I can't really do mindful eating

• As I eat a bowl of oatmeal, chewing the kernels and getting it down to my stomach as fast as possible. My history has taught me if I take time to savor and let my stomach realize food is coming, I’m not gonna be able to get most of the meal into me.
• I distract myself with a show or water play or nature being silly. Watching paint dry is the prototypical boring activity, yet when one is fascinated by fluid dynamics and the chemistry behind physical processes, it can be as engaging as the most well constructed story.
• If this sounds confusing to you, you may not be autistic.
• Our brains are infinitely varied thanks to the way they develop combined with the biology it inherits. Every sense we experience is experienced on a vast spectrum, most often portrayed as a bell curve.
• That bell curve indicates how that trait manifests in our species and we often make the center area what society considers normal. Really, that center area is just the average, but every point on the chart is normal because it represents a human and their unique brain.
• Conflating average for normal has caused a lot of pain throughout history. I hear arguments about society not being able to support everyone, yet when we go back to how our species developed, it seems the effort we made at including everyone was more successful because that group had more knowledge resources to call on.
• I started this piece because I react strongly when I hear advice from people around food and eating without taking into account the wide variety of bodies, which include our brains, that interact with these reactions.
• Food can be many things. In order to consume enough to function on a day-to-day basis I need to consider it an energy source that I just need to get into my system. I have times I get to enjoy food for flavor or experience, there are times I’ve savored a dish knowing how much care was taken in preparing it or tasting memories from the flavors; that doesn’t mean every meal needs to be so intense.
• The interactions each person has with this world needs to be considered and respected. The more we learn about our species and genetics and such, the more we realize that the mutations that arise from different lines interacting are key to our species adapting to the environment we live in. This evolutionary process isn’t ending and so anyone trying to limit the amount of variety we have in our genetic pool, like those trying to cure people like me with an autistic body, the brain being a part of the body, are harming not just us but all of humanity.

Coming to terms with someone not being able to listen.

This thought came to mind when I was sorting my bedroom and an old mentor-figure popped into my mind. The way we ended things could have gone better, neither of us ever thought there would be an ending, still, I learned a lot about myself in the interaction. 

This mentor always told me to come to her with critiques and that she was open to growing in all kinds of ways. Over the years it became clear to me that this wasn’t really the case, she had a perception of herself she projected, yet she seemed to always be the person who dealt critiques and couldn’t handle the return. There was a moment the last time we spoke I realized I had to resign myself to the fact that this person wasn’t interested in listening to me. She told me straight out she thought about the words I sent to her and she wasn’t interested in talking more about it. 

A cry for help was shut down because she decided to prioritize her feelings over her mentee’s mental health. 

There was once talk in this relationship about being there for her during convalescent times and I can only wonder how genuine she was with any kind of more than work relationship moments. I think about those words that you can’t always take people at face value when they say things that would indicate you’re closer than acquaintance, the words my former roommate said as she left after spending the previous year calling me her wife. 

I know there are many people who would blame me for taking these kinds of overtures literally, and to them I say how cruel are you to wave intimate relationships at someone because you don’t take the other’s feelings into account. Coming to terms with someone not being able to listen to you comes down to remembering that it is a good thing to believe someone is genuine in their overtures of developing more intimate relationships. 

The way our society wants us to treat everyone in our circle as an intimate relationship is part of the reason many people can’t identify a real, close intimate relationship in their lives. Words of love and connection are throws around to people a neurotypical person barely knows because there is a flatness in how they consider most of their relationships. 

Each individual will vary, yet Auties being literally minded is a trope for a reason — we tend to put a lot of meaning into each word we say and expect others to do the same. 

But they don’t. 

And we can’t change them any more than they can change us. We can learn how to bridge the communication gap with practice at identifying when there may be a gap developing, yet it is a part of being human to have to deal with miscommunication on occasion.

Sometimes one must come to terms with a person in their life being unable to listen beyond the surface of your words.

Wandering around Prenzlauerberg

A return to Berlin!
It's a big city and I have the fortune of being hosted in the Prenzlauerberg neighborhood for my first month back. I decided to walk around a "3-block radius" of my current home in Berlin to see what gems of the neighborhood I could find.

Mary Makes Stuff

Mary is a freelance graphic designer whose hobbies include making dinosaur, bug, and robot themed artwork. She let me follow her to a few of the Maker Market pop-ups she participates in. Then we had a chat about what she loves about Seattle, what she misses about her hometown of Cleveland, and how great wigs are at SUIKA Seattle.

Good food, good games, good times with Nicole

Nicole has been a friend of mine going on 6 years now, meeting through our love of games at Gamma Ray Games. She's such a fan of the hobby, she started a website with her boyfriend called Across the Board Games, which reviews the plethora of new games coming onto the market every day.
She took me on a perfect afternoon/evening tour of Capitol Hill, a tourists dream itinerary of food, museums, and relaxation.

Couchsurfing Pubcrawl in San Francisco

Every year I make a pilgrimage to San Jose for the fabulous Pantheacon Convention and I usually try to take a day before or after to wander around San Francisco. Just a 1.5 hour flight from Seattle, it's a nice place to take a weekend vacation.

This year I decided to join a pub crawl organized by a few hostels near Chinatown, including the Green Tortoise, who's representative made sure we moved along at a steady clip and was a delight to talk to.
Going on 4 years now, the rock-paper-scissors themed event makes it easy to get to know people. This was honestly the most fun bar crawl I'd ever been on. If you find yourself in San Francisco on a Wednesday evening, stop by The Northstar on Green and Powell by 9pm to join in the fun. You'll be happy you did.

A Streetcar from Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square, and Lunch

Seattle has taken its time getting transit, other than buses, built in the city. So it is with a, perhaps, surprising amount of joy that the first day of a new streetcar is greeted. Also, the train has been a local joke since it was supposed to open in 2014, so we've had more time than expected to anticipate the line.
I couldn't help but hop on on the first day and check out my new, convenient connection to parts of town that were previously quite difficult to get to, especially considering how close they were.