Having a group is only half the battle, the other half is getting that group together when one person works odd hours, another has chronic illness with lots of medical appointments, and a third has a bitch of a commute during the week so often can’t get home in time.
For years we had games every Friday and Sunday, all it takes is a couple of people changing jobs to completely disrupt that setup.
Sure they do, NTs do a lot of stim activities, the difference is that they don’t need to stim in order to remain calm and centred, they can just do it because it’s fun.
Yes, putting an electrical appliance in the bathroom is weirder than putting an appliance that requires both power and plumbing in the room that always has both power and plumbing.
I also buy second-hand whenever possible, and try to fix things instead of replace them, and for the stuff I’m buying it’s usually more expensive, not less. Especially when big stores offer free delivery on just about everything while your average ebay user obviously doesn’t.
Recent example: I got a shoulder strap for a clutch bag and the clasp on the strap broke. It was only missing a tiny spring, so I found a tiny spring online and repaired it. The strap cost £5. The spring to fix it cost £6 including postage. But it worked!
I had lessons from various people every summer for the first few years after I turned 17 (age you can start learning on public roads in the UK). I’d get to “test standard” each time on the mechanics of it, but navigating other drivers was too much so I never actually took a test, and never intend to.
I’m now in my 30s and have structured my life around not having a car. My house is on a 24-hour bus route into town where I work, and walking distance to most amenities. My husband does have a car, so he can drive us places that aren’t on public transit routes (such as our parents’ houses) but the vast majority of the time I’m doing my own thing while he’s at his job an hour’s drive away.
No idea whether it’s their reason, but anecdotally I’ve found it has a few benefits. If coordinated properly it’s significantly easier to train new(er) staff, it improves cross-organisational understanding to overhear other departments’ conversations either at desks or in break rooms, and it stops people becoming isolated pockets of knowledge and culture because they only ever see or interact with the same one or two people.
This is why I concluded that I can’t live in shared housing. Thankfully my social phobia isn’t triggered by living with a partner or I’d be fucked as far as affording housing.
I don’t have any useful advice or way to help, but you’re not a burden and you’re not the only one to feel this way. Sorry if that’s not exactly comforting.
My instinctive response is that it’s a terrible idea. While having no expectation to mask is great, it seems to me that gathering a group of people who generally struggle to take care of themselves and their environment and who have very low tolerance for certain environmental stimuli and a deep need for other environmental stimuli is a recipe for chaos.
I attend a local autistic adults zoom group every other week, and it’s great for support and understanding, but if I had to be in the same room as one of the other members their stims would give me a meltdown. I over-empathise emotionally, an autistic friend has almost no emotional empathy, as a result some of our interactions do not go as intended. Multiply these kinds of issues with having to effectively live with eachother and I just don’t see it going well.
Given the context of the article, the alternative suggestion isn’t “set up your own server” but “use software that doesn’t require a server”, which sidesteps most of that list.