Autism

One time as a sort of party game my friends took the RAADS-R (Ritvo Autism and Asperger Diagnostic Scale, Revised). I didn’t think it was that funny of a bit. I got the highest score at 155. This self-assessment of course is not a diagnosis, but a score this high leaves little doubt that something is going on. Supposedly in research no neurotypical scored more than 64. There is also the caveat that the test should be administered with a professional, but I don’t think that would change much here.

I asked a couple of people who are familiar with autism and they told me, Duh, of course I’m autistic. I’m already feeling shame even talking about it, that my deficiencies are so obvious to tell me so confidently. At this point I’m thinking shame and, not quite relief, but how it would make too much sense. It does make too much sense.

The stereotypes seem to hold. I’m too reserved as a defense mechanism. My batting average for interviews and dates is abysmal. My girlfriend would elbow me in the ribs when she felt I wasn’t speaking enough at gatherings. I can hold a dead-end job just fine for about six months until the routine becomes exhausting. The jobs I can keep are solitary. Forklifts, driving, and laboratory work. Mathematics major. Flight simulator setup with all the controls. The only video games I play are the “spreadsheet simulators.” Weird hobbies. I know more about the Beach Boys than almost anybody. Burning out many times in my life. Absolutely clueless at the stranger-acquaintance small talk stage with people. I don’t have the sensory issues, but I do need silence. Planning and rehearsing before I talk to someone I’m not close with. Generally being seen as a little “off” while managing to be normal enough with great effort. To top it all off, I’m on Neocities.

My last therapist said I most certainly am NOT autistic. His reasoning is that I would be arguing with him constantly. He was an excellent Jungian analyst but I don’t trust his judgment here.

I’m not sure what to make of this. It would finally give me an answer to all the times in my anger and grief I’d lash out and ask “what the hell is wrong with me?” Maybe I’m not. The autism cases have skyrocketed, maybe all these cases are fake. There’s no way I really am, right? Yeah, right. Maybe I’m just tremendously stupid and a fuck-up and that’s all. Well, there’s a pattern that’s hard to ignore. All I ever wanted was to be normal, successful, powerful and in some position of responsibility. Why haven’t I figured that out yet? This could be an answer.

There is zero reason to pursue a diagnosis. I’m getting into jobs that require constant medical certification. I want to get a pilot license one day. It’s extremely expensive and difficult to get diagnosed as an adult. The time for interventions was in childhood and I think for the most part I’m stuck as the person I am. I’m not going to claim it of course and I’m not going to see a professional about it. All I can do is be a little more forgiving to myself for once.

Resolutions

January 1, 2026

Not so much resolutions but more like two perpetual projects.

My friend gave me my first ever professional massage. Part therapeutic, part relaxation. I had my body worked over, but particularly on my vagus nerve, lymphatic stuff, and my slightly out of place shoulder. I felt perfect! There’s so much work to be done on this neglected body. I’d be a much happier and kinder person if I was always that nimble, loose, and not in pain. I’ll be making an effort for general mobility and some physical therapy.

The second is a little trippier and airy. I have a dysfunctional relationship with sleep and dreams. If I’m living as a productive human being I have to get little sleep. If I plan to get 8-9 hours it paradoxically becomes impossible to wake up on time and I start being tortured by dreams. Not nightmares, but absurdly pleasant dreams where I experience this feeling of completeness. Completeness and perfection and when I wake I’m just heartbroken at reality. It’s the feeling I want to bring into my waking life. I’m not sure how. It must be the goal of almost every mystic and spiritual tradition out there.

Life would be so wonderful if my body was in the shape it’s meant to be and I was walking around with this, I don’t know, enlightenment or nirvana or bliss. Nothing else would matter.

Christmas, New Year's

December 28, 2025

What a year. From neck-deep in academia and basically being married, to doing kind of a hobo thing in five states, then back home again. Out of here again in just a few weeks. Weird stuff.

