out loud. Jonna, you can stop me at any time…. kidding, I don’t know if she reads me, but it’s not impossible). I can’t think of anyone I would choose based on direct comparison in looks, because I don’t think that the best actors do imitations. For instance, I don’t think Peter Dinklage actually looks like Cyrano De Bergerac, but I do know he chewed the scenery. It wasn’t an imitation. Dinklage became him.

I would choose Taylor Schilling to play Jonna if she hadn’t already played Tony’s first wife in Argo. I don’t remember how many years it was post-Iran, but she died of cancer before Tony and Jonna started working together.

Here’s the most important scene in “The Moscow Rules” to me, and I will be seriously pissed if they leave it out of the movie. Tony and Jonna worked in disguises, right? So they were in charge of giving people their disguises and training them to detect when they were about to get made. They did this by taking the “kids” to Georgetown and letting them loose, a spy game. They all have different skills, like one’s a linguist, one’s got the map in their head, etc. However, all the spies have to be functional in everything. It’s all about leaning on each other’s strengths and being capable when you’re alone. I think it’s the part about spying that’s ignored the most- how fun the training is. God forbid you get a job where you actually enjoy yourself.

I am sure that in a lot of ways, The Farm is like boot camp. You get out and the real world bears no resemblance to anything you just learned. The courage to be a spy isn’t being fearless all the time. It’s letting go of the fear that you’re going to suck and acknowledging that it’s okay to suck until you know what you’re doing. However, if you’re going to be a spy, know that it’s not a movie. Err on the side of caution because other people’s lives are in your hands. You could get people killed by leaving a newspaper in a coffee shop. It was an accident, and assets still got made.

If I sound like a I know what I’m talking about, it’s exclusively because of podcasts. After seeing “Argo,” I began to look for other writers that did things like it- and then Tony and Jonna released the book in reaction to the movie. But by looking around for writers, that included listening to podcasts about intelligence. Everything I’ve said is something I’ve heard directly, or is my opinion based on something someone else said.

I notice things that people don’t say in audio, more clearly on video. For instance, when I first started dating Zac, Jonna Mendez scared the life out of me on YouTube. We’re friends in real life, it wasn’t directed at me in any way, and yet my stomach clenched. She said something about “when you work for an intelligence agency, it’s not your family that’s the problem. It’s your friends.” And yet, for her, it was the other way around because she did tell someone in her family that made it a huge deal all the time, causing her not to tell her best friend for 35 years… interesting.

In fact, I’m not sure that said best friend still doesn’t know, because I don’t know if the friend was still living when she said that to the audience. Betraying a boyfriend with infidelity is child’s play, and both Zac and I are clear on it. I don’t have a problem with saying I’m dating Zac Wood here because I say it on Facebook, his profile is public, and it would come to someone’s attention faster than it ever would here in terms of search results. That being said, I don’t say things like the specific name of his agency, either. When I say he went to Langley or whatever, it’s because they’re his clients, not the other way around. You could probably Google all that, but my friends/fans on Facebook could do the same thing because he follows me personally and professionally. In short, I don’t want his Facebook profile and his character here to be different, because I want his professional persona to only be what he projects, and for my reactions to him to be genuine without touching on anything too personal in a business sense.

For instance, he can’t discuss troop movements in Ukraine, but we can both geek out over “Folksoda,” “Burn After Reading,” and “Slow Horses.” Neither of us have seen that last one. It would be a cold day in hell before either of us had time to schedule a marathon, but if we did it, “Slow Horses” would be a good one. It’s not that we don’t like being lazy and sitting on the couch. It’s that our lives are too packed to make too much of it. As a result, we make plans to watch things with no recognition of the fact that it’s been a month or so since we’ve seen each other and end up talking for six hours in a row instead.

I want to be with someone like Zac, and I only say “someone like Zac,” because I can have him, but I can’t have all of him. That doesn’t bother me. I just need to find my own partner if I want to settle down. I made the commitment not to start looking until January, because I do not want to be the type of person that turns my back on “The War Daniel” at a time when he needs love the most. He was lost in a pit of despair, anger, and addiction that will only start to lift in January (at the earliest) because it will have been a year since his last drink and his brain will be in a totally different place. No one knows this more than a doctor, and that’s why I call him “The War Daniel.” John Hurt plays “The War Doctor” in the 50th anniversary special of Doctor Who, and Daniel (before he retired) was a medical Navy Corpsman embedded with a team in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. If he’d done the same job as a civilian, he could be certified as both a medical and surgical nurse practitioner, and in some cases is, I believe, superior to an MD trauma surgeon on his best day. Most people who have been to medical school didn’t have to put a brain back together under cover fire.

That is why I am comfortable living with him like royalty or paupers, because he deserves to earn his fortune and he also deserves to kick back and just be poor, living off his retirement so that he doesn’t have to ever do anything he doesn’t want to do ever again.

Dana’s dad (my former father-in-law, high comedy) was a Marine, but he was in the JAG and went into private practice later. I think Daniel could do something like that if he wanted, because he has the mind that would make law incredibly easy for him. But that’s only if he wanted to change careers. If he went to school to become a nurse practitioner or a doctor for real, that’d be a good move, too. It’s just that I wouldn’t want to do something if it caused triggers in me, but Daniel is in the unique position of never being able to walk away at any time. He has a patient population that will never in a million years trust anyone else. They may not have physically seen each other for ten years, but he’ll still get calls in the middle of the night. Sometimes, it’s easy, like “I can’t tell anyone I have a rash there.” Sometimes, it’s talking someone down who literally has a gun to their heads because he’s the only psychiatrist they’ve got.

Daniel could become president of the United States and he’d still be a doctor. He’d still be The Doctor. And here’s the thing. Daniel is George W. Bush if George W. Bush was smart. That’s because he’s the W. version of Bill Clinton without the rabid infidelity….. and he’s a war hero, having won an award that most win posthumously. Daniel could become president of the United States, and I know it like the back of my hand. But I do not want him for that. I would hate every minute of it. I have more in common with Michelle Obama than I don’t. All I’m saying is that if he decided he wanted to be president, people would show up in droves.

That’s because he’s got a George W. demeanor and my political/historical/writer mind. If he did want to become president, I could help him do it. That’s because I’d be great at writing his speeches in the background.

“When did you write that last part?” “In the car.”

If he is Jed Bartlett, I would have to grow into the role of Abby….. but he already has his Sam, Toby, Josh, and Donna…… on multiple levels.

“Oh. This is bad on so many levels.”

Accidentally sleeping with a law student that also happens to be a prostitute is exactly the kind of trouble I’d be in all the time, too. This is because a prostitute, lawyer, and preacher’s kid (and spy, feeding my special interest) have one thing in common. They’re all the type of people that connect to other people immediately and have interesting stories because of it. With someone like Laurie, she would have set my brain on fire talking about SCOTUS cases before I ever realized she was a professional…… another thing I wouldn’t give a fuck about because I would care so much more that she set my brain on fire, which is I think how Sam Seaborn would have reacted if he wasn’t deputy chief of staff……… who also thought at first that his boss’s daughter was like, nine to disastrous effect. He has an archetype, and it is me….. incidentally, I am also the archetype for Toby Ziegler because I believe he is coded as autistic. I see it clearly now because of The West Wing Weekly, which has made me look at the series again after many years. Scenes play in my head.

Ziegler acts like us, even stimming when he throws a ball against the wall to think more clearly. Everyone I know in real life just went “ohhhhhhhh.” Light bulb.

I’ve realized I stim by walking everywhere and dictating my notes. Attaching a sensory memory like walking makes an idea move faster and retain longer….. for instance, not only do I retain a lot of what I read, I retain a lot of what I write because typing is stimming in and of itself…… and honestly, prevents a lot of burnout because I am emotionally distanced from people while I write so I’m not anticipating someone else’s needs. I am fluent in my own and asking for your input so I can change my mind if I think you’re right….. at the very least, explaining my dealbreakers in detail so that someone understands why I can compromise so easily with some things and am so rigid about others. It all revolves around my disability because that’s something I can’t change, and is just as valid as diabetes or COPD. A panic attack in your mind is just as valid as an attack in your heart, and it makes me angry when people admit themselves to the emergency room with a real psychiatric issue. That’s because most of the time, it’s treated like a “false alarm,” thereby ignoring the underlying problem and ensuring that if it happened today, it will also happen next week because Xanax isn’t important and surgeons have prepared for battle. You can smell disappointment in the air.

