Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9hr ago
I mean, there's a museum in Dublin whose entire marketing schtick is based on the idea that there's more to Irish people than whiskey and spuds, and they're so aggressive about it that it goes full circle and becomes full-blown oikophobic – and yet, listening to these bands sort of makes me feel how black Americans supposedly felt about Louis Armstrong appealing to white audiences by puttin' on and deliberately playing up negative black stereotypes.
Well, the Irish are the blacks of Europe, and Dubliners are the blacks of Ireland, and the Northside Dubliners are the blacks of Dublin, soooo... say it once, say it loud?
Completely agree about the Guinness, btw, it's just not the same.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
19hr ago
Something that has always stuck with my about Scott is that he had a rough time in High School, especially with bullying, and, from time to time, this bursts forth in his posts. He's open about his bad experiences back then.
I think it's odd that any person over 35 would still have that much emotional resonance with anything short of real-deal physical / sexual abuse from childhood and adolescence. To my knowledge, Scott doesn't claim anything to that level.
While my thirty-odd to forty-odd year-old self would have readily agreed with you, a funny thing happened to me as my mid-life deepened, and in the past year and change, I've been spending a lot of time and paying a lot of attention to some of the specific attitudes and behaviors I ended up adopting in Junior High and High School, simply because they still persist and no longer serve their intended purpose. It turns out that in my case, at least, my own rough time in school did still resonate with me, but not consciously, for I had internalized attitudes and behaviors that ultimately helped me to fit in at the time, and it is only in having seen them again and understood them that I can let those things go.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
19hr ago
Por que no los dos? I think that America in general now has more of an interest in spicier peppers, giving some truth to 1, but also that 2 has generally been true for my entire life, hence the warning that your waitress gives you. More generally, back when I could reliably tolerate genuinely spicy food, I would frequently receive warnings similar to the one you received in the Chinese restaurant yourself. One of the Indian places that I liked to frequent had both a hot and an, "Indian hot," level of spice, and another did a sliding scale of 1-10 on every dish. I can remember the chef coming to speak to us, impressed that we could actually tolerate food at the level of a 10.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
4d ago
I want to preface this comment by restating that I am also judging primarily by my own experience here, so this is definitely a YMMV situation. Additionally, I would agree that normies aren't particularly well equipped to deal with sociopaths either, but I would nevertheless liken their comparative advantages to having bronze age tools and weapons as opposed to stone age ones, by virtue of their natural ability for nonverbal communication. If, on top of that, the autistic individual in question was raised in the classic autistic father/borderline mother pairing, then there is likely, at the least, an additional layer of cognitive distortion hampered by mother's chronic gaslighting that must be overcome, and likely a host of maladaptive coping mechanisms as well, and here I am thinking of things like Scott being totally cool with polyamory and yet tweeting about his intense jealousy in the moment, because I personally identify with that exact sort of hacking around actual feelings via thoughts and habits. I did far too much of that, to my cost, as said ability was something that steadily degraded until it broke down completely in middle age.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
Right off the top of my head, literally certainly qualifies. Rewind about a century or so, and it was much more common to see the word literally used as a more emphatic version of the word figuratively, which actually makes a sort of sense, given that a common use of the word literature is to refer to creative writing, be it fiction, poetry, or whatever. Example: by voting for x, we are literally eating our own seed corn.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
5d ago
Being more realistic, autistic sex-positive dorks are going to attract sociopaths like flies to shit.
