Time traveling advice to a younger self...
Mar. 5th, 2014 11:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anansi133Dear 1984 Joe:
You are going to spend most of the next 30 years living in shared housing with other (presumed) adults. It's going to consume a lot more of your attention and energy than you want it to. You will frequently yield to the temptation to shuffle the deck and try for better housemates- and that is a shame, because it's all equally bad out there. I wish I'd spent less energy looking for better housemates, and more energy adapting to the way things are.
Related to this, is a particularly cruel deception you will frequently hear. It will sound *so* sincere, and in a sense, it's totally sincere, because the people who say it actually believe it. Something to the effect of, "I really want to create a tiny utopian society where we all get just along".
Take this statement as the semantic equivalent to "I really want to win the lottery, but I don't want to bother buying a ticket and tracking the winning numbers, so I am holding out for someone to gift me the ticket and then tell me that I've won."
In 30 years, I've been so very impressed by people's ideas for how they want to live and with who.... and I've been so very disappointed by what that translates out to in the here and now.
[Also: you are way more aspie than you think you are, 1984 Joe, and the sooner you own these traits, the less energy you'll waste trying to fit in. It may well take me *another* 30 years to master that one!]
No doubt, there really are people out there who are putting the required effort into harmonious living. But none of them want to live with aspie types, and none of them are interested in writing down (and then following) a rule book that you'll be satisfied with. You want a utopia, you'll have to build one from scratch, and it'll have to accommodate aspies and autists, no exception. Anything less, and you'll be setting yourself up for failure.
You are going to spend most of the next 30 years living in shared housing with other (presumed) adults. It's going to consume a lot more of your attention and energy than you want it to. You will frequently yield to the temptation to shuffle the deck and try for better housemates- and that is a shame, because it's all equally bad out there. I wish I'd spent less energy looking for better housemates, and more energy adapting to the way things are.
Related to this, is a particularly cruel deception you will frequently hear. It will sound *so* sincere, and in a sense, it's totally sincere, because the people who say it actually believe it. Something to the effect of, "I really want to create a tiny utopian society where we all get just along".
Take this statement as the semantic equivalent to "I really want to win the lottery, but I don't want to bother buying a ticket and tracking the winning numbers, so I am holding out for someone to gift me the ticket and then tell me that I've won."
In 30 years, I've been so very impressed by people's ideas for how they want to live and with who.... and I've been so very disappointed by what that translates out to in the here and now.
[Also: you are way more aspie than you think you are, 1984 Joe, and the sooner you own these traits, the less energy you'll waste trying to fit in. It may well take me *another* 30 years to master that one!]
No doubt, there really are people out there who are putting the required effort into harmonious living. But none of them want to live with aspie types, and none of them are interested in writing down (and then following) a rule book that you'll be satisfied with. You want a utopia, you'll have to build one from scratch, and it'll have to accommodate aspies and autists, no exception. Anything less, and you'll be setting yourself up for failure.
