Just got done making a spreadsheet that shows the titles of the songs from which I’ve pulled titles, the songs in the official canon I haven’t used yet, the songs that are official or semi-official canon but are covers, and the demos which have any sort of name. This is actually the third spreadsheet of its sort, as I have one keeping track of the number of times I use a song and one that lists the song, the lyric, and the date.

So I’m feeling a bit compulsive and pleased, now. And tired. Tried to go to the library, but the lights are made of some sort of migraine-creating forcefield that also happens to emit visible light, because within ten minutes my eyes and head ached. I feel sort of spoon-drained now.

There have been two Kate-lyric exceptions (both for MBT fangirling) and this will make my 97th published post. In this time, I have:
-Used lyrics from “Caught in the Crowd,” “Dreams,” and “The Truth” six times each (fun fact: I don’t like “The Truth”!)
-Used lyrics from “Blah Blah Blah,” “Day After Christmas,” “Our Song,” and “Out and In” five times each
-These seven songs account for 39% of my post titles
-I’ve used 34 songs, 32 of which are part of the official discography (including Elsewhere, Kate’s previous band). Including Elsewhere there are officially 54 songs (not including multiple releases or versions of a song), and I have an additional 32 or so demos. I think I’m going to have to make an effort to use all of the released songs for a title in the coming year. No promises.

In less compulsive, more personal news, I’ve had a bunch of interviews for jobs. The one I like best is for a group home and assistance organization in Chapel Hill who work with kids and adults with intellectual disabilities, developmental disabilities, and some neurological disorders. In practice this means a lot of people on the autism spectrum, some with Down Syndrome, some with CP, many with more rare disorders and disabilities, and a huge variation in levels of assistance needed. I knew it would be a good fit when the interviewer went off on a long tangent about how their clients are people and have every human right we do (I guess I passed for NT yesterday), even if they also need some help with ADLs or holding down a job. He used some language I only hear in the disability rights movement and stressed that you have to respect everyone as an individual or it would never work. I have a follow up interview tomorrow (after the first yesterday), so hopefully it works out! I’ve also interviewed for an in-home counselling position, and didn’t get a job at a local bookstore–but I did get an interview at a sister store later this week.

AT NO POINT DID I BREAK DOWN INTO SOBS OF FRUSTRATION OVER THE AMOUNT OF MONEY I NEED TO SAVE TO SUCCESSFULLY MOVE TO MELBOURNE.

I credit the cat and his soft, soft tummy for this. Little known fact: sticking your face in a cat’s side and breathing deeply is incredibly good for destressing.

I’m looking for something that will keep my brain occupied. I love anagramming and the last phrase was very successful. I want a two or three word phrase (maybe four, if one is an article) that is easy to remember and has 20-25 letters. The last one was “the very hungry caterpillar” and it worked really well. Suggestions?

Grading People from Rolling Credit on Vimeo.

A short commentary on the use of the terms “high functioning” and “low functioning” as applied to autistic people

I’ve known for a long time that my attention is directly correlated to the interestingness of the material–this isn’t unusual for kids identified as gifted (nor the adults they grow into), or anyone on the spectrum. In fact, it was this extreme hyperfocus that first had me questioning if I might be on the spectrum as I read tales of kids and their encyclopedic knowledge of topics and saw myself. This one time, I drew the same picture with only minor variations a couple hundred times; I was nine. I suspect I could still draw it.

I’ve also known for a long time that if I’m otherwise engaged, I can pay attention to topics of less interest with some reliability. In a school setting, for example, I’m usually really strongly into one class and then have varying levels of caring about the others–just like anyone else. Because of that high interest class, though, I have this sort of carry-over attention effect making it easier to pay attention to other material that is not as engaging for me. This has led me to the conclusion that I do well in moderate to high stress environments, but yesterday I started thinking (a rare thing these days when my mind lands on a topic and only stays for a few minutes at most), and this may not be the case.