I cannot help but wonder at the prevalence of a cluster B parent in the lives of the autistic sex-positive dorks in question. I know this is my own experience talking here, but I strongly believe that having been conditioned to accept a sociopath's behavior as "normal", those dorks would naturally be more vulnerable to manipulation, hence spawning perpetual Drama.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9d ago
I swear to Odin I posted my thanks for your report of your experiences in here earlier, but it seems that it was eaten by a glitch in the matrix. Anyway, appreciate the report, Omarchy was my alternate distro choice to try out Real Soon Now and I may replace my aging Pop! install with it because Cosmic desktop is teh suXX0rz and I'm tired of dealing with its dumpster fires.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
13d ago
Heh, glad you were picking up what I was putting down! That one's still ironic usage for me, but others, like conversate, have been instant classics that I've gleefully adopted.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
13d ago
I know exactly what you mean. Irregardless, some sorts of bad languagisms still grate on my nerves when I read them in the wild, but usually I start using them ironically, and then at some point I realize I'm just using them.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
26d ago
Edit: Breaking fall by landing on bended knees and transitioning into a roll.
This is The Way. Once upon a time a young teen-aged me climbed up the side of a stack of drying lumber on a dare, probably about twenty feet high, perhaps higher. It was an easy climb, with plenty of room for my feet between the layers of lumber, and I quickly ascended almost to the top. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't thinking at all about the properties of the pile that I was climbing, and so when the shim that my right hand had grabbed onto came right out of the side of the pile thanks to all of the force I had just exerted on it, I had nowhere to go but down. I had exactly enough time on the way down to think to myself, "oh, shit," and that I should break my fall in exactly this way before I hit, and I did so in an instant. I didn't do it perfectly, because my back hurt like Hell for the next couple of days, but I was otherwise unharmed.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
28d ago
I mean, there's a reason that divorce is like #2 on the list of major life stressors or whatever. It's a lot for someone to deal with, come to terms with, find peace with, etc., and IMAO the vast majority of the time, both parties had some level of their own issues coming out to play. Ideally, each party would be honest enough and introspective enough to reflect on their own part in the failure of the marriage, and even if they believed said failure was an eventuality, they'd find at least some of their own issues and start working on them, and those sorts of changes take their time. And in the meantime, sex and relationships can be just as stimulating, captivating, and enslaving as any good drug.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
OTOH, that could lead to a Gosling-based Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent-style movie. So we'd have that going for us. Heck, I think I'd have to go see it just to see what they did with it!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Your description of "depressive debt is compelling enough that now I'm wondering if my self-image as something of a clutterbug is actually a cover! I'd like to think not, but depression has historically been a pervasive emotion for me ever since I was a teenager, and despite a major perspective shift that started in mid-life, it's only been the last year or so in which I can definitively say that my day-to-day mood has generally improved. Stupid alexithymia!
And wouldn't you know it, my mouse pad is in fact currently encroached upon by several pieces of mail that really just need to be filed/thrown away. And I just cleaned my new apartment up a bit because the landlord came by this morning to fix something, which is to say you've definitely given me a lot of food for thought. Thanks for this!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Sorry to hear it, sir. Though my situation isn't that different from yours, I'm grateful that living alone, in and of itself, hasn't been too rough on me this time around. That said, I remember what our last separation felt like, and I can easily sympathize. Like /u/FttG/, you can feel free to DM me as well if you want to talk about break-ups sucking and all that.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
Thank you, that's high praise coming from a writer such as yourself, and I appreciate it, and the well wishes!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
1mo ago
It's a subdued, cloudy morning here in my little corner of the world. The Kenyan coffee that I'm sipping, a roast that I've been highly pleased with, tastes just a touch odd compared to the bright, sour cherry note that has been characteristic of this particular batch, and I can't help but wonder if perhaps I didn't rinse my coffee mug well enough, as the odd flavor is close to the scent in my dish soap. Then again, perhaps the issue is an issue with the brewing--when I poured the initial 50 ml of hot water on the grounds for the bloom, it funneled straight through them and down into the cup, and I had to compensate by pouring water around the edges to bring all of the grounds into play before they behaved themselves. First time that's ever happened to me, and I know I gave them their proper shake to let them settle before pouring, but perhaps I didn't do it well enough. Regardless, it's still really good coffee.