If you’ve ever watched Scrubs, it’s the most accurate medical show in the history of the world because Todd is for real. Surgical really does have a bigger complex than medical, even though medical is generally smarter because they don’t just pull it out and see it like a plumber. They’re detectives. In my opinion, House is superior to your basic cardiologist, if you are unclear on what I’m saying. It is absolutely the difference between medical science and medical art.

I say this because J.D. is another good archetype for me. In fact, I would say that I’m more like J.D. than I am most characters on television and not because I have experience in medicine myself. It’s that my ability to learn the jargon has been heightened an enormous amount by living with e medical detective.

Because we also lived in Houston and I went to a math and science magnet in middle school, I was fascinated by her being a doctor because I thought she should apply for the space program. She said, “but Leslie…. I already am a space doctor. I’m a “room atologist.” Here’s the serious part underneath the conversation. Going to space is all about improvisation because you don’t have any tools or materials you didn’t pack.

My stepmother’s second favorite stethoscope was from the medical bag of a Playskool set, and I’m passing this information to all my friends who are still field docs…. but check them out and if they’re not good anymore, try to find one on e-bay from the 90s if you can plan in advance. Retro toys are all the rage- it’s not impossible. It’s something that bar being in the space program, if you don’t have it you can find it at most big box stores on the fly….. provided Playskool hasn’t fixed something that wasn’t broken. It makes me laugh that a Playskool medical bag is as essential as a burner phone in some cases…….. and a tampon can save your life in two ways. It’s ironic that two male soldiers told me why I needed to carry tampons on me at all times even if I didn’t use them.

To pivot to that story, the first way is if you get injured. They’re a great addition to a Band-Aid if you’re bleeding profusely (and you can put it directly into a wound if it’s deep enough). The second way it’s absolutely crucial requires two more ingredients. In order to start an all-weather fire (not foolproof), you need a tampon, a way to start a fire, and some petroleum jelly, which is most useful to keep in your car if the temperature drops and you’re stranded. The reason that the tampon needs the petroleum jelly is that it makes the flame last longer, essentially turning the tampon into a candle. It’s not enough to last more than 5-10 minutes, but it is a better shot at catching kindling than using matches, sticks, and paper.

Another thing I’ve learned in terms of the whole field doc schtick is that multitools and “spy pens” are no joke. They’re not practical for everyday with things like mini-glassbreakers, so it’s kind of like having a truck. Alternately and absolutely the most useful and wasteful thing you’ve ever bought depending on the task at hand.

For instance, a parachute cord bracelet that unwinds is another thing it’s useful to keep on you for emergencies, but the reason it’s not useful is that it doesn’t go with every outfit; who knows if you’ll have it if said time where it’s necessary is absolute and wearing it is optional?

If you are a photographer, my attitude is extremely similar. The most important camera you’ll ever own is on your phone, not your Nikon “Turn it Up to Stupid o’Clock.” That’s because you don’t want to lug around all the equipment, and your smart phone that records in HD for video and takes 12 MP photographs (perfect for printing) is in your pocket. If you have a smart watch, you also have a remote. Anything you can do on the best Nikon can be done with an iPhone or an iPad, a Samsung tablet or phone. When you can carry something so heavy and aren’t required, you won’t.

That’s because most people don’t specialize in photography and filmmaking, therefore do not need the file size that most professional cameras have on photos and video. Even then, for pros it becomes about convenience and they’ll deal with lesser quality because of it.

Seriously, get a tablet and it will change your life because it’s so light you’re more likely to have it on you. The two tablets that accomplished this the best for me were the Nexus 7 and the iPad mini. There was enough real estate to be able to edit accurately, yet they were small enough that it felt like the same diameters in terms of height and width in portrait mode as a novel. Great for things like writing documents and would fit in the front pocket of a hoodie or my smallest bag. My problem with them has never been the form factor, but that they haven’t been able to fit better hardware than is currently available into that form factor. That’s because CPU power for 7-inch tablets is “budget” because they’re going off of price and not use case scenario.

For instance, I could build a marvelous tablet out of a Raspberry Pi Zero because it would fit into a tablet form factor. However, it does not have the power of a Raspberry Pi, which won’t unless you’re just talking about a laptop with a touchscreen on the front. There’s no way to get it small and cool. Pick a lane. It’s not that they can’t stay cool, it’s that laptop cases that don’t come with fans are more likely to overheat, and there’s currently no Raspberry Pi laptop case that’s immune to it. The best I could do with a Raspberry Pi Zero is a file server or a smart mirror, because a graphical interface would run like a three-legged dog. Clicking a menu, then being filled with rage because you’ve come back and it’s still not done, etc. Because of this, it would take a ton of work and the best performance I could get would come with an interface that looked like NASA in the 60s, with Bluetooth for a keyboard and wifi to access other devices on the network. That would indeed be useful, but not on the go. You’d be limited to a tablet where you had to carry the keyboard everywhere, the interface wouldn’t support a touch screen (it would, but you’d get tired of it quickly), bail to the command line, and be limited to the applications you can run using only text. Games like Pong. A text editor. A web browser that doesn’t really work anymore, lynx. An e-mail client so ancient that all college students my age have used it, pine- so old that when I use it, I feel nostalgic and put up with its limitations often. But we didn’t use it the whole time. We transitioned to Eudora at University of Houston. One of the funniest support calls I ever got was from a lady who asked me how to configure her “Endora” account. She asked me why I was laughing and I told her that Eudora was a mail client. Endora was the grandmother on “Bewitched……” Really, I wasn’t laughing at her. She reminded me of my mother’s mother, who made malapropisms standard operating procedure. She once told me she was going to lay down on the couch with an African (afghan). I doubted it, because losing certain words was so hard for her.

I’m not ashamed of being a Texan, but there’s always been a lot wrong with it.

After all, I did agree to marry George W….. if W. was smart. I’m not holding onto him forever, but I am holding onto him until I am sure that we’ve both had enough time to decide whether we made the right decision in the moment or not. I believe, like Meag and me, that it wasn’t that we aren’t good together. It’s that it was the wrong time and the wrong place, because with his addiction and both our mental illnesses/processing disorders, we were trying to find a secure environment in a hurry. But read “Blink” and then question whether I was wrong after you’ve had time to really take it in.

I blew Supergrover’s mind with two blinks in a row, but because of my autism, I could express my entire thought process in a way that came across clearly in text. She was excited for Daniel and me once I explained the ins and outs. That it wasn’t a snap decision like a wedding in Vegas. It was taking a leap toward a better life with a friend I’d known since I was seven and has a daughter I’m completely in love with as if I’d had her myself. It blows my mind that I’m old enough to be the stepmom of a 25-year-old. It was also good for me to have a partner, that polyamory meant he didn’t care if I fell in love with him or not because being friends trumped everything else, that having his back was more important than a wife. That whether I ended up being Leo or Abby it wasn’t a dealbreaker. I said the same thing to him. That even if I can’t be Abby, I’ll always be CJ.

This is better than, for instance, being with Meag and secretly pining for……. someone else. Being with anyone and pining for someone else, now a recurring theme I can’t ignore because it lends itself to cheating when you have ADHD and autism. Your brain makes you ruminate about someone who is not your partner and if they have ADHD, you won’t have to guess because they won’t keep their mouths shut for love for money.

Ask 50 neurodivergent people. We all agree.

That is why research suggests that poly behavior among neurodivergent people is sky high. They throw truth bombs whether you like it or not, which actually makes it easier to communicate because boundaries are secure. It’s especially common among couples where both halves are neurodivergent, because they understand the idea that obsession and complete disinterest are symptoms and there are times when both of us are going to tap out and come back together. It’s extreme because of the processing disorder, not because we’re mad at each other. There is also a complete and total difference between the love you have for a partner and the love you have in NRE (new relationship energy). The former is deeper, like drinking fine wine or looking at a Renoir. The latter is Jackson Pollack deep fried on a stick.

