Far Removed

What is my passion?  I'm an author, a musician, and a cartoonist.  I greatly enjoy thinking about linguistics and philosophy.  I like analyzing ideas, disassembling them, and trying to find ways in which they might be repurposed.  These are all for me intellectual pursuits and I enjoy them as tasks I can analyze.  I like best the parts I have to think the most about.  But I don't know whether these interests are passions or not. It seems to me that the word "passion" involves emotional investment and that it implies catharsis.  I don't experience catharsis.  I do the things I like best to do because they are gratifying as cognitive exercises.  Must one's passions be emotionally gratifying?  Perhaps not.  Perhaps a passion is any nonessential thing one voluntarily does repetitively, seeking pleasure of any kind.  That is a generous definition and by it I can say that I have just as many passions as the next person.  I am ...

I used to care very much what people thought of me.  As a teenager I was desperate to integrate.  I didn't fit in and it drove me crazy.  The world seemed made to reject me, but I didn't see that society is not the world.  I invested in what people thought because I believed winning acceptance was the only path to happiness.  I couldn't have known then what I know now because I had barely been alive.  I hadn't existed long enough to see the world beyond society. I know now that people's opinions are ephemeral.  Good or bad, the thoughts anyone has had about me have been drops in the oceans of their lives.  I remember being made fun of, and when it was happening it was like an apocalypse.  From grade school to high school I was tormented by ridicule and rejection.  But that's over.  There's no resolution to seek now, no balm for the past.  Whether or not I should have been treated in any particular way is an infertile discussi...

I use social media.  I don't like it, but I use it for work. I share my art, writing, music, and conlanging.  I try to limit my exposure to what other people are saying but I do see.  I see posts from others.  Sometimes they're entertaining so I browse.  It's like lingering in an irradiated zone to look for something pretty. There are simply too many people on social media.  It's baffling, dangerous territory.  I see a lot of news and I ignore it as much as I can.  Signs of what's happening in the world I don't want to live in.  The news is invariably accompanied by commentary.  Whether I agree or disagree with any particular opinion is irrelevant.  Opinions flash and then vanish.  Incidents fade, even tragedy.  Even horror.  But there is a great implicit pressure that I invest in outrage.  I don't have the necessary energy. Many are alarmed, angry, and so passionate.  I can't identify with their passion...

What is the meaning of life?  I can't interpret this question.  I understand that it's abstract.  Its answer, if it has one, is probably abstract, too.  But I don't think it's posed well enough to encourage good thinking about a genuine answer.  It seems to presuppose that there is something that life means.  Furthermore, there is feeling tied up in this question.  That there may be no meaning to life seems to some hopeless.  Is it implicit in the question that any answer must pertain to hope?  I don't myself see the connection between hope and the meaning of life. Where does hope come from?  Honestly I'm not sure what hope definitely is.  I know what it's like to hope for something.  Sometimes I will act to increase my chances of getting what I hope for. But I can act independently of hope. Even when it's not realistic to hope for a particular thing I can hope for something else.  And I can hope for something without ...

What does it mean to be human?  This has been asked before.  I don't know how to think about the question.  But I think about it anyway. If there is something that it means to be human, is it in my life?  I look into my life to find it.  I am influenced by others.  But I want to see what I am, if anything, beyond that influence.  Beneath what influence has made me, and beneath what I've made myself, am I anything?  I want to be. I want to be free of influence.  To live in the world without touching it and without it touching me.  To have pure and separate experience.  I want this in part because I want to see what I am when I'm not trying to be anything.  The universe is huge.  Almost none of it has anything do with humans.  I want to feel as small as I really am. At school I was bullied by exclusion.  Occasionally a bully would harass me directly.  But that stopped and I became a ghost.  W...

There are articles about how Edward Scissorhands can relate to autism spectrum disorder.  This isn't one of them. I watch casual interactions.  I don't know how people decide what to say when making small talk.  I don't know what to say myself.  And I don't know what people expect.  Trying to conduct a casual conversation is for me like being colorblind and trying to solve a Rubik's cube.  I can only guess.  I err on the side of politeness and that usually works all right.  Somebody told me I should ask people about themselves so I try to do that.  I have a short list of things to say in any given situation.  Like a dialogue tree in a video game.  Is this what it's like for other people?  I don't know. The video game analogy might not be relatable to everyone but I think it's good.  Video games are limited by their scripts, even those that give the player a lot of freedom.  The play experience happens within clear...

What do I think about being autistic?  Am I bitter about it?  Do I consider the positives and negatives and then have some feeling about being on the spectrum? I don't think about it.  I don't know how to assess the situation comparatively.  It's the only situation available to me.  There are times when I think sadly that I must be difficult to live with.  And there are times when I wish I were more confident and better at socializing.  But I don't wish that I were neurotypical because I don't know what being neurotypical is like.  It would be illogical to long for an experience I can't even imagine; furthermore I don't know how.  I don't know what to envy. I don't see neurotypical people gliding through life with nothing to overcome.  Everyone struggles as far as I can see.  In light of this it feels selfish to complain about my special disadvantages.  I don't feel the need to complain anyway.  But perhaps I would if ...

There is a debate about autism.  Some people would like to find a cure.  Others believe that no cure is necessary.  I have thought about that and I don't have an opinion.  What I can be certain of is that autism spectrum disorder is a significant impediment in my life and I would remove it from myself if I could. It's easy to think of life as a small thing.  Most of it is banal.  But it's actually very complex.  Cognition is a sophisticated phenomenon.  The ways in which my disorder affects me are as numerous as the ways in which consciousness is complicated.  I don't know how to explain all of them.  It might not be possible.  I would prefer not to have a neurological disorder.  But I have one and that is a reality it might be good to explore even if it's ultimately impossible to describe every convolution of my condition. There are many ways to misunderstand people.  Understanding is a subtle task.  People a...

Restaurants should have quiet sections.  People seem to have an impulse to socialize.  Sometimes strangers will attempt to converse with me.  I don't know why.  I think it safe to say that this impulse probably has some relationship to a neurological event.  This neurological event doesn't happen in my brain.  I don't experience the impulse to socialize.  I wonder what it's like but I expect that many who do experience the impulse would be unable to describe it.  I don't see the point of making small talk even when it's explained to me. Strangers might begin talking to each other about nothing at any moment.  Maybe they want to soften situations.  Or to display some intent.  I can only guess.  When they talk to me they are asking me to invest in them.  Suddenly I have to indulge their impulse.  I have to make them comfortable at my own expense.  I don't know what they're going to say, what they might want, if t...

You wake up and the world seems wrong.  It seems only slightly wrong at first but the more you look at it the more wrong it seems.  The colors, the light, the way things look when they're far away.  Everything seems off-model.  Different in a way that you can't explain. You go out.  It's too loud and everything costs attention.  And nothing works.  People are odd and even scary.  They build themselves entirely around ideas that you can't access the ability to care about no matter how hard you try.  You can't be sure you're connecting with them and in your uncertainty they leave you behind.  Whenever you're alone you feel as though something is about to happen.  You feel at once invisible and vulnerable. Years go by and this effect loses all subtlety.  You begin to feel pasted on the world, a design element from somewhere else.  The world for its part seems too big for its own good.  Its complexity feels pretentious...