Above me, a mourning dove coos, and one across the street gives its own answering call. I am sitting on the generously sized deck of my new apartment, a third floor walk-up, and directly in front of me is a mature maple tree that makes me feel like I'm in a tree house, my very own Raven's Nest. The dove's call tugs at my heart strings a little, and I pay attention to them, finding the familiar feelings of obligation and guilt at the other end of the strings. I like my new apartment, I'm having fun outfitting it and fitting my essential things into it, a new puzzle for me to complete with many possible correct solutions. Deeper still, I've found that my intensely painful feelings of failure, grief, sorrow, and identity loss were all acknowledged and dealt with the last time my wife precipitously separated from me, and the work I did then, when I didn't even have an answer for who I would be if I wasn't trying to be a good, supportive husband, is still here with me. Moreover, I've actually found a fair bit of excitement in the prospect of building a new life for myself and discovering who I want to be now that I've finally let go of my rigid adherence to the vows I took almost two decades ago.
Grey divorce is a Hell of a drug.
In sharp contrast to my own attitude, my wife regularly texts me with her own emotional struggles, crying herself to sleep, feeling like life isn't worth living, etc. etc., and I feel badly for her, even as I recognize that she has consistently chosen for herself the prison in which she currently abides. Still, here is the source of guilt and obligation, my old role as emotional caretaker that still wants to help and be supportive, even as the wiser parts of my brain intercede with the knowledge that the best thing I can do is maintain enough distance to let her work her feelings out for herself. I know these things to be true, and yet I can't help but feel guilty for growing enough to have accepted that my marriage was dead, to have grown enough to learn to be comfortable in my own skin.
I'm not the one that said I wanted a divorce in the first place. I'm not the one that said of my vows, "I meant them when I said them." I'm too damned stubborn autistic for that.
The particulars of our divorce have been finalized and notarized, we've agreed to the division of assets, and we are both reasonably content with our choices. All that's left for us to do is wait for our court date, when a judge will make everything official. Then, we'll be legally free to go our separate ways and live our own lives. What once seemed like an insurmountable obstacle now just seems like a good, challenging hike, even though I have not one, but several different elephants to eat one bite at a time, the largest current one the almost two decades worth of cruft that I've accumulated in our home and need to clear out. My most prized possessions that won't fit into my new lifestyle, like my home theater system, will probably go into storage, but I'm going to try my best to practice Swedish Death Cleaning and let go of anything and everything that isn't essential to me or prized enough that my younger siblings would like them, and I know that's going to be a slog.
At this stage of the game, it seems my life is being most enriched not by what it contains, but by what I can remove from it.
Despite my age, this is the first time in my adult life that I've lived on my own and truly enjoyed it for its own sake. The other two times I was following the motto of, "fake it until you make it," and while I did my best, my emotional make-up was still far too close to the dynamics I learned in childhood, namely that I needed to be a part-time caretaker for my mother's sometimes-volatile emotions. That dynamic was so ingrained in my own emotional make-up that I didn't feel complete without having a partner in my life to nurture and care for, and the lesson life has consistently been teaching me as a result is that there is a boundary at which nurturing becomes caretaking, and another boundary that separates caretaking from enabling another's bad behavior, and that my idea of nurturing is far into the enabling spectrum by default.
The question that I try to stop and ask myself when it comes to helping others now is, "am I setting myself on fire to keep this person warm?"
And the beauty of that powerful question is that it helps me to stay the worst of my behaviors, the ones that are popularly called codependent. It helps me find better choices, and as a result I'm better positioned than ever before to take care of myself first, to meet my own needs, and to live a life I want to live for myself without feeling a deep, aching need for another to live that life by my side. I still love and cherish my romantic streak, but freed from the bonds of the expectations of a relationship, I can and do find romance in many of life's small, simple pleasures, like the food I eat, the apartment that I'm renting, this beautiful treetop deck that I like to enjoy, and the unique flavor of my current batch of coffee. My next batch is an Ethiopian bean, and one that looks promising, though an oversight in my roasting process meant that the roaster glitched out several times due to overheating, leading to a significantly longer than usual roast time as the temperature dipped with each glitch. I'm interested to see how it turns out, wondering if it won't be up to par, as my general rule of thumb with my roaster is that it does best with hot, speedy roasts, or if perhaps those glitches will lead to a happy little accident of flavor that I might not otherwise have had from my coffee. Time will tell, and I expect to be tasting my first cup this Sunday.