You can enjoy both environments depending on mood, but to be clear your partner is never going to be Jackson Pollack ever again…….. and not because they’re less valuable. It’s the nature of the dopamine when you first meet. Once it’s gone and lust isn’t the “forward note,” it is only really then that you find out where the rubber meets the road. I am neurodivergent and find it quickly. That is either because I am pastoral in nature and people spill things to me up front, or they are annoyed by my ADHD and Autism. There is no in between and my relationships tend to burn bright and flame out because of it, including at work.

I am not alone. I think something like 80% of autistic people are unemployed at any given time, because think of how hard work must be if you were bullied in school and teachers of “real” subjects looked down on special ed? Do you think that bosses and coworkers are in any way different when we graduate from high school? Teachers decided that you didn’t need it if you were smart, limiting anything we would have learned to help us later on. It makes for a hostile work environment because without special ed, we might have suffered in school and still made it through, but we didn’t learn any thought processes except social masking. Nothing even close to what’s available on autistic YouTube right now…… and lots of podcasts are just YouTube videos with the visuals cut, so the videos are the podcasts I listen to whether it’s on YouTube or not.

Everything I have said in this essay can be found in one podcast or another. I am so grateful that talk radio has expanded in this way…… but podcasts can only do so much when I want to see Rachel Maddow instead of just listening to her voice.

After all, she is my twin.

The One Where I Use The Term “Manage” Loosely

November 9, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

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.

Who Doesn’t?

November 8, 2023November 8, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Do you need time?

We all need more time to understand things than we think we do, and are trying our dead-level best to overschedule; we’re all going place to place and taking in none of them. When I travel again, I’d like to stay at least a week if possible. It takes a while for my body clock to accept a new rhythm, particularly going east. Jet lag was objectively worse coming back to DC from Oregon than it was in the moments I was taking the obligatory Portland airport photo (iykyk). I am using jet lag as an example of needing time because it’s the best way I know how to explain autism to a layperson. Imagine feeling like you have the pressure of your emotions changing to that degree all the time rather than just after a long-haul flight. Taking on change is easier when you feel normal, right? Would you enjoy living in jet lag fog permanently?

This is why transition time is essential to the autistic brain, and why I am yet again grateful that I do not drive. I caused my last wreck from rumination. I’d talked to a close friend earlier in the day, and we hadn’t spoken for years before that. She’d ghosted me without a trace and then reappeared. It was jarring, a new environment for me, so I did what any normal person would do. I thought about it so hard I ran into a guardrail trying to blow town for Frederick, the closest Waffle House. I was about 800 feet from a triple order of hash browns with chili, cheese, and onions (superior to Frito Pie, fight me) when I took a curve a little too hard. Girls with blonde hair will do that to you.

Editor’s Note:

You should absolutely add Fritos to bean burritos at Taco Bell. Also, every once in a while when I hit 7-Eleven, I buy a snack bag of Fritos for the back of the pantry because I’m a Texan and I don’t make the rules. Sometimes you have to have Frito Pie and in that instance, there is no substitute so you might as well be prepared. Not being prepared is such a rookie Texan mistake, because whoever heard of homemade Fritos? You’re going to the store. It’s not that you can’t make AMAZEBALLS tortilla chips at home. I can and they’re fabulous. But they sure as hell don’t taste like Fritos…….. just like pastry chefs are going to use Oreos/Oreo crusts. They’re not going to reinvent that particular wheel.We’ve learned it over time.

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

What you learn with enough time is how to control your environment to the extent that you can and let go of the rest. I’m not going to be able to convince Supergrover that what she read as narcissism was actually an autistic meltdown. I am sure that she regularly thinks I am the most toxic person she’s ever met because I just keep throwing these truth bombs because I’m an asshole and not because I am genuinely curious and love her more than anything on earth. If I throw an emotional bomb, it means I care about the answer and want to hear it. I heard a line from “Friends” that expresses this so well…. when Chandler looks into Monica’s eyes and tells her that she’s high maintenance, but he likes maintaining her. I am not an asshole with a God complex, she has complex problems that cannot be solved with “yeah, I’m fine.” If you want to see a question as an attack, you will.

I honestly found out I was autistic because of this relationship. I had to find out two things. The first was why I was so empathetic on the inside and yet it came across as being self-absorbed. Everyone knows that autistic person, or we know each other. Bet.

I learned over time that the meltdowns happened in a cycle because I would unmask and start letting my brain run wild on these ADHD/Autistic tangents and she would take offense at me not acting like a woman, seriously, and I’m not being dismissive toward her. It’s that traditional women are programmed to fix/please and anticipate everyone else’s needs.

We used to be a little too much alike in that arena, but I felt safe enough to stop with her because she’s so goddamn strong. She lays down the truth bombs as easily and often as I do. It’s just that hers are in the context of what she knows, and mine are in the context of what I do. Her emotional bombs are surrounded by not understanding my neurodivergence, her stepping all over my ass while I’m trying to teach her why my reactions to her are so much more intense than her reactions to me and failing miserably. Why it feels like I’ll always go a little stupid in that dreamy-eyed kind of way when I think of her, and have to stuff that kind of emotion back because it’s part of a social mask I don’t have. Just so many sensory issues that I attach to her, like the smell of coffee or the feel of the t-shirt that I kidded her I ordered that “has her portrait on the front.”

I have already said that the building blocks of our relationship are adrenaline and dopamine. My ADHD/Autism created those memories of smell when my brain chemicals were the most flooded. It’s why I’m so attached to her with a love that won’t die, but not like I loved Dana. Like I love my parents and siblings. The thing is, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she loves me the same way, because when Sam dumped me I told her and then she said her Mama Wolverine claws were coming in. I have never been so grateful for anything in my entire life because my next line to her was that my biggest delight in life was thinking about just how pissed off she was about this. It was that night I formed my first company. It’s called Leslie Lanagan & Pet Monsters on a Fraying Leash, Inc. We’re waiting on our 501, though.

When I become the most upset, I have a meltdown and then burnout. In those moments, burnout looks like me losing function and going mute, only communicating through writing. I get sensory issues from eating because it’s an ADHD hyperfocus interruption and I switch to vegan protein shakes. If that’s not enough, I develop sensory issues with leaving my house, reinforced by depression, anxiety, and an overactive imagination. The overactive imagination is a straight up problem because everything I imagine is a hundred times worse due to rejection sensitivity dysphoria, a common trait among neurodivergent people because we’ve been programmed to think of ourselves as problematic.

I should mention that there is also fascinating research suggesting that the number of autistic people who are nonbinary, queer, and poly is off the charts. My behavior suggests I’m not poly unless we’re talking about writing and physiciality, because emotional intimacy with multiple people is easy. Physically? Not so much. I’m just not wired that way. That doesn’t mean I’m not poly. It just means I probably wouldn’t meet someone on the ground and behave the same way. It remains to be seen whether I could manage that or not, and doing the work to see whether I’m doing the right thing for me or lending myself to getting into a situation where I can’t help myself and put someone I’ve made a monogamous agreement with completely uncomfortable because I broke the rules. Just because it happened organically doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. Just because it only happened to me doesn’t mean I didn’t cheat. The road to hell was paved with good intentions.

I need to make it so clear that I cheated on Dana, but Supergrover didn’t cheat on Michael because of course since I’m queer, my reaction to her was different than her reaction to me. That doesn’t make my emotions to her invalid, just different. She also doesn’t have autism or ADHD, so none of her sensory issues are going to run as deep as mine, and she gave me some pictures that caused sensory issues, but not sexual ones. They activated my alpha dog and my mama wolverine. When I feel that way about someone, it makes me attracted to them…. and in fact, when I don’t feel connected to someone in that way, being physical doesn’t come up. Romance, as with all things, has two modes for me. Obsession and absolute disinterest. It’s why autistic people have trouble with relationships. If they have neurotypical partners who take everything personally, they will not be happy, and probably jump too quickly to the conclusion that their partners are lazy, unmotivated, and angry at them because of their rejection at lights out.

It was a relief to come to that resolution in my mind with Supergrover, that even though the relationship was not nor would ever be physical, I had learned a lot about the way I work in a relationship because she took so much personally that I never intended.

