I teach community IT.

They really can’t.

I still feel like the nouns are in the wrong place when I read this.

I’m reading it as “New York cows new York cows bully bully New York cows”

When I want it to read “New York cows bully new York cows” which would be “Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” which isn’t enough buffalo.

I have to inset my own “that” to be able to get my head around “Buffalo buffalo (that) Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”

Considering the person in the tweet posing the initial question is neurodivergent, and time blindness is a symptom of many forms of neurodivergence, I feel like being late is a poor example.

I’m late because my condition fundamentally does not allow me to process the passage of time properly.

For most people that would sound like an excuse. I understand that.

I set multiple alarms, not just to wake up, but I have an alarm to tell me I need to get in the shower, out of the shower, an alarm that tells me if I’m not currently eating breakfast I need to skip breakfast or I’ll be late, an alarm that tells me to leave the house, and another alarm to actually leave the house regardless of if I can’t find my keys, go now or you’ll be late, call a locksmith later (because you left them in the laundry sink you idiot, that’s why the dirty towels are at the front door somehow)

I’ve managed to avoid being late by being disgustingly early to everything instead.

So when I am late, I’m already feeling like the worst possible human there is, how am I so completely useless?

And “I somehow lost track of time despite having a countdown timer audibly playing in my headphones from the moment I woke up to the moment I got here” is not a valid reason in the eyes of people who have never experienced time blindness, so they pile up more shame on top of my guilt.

My partner and I were standing in the kitchen planning meals and I asked him what day a certain event was because I could have sworn it was “a Monday 20-something” he tells me it’s “Saturday November 23rd” he said, “oh that’s next month” I replied, I went to write it in my diary, but it was already written in my diary.

Later I got ready for bed, I set my alarm nice and early for the big day, and woke up today on the Monday 28th of October, started getting ready and asked my partner why he was sleeping in and he says “sleeping in for what? What are we doing so early today?” to which I reply “the event! …wait … That’s in November, why did I think it was today?” and went back to bed.

I got home from work this afternoon, put my bag down and suddenly and immediately started panicking “oh fuck, I forgot to attend that event today!” and I pull out my phone to text someone and remember it’s not until November.

I’m going to keep doing this until the 23rd of November, when I’m inevitably going to have somehow forgotten the event entirely and my partner will wake me up asking if I’m ready to go and I’ll say “go where? … Wait there’s some important I’m doing, don’t tell me”

I guess my personal definition of excuse vs reason. An excuse is an attempt to get out of the consequences of what happened, a reason is an exploration of the factors that lead up to the issue, and does not absolve me of responsibility or accountability.

To avoid being late in the future, I have to understand the reason I was late, otherwise how can I fix a problem I don’t understand.

In my case the root problem is unfixable, I can only ever work to mitigate the impact, and that’s never going to work 100% of the time. So it’s tricky because it’s not an excuse, I know I’m making things harder for other people with my behaviour and I don’t expect to face zero consequences for my actions, but I can’t exactly fix it or guarantee it won’t happen again because I know it will, so I’m not going to make false promises about doing better, I’m already doing the best I know how, trying to guilt me does nothing, I’m already at max capacity guilt because I don’t know how else to address this problem and it feels like my fault.

Both the battery and the charger are old and broken in my brain.

If it’s too hot out the battery drains faster, if I’m playing music the battery drains faster. If I’m having to swap between conversations, bye bye battery.

Sometimes the charger works fine but sometimes it just doesn’t charge no matter what I try, and the battery stays low even if I leave it plugged in alone.

Some days there’s a process that’s absolutely and inexplicably guzzling power, but the next day that same process barely takes up any processing power.

Some days it just doesn’t turn on at all, and then on rare occasions I can’t get the damn thing to turn off, it’s just blasting notifications and I’m trying to sleep.

Related: personally I think “old phone battery” is a much better metaphor than the “chronically ill spoons” metaphor that is commonly used to explain the impact of chronic illness.

Yes and no, applying for accommodations is as fun and easy as pulling out your own teeth with a rubber chicken.