There are different kinds of stress. Google thinks there are three–acute, episodic, and chronic–but that’s not what I mean. Those factors certainly play in, but I think stress can and should be divided by what part of you it engages, not just the length. Intellectual stress would be things like heavy schoolwork, complex reading material (fiction or no), non-rote professional work, puzzle solving. Emotional stress is identifying your own and other people’s feelings, social cues, working with other people. Physical stress could be identifying sensations (like needing to pee or being hungry), things that involve physical labour, or enduring discomfort (like working in a too-cold or too-hot place). Some combination of three things creates the stress, and that can then be chronic, episodic, or acute.

By this system, I really like things that are chronically intellectually stressful, with low levels of emotional or physical stress. I don’t like to move or worry about what my body language says. That is…not how I would currently describe my life. So even while I feel stressed, worrying about money and the cat and immigration, it isn’t the sort of stress that puts me in a position to spend a lot of time thinking. Those stressors are not comfortable for me, so they use up many more spoons than the stressors I like–and because I’ve wasted those spoons, I can’t do the things I enjoy (like reading scienceblogs) which could potentially refresh my spoons.

When I’m stressed–in the bad, not comfortable way–my memory and attention are spotty. I need to have a constant stream of intellectual information coming in–and going out, such as via blogging–to feed my own ruminative processes. Not only do I think they are a good thing, I now think they are essential to my well-being. When I am taking in enough information to have a viable ruminative background process going, my whole mind is working in concert, concious, unconcious, and memory. Being able to ruminate this way requires a precise memory, which is the first thing to go when I’m under stress (I often have no memory of meltdowns, for example–they’re just missing or I have a handful of photograph-like images).

I have been incredibly, risably forgetful lately–and lucky Kit doesn’t mind. Things we discussed multiple times have slipped my mind as if they never were. There is no sense of loss, of having forgotten something. My memory is not recording in the first place. Even when she reminds me, often with my own words, they feel new, unseen.

We talked about it yesterday, and I think it shifted my brain into the right gear to ruminate, because it hit me this morning, how all of this is connected for me: I need intellectual stress (and preferably as little of the other kinds as possible) to function well; I know alternate sources for this when I am not in uni; when I do not get this stress I become unable to seek it out because my will to live attention span grows shorter and shorter the longer I go without; this correlates with an unusually poor memory; these things are because with information coming in, I am able to ruminate properly (like any good ruminant and/or monster), because it is an adaptive and helpful process for me rather than being a destructive way to rehash bad memories or thoughts; therefore I have to just force myself to do something brainy, because it will sort of kickstart the whole process and I will stop feeling leaden. Which is…a helpful conclusion, and hopefully writing this will have done enough kickstarting I’ll no longer feel like my brain is dribbling out my ears slowly and painfully.

Anyway.

I’m constructing a post about spoons and variability thereof and executive function, but, ha, I do not currently have the ability to construct this in a manner that is grammatically correct or readable. I will return to the topic when I can think in words again. It’s hit me that my first (FREE!) diagnostic session is this Thursday and I should probably link mom to some autism inventories so we can compare notes.

We went to Kate’s hens night, which involved thai and karaoke and a lot of overstimulation, and the wedding, which was beautiful.

We also went to a place trying to bill itself as molecular gastronomy coffee. It wasn’t, so much, but they did have test tube coffee:

Then I took some more pictures of flowers:

I flew back to the US and it took forever, 10 hours of which I spent chilling in the SFO airport, which may be the most boring place on earth. I’ll make a point to go through LAX next time.

I did come back to my kitten, which is some consolation.

I got rid of GoDaddy hosting and signed up with ANhosting.com, largely because Hank Green told me to do it. It’s been a breeze and I’d reccomend them.

Currently, I am unemployed and living in Greensboro. Well, that’s a lie, right now I’m in Staunton visiting Stina and Dylan, but on the whole I am in Greensboro and loathing it, but it’s free and hopefully there will be jobs. There’s been a lot of drama about my car insurance and liscencing, but it’s over and I don’t want to rehash it.

ON JULY 1 I HAVE AN INTAKE APPOINTMENT WITH TEACHH, THE AUTISM PEOPLE IN NC. IT WILL BE FREE.