I remember telling her that it was really hard hearing about the abuse she endured as a child, that my heart walked out of my body and I just had to breathe through it. She thought I was trying to make her feel bad, but I was trying to explain both why our trauma bond was immediate and deep. She became a monotropic thought process, what I mean when I say she lives in my ink. I was telling her why I loved her with such intensity and drive, and that in some ways I was sorry that process came across as negative, but not sorry for loving her as much as I do. She’s amazing, and part of the reason that I haven’t fallen in love again is that I hold every woman to her standard and find other women uninteresting. Why would I put myself out there when intellectual stimulation is more important and no one gives it to me more than she does? No one will ever be able to beat her in that area, even though Zac and I are wrapped up in my special interest. It’s not because he’s not brilliant, it’s that we’re talking about history and she’s making it.

If you never believe another word I say, believe that.

She jokes that other women are the smartest woman in the room except her, but you don’t know the room where she said it and I do. She knows an actor I would kill to meet, and a director, and neither of them do what she does. She knows them by dumb luck, the same dumb luck that put us together. Karma is magic and I will never believe anything more than that. I got a gift from the universe at the exact moment it needed to drop in my lap, and my nose got red at that, the first signal I’m about to cry, when I wrote that. And yet, even Zac doesn’t know who she is and respects my privacy like I know when to stop pushing about work. She’s my “classified information,” for all practical intents and purposes. I could tell you if it wouldn’t embarrass her across the world, but I wouldn’t. I keep it tight to love her, not to diss you. The “classified information” joke just fits in with my whole vibe. I will never stop being, in the immortal words of Zac Wood, a “drooling fangirl” over CIA, but that’s only because I’ve seen the disparity between the way people treat soldiers and the way they treat spies. Civilians matter.

And I’m a judgmental bastard, just not of people. Of institutions and situations. It’s how I can feel every emotion in the spectrum about Supergrover. How love and fear are inextricably interrelated, why I have no problem walking on eggshells for years and yet struggled so hard with my needs being met that I finally walked away. It was killing my self esteem and better for me when I stopped letting it.

Doesn’t mean I don’t miss her, and at first it was every moment of every day. You don’t learn to let go overnight, and my writing has proved it. She’ll never be far from my thoughts, though, because in the last 10 years of my life, my thought processes and emotions regarding her have been so deeply ingrained. It’s why I even thought we’d be good for each other as partners in the first place, but not that I insisted on it. It was just too good a question not to ask, because it made sense at that point, a united front. But then my monotropic thought process spiraled out about that, too, and it was just bad juju. It was a question better left unanswered, I’m just autistic and ADHD. My autism made me hammer away at it and my ADHD gave me no impulse control.

I didn’t know how those diagnoses affected my behavior until I knew I had them. I only knew about one. I didn’t know about the other, that when I am in autistic mode relationships take over my whole brain because I’m also an INFJ. I wanted the best for both my red and yellow strings and got them tangled. It was a struggle to stop dwelling, but I’m glad I did it and I know the root cause.

I have learned not to let relationships take hold of me in that way because it makes me give all my energy toward making them a better person. All INFJs are attracted to teaching and social work sorts of positions because we want all of our close relationships to be the best people that they can be. I wasn’t obsessed with who Supergrover could be, but helping her to be her best self. An INFJ will not watch anyone stagnate.

It was all reinforced by the fact that it’s easier for me to talk to other people about their problems than it is for me to talk about mine, because then I can stop social masking. I can stop remembering to make my thought processes masked and just listen.

I notice things that no one else does and people call me brilliant for pointing it out when it’s something they love and hurtful even when I don’t mean harm. It’s a lost place to be when your self-esteem is dependent on other people to that extreme, because when you take off your social masking and other people react poorly, you drift toward making masking the priority and it drains your energy before you even have the spoons to leave the house. The meltdown/burnout cycle is real and it’s deep.

Neurotypical people can only take so much before they decide you’re too much for them, and that has been true of neurodivergent people since we were born. “Autism Speaks” has an awful video where a mother says in front of her child that she thought about strapping her into the car and killing them both. I am sure that she thought she could get away with it because her daughter wasn’t “high functioning,” whatever the fuck that means, and she has no idea what her daughter is capable of processing emotionally without being verbal. What if the internal tape that plays in her head is “my mom wanted to kill me and didn’t.” Being “high functioning” is being able to speak for the mute and letting them speak for me when I am….. more specifically, I am non-verbal a lot of the time but I can reach out through text.

I need the world to adapt around me, and I am not being selfish or egocentric when the problem runs as deep as children feeling like their parents don’t want them. I am not alone when I say that I feel the pain of being too much for people, driving my depression and anxiety. Everyone wants to stop me from drowning, but few people are willing to help me from falling into the river in the first place.

Supergrover did the best she could, just not fast enough for my autism not to kick in. A trauma bond is a hell of a drug. It’s what made me rearrange my life around her and not Dana. It was the same deal with her- I never wanted to have a situation with another partner where I leaked information that wasn’t supposed to go to them because I felt so bad when I did it. She forgave me and moved on, but thought it was impulsive to solve the problem.

When you have situations where your sensory issues attach to a problem and it gets deep fast, you move quickly…. often what leads to getting married in a hurry and things like that. You are always trying to create a secure environment and you’ll grasp at straws because acceptance of your neurodivergence is transient. Because of this, Supergrover is the longest of any of my significant relationships by almost three years. It was more significant to me because it was in my wheelhouse, the writing.

Her greatest gift to me was that time, and I’ve loved it despite walking away in frustration. I needed a secure environment and couldn’t get one, so I grasped at the comfort of isolation whether I wanted it or not.

I want more because she’s wonderful. I also love her enough to let her go because the relationship didn’t serve us presently like it did in the past. I didn’t have room for other people like Zac, and in some ways my pathways are so changed there might not ever be. Sam got in under the wire, but even then my attention didn’t completely turn.

I need more time to spend with her, but only in reflection if need be. I learned so much from her, and it’s time to take all that away because I don’t want to pour love into her if she does not accept it. I would rather be alone with my thoughts in that case. The affect she has on me is tremendous and I cannot underestimate its effect. She doesn’t think of her (or me) in this way, so it clouds our judgment on whether we’re telling the truth. We both have trauma reflexes, and don’t treat each other like we’re worthy of being treated like goddesses. That’s because the root of our anger is how we feel about ourselves. We are both fixer/pleasers, and both easily jump to the conclusion that the other means the worst.

For instance, when Supergrover said “I can do nothing about the past. I can do something about the present,” and “this is all I can manage,” I took it to mean I would never get anything I wanted and to die mad about it. What I didn’t say is “what can you do about the present that you haven’t in the past?” I saw the writing on the wall and pushed her away.

I will never know if I was correct, but I do know that our relationship had that cycle for 10 years and I didn’t want to do it anymore. There was quite a difference between Mama Wolverine and ignoring me because you think I’m goading and provoking you instead of asking me questions in return. We both got defensive immediately.

I never wanted a war, but I started it. I am only suffering under the terms and conditions of the surrender. My bad behavior was supposedly forgiven and I haven’t been able to express a need without nuclear war for eight years. I didn’t think she was lying because she said she forgave me. I thought she was lying to herself about how much she wanted to be friends with me because she always seemed pissed off. I know enough to know that the world doesn’t revolve around me, but I can feel the energetic difference between “I’m busy” and “I’m ignoring you” even in text.

For instance, I have lots of friends that I hope aren’t mad at me because I’ve gone mute and can’t handle conversations right now. I have enough energy for an occasional Facebook comment, but mostly I am spending my energy on changing my own thought processes here. I will never be able to sustain myself if I don’t. It is how my life is coming together, not how it is falling apart.

I had huge sensory issues that Zac didn’t tell me he had a roommate before I arrived on Sunday, but I told him that and he apologized. He wasn’t trying to offend me, just spaced it, but that didn’t render my feelings invalid. He’s a solid dude and remembers so many things I don’t remember saying, so I know he does listen to me, deeply, I just have to roll with it because he’s neurodivergent like me.

It’s why I need Zac, and why I need time.

Wound Care -or- Soteriology

November 4, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

I have noticed that now there are millions and millions of words between us- probably tens of millions considering that several years running my word count was at two million alone- and that was before I stopped tracking it. Therefore, I feel like now I can give advice on writing (sort of) because you can see that I may not be “the best and the brightest,” but I am coming from a place of authority over my experiences because when it comes to how much I’ve written, I can bring the receipts. You don’t even have to go to Amazon (yet).

