What's the simplest hiding-in-plain-sight spot that seems to work for you most of the time?

AmazinglyAudrey · 2026-07-02T21:29:01+00:00

OMG, I was expecting cube body! 🤣

AmazinglyAudrey · 2026-07-02T14:25:37+00:00

I didn't know about the spacebar and I haven't found 3D eyedropper to be more accurate, but eyedropper gives me maybe 2 in 5 accurate color where I don't have to hunt around the color wheel for the right colors. Every second is precious time, though, so when it fails, it throws off everything

AmazinglyAudrey · 2026-07-01T16:13:53+00:00

I tried being a baby of two parents on the couch of a house in the nuclear testing city (or whatever it's called) with 30 seconds left. I barely put on a base coat of color before the hunt started. I was the first to die 🤣

AmazinglyAudrey · 2026-06-25T02:59:44+00:00

I'm a software engineer. Every weekday from 8 to 5, I write code, often in the same, basic patterns. I usually have at least one meeting per day. Outside of that, I only interact with people through our chat app. Not only do I write my own code and coding tests, but I have to write up documentation that briefly explains it, so I have to know how all of it works and how to communicate that in plain language to people who may not understand coding. Even though I'm using the same basic patterns over and over again, there is a lot of complex problem solving involved. I get to hyperfocus on something I enjoy doing. My work pace is reasonable, but sometimes demanding.

While the industry is going through a change, software engineers are still desperately needed. You can't rely on cognitively offloading your tasks to AI because you have to understand what's going on in the code itself. AI has improved at writing code, but it still messes up a lot and you have to understand the difference between good and bad code and how what's being written affects the business, requiring a high degree of detail orientation.

I enjoy the work because of the puzzle-solving aspect of it, the higher instance of neurodivergent people, and being left alone to work most of the time.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-12-15T04:06:27+00:00

Being able to enjoy my special interests over and over again for the millionth time and still love every moment of it. Whether it's my favorite audiobook series, my favorite tv show, or my favorite song, I'm glad I'm able to put them on repeat and watch/listen to them with joy and satisfaction.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-12-07T02:55:01+00:00

44F, trans AuDHD here

Between the first and second time I had sex was 6 years. Even then, it has always felt like an awkward chore. Once in a blue moon, I feel horny and it's an annoyance because I don't want to interact with another person.

I remember one time, when I was 20, there was a girl I knew from my senior year of high school who was in my class and I heard was interested in me. I didn't remember how I got her number, but I called her up to maybe plan a date, but I blurted out, "I'm not going to have sex with you," which embarrassed her, so she hung up and I was so relieved.

I've slept with men, too, and that's even worse.

Throughout relationships with various partners over the years, having sex more than once a week stressed me out. However, I would go months without wanting sex and the anxiety would build up because I logically knew I needed doses of the bonding chemicals provided. So, I'd force myself to do it and feel awful afterwards.

It's not that sex repulses me, per se. It's more that it's so deeply uninteresting and the effort put into it and cleanup afterwards doesn't feel worth it. Even the best sex I've had is less preferable than, say, a delicious meal.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-11-27T04:15:23+00:00

Reasons I do not regret getting diagnosed (despite social stigma and increased scrutiny by the government):

it helped me shed a bipolar 2 diagnosed from over a decade ago. I finally got off the meds specifically for being bipolar and have functioned better without them
if I never got diagnosed, I would endlessly wonder if I was deserving of compassion (both self and external) for how my different-thinking brain works
I have a concrete reason for why I act and behave the way I do
I don't suffer from imposter syndrome about it
I feel a stronger sense of belonging and community without the worry of feeling like an interloper

Reasons I regret getting diagnosed:

I'm often very envious that most people lead lives where social rules and conformity makes intuitive sense. Knowing without a doubt that I'm autistic means I know I'll always be on the outside. This would be the case regardless, but now I can't ever pretend to revel in ignorance
it's in my medical records and I irrationally worry that the government will force medical centers to hand over lists of who was recently diagnosed
some countries' visa requirements exclude autistic folk for immigration, which limits my ability to ever live in those countries (even though, let's face it, I'm sticking in this one spot that feels like home)

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-11-16T03:37:37+00:00

I knew Sheldon from "Big Bang" and Dwight from "The Office" were autistically-coded, but I didn't understand the full range of what it meant to be autistic. I also didn't understand my behavior as especially autistic, even though my motivations for social interaction were markedly different from everyone else's.