It took months to get the paperwork organised and the conversations started around accommodations I needed for my disability, I realised halfway through I had to simplify what I was asking for and just deal with some less than accessible issues because the process of applying for disability accommodations was not accessible and I was getting rejected for simple requests like “can I reserve a seat in the front row because I can’t get up the stairs, and I can’t get there early because I need to take the service elevator to get to the lecture hall, so I’m always waiting on the security guard”

My teachers knew I had a physical disability and had mobility accommodations, some of them knew that the condition I had also caused a degree of sensory disability, but I had nothing formal on the paperwork about my hearing and vision loss because I was able to self manage with my existing tools.

I didn’t need my teachers to do anything differently so I didn’t see the point in delaying my education and putting myself through the bureaucratic stress of applying for visual accommodations when I didn’t need them to be provided to me from the university itself.

Obviously if I’d gotten a result of “you cheated” I’d immediately get that paperwork in to prove I didn’t cheat, my voice over reader just gave me the ChatGPT instructions and I didn’t realise it wasn’t part of the assignment… But that could take 3-4 months to finalise the accommodation process once I become aware that there is a genuine need to have that paperwork in place.

I’m forced to because I make the most ridiculous spelling mistakes that completely change the comment.

“With” autocorrects to “without”.

“is” autocorrects to “isn’t”

Finally worked out why though - my right eye is impaired and I type exclusively with my right thumb (on mobile) so I’m not actually pressing the keys I think I am and I’m often hitting the “predict word” button instead of the space bar.

Looking forward to getting tactile keys on phones again!

My job somehow shifted from teaching IT to seniors to teaching SOSE to migrants

It has simultaneously been the most challenging, and most rewarding change.

I’m forced to edit myself down from my preferred 5000 word lecture to about 150 words with clip art.

It’s slowly helping me become less of a rambler.

Except for the “post restraint collapse”, I get home and I can’t hold it in anymore, cue the explosive verbal diarrhoea.

At work, fewer words are better.

But in my own personal life I feel that the fewer words I employ to convey the way I feel the less nuance I’m embedding in my message and what is communication if not the conveyance of the core message, failing to express myself clearly would be counter-productive so surely explaining in more detail is beneficial, hello? Are you still listening? Why have your eyes glazed over.

Gay lead; when being a stone top just isn’t hard enough.

When you gave up caffeine did you experience rebound insomnia?

I gave up caffeine a month ago on my neurologists orders and it’s been easy, no obvious withdrawal symptoms, no cravings, I just replaced all my tea and coffee and redbull with herbal tea and lemonade.

But I have not gotten more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep in this month, and I’m missing the relaxation and quiet that a refreshing 9pm redbull used to offer, I’ve got plenty of other relaxing rituals, but none so easy as just drinking coffee.

I started drinking coffee at 15 and religiously relishing redbulls at 21. Now in my 30s, this is the first time I’ve had true insomnia symptoms.

My mother has been an insomniac her whole life, my dad is narcoleptic, I was previously diagnosed with N24CRD and my brother has DSPS, so I come from a family of fucked up sleepers, but this is a new symptom set for me and it appears directly related to giving up caffeine.

I’m hoping it’s just an adjustment period and my brain will sort itself out and get some sleep soon.

Call her doctor

I should have been more specific. Find a time when she’s not doing anything urgent, tell her it’s time to call the doctor, pick up her phone and dial the doctor, put them on speaker and put the phone down next to you while you body double your partner as they gone through the motions of locking in the appointment.

While on the phone your partner can also give third party authorisation. It’s the first thing I do when I meet a new provider, I give third party authorisation to my partner and mother so they can make appointments on my behalf (they can’t get results for me, but they can schedule things for me)

Every time I do a Bunnings BBQ for the community centre, it’s women run, we get the onions on ASAP because they need time to cook, and we’ll have people buying a plain onion sandwich in addition to a snag, because caramelised onions are so good!

Every time I volunteer to help my partners football club run a sausage sizzle, I’m saying “put the onions on, they take longer” and I’m told by the guys “I’m a man, I know how to BBQ, go away little girl, go hold the sign and be pretty”

Then everyone buying a snag is complaining about crunchy raw onions, and the guys are saying “why did we buy so many onions?” (because you were supposed to cook them down so they shrink!)

These same men will unironically say “women belong in the kitchen” then won’t take cooking advice from a woman.

