OMG you're here! Come come give me hugs. Rest awhile. Tell me about your day. Or... sorry... this is very one way. Listen to me blather!
I've mentioned that I've been feeling lonely recently?
 |
| Yes, I have this exact same shirt in a variety of colors... what? |
Well, over last weekend, I felt a surge of inspiration to do something about it!
I can't quite recall why, but something must have sparked the impulse. Somehow, I ended up downloading Bumble BFF.
Which was... terrifying.
I remember liking dating sites way back in the day.
I even used OkCupid for a while when we first moved to Seattle, since it has a Friends Only option (that was not convincing to anyone who wrote me, even though I spent about ninety percent of my profile talking about how I did not want to date anyone, thanks).
Aaaaaanyways, dating apps have changed!
Back in the OkCupid days of yore, I just wrote about twenty blog entries worth of random thoughts, took some quizzes and wrote whomever I fancied. And, because I was presentable and female, every nerd and their geek friend (this was okcupid and hadn't exactly been infiltrated by normies yet) fawned on me for a while before standing me up on actual dates! It was a blast, and more a mix of social networking and blogging, than anything else.
Now they've brought it down to some kind of malicious sadistic science!!! OMG!!!! It's so stressful!!!
Bumble BFF is based on the swiping model that Tindr popularized. It makes sense, since I think nobody wants to be spammed by horny men en masse: requiring a match seems like at least some kind of dick-pic shield.
I get it. But also, it's so brutal! I'm looking at a person's profile and thinking they seem super cool, but I don't know if I also feel ready to communicate with them, and I'm not totally sure if they'd much like my boring ass and I'm still all tender about rejection...
... and, the options are "YES I LOVE YOU" or "F- OFF LOSER!"
 |
| COMMITT!!! |
I don't want to dismiss somebody permanently because I wasn't feeling it in the moment. Like bruh, you don't know how many meals are missed due to indecision or how many of my good friends were people I warmed up to over time (and vice versa).
Every time I swipe, I whisper a little prayerpology, something along the lines of "I'm so sorry, you seem cool, but I just don't think you'd really want to hang with me and I hope I'm right! I'm sorry!" Because that could have been my bestie I just dismissed forever.
And let's not even start talking about how sometimes I swipe the wrong way!!
I'm nervous! I am not good at initiating friendships.
I am that quirky lil autistic girl who goes places for long enough that a curious ADHDer adopts her. That is my social skill with friends. Being taken under a more excitable ND's wings!
So... that's traumatizing. Also, they are a lot more balanced about answering in succinct little responses to specific prompts. And my brain was just not having any of that.
Say something "punchy and cool about yourself".
Uhhhhh I'm allergic to the world and get overstimulated very quickly, but I send some dope-ass memes from my hypoallergenic bubble?
I think I went with "I'm an AuDHD spoonie" cuz frankly I am looking for people I can infodump on and hyperfocus with. I need people who won't be annoyed that I crash out sometimes and can't go to the hot new bar on Friday nights! Not saying NTs need not apply, but I have lost the ability to mask longer than an IEP conference, so they gotta be willing for random diatribes about pigeon fledglings and the underlying folklore of Kpop Demon Hunters.
 |
| Also, they're getting Derpy pictures at random when I have nothing else to say |
And then... this is the kicker... sometimes you do actually match with somebody. And then what??
Once again, my friend making skills are usually limited to: (1) being in a location, and (2) being fancied and taken in by somebody with a more outgoing neurodivergence.
That said, I have had some cool conversations. The first person I matched with basically got me with her cool glasses and houndstooth hair band. We talked nonstop for about a day. Then began again the next day. My cool new friend kept apologizing for not responding more immediately, so I finally told her that most of my friends are ADHDers and kind of pop in and out of conversations at random, so no sweat. She said that's cool for me too. Which was awesome. And of course since then, neither of us has written the other because well... you know... But based on my adventures in ADHD land (42 years and counting!) we never need to talk again to remain besties!
Besides, we have plans to meet up on her birthday to go the art gallery. At 10 a.m. And, no I have no idea what art gallery we're talking about! I'm sure we'll figure it out!
I kid, I kid, we still chat, just not quite as frequently.
Also - small world - her spouse might know me, but very definitely knows a lot of people I know, because they blues dance!
Another person wrote me a small essay about her life transition and the next phase of middle age, and I wrote something back to her in about that same depth. And that may have been that.. I can't really tell you if I'll ever hear anything else, but it was a fun conversation.
Another person waited 48 hours after my very awkward intro greeting to answer with, "thanks, do you have a dog?" Which, I do not, so I'm pretty sure that's just out. But I want one more and more every day! Partially to spite Froggy, who is getting awfully uppity about her possessiveness of Andrew. Whenever I go towards him to wish him goodnight, she starts flipping out and meowing a ton, then seriously walks me to the stairs like a bouncer ejecting a non-paying club attendee.
Like, girl, you won that battle years ago. Simmer down until wet food time.