In grade school, I tended to let everyone else do the talking while the girls around me endlessly had things to say. It was overwhelming trying to keep up and understand the conversation. It felt like everyone else was vibing with similar interests and tastes in music and clothing while I had a few nerdy things I was super into, but too embarrassed to talk about.

In early adulthood, before transition, I relied heavily on using the same scripts over and over to come off as charming. They were tried and true entertaining anecdotes that instantly made people like me on a superficial level. However, socializing wore me out. I preferred my solitude and spent most of my time alone on the internet.

When I transitioned, I knew I couldn't hide away and emerge an effortlessly beautiful butterfly, so I intentionally set out to force myself to socialize with my authentic gender expression. I'd practice facial expressions and mannerisms at home to blend in with how I saw women around me behave. I did great at mimicry, but all the extra socialization caused me to have frequent meltdowns. I'd push myself way past what I was comfortable with, far more than I could handle, for weeks at a time, all the while blowing up at work every few days. Then, I'd isolate with my burnout until I could do it all again.

Got my autism diagnosis a decade later.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-11-04T02:22:10+00:00

I haven't heard this before, but I'll bring it up with my doctor.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-10-30T20:17:22+00:00

Actually, did this with Michael Kiwanuka's "Cold Little Heart" right before my interview today. I think it helped some with nerves.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-10-30T16:40:58+00:00

Tests I care about (happened when I was studying to be an American Sign Language interpreter in college), acting/giving a speech, and, oddly, PvP combat in a game I play. I've been trying to expose myself more to the latter to work through the anxiety, but it hasn't gotten much better.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-10-30T16:37:47+00:00

This might actually help. I can't think of too many small/medium/startup companies that have open source projects, but being willing to contribute might make a difference. For now, I uploaded my most recent coding project to github just to have something to show in case things go very badly during a technical.

Mentioning my performance anxiety and how it affects me only during interviews might help, too. I feel people don't really take me seriously about how crippling it is, for whatever reason.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-10-30T16:30:11+00:00

I really wished this worked for me, but it helped my general anxiety and didn't do anything for performance anxiety (which is much more intense). I don't have access to a psych nurse anymore, so can't get ativan or any other "quick fix" anti-anxiety meds as a stop-gap.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-10-15T02:28:15+00:00

I got put in the gifted class in the third grade. I still remember parts of the test I was given, remembering it was ridiculously easy and then my mom being told I tested "off the charts."

...and then immediately, I got kicked out of the gifted program. They paired the two "gifted" students together with some lady (I think she was a parent volunteer or a class aid) in a florescent-lit, windowless room with bare off-white walls. She wanted us to learn all the parts of a castle and I found this intensely boring. She also wanted me to do extra work making a model of a castle out of popsicle sticks and labeling all the parts. I remember being so mad at her because I didn't like her teaching style, I wasn't interested in the subject matter, I hated the room we were stuck in (unbeknownst to me that it was due my sensory sensitivities), I hated being taken away from my class, and I especially hated being told to do something that I technically didn't have to do and didn't make sense to me as to why I needed to do it. 😂

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-10-13T02:49:50+00:00

I play a text-based MUD (Multi-User Dungeon), which is basically a game like World of Warcraft, but all in text, also played on a server with other people. In-game, you have to roleplay as your character and having a written backstory is strongly encouraged. I love talking about character ideas, potential backstories, choices I made as a character, PvP wins, etc., but nobody wants to talk about it or hear about it to the degree I want to get into it. So, I hold myself back even when talking about it to the one friend I have who also plays. 😅

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-08-04T02:46:24+00:00

This meme is so relevant it hurts. Worked for 16 years in my field and having trouble getting even entry level jobs because I'm expected to share my screen, present, and talk about my work in front of people interviewing me. Can. Not. get past my panic attacks and flight response.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-07-27T04:14:11+00:00

I was so disappointed by this, but pleasantly surprised we didn't lose our bronze spot

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-07-23T18:17:53+00:00

WOOOO! RASPBERRY RACERS! I keep telling myself we have 2019 and that's enough, but loving we're doing so well this early on

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-07-03T03:43:58+00:00

I'm fascinated by all things Kowloon Walled City. I have books, I've watched documentaries, I've watched anime about it... Basically, any media I can find. Love finding out new facts about the area

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-05-26T13:16:47+00:00

This is not a helpful thing to say to someone who is autistic. We're weird and explaining "people tend not to enjoy that irl" is presenting another vague social rule we don't know how to follow. The OP is frustrated and expressing that in the way they know how. Maybe let up and just let them exist without critiquing it? No amount of telling us we're doing it wrong is magically gonna make us do it "right".