As strange as an earlier version of me would have found this, despite the challenges and the inevitable problems and complications, for the first time since childhood, I find that all is well in my life and that I am generally pleased and often happy.
Oh, I completely agree, and this is what makes the moment so poignant for me: Harry knew exactly what we was doing when he asked, knew that what he needed, what he was asking for was completely unfair
I don't think we're in fundamental disagreement here. It sounds like you've developed some antibodies for folks using therapeutic speak to justify their own bad behavior, and I'm going to encourage you to hang onto those antibodies. If that means the word internalized makes you suspicious, no worries, you're aware of the reason why it makes you skeptical and that's the important part. The narcissists can and will weaponize anything and everything convenient to them to cast themselves in only sympathetic roles while demonizing anyone and everyone else necessary to do so. I totally killed that dragon and everyone was super stoked on me before I came here and gave you that joke, Jimmy, but I'm going to be the better person and stop making it an issue! We see this all the time not just with words like internalized, but also trauma, abuse, entitlement, etc. etc. etc.
I'm of the personal opinion that our culture has adopted therapy language in incredibly destructive ways, and that the whole field of psychology hasn't covered itself in glory, either, but that doesn't mean that the concepts are all invalid and that they're selling snake oil. I'm IT, but I actually work in the mental health field, so that means I talk therapeutic speak all the time, and all 'internalized' really parses out to is a strong, often ingrained habit. I don't think it's a coincidence that the Buddhists are big on mindfulness and warn about the danger of habits. How much conscious attention do you pay to the myriad daily habits that are necessary for life and hygiene such as the brushing of the teeth, bathing, eating, etc.? And neuroplasticity is the explanation for how, over time, repeated activity forms and strengthens a neural pathway in the brain, and a habit is simply a neural pathway that becomes so strong that it takes barely any effort to achieve the desired result, in the same way that someone experienced with a manual transmission will have no problem starting on a hill, while someone just learning the clutch would struggle. Neuroplasticity explains the other side of the coin, too. Just like I've forgotten how to play many of the songs that I used to play on guitar because I stopped playing a decade ago, so too can habits be neglected for long enough that their associated neural pathways atrophy to the point where they are no longer functional, and another good example in this case is that my brother reminded me of a particular chord in a song that I couldn't remember, but that I had taught him decades ago, and that he still remembered because he got way better than I ever did and never got as far away from it as I did, either.
I was actually making my comment in the vein of that whole maybe the purpose of my life is solely to serve as a warning to others, and I have made a
badhabit of talking about how the stereotypical midlife crisis can be intensely real and heartbreakingly spectacular. One of the overwhelmingly common themes is, strategies that people use to try and deal with their shit that don't really work in the long run and actually break completely over time, and that started for me in earnest in my early forties and picked up speed until I hit the wall in my late forties. I've spent just about five years now trying to dig out and get my shit together in earnest. That, in turn, brings me to the answer to how one becomes aware of habitual/internalized attitudes and behaviors which is technically surprisal, but for the purposes of this discussion, pain. Lots and lots of pain. I love quoting Feynman when it comes to this shit, specifically that the first principle of science is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. I thought I had dealt with my feelings, but I was fooling myself, and it took my marriage unraveling and having to put my dad into a home in the same time frame to overwhelm me enough to break me of that belief.Your final paragraph shows that you know the answer to your question of how that assertion that someone has changed their ways can be taken seriously: the person in question doesn't simply takes responsibility for their behavior with word, they back up that ownership by acting with obvious openness and integrity. That's simple to say, much harder to live by, but I'm tryin', Ringo.
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