Your Autistic Year

Over the course of our pandemic year, neurotypicals kept running into thingsā€”such as zoom fatigue and a need for cognitive transitionsā€”theyā€™d do well to remember the next time they encounter an autistic person just trying to get through their day-to-day lives.

Continue reading...

Iā€™m On A Boat

On my fourth day on antibiotics for my fourth urinary tract infection of the year, the world started to move even when I was standing still.

Continue reading...

Six More And I Get One Free

It took a long-distance hail and a jogging trot across the street, but I just barely managed to catch the most convenient bus to my destinationā€”important, because I didnā€™t want to waste any more time than already had been wasted that morning.

Continue reading...

Pre-Pandemic Achievement Unlocked

Today at midday, failing in the energy required to do yesterdayā€™s dishes, I set foot inside a neighborhood bar to have what in pre-pandemic days was my weekly excursion for a cheap bar breakfast, for the first time since the first week of March of last year.

Continue reading...

Opening A Support Ticket

Iā€™ve long been in agreement that functioning labels need to go but Iā€™m not sure about replacing them with internalized versus externalized presentations.

Continue reading...

Pathologies And Pendulums

The trouble with being a mediocre autistic is that you canā€™t have a purely positive response to something like Spectrumā€˜s pair of surprisingly forward-thinking articles on autistic strengths and special interests.

Continue reading...

That Inevitable Snap

It eventually came in over the Arabian Peninsula and crashed near the Maldives, but I failed to take Marina Korenā€™s advice not to ā€œfall to pieces just because Chinaā€™s rocket isā€.

Continue reading...

Did I Have Covid?

Very early on in the pandemic, in February 2020, James Hamblin of The Atlantic passed along Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitchā€™s view of what was to come, in a piece entitled ā€œYouā€™re Likely to Get the Coronavirusā€.

Continue reading...

Begin The Begin

Last year during the height of the pandemic, I quit social media. The long and the short of it being that Iā€™d come to realize that the feed is a cognitively terrible way to present information, even setting aside the way in which itā€™s gamified to trigger dopamine responses.

Continue reading...