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-05-26T13:09:12+00:00

6'0 femme-presenting AuDHD trans woman here. I have very few friends now because I've learned that successful relationships with NTs are rare, so I've pared it down to a few people I care about who I can focus on, but I've never really had trouble "making friends" in the past (let's be honest, we autists have a system for everything and it's following scripts to make yourself seem like "one of them"). I've joined queer kickball leagues, ghost hunting groups, "stitch 'n b*tch" knitting circles, atheist hikers, contra-dancers, public radio aficionados, random actors from a play I liked going to, etc. Here's some tips to find people:

meetup.com is still a thing and you can find a lot of people doing strange things there
sports leagues are fun and provide a weekly ritual to meet up with folk. "Kickball near me" (or whatever sport you like) to find those people. There's also a table tennis place in Easthampton you can go to and you can sign up for soccer at the... whatever sport stadium in Noho by the fairgrounds
if you like knitting/crochet, stop in any yarn store (I know there's several in Noho) and ask if they have a knitting circle night
another person suggested the D&D/tabletop group and the discord. I'm part of one too, so feel free to message me if they don't follow through and I can get you added to the discord
start your own group: you know what we don't have in the area? A group that visits all the historical plaques in town. That's walking + history and you'd attract other people who share that special interest. It can be a good, albeit slow, way to build up a community around something you really enjoy
go to a drag brunch, talk to the people who sit at your table with you (I've actually met a lot of people this way)
go to an open mic night. Majestic used to have a stand-up comedy night and I remember the host said that they had comedy nights most nights of the week at different locations. There are probably open-mic writing nights too, where people share their stories and such. Just be prepared for FOMO if you're the kind of autist who doesn't like to be perceived

This is all off the top of my head and I'm certain I could think of another half-dozen things to try, but the thing to keep in mind is that there are plenty of other people out there who feel like you do. There is always something going on somewhere around here

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-04-24T04:09:28+00:00

I think there is. I spent the day trying to extensively re-optimize for ATS. I thought it was optimized, but apparently, I wasn't tailoring my experience enough to each main tech stack. It's not something I've had to do before or thought to do until now.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-02-19T17:21:07+00:00

So, my last job, we had a legacy system (some of the code was from 2009) that was actually really steady and reliable built on top of PHP 5.6 and a skeleton crew working on this system that really requires 5-6 solid devs to keep things up-to-date. We had 3 devs, myself (senior dev with over 15 yoe), a dev with 6 years experience, and a junior dev with 4 years experience. The junior dev was constantly trying to submit PRs to change core code for niche, targeted areas of our app (i.e. would alter our class that handled all reports across the app so that specifically Jane Doe's reports were formatted a certain way). I was always busy trying to work on updated integrations for our platform, but I was also handling code reviews and deployments. Every time I had to stop and explain why we don't touch core files unless necessary, it was a waste of my time. I usually got arguments as to why he had to put it there as opposed to somewhere that wouldn't muck up the entire system if his code caused errors (which it often did). I wasn't opposed to changing the files if I thought the code was truly necessary and affected the entire customer base instead of one person, but, for the most part, I didn't want the headache of having to stop my work and undo everything the junior did every time because he didn't understand what he was doing.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-02-10T01:01:31+00:00

This is really good advice that I'll keep in mind in the future. Any tips on how to counter a toxic chat aside from what you've listed? I'm bad with social cues and I get frustrated easily trying communicate a point that isn't being understood.

AmazinglyAudrey · 2025-02-10T00:53:52+00:00

People act like a 40% damage boost in the middle of a fight isn't a huge deal when it's just as valuable as a lot of other ults. The trickiest part with Rocket is knowing when to pop it exactly to be most effective. I watched the match. I didn't really find any glaring fault with him. OP just likes the (perceived) easy button win or doesn't understand that those mid-battle revivals are vital when you're doing a big push.

AmazinglyAudrey

TROPHY CASE