There is no way that the me of ten years ago ever had a 65 day streak on WordPress. I was motivated, but not to the degree I am now. Presently, I am not married to an extrovert and don’t have social/family obligations that I don’t really want to oblige. “No, but thank you so much for the invitation” should be sufficient. It helps that Zac and Bryn and I use Facebook Messenger 90% of the time rather than getting together- and the last time I was in Portland was years ago, but I know I could knock on Bryn’s door without telling her I was coming if need be. I know Bryn well enough that she’d take me in if she had room, and would certainly help me find a place failing that. It’s good to have friends.

It’s the support system that respects my privacy as an observer to human behavior more than a participant. I feel like I have had enough of forced extroversion because it makes other people uncomfortable. Harper Lee is widely considered to be one of the greatest writers who ever lived. No one remembers that after a certain age, she never left her house. Scout and Boo are the same person, and they are me in the singular sense of the word. We are not the same level of writer, but we have similar souls.

When it comes to me, never forget that. I am not saying I am Harper Lee. I am saying that writing comes better to me through isolation because I am a monotropic thinker; any stimulation interrupts that because of my ADHD. Therefore, I do not want to play the organ, conduct, and sing all at the same time. I sit in complete silence in order to drive the bus rather than riding. Hyperfocus can be induced the longer I think about something and let the minor irritations float away. When I’m writing, I don’t feel physical sensations in the same way. My hands are so focused, playing the keyboard with the same facial expressions as my mother at her piano. Making one thing the most important is the only thing that drowns out other priorities.

That’s one of the things that makes my writing so intense and visceral. A blank page lets my autism run wild, stream of conscious thought my best quality and not my worst.

No matter what you write, start with stream of consciousness first. Your books are where you learn plot, character, and setting. Your brain is where you learn voice. You don’t learn your brain until you can lay it out on the table and see it. I think that’s why most autistic people throw truth bombs. They’re going to tell you the truth whether you like it or not, because they’re not thinking about you. They’re thinking about the one thing they’re programmed to think about- which is whatever the single interest of the moment is for someone with ADHD….. so much of the reason my behavior has been erratic the last 10 years, because two things are true. I need a lot less stimulation in my life, and I have been through the ringer. I am not blaming, I am saying there are two sides to that equation. I overestimated my social anxiety due to my situation, but that doesn’t render autism invalid. It only made my trauma my single interest when I write. But that’s what taught me voice. Both writing trauma and learning to laugh about it as time went by.

While I thought Supergrover hung the moon, I still had to walk through the dark on starless nights.

Voice.

This blog might as well be called “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” with apologies to Irving Stone.

For people with autism without ADHD, they overfocus on one thing consistently. I am a blend, having both spur of the moment interests and a single thing- being myself here. That’s because the one thing I know is that readers will not find you if you don’t put out a pure signal. People are searching for something real, hungry for it. If you don’t throw down, neither will they….. whether it’s a reader or a partner.

By being a writer, you’re leading from the back and you should be aware of it. That if you write fiction, things will be attributed to you that are just your characters’ personalities. For me, this comes in where my friends are all characters and real people. That their characters cannot be them because I don’t live in their heads. I give you my impression of what’s there, and sometimes I’m right. Sometimes I’m wrong. But I put down all my vulnerabilities first because it makes me stronger, not weaker. I develop emotional resilience by charting growth and being proud of it. I regret all the times when I was full of rage and look forward to not feeling it in the future. I have gotten rid of most things that give me anxiety, but not all because to a neurodivergent person life itself induces anxiety.

It feels a lot like internalized homophobia, because neurodivergent kids are taught to hate themselves early on. Kids have ADHD or autistic or depressed or anxious behavior and it’s attributed to malice. This also creates blowback for me now as a writer. The first problem is that people say to me all the time “don’t write about this” when it is the most boring thing I have ever heard in my life. Making a story out of it would be harder than nailing Jell-O to a wall. But it’s not because the story itself is uninteresting. It’s that it requires a level of craft I don’t have in all cases. I don’t write about things right away all the time. Sometimes, I have to mull it over because some stories are interesting right away. Others unfold in the memory. It’s all about energy and flow in stream of consciousness, and the crafting of the narrative is completely organic. In order for a story to appear here, it has to fit the overall message of what I’m trying to say. It’s not gossip. It’s a treasure trove of memories that won’t mean anything until they become as emotionally detached as I am…. not in that I’m emotionally detached when I write. That when they read they are seeing themselves as a different person, as am I when I go back several years.

All people view themselves differently when they’re reading something written about who they were in the past vs. who they are now. They can acknowledge their humanity easier, because in the moment they’re angry and their pride is hurt. Over time, they come to accept their flaws, and my intent is to write about all of it. Gossiping would be boring because it wouldn’t change me. I wouldn’t grow from being Walter Winchell, but I like that Brené Brown. She’s going to be big one day.

If you are a writer, tell your story. No one owns it, and will probably be grateful down the road because they didn’t have the foresight to make notes. They’ll read yours because they at least know the memory is there whether they agree with you or not. They’re not coming back for your side of the story, but to remember their own. But in that, they see the problem with different eyes. It seems I have learned something in the last few years, when they did.

You cannot write a message to anyone who isn’t ready to hear it, and I’ve stopped trying. This is my web site. It is my treasure trove of memories, and you are invited. It is not the sum total of my writing, it is the gym, and we just got Pilates up in this bitch. It’s hard work, the bleeding. But here’s the thing. The writing is the Band-Aid you put over a wound to stop it, because you can actually see the source. Writing is also the Neosporin that keeps the infection out so that you heal faster.

Also, don’t end a sentence with a preposition. It’s not “where’s the library at?” It’s “where’s the library at, asshole.”

Saying Macbeth Outside the Theater

October 29, 2023October 29, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Shakespeare understands grief better than I do.

Sir Patrick Stewart said on Graham Norton that when he took on the role of Macbeth, Sir Ian McKellan asked if he could give him some advice. Patrick said, “PLEASE!” Patrick proceeded to make tears roll down my face when he said that Sir Ian said, “the key to unlocking Macbeth is ‘and.’ It is not “tomorrow.” It is “tomorrow….. AND tomorrow…. AND tomorrow.” It is the interminable march of days, the piling on of all kinds of trauma small and large, the fact that it seems like it will never end right up until it does. That’s why there’s such a dramatic boost between happiness while poor and happiness while comfortably middle class. When you have savings, the minutiae of life does not drown you, constantly. It is also true that happiness does not get much deeper after that. Once your basic needs are met, it doesn’t make you another 50% happier to be a multimillionaire.

I think that’s because Shakespeare recognized a specific kind of future. The one where you, too are stuck in a moment and get get out of it. I wish I could do all of life like I cook, which is knowing enough to be able to correct a mistake on the fly… not knowing whether I have just experienced a symptom or whether it’s a regular dumbass attack and treating everything like the latter, blowing it out of proportion with rejection sensitivity disorder. And I could give truly frightening examples of it, but most people who have anxiety and depression jump to the worst of conclusions first because they can’t handle their environment in the first place. It’s hard to feel like people love you when they’re exhausted by behavior that frustrates you all by itself.

It’s hard not to feel like everything is your fault when people are so insistent that the common denominator in every interaction is me. There is no possible way I own a hundred percent of the blame for every situation in which I encounter. It’s just not physically possible, especially when I’m a fixer/pleaser and do things to make people smile often. But people are more naturally drawn to you when things are going well…… and when things aren’t going well tend to think they’re right more than they are. So do I. It’s human nature. The objective truth is found in the chasm between our two stories, and most people don’t have the stomach for that.

People conflate “the common denominator is you” to mean that you are responsible for every slight that happens (as if you have that kind of power) and every misfire in communication; it’s “you are somewhat responsible because a situation takes two or more people to create and you need to own your part.” For instance, Dana and I agreed that we both fucked each other up. After one fight, we divided up percentages and decided it was 60/40 in her favor. Then, I told her I would have taken 75 and she lowballed herself. I tend to take on more guilt than I should, and I am now only reclaiming a normal amount of room in the universe rather than being unable to dictate any terms with anyone. It leads all my energy to bleed out, trying to please everyone from my family to strangers. This has often led to people being entitled to their boundaries with me while ignoring mine because I’ve let them get away with it for so long.

