The unsupported use case of Bix Frankonis’ disordered, surplus, mediocre midlife in St. Johns, Oregon.
No fear, no hate, no thoughtless bullshit, and no nazis.
Out of the 4257 posts across 16 sources in the 25 years since March 2000, these 15 posts were published on this.mediocre.life.
Last month, a study dropped (Google cache because U.K. Ed Chat has since deleted their article) in Journal of Child Neurology brazenly entitled, “When an Early Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder Resolves, What Remains?”
Suddenly folks are steaming over a newly-posted synopsis of the live-action adaptation of Akira, with Screen Rant, ComicBook, CBR, Heroic Hollywood, and Bleeding Cool all stoking the fires of fandom ire over a description published in Production Weekly.
#ActuallyAutistic folks on Twitter love to “explode myths” about autism, and they’re pretty good at it. They explode myths about communication, about empathy, about romance. If there’s a myth out there about autistic people, it’s regularly and routinely exploded.
Last week, someone on Twitter asked their followers what lines have stuck with them or even become part of their personal philosophies.
This morning, Spectrum announced that a piece by Lauren Gravitz from last September had won second place in the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. That piece? “At the Intersection of Autism and Trauma”, a look at the links between autism spectrum disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
One of my big issues these days is whether or not forms of psychotherapy designed for the typical necessarily work for the atypical. It popped up again this week in a Spectrum piece on OCD and autism.
Five weeks ago after an epic autistic meltdown that then a colleague disparagingly reduced to “venting”, I took an unplanned and unceremonious sabbatical from the nonprofit I helped form back in 2014 as part of “rescuing” a herd of fourteen urban goats from being split up into their original pairings and sold off.
This week has not, in general, been going well for the All in a Row team, with a producer complaining that they had a roll-out planned for Laurence but a “leak” ruined everything, the play’s official account complaining that it’s just that critics don’t understand theater, and the artist who conceived of the original incarnation of Laurence spotted laughing at him being referred to as “a sad little modern chimney sweep”.
This by necessity is less about scientific reality than about observing interesting patterns. I can’t speak to causation or, really, even any true correlation. It’s just that recently and quite randomly I had a string of thoughts I wanted to set down here.
Ijeoma Oluo:
I wanted to come back to a bit from a study I talked about before because as much as I’d love to find psychotherapeutic support from someone who already is versed not just in autism but late-diagnosed adult autism, in many ways I would love it if a therapist asked me to educate them.
I do not know the degree to which I can come back. In the meantime I’ve kept the books updated and filed/paid our annual state and federal filings. It’s clear to me that I feel like I’ve burned out on any vocation or avocation I’ve ever done that required working close-quarters with other people over a period of time. Or, burned out on that part of it, anyway. In retrospect (decades not just months), I do wonder to what degree any work that involves close interpersonal coordination was putting way more pressure on me than I understood, and that post-diagnosis I should have been managing the balances better, whatever that might have entailed. But between navigating social comms, performance distress, literal neurological trouble getting off whatever track I’m on, and meltdowns I have no internal control over under high-pressure circumstances, every day close involvement clearly isn’t sustainable.
Since starting an unplanned sabbatical from my nonprofit in the middle of January, I’ve not had a mental health day as low as any of the recent days beforehand.
In the latest newsletter by Anne Helen Petersen, she appears to draw a link between burnout and a lack of “solitude”.
It’s tough for me not to read every new piece about millennial burnout through the lens of the original one that referred to being bored with every day mundane tasks as “burnout”, which I know is terrible because not every other article is being that fatuous about the matter.