It was all kind of a disaster. There’s no way to get out of a five year relationship without acting insane. Nothing really worked out the way I wanted, but a lot of good happened too. I’m about to mail off a (surprise!) to a Neocities friend. My Neocities friends are great.

It’s going to be a good year. I’ll pay off all my debts with this job coming up. Zero expenses living. Some people when I got back home assumed this was an idealistic escapist fantasy but it was primarily for financial reasons. Early retirement. There was a little bit of idealism I suppose since the other options were oil rigs (quite similar), resorts, or trucking. Nothing as romantic as a boat.

Christmas was different. It’s the first one in years without my ex-girlfriend’s normal, Mormon-ish, functional white family. The kind of white people that go to the movies on Christmas Day. Damn it, I could have seen Avatar 3 if we were still together. I’m letting the bad parts of this Christmas give me more drive and focus for the next year. Cutting off people I never would have imagined I would cut off. Again, isolation and abandonment was never the point of this line of work. It’s awfully convenient now that I want to, though. It's the chosen family thing. There's people new to my life and also people returned in my life that are far more worthy of my love. I feel a lot less lonely now, funny enough.

I didn’t intend for the blog to have such a negative tone. It got pretty bleak for a second and it didn’t seem like much of a downer in the moment. I thought I’d be up to something more interesting. I’m still wrestling with what exactly to put here. I guess anything.

If the world doesn’t end in 2026 I think it will be an improvement over the last few years. Sail, upgrade as soon as possible, get on a better boat. Bounce around and find out where in the world I might want to settle down. And RELAX!

Motown Junkies

December 16, 2025

I love Motown so so so much. It's as significant to the nation's soul as Ford or Coca-Cola is.

One of my favorite things on the internet, https://motownjunkies.co.uk, has returned after a 5 year hiatus. An ambitious project by a Brit to review every Motown single. I am so, so, so happy it's returned. Check it out if you really want to get in deep with Motown history and trivia.

Qi Gong, Relationships, Butterflies

December 12, 2025

Hired on a boat. Wanted a better one, but I must take what I can get. Starts eventually.

I think I’m beginning to recover from burnout. I haven’t felt mentally 100% for at least a year, maybe longer. From reading other’s accounts, the healing process is similar to recovering from a brain injury. Brain injury sounds right. The quality of my writing has certainly plummeted from what it used to be.

There’s the grogginess, the gunk, the ever present tension held over from being attacked and yelled at in my last relationship. I still can’t wake up in the morning without feeling like I want to vomit or have a heart attack. I still can’t read. Still a mess, but getting better.

I started practicing Qi Gong. Almost certainly improperly since I am only following from a crummy book and not a teacher. I am not a stranger to meditative practices but Qi Gong has been a little different. Mental clutter is just one of my problems right now. My body is constantly tight and now weak and I feel just so lethargic. Practicing Zhan Zhuang and letting just my skeleton and the Earth hold me upright while supposedly “cultivating qi” is solving the other issues. And the qi, whatever it is, is absolutely real. My hands are aching from it gathering.

My dicking around with the I Ching is to be sorted with my interest in Jungian psychology. I am not in my “Chinese era.”

As much as I would prefer not to, I have been thinking a lot about relationships. Relationships I’ve been in and relationships in theory. I’m not satisfied with my conclusions about both.

I don’t think anyone has ever been interested in me on my merits alone. It was always exceedingly rare for someone to show interest, that’s the first hint. The quality of the people is the second hint. I think broken people see my plain and polite appearance and believe I’m some redeeming path to normalcy. Eventually you find out I’m just as broken as you are, actually, and bad things happen at that point.

Then I start thinking about what I do want next. Besides me listing my type (For women: short hair is a plus, introspective, smart, has taste but not too much, must like seafood, HUGE eyebrows.), I’m not sure what that is. Something permanent. One more heartbreak is going to kill me. I suppose the biggest thing on my wishlist is someone who has gone through the excruciating and alchemical process of resolving traumas. Someone who creates their life, not suffers it. Someone who sees me, just me, and not themselves reflected back with their wounds filled in.