I didn’t decide that I was the only arbiter of my friendship with Supergrover. She shut down and didn’t give me information, then didn’t have any tolerance for me making decisions based on what I thought rather than what was actually going on with her. But it wasn’t because I didn’t ask or want that information to purposefully ignore her needs. It’s that mine were never addressed, ever. She felt great about me adoring her, but not about the fact that she had severely emotionally wounded me. And I wouldn’t have cared by now if she hadn’t forgiven me on the surface so that I felt like I was a ghost in her life. The one in which she thought I was a threat and then checked in with me, not establishing new boundaries so that I didn’t constantly walk on eggshells around her.

Like getting annoyed that I wanted to know something basic through conversation, seemingly annoyed I hadn’t looked it up when I couldn’t have Googled the information, anyway. Why would I do that if I don’t want to give you the impression that I try to get information about you that you don’t want to give?

Tomorrow…. AND tomorrow…. AND tomorrow….

The feeling of how she treated me hasn’t gone away, and I know exactly why I didn’t walk. It felt like the pattern to which I’d become accustomed to in childhood, trying desperately to please someone that had already moved on so that it felt like I was pouring love into them while they tolerated me. Fully capable of being a baby monkey, too scared to walk away from wire because I don’t know how to find cloth yet. I haven’t been taught. But I am teaching, reparenting myself. Trying to give mysellf what I didn’t get, and part of it is saying what I mean and meaning what I say. Everything is a lie as I figure out what’s masking and what’s not.

I just know that my social masking wasn’t limited to autism, it was reinforced by trying to be good (which meant quiet and out of the way) and covering my needs. I’m not special. Most women and girls do this. However, most girls aren’t preacher’s kids, either.

I’m not trying to piss anyone off, it’s just a side effect of change. People see me differently and they ought to. But remember that we’re both going through a struggle and behavior doesn’t exist in a vaccum. If I have to be responsible for my behavior, you have to be responsible about what triggered it. You cannot say I am wrong a hundred percent of the time, because my self-esteem isn’t low enough to believe it anymore. I can work with boundaries, but not when you don’t set them.

So much of my need to run from Supergrover stemmed from her marrying Michael, then not telling me for almost two years, then saying “surely I must have gotten the wedding announcement,” then saying there weren’t pictures, etc. I can believe that last one, but everything else sounds like “lies you tell” when you want to protect someone…. and this isn’t the first or only example of her doing it. Her identity fundamentally changed, her life had moved on in a concrete way, and it felt like I wasn’t worth telling…. whether it was/is true or not. It’s not what she intended, it’s what I felt in those moments. She also didn’t talk about anything but work when that was the last thing I wanted to know about her most days.

It was too big a hurt to mend alone, but an even bigger one that she was right there and couldn’t hear me. She had the right to set that boundary with me, but I had the right to walk away when she did it, because she explicitly said that there were things she wouldn’t be opening up about again…. which was, of course, the thing that drove my crazy dreams. Then, over time, she relaxed about it and I felt like there was a new boundary set with no way of knowing whether it was true. Actions and words didn’t line up for a long time. She wouldn’t have reacted to me so angrily all those years if I hadn’t hurt her, or if we had truly mended the rift. We “put the word ‘free’ on a note so high we couldn’t sing it,” paraphrasing Tony Kushner. Or, one of us couldn’t. Taking Kushner literally, I can hit that high B flat at 1500 yards when I’m on my game. I’m currently not, but that’s not the point. The point is that you get out what you put into it. I wouldn’t be able to hit an emotional high B flat at 1500 yards without years of understanding someone, just like years of voice lessons makes me able to sing “The Star Spangled Banner” (No one will ever, no not ever beat Whitney Houston taking it in four at the SuperBowl.) I will never be Whitney Houston without another party’s input. It takes both of us being vulnerable to move forward.

It’s so counterintuitive, but leans the relentlessness of life into rolling joy rather than rolling pain.

Being able to move fast and take chances doesn’t happen in a vacuum, either. It comes from examining yourself to the point where you understand and trust your own intuition, because you’ve talked to enough people to know whether you’re a good judge of a situation or not. How often your behavior is a source of joy or worry. When it pays off to focus on yourself and when you’re ignoring people. When you ignore them too long, they’ll go away.

When I tried to set boundaries with someone who had no issue setting them with me and just not apprising me of the situation consistently enough to understand it, she ran. I don’t have to take it personally, but I do have to remember it’s what she does. She doesn’t let me know what the boundaries are and blames me for overstepping them, but is also the one I’d trust with my whole life because she’s shown me she’s rock solid in other areas of our relationship. It’s worth working on, but…

Tomorrow….. AND tomorrow… AND tomorrow.

You’re Supposed to Plan Them?

August 18, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

How do you plan your goals?

I am only now learning what is within my control and what is not. It’s only been within the last year that I’ve allowed myself to have opinions. They’re not always the correct ones, but it beats searching for the right words- not because I would like to use them, but because they are the ones that will keep others from reacting. I tried so hard to need nothing that resentment built over time. 45 years, in fact. Having all of that anger rush out had consequences, but I knew what I was putting into motion.

Relationships changed when I wouldn’t let anyone run game on me anymore. Either be up front or get out. I do not want to read your mind, nor do I want to be infantilized because of my CP or bipolar disorder. It’s my job to take care of me, and I will take input, but I don’t need coddling. I need empathy, though. Caring that I’m neurodivergent goes a long way. So does compassion for my physical limitations. But if you cannot do those things, don’t be mad when I close the door behind you. I won’t lock it. I’ll give you room to grow. But I won’t let you come back until you prove to me that you can do those things. The people who aren’t my friends do it enough.

I just don’t want that temperature in my life anymore. I don’t want to live with rage, even if it is appropriately directed. No adult likes to feel parented or that other people are frightened by their emotions to the point they feel unlovable. This is not a limited to me problem. Most ADHD/Autistic people feel this way. Our emotions are too convoluted for them to make sense most of the time. As I was telling Bryn earlier, I have never met an ADHD person that could plan a goal for shit, so what am I going to write about today?

I’m going to write about how much it sucks to be neurodivergent in a neurotypical world. We are struggling to be heard and understood. We will explain until dark when the street lights are on and Mama’s callin.’ It’s an intrinsic trait with ADHD/Autism. My particular need to expound upon everything I’ve already said once is generally a reply to someone hearing my words and don’t have any idea what dog I’m walking.

It’s Oliver, btw.

So, I’ll just ruminate until people say they get it or walk off. But even when they walk off I want to keep explaining because up until now, I cared deeply and desperately about what people thought of me, and I extended that kind of energy to everyone I met instead of keeping it to the friends I loved the most. That way, I was sure to disappoint everyone all at the same time because I was so overextended.

I have made Zac, Bryn, and Oliver my entire world because that’s as much as I can handle right now. I have so much to think about that it’s incapacitating at times, so I need to be mostly single and just focus on what’s right in front of me. It’s all ADHD/Autistic people really know.

Life with no executive function leaves me absolutely brilliant in some ways, feeling like I continually fail other people all the time because my software is different and there is a huge chasm that people dismiss all the time. Even my CP is problematic because my case is so slight it’s not as noticeable as, say, RJ Mitte. Therefore, people see me as normal when I have no balance and floppy muscles. I trip through life because I can’t not.

Very few people explain the logic behind things, and that’s all I really want to know. If I can’t figure out something on my own, I will tire and confuse my friends and family… and I know it. That’s the worst part. To know you are capable of handing out that exhaustion is devastating because you can’t change the way you were made. People alternate treating me like I have the smarts of all my favorite authors and then they spend time with me and all that goes out the window…. because when people are in adoration mode, they act completely differently once they see how my mind actually works.

I think that’s why I like the book shop at the Spy Museum so much. They don’t care if I sit on the floor and get obsessed with a subject and pull out 10 books and not buy any of them. It’s the same at the library, when I used to go. I don’t have to anymore because I can borrow them with an app on my phone (Libby), cutting out all the social interaction necessary to maintain isolation.

My self-esteem has been that low my whole life. That I have to get up the energy to even leave my house because everything becomes a Dorothy Parker quote within minutes.

