EmilyMoranBarwick

EmilyMoranBarwick, 21 days ago

@twan This truly is an #ActuallyAutistic superpower!

It can also be a bit absurd…I’m remarkably calm & level-headed in “legitimate” life-threatening crises. But change my schedule suddenly?!?

On a related note…I used to think I was “weak” because everything was so damn hard & intense

Once I learned about my #neurodiversity, I realized I’m weathering things every damn day that would break most people. We’re actually strong as hell…we have to be

@actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@Uair
Oh I constantly have a billion things running simultaneously in my brain.

But it seems like the only way for me to stay "fully oriented" to something (whether it be a research paper, the Mastodon community...anything) is for it to be a primary-to-the-point-of-exclusive focus.

I can't seem to successfully shift in and out of many things without then doing ALL those things crappily, rather than one thing well.

It's frustrating.

@actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@MarkRDavid
I guess I could have worded this all better... I absolutely value it when I can hyper-focus.

What I'm struggling with is the fact that I can't seem to do things well or stay properly "oriented" with them without excluding ALL other aspects of my life (which I very much want to have in my life).

It's how I ended up erasing SO much of myself to keep my educational nonprofit going for the last 10 years.

That kind of "flattening" of my life has been devastating.

@actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@MarkRDavid
Ha! I’m currently writing at a cafe. But I’ll do a combo. Yes I’m in public around people, but I also have headphones on playing brown noise :)

@actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@nddev
ha! Same same. My breakfast is “static” as well but dinner varies more.

For me a lot of it is my lifelong drive to “reduce variables”. There’s so much coming at my brain all the time. Anything I can “lock down” is one less thing I have to lose cognitive energy to.

(Man sometimes I sound like a robot ¯_(ツ)_/¯ )

@actuallyautistic
@Woofman

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@ritabwray
Same! I also am the one who suspected, sought out and paid for my own evaluation. Despite having my current therapist and family tell me “you’re not Autistic” and treat it like some silly thing I was “stuck on”. (Cause guess what? I get really deep into things…guess why? Autistic…ha)

And yes I also started seeing (and still do) my past through an entirely different lens & framework that finally made it all come together.

@actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@Aerliss exactly! Unfortunately, this completely logical (and helpful for an Autistic brain) way of operating is often pathologized.

In the case of food, eating the same thing all the time is misdiagnosed as an eating disorder.

So many “treatments” for the misdiagnosed pathologies are often more destructive than helpful to #ActuallyAutistic brains. If you see the #neurodiversity as neuroses it’s a recipe for disaster.

@Woofman @nddev @actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@elizabethveldon
Well hello fellow Autistic #vegan 👋

I don’t know about you, but I have always seen my Autism as inextricably linked to my #veganism

So much so I made a whole video & article about it...which was...challenging and vulnerable to do.

It TOTALLY skeeves me out to ever share crap I made for some reason...but if you have any interest: https://bitesizevegan.org/how-autism-connects-me-with-animals/

@actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@elizabethveldon Yep!

It’s that hyper-empathy that flies in the face of traditional concepts of #ActuallyAutistic people lacking empathy

For me, I also see a connection with my difficulty communicating my interior life. I knew that I had a LOT going on inside that I couldn't communicate

So I never assumed that just because non-human animals couldn’t speak in a way humans could fully understand, didn’t mean they weren’t capable of thought, emotion, or communication.

@actuallyautistic

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@the_etrain Was fortunate enough to see him live in Chicago, along with Stephen Lynch.

One of those moments in life seared into my memory like a full sensory experience.

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@RickiTarr
When I hear anyone of any age talking about having energy ever…

Also, when I hear people say things like “remember the care-free days of our youth?”

No…no I do not…

EmilyMoranBarwick, 2 months ago

@mentallyalex @Alice

Well (tragically) I don’t have a bed tent…but I do have that same 1963 version of Cat’s Cradle :)

(it’s not obvious in the photo, but this “bookshelf” is my repurposing of a planter because no matter how hard I try, I cannot keep plants alive.)🥀☠️

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@Alice I thought about not liking this just to "give you a dose of your own medicine"...but then I caved...because I find you delightful. 🙃

Also, how the f—ck would you know I'd seen it, liked it in my brain but not clicked the like?

@Skepticat

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@clive Ah yes. Movies as evidence or blueprints or "'announcements of ill-intent by bad actors"

This is a VERY common phenomenon exhibited with almost comical frequency by Alex Jones & those in his orbit

The podcast Knowledge Fight deconstructs Jones' rhetoric & always remarks on the countless instances where he "cites" movies as proof or foreshadowing or speaks of them as if referring to real-life events

This is then integrated into the "reasoning process" of his followers

@RickiTarr

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@clive
To make it just a bit more maddening & surreal...the same people who will "cite" movies as facts & view YouTube-binging as "research" will vehemently question/refute the integrity of peer-reviewed scientific literature.

The cost of conspiracy-driven propaganda outlets & figures cannot be overstated. Not just their content, but perhaps, even more so, how their "modeling" of what counts for "trustworthy" sources is absorbed, integrated & reproduced by the greater public.

@RickiTarr

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@sarajw much appreciated ;) atm I am not even sure where I’d start. I think a great deal of “wanting to get it as right as possible before taking a step” comes from having been through the nightmare of “undoing” a bloated monster site (it’s still a monster).

As a non-dev, undoing something is rarely simple…so the idea of just doing something and changing it later is daunting ;)

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@sarajw RE: willing to dive into code...that's what also keeps me in a liminal space. I WANT to have access/understanding of the code (I'm not into "ready-made" stuff) BUT my knowledge isn't robust enough to fully implement code myself

I'm up for input, but felt I needed to get a clear handle on what I want the site to be/do first...so I'd started a Notion page to "gather my thoughts" & it's now a Notion wiki with all the chaos & organizational devolution expected when combining Notion & ADHD

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@sarajw Yeah I have been considering hand-making an HTML "home page" just to put into the universe while I continue my endless meandering toward my "real site"

I’m also rubbish at knowing what's ACTUALLY necessary until I'm too deep in & then have to "undo" a bunch :)

I do want to have a blog, but also want to show visual art & other things. So would need more than Markdown. Ideally, also have tags/filters/search kinds of things

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@sarajw I understand this in theory :) It's just overwhelming. WebDev moves so fast. Even experienced people are always learning & re-learning

But not being experienced, things that are "tweaks" for them are multi-month new endeavors for me

Not having a solid base makes it harder to evaluate which direction to take

I could spend so much time learning a "framework"...but also read a lot about not using frameworks at ALL

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@sarajw
Then I come across things like https://every-layout.dev/ from https://buildexcellentwebsit.es/ where you use the browser rather than media queries to make sites more universally accessible (which I find extremely important).

So it feels like I should learn THAT first. (And on it goes) :)

EmilyMoranBarwick, 3 months ago

@sarajw Again, I understand this in theory :)

I think a big part of the problem is I already have too many ideas and have already looked into too many questions and found too many answers.

I know a lot of what I want to accomplish but the "how" is just so extremely overloaded with options and gaps in my technical abilities.

Much of this is also the combination of the reality of WebDev and my particular flavor of neurodiversity...it's quite intense.