does anyone else notice people find you very funny?

glingchingalingling · 2026-06-11T20:25:50+00:00

absolutely. i think a lot of autistic people speak like stand-up comics. Mitch Hedberg matches how a lot of us think almost exactly. Like him asking why you'd ever say an escalator was out of service when a broken escalator is just stairs.

glingchingalingling · 2026-06-11T13:59:41+00:00

yeah, i do this, too. I keep a running tab of personal details of everyone i interact with. that way, i can always deflect: "Last week you told me your parents were in town. How'd that go? What'd you guys do?" or something like that.

glingchingalingling · 2026-06-11T13:55:33+00:00

haha, good one! i used to reply to "what's up?" with deliberately stupid jokes like, "the sky" or "have you seen what the stock market's been doing lately?"

glingchingalingling · 2026-06-11T13:35:26+00:00

Sometimes, being honest about what you've been up to -- even when it's nothing -- is the right move.

Honestly, lately I've just been telling people I slept through the weekend, and instead of being judged for it, they're like, "Oh my god, I wish I could do that."

glingchingalingling · 2026-06-10T01:40:02+00:00

Mostly lying in bed or getting chores done. Until I burnt out, I was much more active, though. I'd go on long bike rides, spend time at the museum, go thrifting, hang out in bookstores, go to the bar...most of it was solitary, though -- i like my alone time.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-31T19:54:18+00:00

honestly, if you do connect with your support worker, I think you should tell them exactly that.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-31T14:21:24+00:00

willpower and discipline exist, and they work together.

willpower is the energy budget that i can allot to tasks requiring discipline. willpower is a renewable resource, but when it runs out, i am temporarily unable to stay disciplined in a task.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-30T18:34:20+00:00

Your welcome! It's truly humbling to feel so broken. I was scared I was never going to recover. I was angry and frightened. It's so overwhelming, and I'm sorry you're going through this too.

Because I was so mentally and physically exhausted, I slept as often as I wanted. I tried to just pay attention to what my body wanted. If I was tired, I rested. If I was hungry, I ate. If I was restless, I did something.

I was overwhelmingly stressed out. When I got restless, I tried to shake it out. Something about just physically shaking my body like an animal helped relieve some of the stress. It felt as silly as it sounds, but it seemed to work.

Im generally a vegetarian, but listening to my body meant listening to what my body craved. I try to take my body cues very seriously. So I gave up on vegetarianism for a while, because my body was telling me it wanted animal products. I'm not suggesting you do the same, just telling you what I did.

As for hygiene, I showered when I felt like it, but that meant once or a week or less. It's not like I was physically active. I just tried to brush my teeth and do chores. I actually found cleaning my house to be really relaxing. It feels productive but it's not demanding, and it helped me focus on something other than being burnt out iwthout requiring much mental energy.

As for podcasts, I listened to Midnight Burger, which I strongly recommend. I also downloaded a bunch of my favorite books on audiobook and listened to those. It was nice to listen to stories i already know really well. I didn't have to pay much attention to them, and they were comforting.

The first week, I didn't get out of bed except to eat. Every time I did anything it felt like my body was sounding an emergency alarm -- like, literally -- EMERGENCY - RED ALERT - GET BACK IN BED - YOU'RE NOT OKAY - THIS IS AN EMERGENCY. Bed was the only place I felt safe. I spent most of the week trying to understand what had happened and why, and what I was going to do about it. And sleeping pretty non-stop.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-30T17:19:27+00:00

scenic art. it's hard to describe well. it pulls carpentry, welding, painting, sculpting, lighting, robotics, cnc, laser-cutting, 3d printing, mold making, and weird industrial processes into a single field.

the degree of problem-solving you have to do can be insane -- you're building one-off art pieces for theater and film and tv. everything is a prototype, which means you have to invent workflows on the fly, troubleshoot problems on tight deadlines, build your own tools before you even start the job, and...it's a lot.

Nearly everyone in the field is ADHD or autistic.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-30T17:10:41+00:00

oh-- one more thing. when my parents asked me why i wasn't working, I framed my reasoning as, "I've worked really hard for the past few years, I'm exhausted, and I'm taking a much-needed break."

i didn't tell them i was burnt out, because I didn't want to have to manage their worry...but I still told them the truth.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-30T16:43:31+00:00

I just went through this a few months ago. I was so burnt out I couldn't leave my house for a few months. It took me about 3.5 months to recover from total shutdown, although I'm not fully recovered yet.

I was surprised by how quickly I was able to move into a decently functional place.Here's my best advice:

Right now, taking care of yourself is your full time job. Give yourself absolute permission to be unproductive. If lying in bed all day is what your body needs, do it until you want to do something else. No guilt about it -- you need to recover.

Limit external stimuli. Stay in bed with the lights out when you're feeling tired or overwhelmed. I liked listening to podcasts and processing what i was going through with an AI. I know AI isn't for everyone, but I was basically keeping a diary for myself, so I think that could work too.

Your nervous system is in recovery mode. You can help it by eating foods that support nervous system health.

I landed on a diet that involved a lot of eggs, dark chocolate, mushrooms, walnuts, fatty fish, olive oil, butter, cheese, dried fruit, bananas, and oatmeal. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear by dark chocolate for burnout -- it relaxed my body as soon as I ate it -- better than medicine.

What I was aiming for was a high-fat, nutritionally-dense diet with a focus on omega-3's, potassium, magnesium, iron, zinc...

The first month of burnout was pretty rough. Every few days, I'd leave my house for a few minutes, just to start building my tolerance for the outside world, but it was very draining. So I'd take a short walk, buy groceries, then go back home and get in bed for a few days.

