woe is me

[kindkit]

1) Well, my back is still fucked. I am getting better, but very very VERY slowly. I tried to go to work last Friday and only managed an hour, and then I was in such severe and obvious pain that a colleague volunteered to drive me home (because sitting = bad, which makes driving a challenge).

I'm going to try again tomorrow. I'm a bit more functional now and if all goes okay I should be able to make it for a few hours.

Meanwhile, my PTO that I having been saving up since the last time this happened (because when I get top surgery--I was hoping for next year--I'll need to take at least a month off) is pretty much gone. And HR wants me to request FMLA leave but hasn't sent me the damn paperwork. *sigh*


2) I haven't been capable of much reading/viewing etc., because my concentration's gone all to hell. Even though I'm not constantly in pain, it's hard to sleep for more than 2-3 hours at a time. So mostly I dazedly scroll Twitter, which these days is bursting with TERFs and fascists, plus a goodly portion of the people who are neither TERFs nor fascists are goddamn irritating. (For example, there's currently a massive kerfuffle because someone said that refusing to engage in very basic formula small talk--such as replying to a "Hi, how are you today?" from a retail worker or restaurant worker--is extremely rude. Predictably, the replies of "OMG I'm actually autistic and why do you want me to die of small talk?" and "OMG if you ask how I'm doing I'm not going to lie, so you better be prepared to hear about how my cat has cancer"* came in like a missile barrage.) Ugh, Twitter is so awful, and yet so perfectly designed to keep you refreshing when you're bored but not capable of anything more demanding.

(*In my experience as a retail worker, this happens pretty often. And it's TERRIBLE. I'm at work, I asked "how are you?" because it's a politeness formula, and I am not equipped, emotionally or in terms of time, to hear about your actual problems. Why are so many people unable/unwilling to distinguish between "meaningless polite noises between strangers" and "question from friend who actually wants to know"?)


3) I did manage to watch Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. It's a perfectly fine undemanding movie, and I didn't know Hugh Grant was in it so that was a pleasant surprise. But I feel like it's suffered from a sort of reputation paradox. When it came out, everybody was expecting an absolute dog. So when they saw that it was an okay fun movie with some nice moments, they all went, "Wow, it's so good!" And that inflated its reputation enough for latecomers like me to be disappointed that it's not really as good as all that. It's fun, it's silly, it's not going to wow anybody.


4) Also I've been catching up on This Podcast Will Kill You, which suits my mental state right now because it's not narrative. I also managed to listen to the second episode of Malevolent, which is narrative and which I'm still not loving, but I'll keep trying because I am assured that it gets better. I'm stalled on Old Gods of Appalachia, but eventually I'll get back to it. Part of the problem (with this and with Malevolent) is that I prefer to listen to horror podcasts while I'm outdoors walking in the nice bright safe sunlight. It gives me a needed bit of distance from the story. But I'm not up to taking walks just yet.

Comments

[sovay]

Why are so many people unable/unwilling to distinguish between "meaningless polite noises between strangers" and "question from friend who actually wants to know"?

I don't know. I've been saying cheerfully, "I'm alive!" for years and people seem to accept that.

Good luck with getting the FMLA paperwork and also your back unfucking itself sooner rather than later.

*hugs* if useful.

[kindkit]

*hugs* I'm back hobbling around at work, hoping not to do anything to mess my back up further.

[lilacsigil]

Best wishes for your back turning the pain bus around.

I don't know why people seem to take "hello" as an invitation to tell you all about horrible pet deaths.

[kindkit]

I'm doing a bit better now, and hopefully on the mend for real.

In re: the second point, I wonder if it's the same kind of person who prides themselves on their "honesty" and therefore refuses to participate in little social lies like "That outfit looks nice on you."

[rydra_wong]

(For example, there's currently a massive kerfuffle because someone said that refusing to engage in very basic formula small talk--such as replying to a "Hi, how are you today?" from a retail worker or restaurant worker--is extremely rude. Predictably, the replies of "OMG I'm actually autistic and why do you want me to die of small talk?" and "OMG if you ask how I'm doing I'm not going to lie, so you better be prepared to hear about how my cat has cancer"* came in like a missile barrage.)

OMG I'm actually autistic and capable of learning that this is a simple social ritual between strangers to show basic human acknowledgement and you say 'fine thanks how are you' and move on.

No thought is required! It is a very basic formula!

I absolutely did not understand it in my youth, so it's fair to say "please explicitly teach autistic kids the social rule and that it's not an invitation for an honest answer."

But, you know, if you're an adult who's capable of getting into Twitter kerfuffles about it, you're capable of learning the formula. And recognizing that the retail worker is required to say the thing and probably has about as much desire to participate as you do, so don't be a dick.

[kindkit]

I don't know if I'm autistic--no diagnosis, but I sure have a lot of the traits--but I remember learning "How are you?" "I'm fine" by rote as a child, and the relief of knowing it was a formula and knowing what the answer was supposed to be. (I'm somewhat discombobulated by how, in the last few years in the US, "How are you" has been replaced by "What's up?" I do not like this new question, and I had to literally post about it (here, I think) asking what the formula answer was supposed to be.)

And recognizing that the retail worker is required to say the thing and probably has about as much desire to participate as you do, so don't be a dick.

Yep. Alas, if Twitter has shown us one thing, it's that many people love being dicks.

[rydra_wong]

I don't know if I'm autistic--no diagnosis, but I sure have a lot of the traits

I will use whatever authority is conferred by my Official Diagnosis On Paper and status as An Author In The Field to say:

I think the best test is whether or not autism is useful to you as a concept in making sense of how your brain works and why other humans can be so weird, and that if you have the "oh shit this is describing me" sensation when you read stuff by and about autistic people, that's as as reliable as anything.

Technically, there's a grey zone where you might have some autistic traits but not necessarily enough to cross the threshold for a formal diagnosis -- but also, that's a distinction that's largely devoid of practical meaning, unless you need the official piece of paper to get access to services. It's an arbitrary cut-off being placed somewhere along a spectrum, you know?

And being one cm from the arbitrary line on one side, versus one cm from the line on the other side, makes minimal difference to your experience, not to mention that the line sometimes gets moved from one edition of DSM to the next.

And exactly how many boxes you do or don't tick can be dependent on the whims of whoever's doing the assessment anyway.

So yeah: if autism as a way of understanding your experiences is useful to you, I say grab it.

[greenwoodside]

I had the same experience with D&D Honour Among Thieves. I was expecting something very meta and crammed with sly jokes plus a strong plot after reading lots of enthusiastic reactions. Instead it was just...nice. A fun, unremarkable adventure film.

[kindkit]

*nods* There are lots of references to D&D lore/gaming culture, but that's all they really were. It felt a bit like the writers had a quota: "Uh oh, we need to get a gelatinous cube in here somehow!"

[schneefink]

But I feel like it's suffered from a sort of reputation paradox. When it came out, everybody was expecting an absolute dog. So when they saw that it was an okay fun movie with some nice moments, they all went, "Wow, it's so good!" And that inflated its reputation enough for latecomers like me to be disappointed that it's not really as good as all that.
Yeah, I feel like that happens a lot. Barbie was another case for that imo.

[kindkit]

I haven't seen Barbie, but that's the sense I get from what I've heard about it. Everyone was so surprised that it tried to be feminist at all that it got overpraised.