(also, the footy guys always giving me flak for deglazing the BBQ plate with water to help the onions cook down faster. They’ll just keep adding oil, once saw a Rotary Club use 1L of canola oil to half cook 5kg of onions, when we’ve never needed more than 200ml to fully cook onions, because onions need water to cook down!)

No idea, he lives on the other side of the state and I only see him 3 times a year for his birthday, father’s day and Christmas. My brother used to live with him but he spends most of his time with mum now.

I’m certain my dad is getting this rhetoric from social media because he’s a lonely and isolated man in his late 60s with no friends outside of his male dominated blue collar job.

But it’s not my job to reform him, I don’t have the skill set or energy.

Call her doctor, make an appointment, save it in her calendar, remind her in the lead up, drive her there, get the referral. Walk her to the post box to send it off, sit next to her to phone the intake office to confirm they got the referral, set appointments on her phone for every 6 months to sit with her and call to check the cancellation list until you get an appointment. Drive her to that appointment.

If she has ADHD, the steps involved in getting a diagnosis are bigger than Mt Everest, she will need a neurotypical Sherpa.

He’s also not a racist!

I’d had the same recurring dream since early highschool. It was dream like in that it was a true labyrinth that mademoiselle no structuralism sense, walking around in the dream was ethereal, but the objects within were mundane, the toilets were broken or dirty in ways that could be reality not fantasy, but I always knew it was a dream, and for me it wasn’t panicked, it was just helplessly frustrating.

Because it was so recurring (at one point I was having this dream weekly) I told every therapist I ever had and they’ll all suggested it was about performance anxiety, since many of the toilets were missing doors, or contamination anxiety, or even just having a full bladder before bed. None of that really resonated.

It was in my 20s, having lunch with and old friend, they’d brought their new partner and we got talking about recurring dreams somehow. We covered the usual, the teeth falling out dream, the highschool exam you never studied for that you’re also naked for, etc. I start describing the toilet labyrinth, specifically mentioning that I’m not panicked in the dream, in just confused and frustrated, and this new guy excitedly exclaims “you’ve got an undiagnosed disability, I guarantee it”. He was half right, I was diagnosed, but I didn’t have any support systems because I’m broke.

The toilet labyrinth is a very common stress dream, but everyone has a slightly different response to it, and it’s motivated by different factors. For some people it’s performance anxiety, for some people it’s health anxiety. Sometimes it’s a fear that your private secrets will cause public shame if they got out. In my case it was my subconscious asking the question “how is everyone else making this look easy? how is everyone else able to do this? The tools I’ve been given fundamentally don’t work! why do people keep staring at me like I’m the idiot for not being able to use a broken toilet? why is no one else talking about how to broken and unusable these toilets are? How is it everyone else managing to do this!?” because I in my real life I was trying to keep up with the able bodied peers while disabled with no support, and I wasn’t eligible for support so it was very much “but how do I do anything when I don’t have the tools? Stop asking me to jump, and punishing me for not jumping when I have no legs to jump with”

(I have legs, that’s just a metaphor)

Jesus, now that its terrifying!

What would even be the point of a link that allows you that? Like, why was it designed to do that!?

Props to that person who PM’d you the warning.

I’ve been out as queer since I was 14. I’m in my 30, he still hasn’t come around.

Given his age and health, if he’s planning too come around he’d better get on it quick, at this rate he’s dying a bigot.

I’m not waiting any more, I put my whole life on hold waiting for him to come around so I could live my life safely. If I need to cut him out of my life I will.

I appreciate they kind words, but please keep in mind mind that it’s not always smart or safe to tell a trans person to be patient. The individual will know their level of safety, and advice to be patient and understanding can in some cases case be very, very harmful.

Yeah it’s pretty regulated here, you present your evidence for being a medical cannabis candidate to your GP/PCP (or they tell you they think you’re a candidate) who refers to you to a clinic that specialises in cannabis, the intake appointment was 2 hours long, they prescribe specific products based on your symptoms and needs, then script gets sent to a compounding chemist and you go and pick up the medication from the chemist, the same chemist that you’d go to for advil and beta blockers.

As if there wouldn’t be a black market for menthols if they were the only product to be banned.

And if my yeasty poison goes bad, I’ll just pour it over some poisonous leaves, I love salad.

Don’t forget to season it with minerals you chipped off a rock in a dried out lake bed.