So, having a large excitable thing I'm not allergic to terrorize her would be fun. Also, pugs are cute and I want to put one in a tutu. It's just a thing.
That conversation didn't really go anywhere, but it did remind me how cute pugs in tutus are!
In the meantime...
After a swipe related meltdown on Saturday night, Andrew mentioned that he meets people through Meetup. This seemed like a funny suggestion since I do not actually "do activities". But hey why not? They do actually have a lot of online activities. Like ADHD body doubling (basically for whatever reason having another person hovering around can be very motivating... for instance whenever anyone else around me starts cleaning the house, suddenly I'm turbo-maid, while ordinarily I cannot summon the motivation). It's become a pretty big thing to do these sessions online where a bunch of ADHD people just have a zoom call and do their chores together. I'm curious to give it a try anyways.
I've been putting off a ton of homeschool related portfolio building and it's getting a bit on the tardy side, so hopefully I can catch up on Tuesday!
But... even more exciting, there was a Photography Walk in West Seattle scheduled for the coming weekend. I've always been amorphously interested in photography without ever really committing to it. Mostly, what happens is I see a class I want to take, or Andrew suggests I might like "the outdoors" more if I got a nice camera (since I tend to stop and take pictures a lot when we are out, he has reason to hope). And then I go looking for a camera, get totally overwhelmed by all the different specs, price points, and options, and I shut down and instead sit on the couch rocking and watching Netflix!
But I am due some outings.
Andrew and I have this theoretical agreement that each of us gets one night off plus two weekend days off a month. Andrew is very good at using his! Meanwhile, I have basically never used my weekend days since a few times the three years ago that we made this agreement. Used to be that Andrew would take Allan on adventures, and then I would get my downtime, but now Allan refuses to leave the house, so break time is a little less restful.
I have art gallery plans with my new friend on the 22nd. So, I have another slot to fill! And damnit, I'm doing something!
So I was reading about the photo walk, and it says to bring your favorite camera. And I thought about bringing my phone or maybe just like a box camera and pretending I'm retro. But honestly, it felt like a moment to leap.
This evolved into the most neurodivergent couples' synergy ever. Largely because once I had mentioned this interest to Andrew, he got kind of interested and that made me a bit more interested (body doubling!) so I started researching. A lot. Very, very unproductively.
I needed a camera within a couple of days, and this excluded a lot of refurbs that I was looking at.
But I also thought it would be a bad idea to spend a crapton of money on what may turn into a one-month hobby (I know myself here).
And of course some cameras suck even for beginners or are cameras even a beginner outgrows in a few months, so I can't just get one of those because that's just shooting myself in the foot and...
And I spent hours reading about cameras and looking at things, until eventually it was too much information, and the paralysis set in hard. At this point, I shut down in tears and decided to watch Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood with Allan instead.
At which point Andrew - the gearhead of the relationship - dove in and started researching lenses, bodies, and camera parts in the kind of technical detail that gives me vertigo. At first, I found this stressful, because I have this neurotic independent streak that largely feels that I should do everything on my own and if I can't then nobody else should either, but then I was like "you know what, paralysis has set in... go, boy go!" And I watched Eric and Alphonse learn hard lessons/trauma.
An hour or so later, I got links to a fancy used camera and a fancy used lens at a significant savings from what I anticipated. But the flip side is that it's a much more professional camera than the "starter" DSLR/mirrorless cameras I was looking at and it's a bit in pieces to be frankencamerassembled. Which is definitely not my style of neurodivergence. So, it will have to remain a group effort, because all I want to do when I see the camera is hide it in a corner and go out to take pictures with my phone!
I spent about three hours trying to figure out why autofocus didn't actually focus. I'm still not totally sure but I have at least found a way to take a picture. Granted, I don't have a memory card, so it doesn't exactly stick, but I can see what it'll look like for a few minutes anyways. Working on it!
Andrew of course has pretty much become obsessed with it and I'm reasonably sure that a likely outcome will be he eventually inherits the camera and I go back to taking photos with my phone, but we'll see, we'll see. It'll be a good start to have a memory card!
So still unsure if I'll be together enough to go to a camera walk on Sunday. If I'm not, I suppose I can just go out and look for some pigeons on my own (I'm having a pigeon moment - if you wanna hear about them, I'm always here to share!). But at least I have a fancy camera and a camera strap that might or might not be a good place to put some of my favorite lapel pins.
In other news, I'm still gradually raking back range of motion from my broken shoulder.
And even on to some strength training. Those little faces are mostly faces of "omg ouchie! But just a liiiiiiiiitle more" but also some pride! I'm pumped on that.
I'm basically ready to hit the clubs!
As long as the clubs are open at 11:00 a.m. and sell mostly sparkling water and have calm rooms with cool sensory toys.
I'm ready to go sit in a sensory room with water is what I mean.
Maybe with a new friend? Who knows!
But as the saying goes, make new friends and keep the old... My favorite friends are with me for life whether I use my camera or not!
No comments:
Post a Comment