What fresh hell is this?

That wasn’t terrible. That was fancy terrible….. with raisins in it.

Sometimes I’m the one that thinks them, sometimes it’s another person in reaction to me.

I can’t make anything better unless people tell me what’s wrong, and even that is a common problem. Because I do most of my communication in writing, people constantly write themselves off as “not a good enough writer to compete with me.”

First of all, you’re probably not. It’s not because you’re dumb. It’s because I’m a blogger and you’re not. I didn’t get to be a good writer overnight. I got to be a good writer by taking a knife and slicing it into a vein, bleeding out over my keyboard day after day after day after day after day.

Secondly, me being a writer is a pitiful excuse to shut down two-way communication, or extraordinary if you don’t want to be in relationship with me. That’s because it doesn’t matter to me how you communicate and what your natural style might be. It’s that you think that completely shutting down your emotions is okay. That our relationship will survive despite neither of us getting our needs met.

Zac, Bryn, and I are all good writers. Therefore, no one shuts down. And if we need to switch mediums for a conversation, we do it. Bryn calls me even when she can see I’m still typing. 😉

Because I live an hour and a half from Zac (whether I was caught in traffic or taking the train), Facebook Messenger is the most awesome thing ever invented. He sends me a picture of himself every morning so that I can see how he is before he leaves for work. I don’t have to guess, I can see it in his face.

Removing all the barriers to communication with those closest to me has been a godsend.

I don’t know if it’s the best way to plan a goal, but for ADHD/Autism, it is 90% of the time “accidentally on purpose.” I’m not sure that I could do anything differently, so I’m not a Monday morning quarterback in the way most people think. My mind moves too fast to retain all the information I need. It’s one of the reasons you’ve started getting entries every day. It’s not for me to show off. It’s for me to have a place to go when I need information about my own life. Seriously, how many of you can pick a year out of thin air and remember everything about it?

I can’t.

But my goal is being able to look it up.

It’s a plan.

Assemble, Prepare, Adjust, Discard, Modify, Complete

August 13, 2023August 13, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 6 Comments

My friend Emily is a teacher in Seoul, and we were talking about our lives. How everything about us makes us, well, us. We weren’t close in high school, but we both went through the same process (performing arts high school vs. “real high school”) and therefore both are driven to create. This entry is kind of “Your Blog Makes You Sound Like a Dick: Kitchen Edition, Part II,” but I decided that I didn’t need as much authority when I’m talking about being subservient for a purpose.

Creativity is a hard mistress. But that’s exactly what Emily wanted to know.

My head plays music when I cook, if this even makes sense. Not music I’ve heard, just tuneless sound that progress in order of mood depending on how the food is going. It makes me hum. I’m interested in what happens when you assemble, prepare, adjust, discard, modify, complete

It’s such a complete question that I had to think about it for a couple days before I was ready to address it. There’s an attack to cooking, and a laserlike focus. What there is not is room for error. Life comes in ticket times, the most important thing for every diner there. Whether you fold under the pressure or not is your own doing, completely. I respect a dishwasher that walks out during the first shift rather than thinking they can do a job and dragging everyone else down with them. It is why I left the kitchen to an enormous degree. I was making other people slower.

That doesn’t take away the burn, literally or figuratively. It’s an essential ingredient to creating a life in which you don’t want to escape. You don’t need drugs because you live them. The kitchen is a living, breathing organism from which there is no escape. My books have more in common with Jonna and Tony Mendez’s than they don’t. Both cooking and spying require a relentless focus without thinking of the outside world at all. To do so would be paralyzing.

People with ADHD do this better than most. Because we have no executive function, we hyperfocus on the thing at hand, a better coping mechanism for most in the race against the clock that being a cook requires. Nearly every kitchen employee I’ve ever met who decided to do it long term is because their brains and the kitchen’s rhythm fit together like a glove. People who can’t hack it should leave quickly, and often do.

Executing an idea is one thing. Prepping it for large scale is quite another. That’s because cooks play around until they like something without any recall as to how they did it to precise measurements. Did we throw in a teaspoon? Who the fuck knows? Eat it.

To prepare something for a large scale, you have to take the idea and retroactively fit it. My best example of this is hearing a pop song on the marching field. The marching band can play the melody, but it sounds off by a wide margin because everything the singer did to personalize it is gone, plus the rhythms try to mimic it and nobody has time for that.

Preparing a recipe in a restaurant is to make that dish a hundred times with different variations because you’re trying to get the best version of it on paper that you can, because you can’t really capture lightning twice. You can try, but it’s chasing the same high as everyone else.

Once a recipe is divided up, it goes into separate parts of the kitchen. A good for-instance is a steak salad. The salad is made by pantry, the steak is made by grill, and we meet in the middle. What I have come to call the ballet on the brigade.

Assembling is often more difficult than you think over a certain amount of time. By hour five you are not the same team that you were at hour two. You’re too exhausted to communicate and too behind not to try. Part of getting in the weeds is setting everything up perfectly so that if you get into the weeds, you can recover quickly. Being in the weeds is being 50 tickets deep and not panicking while expo and chef are breathing down your neck. There’s also a group project aspect, and I have caused mine to flunk. I have thought people have done things that they haven’t and paid for it, like assuming that another line cook was frying the chicken I needed, but they weren’t. We hadn’t made stations on boundaries clear. It always made me feel like the worst player in the game. I wasn’t, I was just bad at talking out loud. People would ask me what I was doing and I’d tell them and they’d tell me they didn’t need my excuses. For what? I am explaining what you asked me to explain.

The benefits outweigh the costs to an enormous degree. It ruins you for any other job quickly because going to the office feels like cutting off a limb when you’ve been on the A-team of a well-oiled machine. It is worth the arthritis and burns and cuts to feel like you actually did something that day. It’s the job you can’t wait to leave until you actually try to fit back into your old life. Maybe you can do it, maybe you can’t. Most ADHD people cook long enough to know that there’s a reason why they fit into a kitchen and they don’t fit into an office.

It costs an enormous amount to be a cook, because you’re just far enough above the poverty line not to get health insurance from your job and not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. Therefore, you have to purchase your own insurance with no subsidy from anyone. Meanwhile, you always need a doctor for something. Most likely it’s arthritis and chronic pain. Sometimes wound care.

We work like doctors who stay over after their shifts because they can’t come down from the adrenaline of treating patients all night. If we’re not cooking, we want to be with other cooks in the restaurant, anyway. We’ll sit at the bar and talk to the bartenders, occasionally talking to a cook if they’re allowed to breathe at all.

Most of the time, they’re not.

There is a limited amount of time between one shift and the next. We have to look at what we’re selling and what we’re not, because we have to be able to plan forward with accuracy. We can’t make six orders of fried chicken if we only have enough for three because we didn’t think we’d sell that many. All restaurants have this problem. It’s a matter of degree.

The reason cooking requires such high intensity energy is that you start getting tired and you can’t stop. It’s great in the beginning. The first three hours are AMAZING. But when your shoulders are aching from being five foot two and flipping a full paella pan, you still have to keep moving for four more hours. People think about the hours we spend in the kitchen assembling, cooking, and serving. They vastly underestimate the number of hours of prep that go into every meal. That it takes a team of people on the line and in the back to keep up with demand. Prep cooks do not need to speak with as much authority as line cooks, because it’s not their ass on the line if something burns. They’re literally out of the heat. We prep everything that needs to be cooked, they prep everything that doesn’t. Line cooks don’t give orders, they give supervision. I have been the one that has chopped 20lbs of mushrooms into small dice and the person that watched over someone else to make sure they did it the way chef taught me. The thing most people do is call all cooks “chef.” This is irritating and incorrect. Chef means boss, and those motherfuckers will remind you of it constantly. It’s a meritocracy. You don’t argue with it, you decide toward running your own kitchen or you don’t. Every cook has their level. For me, I would be a horrible chef because of all the administrative paperwork and inventory. I have watched lots of people turn down chef and sous jobs for that very reason. We were made to be weird. Chefs were made to be “the man.” It is very much like being an executive director for an arts organization, because even though you’re enabling creatives, you still have to talk about money. There is nothing worse than working for owners that constantly disagree with your staff so that you’re constantly hung out to dry on personnel matters. You can’t always go back to the kitchen and tell the employees that their demands, once again, have been ignored. The owners who do this to chefs really do not care about turnover. Cooking is a small enough interest that if you fuck over a cook at one restaurant, they’ll never work for you again and they’ll tell all their friends. It will not go unnoticed.