Un?fortunately the next thing is years away. Too many things to get sorted, too much money to save up. This boat I got on is a seven month contract. The next one will probably be longer. It’ll be lonely.

To my surprise I felt some simple joy and butterflies intermittently. I believed certain sensations just die off with youth and I thought that was a little sad. It’s been many, many years since I felt butterflies and even then it wasn’t even close to the electric intensity as a child or a young teenager. Besides being generally healthy I wonder how I can make it come back.

I Ching

November 28, 2025

I asked if I’ll be suffering the rest of my life.

Hexagram 54, the Marrying Maiden. Supposedly this is the present.

The Thunderstorm inseminates the swelling Lake, then moves on where the Lake cannot follow:
The Superior Person views passing trials in the light of Eternal Truths.
Any action will prove unfortunate.
Nothing furthers.

Doesn’t sound good. The commentary of this one seems to be about being in a bad spot and having to subordinate the will. The imagery is a young concubine newly arrived to a house that doesn’t accept her. She has to accept her lot and conform.

The second line is changing. Apparently the changing line is what action I should take.

Nine in the second place means:
A one-eyed man who is able to see.
The perseverance of a solitary man furthers.

My transformed hex is 51, Shock. Supposedly this is my future if I heed the changing line.

Thunder echoes upon Thunder, commanding reverence for its father Heaven:
In awe of Heaven's majestic power, the Superior Person looks within and sets his life in order.
Thunder mingles with startled screams of terror for a hundred miles around.
As the people nervously laugh at their own fright, the devout presents the sacrificial chalice with nary a drop of wine spilt.
Deliverance

A religious experience. Something will rock my entire world and shake me to the core. The unprepared will be ruined but the “”Superior Man”” will come out ahead.

This was a long-winded way to be told I need to keep my head down and persevere.

Home

November 15, 2025

I’ve been alright. Just all the goddamn waiting. Trying not to beat myself up too much because it’s genuinely not my fault the country collapsed the minute I left home. I got an interview for a boat! However, the rental car company called me the day I was meant to leave to let me know they’re sold out, no doubt because of all the stranded people at the airport deciding to just drive to their destination instead. Clearly the nation is too dysfunctional at the moment. Picking up an assembly line job in the meantime. It kinda sucks but I got a couple of reasons to smile this week. You don’t get to hear about those.

The one thing that has kept me going the last few years is the idea that I’m going to build my own house. People look at me funny when I say this but I am dead serious. It really isn’t rocket science. In America we build stick frame structures. That was a postwar innovation to mass produce housing using unskilled labor. There is nothing intellectually difficult about framing a structure. Any able-bodied person can build their own home.

This was the expectation for men just three generations ago. It’s what men did. I don’t see the sense of working so hard to pay for a $500,000 piece of shit “”home”” when I can get some piece of quiet land for $20,000 and put up my own humble, tasteful house for just $70,000 in materials and build it the way I like.

There’s a few other factors besides money, although money is the primary one for sure. I am not built for this world. I have not had success and I cannot find comfort in the usual way of doing things. The little brain and muscle I possess has not yielded any results, but I chalk most of it up to bad luck. I hate driving every day. I hate most people. I’m not old but I already cannot recognize the world I live in anymore. Our government and the industry has colluded to shut us natural born citizens out of my old line of work. These freaks are about to carpet bomb, maybe even invade Venezuela. AI content is just going to turn us all into stupid scared serfs. Love, family, work, education, friends, sex, everything that is meant to make life worth it just has not been right. It’s all wrong. I want out!

I want out the same way Ted Kaczynski got out. I want out the way Dick Proenneke got out. I want out the way Seraphim Rose got out. I want out the way countless men said FUCK YOU to the world and let the sea or the forest consume them. I’m not going to be a hermit, I’ll have internet and a mailing address and I won’t be more than an hour or two from civilization. But I’m not wage slaving another 40 years. My brain isn’t that special but it still has better things to offer. I want independence and I want peace in my mind and the only lesson I got from life is I won’t find it in this society.