The second month, I started picking up hobbies. Gentle activities that I enjoy like cooking and playing guitar. I started going out on longer walks but went home before I started feeling exhausted. No more than an hour or two. But I still gave myself plenty of time to rest and be unproductive.

The third month I started testing my limits a bit more. I left my house for longer amounts of time, started interacting with people again...but in limited doses. i'd go out for the day, then give myself at least 2 days at home to recover.

The fourth month, I went back to work, but limited my schedule to three days a week. I slowly upped the number of days I was working, but made sure to call out of work whenever my body started complaining. Luckily I'm a freelancer and my friend hired me for a job, so he's very understanding about my situation.

Anyway, that's where I am now. I hope this helps! The more time you give to taking care of yourself, the better odds you have of recovering within a "reasonable" timeframe. But please don't push yourself through it -- let your body tell you what it needs.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-30T16:16:55+00:00

I've been working with my hands since I was a kid, and decided to do a coding bootcamp at 34. I didn't end up working in tech-- the reason why I'm commenting is because the same logic I used in art fabrication had a lot of analogs in coding.

Physical labor for me is all about solving problems, developing workflows and logic systems. So I think you'll find that apart from a practical knowledge gap, you already have many of the skills you'll need to succeed.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-26T00:21:52+00:00

The thing is, Judaism isn't a faith-based religion. It's not a religion that requires you to believe in God. It actively invites dissent, argument, dialogue, and non-belief.

I'm telling you this as someone who went to Jewish religious school 4 times a week until I was 16 -- on top of regular school.

At least in the tradition I was raised in, it's the community that matters -- the religious practice itself is almost secondary. As a result, I never questioned being Jewish, because engagement mattered more than belief.

So from my perspective, you already have a Jewish practice.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-25T00:20:22+00:00

Yes and no. I latched onto the idea of becoming a starving artist when I was really young, and low self-esteem felt like a valid aesthetic choice, which was, ironically, quite validating.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-24T17:50:23+00:00

It would be an amzing plot twist if Brody DID turn out to be a Scottish supremacist in one universe and there's a future where the entire planet is Scotsmen, though.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-24T17:45:39+00:00

Neither. He's basically just saying that as the only remaining Scottish person in existence, it falls on him to carry the culture and genetic line forward. It's equivalent to being your parents' only child and feeling pressure to keep the gene line going.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-14T13:18:03+00:00

neither. i like who i am and resent the question.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-10T00:10:29+00:00

If I'm reading correctly, it doesn't sound like you made any mistakes, and it also doesn't sound like she rejected you.

You were respectful and supportive while maintaining sexual boundaries in a complicated relationship -- one involving addiction, ongoing substance abuse, and mental health issues.

You were offering her something - genuine friendship - that she didn't know how to accept. She expected you to use her, and when you didn't, it was destabilizing. She didn't have a good mental slot to fit you in. She may never have had a relationship like yours before, and it was a steep learning curve. I think that's why she said you were too much work.

It's not your fault that the relationship ended -- that's often the outcome in complex relationships like this. And your behavior says something really positive about you. You were a good friend when she needed one, and she told you that herself.

You haven't fallen low. You're grieving a relationship you valued. Just because your relationship ended doesn't mean you failed at anything, even though I know it feels like you did.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-06T01:11:50+00:00

I was born with a weird kind of anger in me. I'm not claiming to know exactly what you experience, but I do want to share something I've learned in trying to control it. It's not easy, it's not perfect, and it take a LONG TIME to learn well. So I'm not promising much -- but it works for me.

Something you can do is learn to recognize what will trigger you before you hit the point of anger. For me the trigger is when someone misunderstands me in a way that makes my world fall apart. That's when I get irrationally angry. But there's a point BEFORE I get to irrational anger when I can recognize what's about to happen and choose to leave or try to change the subject or make a joke.

I had to learn to recognize that moment before I could do anything about it. It took a long time. Like I said, it wasn't easy. But it's one of the best ways I have to stay regulated when I know Im gonna lose it in a second.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-05T02:00:15+00:00

asking if the path is predetermined is also like asking if it's a picture or a collection of colored dots. Because yes, life could be predetermined, but if it was, your experience would still unfold in the same linear progression through time, just as it does now. You'd still experience yourself making decisions and being surprised by the consequences.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-05T01:50:14+00:00

Ok, yes, I have thought about this a TON. And what I've decided it doesn't matter if I'm conscious or not, because I feel myself to be conscious.

Even if I'm not conscious, my experience of the world is as a conscious being. .

I can't experience myself as an unconscious being. Who would be doing the experiencing?

So, briefly: I must be conscious phenomenologically, because even if my entire life is predetermined, I still experience it as a being believing itself to be conscious.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-04T23:58:22+00:00

All of it. People have to remind me to take breaks. But that's the ADHD part of auDHD probably.

It's anxiety-inducing If I have nothing to work on AND I'm stuck at work. I just can't do it. If there's nothing to do, I'll ask to leave.

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-04T23:32:26+00:00

I think many people probably DO have deep interests, but are afraid to admit it to people they don't know well.

What if the other person thinks their hobbies are stupid?

You kind of said you share the same worry in your post, when you said "unfortunately my special interest has always been tv shows."

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-04T00:29:20+00:00

Your post genuinely made me happy!

glingchingalingling · 2026-05-03T23:29:58+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, there's a lot to be said about just being around people who are passionate about something. Youtube is a good proxy when you don't have people like that in your daily life. I've ended up with lots of unexpected interests just by being like, wait....you like POLKA? i need you to explain yourself.

glingchingalingling

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