Planning is a massive hurdle for me. Organizing my ideas and thoughts is hard on my cognition. And yet, this society wants me to adhere to their rigid and rigorous rules.
I'm expected to be methodical not only in a workplace, but also my creative works. As much as I tried to, I keep on having debilitating decision paralysis which prevents me from making major progress in my work.
As for my creative hobbies, I just draw and write anything spontaneously. I'd draw plants if I want to at the moment, and I'd write down my current painful emotions and trauma that I've been experiencing every once in a while.
I'm 'freestyling' this blog post as I write. Letting myself go without internal or external interference makes me feel at home with myself, with my own cognitive skills and spiritual energy. There's no judgement on how the end result looks and sounds like. No one's there to clown on me for my natural way of creating or how I feel about everything.
Spontaneous activities feels truly relaxing and freeing. If only there's a way to harness that in my potential major art projects or even in a workplace...
I realized that creativity is best drawn from spontaneity and authenticity. This is evident in freestyling rap and hip-hop culture at large. Rappers and artists do not care about what others think of them or their work/performance. What truly matters is speaking their truth and inspiring people. And that is what I am striving for.
Last year, I was having good progress of changing my habits for my physical and mental health, such as limiting social media or YouTube and eating healthier foods. As a result, my body was changing in positive ways.
But one outcome that I noticed is that my brain became more sensitive to noise or other sources of stress. I realized that I was desensitized for so many years until recently because I was put on sedative medications and I was having an unhealthy lifestyle. During that time, I craved for a lot of stimulation from the internet, hence my chronic phone addiction. And I thought of everything else as painfully boring, so I was trying to avoid them.
Now my brain seemed to be in a much better state. But this also led me to have an aversion to noisy people, crowds, and environments, as well as over-stimulating online content such as popular YouTube videos. On the other hand, I find myself enjoying relaxing activities and being in quiet places a lot more. I've been enjoying reading some books, and I no longer had the urge to stimulate myself with pointless media. My attention span has also improved, which means I can focus on slow-paced tasks and media so much better than before.
I think this state of mind is a lot better than the previous one, and I'm happy for it :)
During my childhood, I was constantly traumatized by the sound of the fire alarm in the old apartments that I used to live in. The alarms were both abrupt and loud, make them disruptive and terrifying to my sensitive autistic mind.
The worst part was that most of these alarms were not due to fire at all, but rather triggered by paranoid and bluntly stupid people who think they were having a crisis when it’s just minor issues like the laundry machine acting odd.
There was even one time when some woman was cooking food (probably curry) which emitted so much fucking smoke, and she even left the door open! That caused the smoke detectors to go off hard, and then the fire alarms...
If it weren't for moronic people abusing the fire alarm systems, I won’t have this much sensory trauma throughout my early childhood.
Those experiences has led me and my family to move to a house instead of another ghetto apartment. I was begging to them to do this for the sake of my sanity. Now I’ve been living in suburban homes ever since.
Recently, I was having a conversation with someone about the house affordability crisis worldwide, and the thought about moving to a modern apartment or condo as a cheaper alternative to a suburban home, and if the alarm systems there are less harsh than in the past. They argued that even if the alarms are harsh, it’s still ‘necessary’ because people – especially deaf people – NEED to hear them in order to be aware that there’s a potential fire in the building. But I argued that there are many sensitive people like me who cannot live in places like that, and architects who forces these kind of environments to everyone is wrong.
I just don’t want an alarm that randomly goes off all the fucking time for no good reason. It’s fine if it there’s an alarm due to actual smoke or carbon monoxide, but other than that, that thing needs to keep it’s mouth shut when I’m living in the house or apartment.
My family member often thinks that I’m ‘overthinking’ about things like the WiFi when we were having problems with it, or something philosophical or political about the future. Despite them knowing that I’m autistic and tend to have hyper-fixations sometimes, they still don’t know the full scope of my patterns. In my opinion, being a deep thinker is a good thing, because I have more time to think about many things while others have less time due to their social lives or other factors.
I generally prefer to read the articles or written lessons instead of watching a video. When I read, there's no other stimuli present like audio, so I become more focused.
When I view new information, especially more complex ones, my brain works very hard to process them. This makes the learning experience uncomfortable and exhausting.
So what I do is read the text little by little first, and then reread them after a certain period of time (days or weeks). Every time I review text, it feels easier to process the information than the previous time. The more comfortable I feel processing things, the better I learn them.
Whenever I think of a bittersweet topic, my train of thought often rapidly go from one sad topic to another, and eventually themes of the nature of existence, and death v_v .
I shed some tears every time afterwords :'( , and it’s uncomfortable. It even happens when I was having peaceful or happy thoughts beforehand.
I should have stuck to positive thoughts, but I just cannot do that. I'm unable to do that sometimes. But... is it healthy? Does this make me more self-conscious, and feel more empathetic towards others?
I'm starting to believe that, the media that let's me explore at my own pace is better for me, such as books, written text, or lighter video games where I can observe and progress the game at my own pace.
On the other hand, media – especially video games – that have too much rapid pacing and convoluted information would overwhelm me quickly. For example, when I play a story-driven action game, I get tired right away and want to either take a break or stop the game for the day. Those type of games contain both heavy plots and intense gameplay mechanics. Unfortunately, my mind's capacity to process all of that at once is often very limited. So I often feel burned out playing the game for 20/30 minutes.
When I read books or articles however, I feel more comfortable doing this kind of stuff for much longer than 30 mins. These things allow me to stop whenever I need to, and reflect what I just processed before quickly going back to exactly where I paused.
Casual video games are relaxing also, such as puzzle, adventure, or action games with light narratives.
I never realized that my body and soul needs to be in a library.
Every time I'm in a crowded mall, especially during weekends in the afternoon, I feel overwhelmed. People kept walking in and out without consistent pacing or direction, nor do they often have manners when they bump into me or not move out of the way when I need to pass though. People are also too fucking loud, especially those annoying kids when they goof off in public. I remember seeing a boy and his dumbass father making pterodactyl noises for fun while I was there drinking my decaf latte at Second Cup close by. I kept thinking to myself “Yall have no awareness, manners, self-control, or respect for other people...”.
My mind kept screaming “I want to get the fuck outta here PLEASE! I want to find someplace quieter”. But there was rarely any remotely quiet places in this noisy hellscape...
The other day, I try to build a habit of going to a library more often for a change of pace. And I often feel much more peaceful with that kind of environment. I can use the computers or just read some interesting books in the absence of people chatting or their fucking awful body odor. But there are times when kids come to the library after school hours and start running around and playing loudly (where's the librarian lady when we needed her to tell these kids to STFU? Once again, parents are failing to tech their children self-control and respect to people's peace...)
The library has calm me down quite a bit in a time of a major depressive episode. I didn't have to always be in the presence of obnoxious people, (including my family). I had a small place to myself, sensory speaking.
– v -