It is possible to live a life where money is largely optional once your shelter is secured. I have enough hick family to have witnessed it. Following the 5% withdrawal rule, if you spend $10,000 a year (and this is quite a lot for the life I plan), you need just $200,000 invested. A deer can feed you for months. Personally I’d skip the trouble of processing an animal myself and just go to Costco, but there really is probably a million people in America who don’t spend one cent. Firewood is a very efficient form of heating. Solar power requires some money but it more than pays for the ability to live on even cheaper land. You still get electricity, heating, running water and a toilet. Why aren’t more people doing this?

I have a library of home building books mostly regarding unconventional techniques and materials. To my dismay a stick-frame is the most economical option, but maybe I’ll try out one of these techniques after my first house. Earthships, rammed earth homes, semi-underground structures are some of my favorites.

I realize this is a fantasy everybody has. It’s not a fantasy to me. It’s been in my mind for years and it’s the reason I’ve put up with all the bullshit I have. It’s what every cent I'm going to make will go towards. It’s going to happen very soon. I don’t have to be a slave the rest of my life and neither do you. You don’t even have to go this far.

I want to b*** TikTok (In Minecraft)

November 5, 2025

It used to be in a thing in the news that you read about someone losing their mind aided by TikTok. Religious psychosis, incel ideology, gangstalking, body dysmorphia, various business scams. There’s a lot of disastrous feeds you can fall into. This has been written about to death already, now the current thing is LLMs doing the same thing to people.

I am one of those TikTok victims. I never used it, but my girlfriend did. If you caught my embarrassing drunken vent, you know my current situation. Four months ago everything was great. We shared an entire house out in the suburbs and my only two complaints were the long commute to school and mourning the wild 20s I never got to experience. Very minor problems. I was working far too hard and I was miserable, but I was going somewhere and I almost had the reward.

Things got bad between us. I couldn’t figure out why. I was busy a lot, sure, but I always made sure to pull my weight and be a decent partner. A better partner than most of the losers women are dating, anyway. I came home and she was sobbing. Tell me. No, you don’t want to hear it. Tell me.

It’s a TikTok skit with the premise of “that friend that’s been a girlfriend for four years”. Her entire feed is filled with stories of women being suddenly abandoned by their men. Everything makes sense now. TikTok said I’m on my way out and now she’s testing me with every single interaction. If she looks at my Resting Bitch Face while I’m struggling with work it’s not because I’m thinking about mathematics, it’s because I’m pissed off at her. If I’m tired after work, it’s because I’m tired of her. That’s all she could see.

She eventually gave me an ultimatum. She wants a ring, even an Amazon ring. We can Zoom the courthouse. As if a sub-$100 ring and a paper marriage means more than my word and how entangled our lives already were. I certainly didn’t have any assets for her to secure. “If he wanted to, he would” is a popular comment on that side of TikTok. Something she told me probably a dozen times. I told her years ago there was zero doubt we were getting married. I just have to graduate.

I couldn’t convince her in the end. Her tests and tantrums sabotaged my classes and work. TikTok told her I’m going to leave and eventually I did.

STCW

October 21, 2025

In a bid to make myself more employable I got my STCW (Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers) Basic training. It’s a quick course in CPR, first aid, survival at sea, some rules, and basic firefighting. It’s required by treaty for ALL sailors worldwide aboard ships of a certain size in international waters.

But that’s not what’s interesting. I was in Orlando, and being in Orlando without a car is alienating and isolating. Or so I thought. After everyone graduated, being sailors, we all found the nearest bar and tore that place up. We owned the karaoke from opening to closing and crashed a Scottish couple’s honeymoon. Good fun. Days later my throat is still sore from scream-singing I Want It That Way,

The Last Place on Earth

October 20, 2025

I spent 10 days in New Orleans. I stayed at a very cheap hostel. It was great fun, except it was a bit like the horror movies where they stay in a wonderful mansion or something and it gets revealed that some fucked up shit is happening beneath the surface. I really do not want to get into the fucked up shit. I went mostly to kill time and also doorknock some boat companies. No luck with the boats.

