When it comes up, I prefer to just describe the symptom currently at play— e.g. “no it was funny, I’m just slow to get jokes”, or “I need to step outside, crowds stress me out”.

It’s not a big secret or anything, but I don’t want every slightly awkward moment to turn into a big conversation about my neurotype. Besides, I am how I am, it would be fine even if I didn’t have a reason. I don’t want people to tolerate me because I have a disorder to “justify” it.

Wow, this whole thing was stupid. I guess it makes Trump look like the good guy, if you’re an idiot, so thanks, Bytedance.

I understand. It’s true that you can’t pin all your happiness onto a hypothetical person, or even a real one, but it’s also hard to be happy when you’re lonely. Sometimes I do the things that used to make me happy and just wish I had a friend to do them with.

I guess that doesn’t help much, I just want you to know someone gets it. And Valentine’s Day doesn’t help because marketing is inescapable, and marketers want you to have a partner to buy their cheap heart-shaped shit for, so the result is that it makes lonely people like us hyper aware of our loneliness.

I do hope you find happiness and fulfillment, in whatever form it takes, not just the one that’s expected of us.

Consider: floating in a bowl of milk like cereal. It’s one big piece but you still have to use a spoon.

Shoplifting from Walmart hurts my knees because the boss won’t believe that our onhand numbers are wrong and makes me check high and low before I can nil pick it 🥲

This isn’t an ethical argument against shoplifting btw, this is an ethical argument in favor of nuking Walmart

Had to specify “boy” because Pippi Longstocking is clearly the strongest.

Thanks, that’s very encouraging ❤️ the gym is a nice hobby but I don’t think it’s the only or even the best route to self improvement, like for instance I feel the same way when people talk about reading regularly or making space for friends and partners.

Unfortunately therapist choices are actually pretty limited if I want one that’s paid for by my job. I went through the list and she was the only one who fit into my availability. I could still look elsewhere and get one mostly paid for by insurance ofc but it means seeing them less frequently.

Gotcha, that’s a reasonable question. I’m not able to answer, unfortunately 😭

I do have a friend who’s aro/ace and has zero interest in sex, but they’ve written a lot of romance. It’s not their main thing but they still seem to really enjoy it. I think well-developed characters can make any kind of goal interesting, even if it’s not one you’d ever have. I don’t know how many romcoms bother with that level of development, though.

Is it a legit term I haven’t heard for aro/ace/agender folk? Or do you mean like a Ken doll (no titties, no nipples, no genitalia)

Yeah, I really should. I mainly go to the gym because it’s hard to focus at home, especially with the cutest cat in the world always wanting on my lap.

Rough. I lost muscle mass over the holidays due to being swamped with work as well as on call to help with a family crisis. I’ve been trying to get back to the gym, but due to the snowstorm I only managed two days this past week. My dumb ass kept driving down there at 5:30am and they’d be closed 🤦 There’s supposed to be another storm coming up, too.

In therapy for relationship issues but I don’t know if it’s going well. My therapist claims I’m very self aware and I’m not asking for too much, but I don’t think that can be true because people in my life keep having these horrific meltdowns at me.

I haven’t talked to my friend in two weeks because I was going to ask my therapist how to approach him but we ran out of time. I should probably let him go but I hate to end on a bad note after everything we’ve done together.

Starting this week off with a hike with a new group, not sure if I really want to meet people ever again but I already RSVP’d so let’s go.

ETA hike went well and I was getting to know everyone and then on the fourth mile they started joking about how liberals moving to our area won’t have any friends. I’m much further left than liberal 🙃 my therapist told me to try to make friends but I’m done, this is a waste of time

I’m sorry, that sounds miserable 💔

It’s not specifically for groceries but if you have google play services, I like TickTick for groceries and other lists. It’s easy to sync with Windows so if I remember something I need at a random time I can just jot it down on my nearest device. Plus there’s a home screen widget so it’s impossible to forget if I haven’t been grocery shopping yet.

I know that’s the least of your problems ofc, I hope you feel better soon.

People use social media for different things. I never used Instagram to meet people, personally. I’ve posted art and I’ve uploaded photos just as a way to show long distant friends what I’ve been up to, but those friends and I mostly talked over text so I don’t know if I ever even looked at my DMs.

I do actually think social media has made me bad at talking to people irl though, but for different reasons. The way I made friends on Tumblr was I’d post a character design and wait for someone else who designs characters to comment, and then we’d talk back and forth about our characters for hours.

Now I’m trying to remember how to make friends in person and it’s so much more intentional. You have to actually ask questions and broadcast your interest in people instead of assuming they’re going to infodump on you. You can’t take five minutes to think up a reply because there’s no going afk. You have to have interests other than a gay man you made up.

Nah, it’s not a literal statement. It’s a rude way to say “I don’t want to talk about this”. It can be due to a genuine lack of interest, or if you’re trying to have an emotional conversation, it’s a malicious way to downplay your experience.

It’s a big old world and there’s always at least one person who will care about something.

I also don’t parade my identity at work but I’m obviously still affected by the false accusations and firings I’ve seen of other queer people. I’m single right now but imagine if the wrong person saw me getting picked up by my partner, my livelihood would be gone and I’d have to go back to my old dead end job where cis men were allowed to scream at me and throw things and management would make excuses.

(I was closeted there too, that place was just like that)

You are affected by anti-LGBT discrimination, you’re just not paying attention for some reason.

I’ll also add that one of the two parties actively wants to see me and anyone like me dead, so there’s a lot of pressure for many of us on simply surviving

Oh, for sure, hence why I’m not anti-voting. I still want to save my ass in the short term, even while thinking about the long term.

The USA’s two-party system is a fucking farce and we’re not going to see major, widespread change under either party. But if I bring this up I get called a “Russian bot” and accused of telling people not to vote… even though I vote.

OK lol maybe urgent is the wrong word. “Important” or “time-sensitive”, ig. Not something I’m cool with just closing the window and forgetting about.

Also I forgot this isn’t normal but I somehow fucked my phone up so bad when installing AdAway that I get an error when I try to disable it. That’s probably important context.

The classic example is whenever my mom got a new car when I was a kid, looking for it in a parking lot, suddenly I’d see it everywhere.

To be fair, I think “nuance” is genuinely being used a lot more lately because there’s so much backlash against the black-and-white discourse that dominated the internet last decade.