I’m super excited but also anxious for 2 reasons: 1. I worry it’ll be like Dr. Gaddis again, and 2. it might negatively impact my immigration. We’re waiting to hear from a lawyer, but this isn’t a full-on diagnostic appointment and nothing stays written, so I’m keeping this one and hopefully making the follow-up diagnostic appointment and then making decisions after Kitty has her surgery and can see again to visit lawyers. If I have to wait to get my papers before I can get my other papers, that’s fine. Australia has plenty of very good doctors in this regard and I’d be happy to see them. BUT THIS ONE IS FREE.

So…that’s all. Etsy sale on right now. I took lots of pictures that I hope will become my moo cards.

…less win: I need to figure out how the hell to make categories go, since it appears to think I want them.

I’ll be in transit to Melbourne for the next day and a half, and am travelling into the future (wooooooooooo). Here’s hoping to no airport meltdowns this time.

1. I will be on a plane in less than 24 hours.

2. No one has opinions on a new theme? You guys suck.

3. I’m just getting around to reading some posts from BADD. Here are some reccomendations to start:

Kitty’s post about miracle cure themes in kidlit
The self-pity model
Of privilege and auditory processing (I’m very lucky that my auditory processing is relatively good for the spectrum.)
Public transport and disability in Melbourne

4. An interesting piece about listening to patients (I know, it’s such a bananas idea!)

To paraphrase Stina: either words have meaning or they don’t.

Let me flesh that out for you a little bit. I believe that words are impactful, and that our word choices reflect a combination of our backgrounds, our individual lives, and our education on a given topic. Becoming aware of one’s word choices and actively changing them requires acknolwedgement of privilege and a desire to mitigate that privilege.

There has been talk on Jezebel, a website I usually enjoy, about why words matter. We talk about why it’s not okay to use sexist language every day. There have been discussions about feminism vs womanism (especially in the comments section) and tokenism. Discussions are held about racism regularly. Fat shaming is verboten, and lengthy educational discussions are held by the commentariat regularly. It’s a pretty damn nice place to be out as queer on the internet (though it’s not quite as good about trans issues). We also talk about a specific subset of ableist language, namely eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

All of these are good things. Jezebel is a mainstream, very busy website run by paid bloggers. While there are safe-space websites to discuss these issues (Racialicious and Shapely Prose are both good places to start for racism and sizism, respectively), I think having them discussed in a busy, largely privileged place is helpful and important.

In my experience, a lot of people who are otherwise liberal and well educated don’t know a thing about ableism. Words that are ableist are part of many people’s regular vocabulary, and they never give them a second thought. This BADD, I’d like to maybe put the idea into people’s heads that these words aren’t okay.

There’s a thread of ableism in many Jez posts where other language could and should be used instead. I don’t think it would be fair to call out commenters, so I’m going to limit these references to posts which use ableist language, themselves. This is not a comprehensive list in any way–there are many words I omitted because I only returned one “official” (not commenter-written) result, and I didn’t put myself out looking for these words–if they weren’t in the first couple pages of results, I didn’t bother).

Schizophrenic: 1, 2, 3, 4

Retard/ed: 1, 2, 3, 4, (interestingly, Jez commented on the usage on Vh1 before)

Wheelchair bound: 1*, 2

Lame: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Bipolar: 1, 2, 3, (again, to be fair, there’s this, too)

Spaz and derivitives: 1, 2, (this is a very common slur among the commetariat, and I got sick of wading through those results)

Jez (rightfully!) gets upset when words associated with feminism are misused. The editors and commenters won’t stand for the misuse of words like “rape,” or “lesbian,” or “bitch.” It would certainly be nice if they would make this shift as far as ableist language goes, too. Unfortunately, I don’t anticipate that happening any time soon, since responses to noting ableist language, as recently as last week, have been angry and dismissive (to the tune of “Go find someplace else that will let you whine”).

*(A direct quote: “When you think of amputees, dwarves, people with Cerebral palsy, or wheelchair-bound individuals in sexualized situations, it seems wrong, doesn’t it?”)

For further reading:
Bitch Magazine
Feminism 101
FWD/Forward