Here’s some shit that happened:

Fell MADLY in love with a woman 10 years older than me.
Got a last-minute invite to a transgender rave held in a communist venue.
Somehow ended up in a Mercury Sable with 5 trans people outside the rave, a car with 4+1 seats. I was just a dude in khakis and a polo.
Got into multiple comedy shows for free as the comedian’s plus one.
Got into passionate discussions about mathematics (my major).
Went down the wrong street and got followed and accosted, but I kept my wallet!
Got brutally and cruelly roasted by the comedians. I suppose that’s the price for getting in free.
Drank too much.
Regained my confidence about my ability to just be normal and accepted among people.
Made friends I think I’ll keep for life, all over the world.
Debated a woke Aussie on the usage of the term “cunty”, in the girlboss/queer sense.
Met two French people I didn’t absolutely hate.
Found the only decent Étouffée in the Quarter.
AC went out while my dorm of 16 men was fully occupied. Absolutely disgusting.

I met some interesting people. I didn’t relate to people back home at all, but I met a few that were in similar situations as me.

The Staff

Indian guy who just recently got his PhD in Mathematics. Sort of disillusioned with the field and stuck in a weird limbo period. Can’t work because of his visa, but hasn’t landed an academic job. Stuck. Stuck like me.

Utah

Kid who decided to just take the interstate one day and didn’t stop. From my state. He befriended an old woman, she died, and her family let him stay in her old house. He felt like life was too easy that way and decided to see the country. Last I heard from him, he’s living in the forest in Mississippi.

The Comedian

Her material covers killing your landlord, gender, Luigi Mangione, The System, and being broke. From San Francisco. Also makes fun of the techie freaks. We both happened to have Jungian therapists and we had wonderful conversations about that. Kinda loopy person.

I did manage to spend some time with locals, since the excursions with the comedian and others brought me out of the tourist traps. You also get into conversations just walking to the corner store. There really is something unique here, even still. There’s this social order that’s constantly being maintained by everybody and it’s not just the Southern hospitality thing. It’s deeper. I wish I spent more time around it to be able to articulate it better, but as someone who is very reserved and closed off I found myself getting into wonderful conversations with complete strangers without even necessarily wanting it. A transplant from decades ago told me this was “The last place on Earth.” I thought that was an interesting way to say it.

I feel like I got over some hang-ups here. I joked with my adopted family (the comedian dubbed us the Manson Family) that doctors should prescribe a trip to New Orleans for depression instead of pills. Spending a week or more with women, who I am not chasing, also lead to some revelations. I always felt like I carried around a big neon sign or some dark aura that signaled to the people around me “This dude isn’t normal, he’s a freak, he’s a weirdo, what the hell is he doing here?” No. To my surprise, everyone said that they thought I was just a normal dudebro. That I am not.

It was a huge relief. It’s something I’ve been carrying my whole life since my early teens, that I had a “smell” on me. That I had something on me that just let people know to steer clear. No, I’m just a man. I am what I am, as Popeye says. The worst feedback I got from the women is that I had a little Resting Bitch Face, which I already knew. I guess my hometown is weird, not me.

Arias I'm Stuck On

September 18, 2025

None of these are particularly deep cuts, and the ones I would like to write about aren’t particularly great pieces of music. And for an audience that doesn’t know opera, the “dying cat” singing would be a turnoff. So, here’s some I think I could show off that wouldn’t be offensive to someone without an opera palate.

La Bohème: "Che gelida manina"

Moods: Love at first sight, desperate curiosity of the other

Mimi’s candle has gone out and she’s out of matches. She asks her neighbor, Rodolfo, to light it. She loses her key and they both search for it on the floor. They live in a very poor building and a draft blows both their candles out.