It affects the art of completion to an enormous degree, because you cannot be the same restaurant if you have an A-team and keep submarining it. It’s a crime when you’ve got a great team and dismantle it because someone wants a dime raise or needs a day off. Most cooks don’t have the ambition to dream big because they’re only focused on improving the food.

They’re not asking you to give them the whole world. Just to help assemble, modify, and complete it….. and that other stuff Emily said.

Sensory Issues

July 24, 2023 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I realized that I’d told you I have sensory issues, and that I do my best to mute them while they’re not my focus. Here are the things that make me feel the most comfortable:

Professional-grade Crocs, the kind you wear in a kitchen or hospital. They keep my feet on the ground, whereaas Danskos have a heel and it makes my foot rock side to side. That is a disaster for someone with floppy muscles. I don’t care what people think of me when I wear Crocs, but I for damn sure notice what they think of me when I fall. There are very few Good Samaritans in this world and I’ve found that to be true everywhere. I can be walking around with blood on my face and pants and no one says jack shit.
American Giant’s “The Original Hoodie” is the only jacket you’ll ever need in your entire life. The only reason you’ll ever need another one is to change colors, because it gets better the more you wear it. Yes, they’re over a hundred bucks, but they get cheaper than nearly anything else when I look at price per wear. Same with the Crocs. It turns into less than pennies.
Unchallenging food, like white bread, pasta, yogurt, etc. I will get wild with yogurt because I don’t like sweets. I leave it as is and just add fresh fruit. Not many people like it that tart, and my favorite flavor at all yogurt shops is plain. If you mix it with dark chocolate yogurt, it will taste like the best sour cream donut you’ve ever had in your life.
Bombas socks are the tightest elastic that holds over time. My whole thing is about making my body feel secure, so anything I can do to stabilize is critically important. I need to feel balanced, and I am irritated when one foot feels more bound than the other, etc.
Button downs, but only the ones that have buttons on the collar as well. I also like it better when they’re 20 years old and white or blue having been laundered a thousand times and still look classic. I joke that it’s the “Visiting Professor” collection at Macy’s, and I also love sports coats and Nehru jackets that fit like a glove because of it. I also want everything to have a place and look put together. It’s almost impossible to get a collar correct when you iron and have it stay that way. What looks good on the board has fallen flat by the time you put it on.
I like Dockers because they’re just as comfortable as American Giant and Crocs. They just don’t last very long and they’re confusing to buy because every fit is a little bit different. You have to get the name of the make and model, and sure as shit by the time you look it up to order more it’s not there.
Big boys’ dress shirts are always welcome because I prefer men’s clothing because of the way they feel and have a teenage frame…. with the exception that I’m just between a size 16 in boys’ pants and a size 30 in men’s length. It’s mix and match, but nothing too crazy. I’m a visiting professor.
I will do anything to get my hair out of my way, and wear my CIA baseball cap almost everywhere. I cover my head a Muslim amount because it makes me feel safe. I can hide behind it, both because people aren’t staring into my eyes and for some reason CIA is more intimidating than other agencies. I can’t figure that out. The FBI was built on slave catchers, but CIA is the problem. Ok. Whatever blows your dress up. I am genuinely using it like I would use a yarmulke or a hijab. I am hiding in plain sight, because I have trouble believing that people want to notice me. I make people jump too high sometimes, and it’s all my own shit. These sensory inputs being dulled helps me to keep from swinging at every pitch. If I don’t work on my reactions, I’m not keeping up my end of the bargain in relationships and cleaning my own house before I clean someone else’s.
I pay close attention to bar soap because I like to use it to shave. You actually use up body wash and shaving cream much more quickly. The bare minimum is Dove, but I have a housemate who cold presses her own soap and lotion bars that don’t have any scent to them (or are lightly scented). My favorite is charcoal, but I have to have a serious cleanup afterward. All the shower walls are dark gray when I want to turn off the water. It’s nice having the cleanest products available in a quantity that makes me think my housemate likes making soap faster than she can give it away. I’ll have to gift some to Zac if and when I remember it. If I write it here, there’s a solid chance.
I enjoy soap designed for men from high end shops because they always have both cologne and shaving in mind. Basic men’s soap is wax stripper with no conditioners. High end men’s soap is designed to make it harder to cut yourself. Soap and a brush is so much better than anything else I’ve tried, and I’ve had to remember all the best stuff because my skin will freak out at anything less. The best part is that Dove really works on my face and in shaving my legs. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It’s just something I value- continued safety is not nothing, and that’s what grocery store soap offers. It will never change.
Things never changing is why I love futbol jerseys so much. I can ask Lindsay to bring me one from any country in the world and it will feel the same. If I ask her to bring me a scarf, it will feel the same. Right now she’s in Barcelona and I’m wearing a Messi jersey.
I will start a new game of Skyrim like people rewatch The Office. There is comfort in hearing dialogue you’ve already heard, like a famous comedy routine. There is also camaraderie. We used to be adventurers like you, but we took an arrow to the knee (got married).
I go through phases with media. It’s “binge/purge.” I have to see it, then I need to retreat and write my own content. Lather, rinse, repeat. The hardest part is coming back and looking at my own writing, because it’s twofold. Both the WTF? of what I’m saying and the “WTF?” of how I wrote it. How did I miss that twice?
If I was wealthy, I would put a lot of money into peripherals that I don’t now. My Fire tablet is not great on its own. It’s great with a keyboard that makes me feel comfortable. It’s long lasting because Office and Chrome don’t require many system resources and the Fire can handle a browser and a text editor in split screen. Therefore, even with my sub-$200 throwdown laptop, I am just as productive as I would be on a $4,000 laptop. It’s not because I wouldn’t use that expensive a computer if I had it, it’s just that I don’t have a need for it. I will save up for an M1 or a Ryzen when I start seriously thinking about video rendering. If everything can be done using Audacity, Google Photos, and JetPack, I have no need to put together a monster gaming rig.
Because of what my current tablet will do, I think if I bought a new computer it would be a top of the line Samsung or M1 iPad, because there is no need to carry something heavy when you just don’t have to. I don’t even need an M1 iPad to do what I currently do. I have an old iPad Pro first gen that will edit the videos on my phone quite handily. I would get a gaming-rig level processor if I bought a camera that required it or it would take an hour and a half to render everything. I can’t have my computer incapacitated that much of the time. If I was shooting/working in RAW with a Nikon or a professional studio camera, that’s a whole other thing. If I needed that kind of editor, it would be easier to let a professional do it than it would to save up enough money to buy that kind of workstation.
Touch and feel above everything else. So much of the world is uncertain that it helps to have things you can count on. Clothes are one of the easiest ways to make yourself feel safe, because when you feel good, you act completely differently than when you’re threatened. It also helps to look at why you feel threatened so that clothes don’t become a permanent trap to hold in all your feelings.
It works as a relationship analogy as well. If you’re going to wear a suit, remember to occasionally change to sneakers and a zipper cardigan. If you learn nothing else from Mr. Rogers, learn that. No relationship will ever progress until you learn to be as vulnerable as you were the first time you saw his face, and you will not feel any differently after learning that he was also a very flawed human and treat your relationships like that as well. You cannot cancel everyone, and you will not know what’s up until you can look at the situation from a third person perspective. That’s much easier for me than it is for most because I can go back and read myself with a dispassionate eye. I am clothed in the softest material to allow myself to feel words more deeply.
If I can’t distract myself, I won’t. So if I dress weird to you, I don’t care. If I eat weird to you, I don’t care. If people believe I’m in the wrong relationships or saying weird things about people, I don’t care. That’s because all the people I do care about have laid out their boundaries and so have I. Other people are free to look at me from the very, very outside and make their own judgments, because their opinions can’t matter. I have to write what I saw because I have to remember things accurately according to what I was thinking in the moment. Otherwise, this is not even self help to me, much less others going through something similar.
So. Crocs? You have to give me this one. Especially if you later admit you also own them. I will notice. 😉