A man like Rodolfo needs to use some slight dishonesty and gamesmanship to win a woman like Mimi. He finds the key and slips it in his pocket, then declares there’s no use searching in the dark. He uses the opportunity to introduce himself to her. The aria begins.

He introduces himself. A lot of words here to say he’s a broke writer. The shocking confession begins at 2:35 and climaxes perfectly at 3:45:

l'anima ho milionaria.
Talor dal mio forziere
ruban tutti i gioielli
due ladri: gli occhi belli.
V'entrar con voi pur ora
ed i miei sogni usati
e i bei sogni miei
tosto son dileguati.
Ma il furto non m'accora,
poiché vi ha preso stanza
la dolce speranza!

I’m a millionaire in spirit.
But sometimes my strong?box
is robbed of all its jewels
by two thieves: a pair of pretty eyes.
They came in now with you
and all my lovely dreams,
my dreams of the past,
were soon stolen away.
But the theft doesn't upset me,
since the empty place was filled
with hope.

Now the supplicant Rodolfo is on his knees, literally begging Mimi to find out who she is. Ramón Vargas delivers this role better than any other filmed performance I’m aware of. His vulnerable pleading is what does it for me. Who hasn’t been enamored by a stranger, just wishing you could just get on your knees and ask “Who are you?” Rodolfo gets to.

L’Elisir d’Amore: “Una furtiva lagrima”

Libretto

Moods: Triumph, requited love

Nemorino is a peasant and a fool hopelessly in love with Adina, a landowner. He gets swindled by a traveling “doctor” into buying a love potion which is actually wine. It doesn’t work. He enlists in the army and uses the bonus to purchase even more.

There’s a party and the women are all over him, as the entire village found out before our couple that Nemorino’s uncle has died and he just inherited a fortune. Now, he’s drunk and is convinced the potion has worked. He notices a tear on Adina’s cheek and takes this as evidence of her jealousy. Actually, she found out the poor idiot spent his entire recruitment bonus on her. The aria begins.

Le Nozze di Figaro: “Porgi, Amor”

Moods: please God bring him or her back

Mozart. Not much to say here. Just sad and whiny. Stream the full thing wherever you’d like, the linked video isn’t complete but I think you must see what’s happening on the stage.

Serse: “Ombra mai fu”

Moods: Security in another

Baroque, Handel. He’s singing to a shade tree. Written for castrato, nowadays commonly sung by mezzo-soprano. Really nice with a body high.

Remedia Amoris

September 1, 2025

I have been stir-crazy, and combined with travel stress I haven’t been completely stable. Lovesickness and mild erotomania have possessed me.

I went looking for a cure. I found Remedia Amoris, a didactic poem by Ovid written circa 2 AD. Ovid presents himself as a physician curing you of the disease known as love. It is the follow-up to the Ars Amatoria, which is about how to find and keep love. Both works are for men and women.

Here's his advice:

• Get busy. Work for the courts, join the army, or take up farming.
• Do not use sorcery.
• Tally up the betrayals and grievances. Ovid tells us his lover had ugly arms.
• Exaggerate or twist benign (or even good) qualities into bad ones. Ovid’s example: if she’s a little heavy, now you must believe she’s fat.
• Get her into situations where her bad qualities show. Examples: If she has bad teeth, make her smile. If she has a bad voice, make her sing.
• Catch her in the morning before she has the chance to do her makeup. Ovid: catch her “disarmed”.
• Get a second lover. Your energies will be split between the two.
• Don’t be alone.
• Don’t meet her. Don’t meet her family nor her servants. Move if you must.
• Don’t hate her. It enrages Heaven and the man that hates, loves.
• Burn your letters.
• Throw out her portrait.
• Move out of the place that you shared.
• Avoid romantic poetry.
• Don’t drink. Wine inspires lust. If you must drink, drink so much that you can’t think.