Underneath my yellow skin

How my brain works (and doesn’t), part seven

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Sometimes, I just want to give up. Well, lots of times. It’s much less of an impulse now and not nearly as strong, but it’s still there. My brain is tired. I am tired of always trying to be “normal” or anyithing remotely close to it.  Here is my post from yesterday in which I talked about struggling to differentiate between my brain being broken and it working as intended (but just differently than other people’s).

I could just say fuck it and go to bed at six or seven. There’s no real reason I can’t do that–it’s not like I usually have to get up at a specific time. Well, one day a week and two other days every other week I have a set time to get up, but that’s not a big problem. Only one is in the morning and would be a real problem.

I want to be…not normal, per se, but not such a weirdo. I’ve written about this before. I’m not one of those who is slightly odd or just one deviation from normal. I’m a freak. However, not in the way that, say, artists are freaks. I don’t drink or do drugs, so that makes me an outlier for that group of people as well.

In fact, I don’t do groups in general because I will never fit in. That part doesn’t bother me because I’m used to it and I’ve given up the hope that I will find a group that is my people. Not because I don’t think there aren’t people who are my people out there–it’s because groups tend to fall to the lowest common denomination.

Hm. That’s not quite what I wanted to say, either. It’s really hard to explain without making it sound like sour grapes. I’ll try my best. When a group of over, say, ten people (actually, maybe even over five) gather, there has to be a code of conduct, whether it’s verbalized or not. Maybe not so much a code of conduct, but any group needs norms.

The problem is the more people a group has, the less the ability and/or desire to monitor behaviors. And, because groups are microcasms of the world around them, that means that all the things that are wrong in the world at large will always be present in a group.

This is why there needs to be explicit rules and miscreants need to be dealt with swiftly. Conventions learned this the very hard way. Many of the comic/gaming ones are, well, were filled with misogynist bullisht. And racist bullshit. The groups who put on the cons tried to ignore the problem for a long time, but it reached a tipping point, and it exploded messily all over everything.

I don’t know how the tipping point happened, but afterwards, many cons started having posted code of conducts and got more serious about making their minority con attenders feel safer. It’s become a standard, and now it’s weirder not to have a code of conduct than it is to have one.


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Why my brain doesn’t brain, part six

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I want to talk more about how my brain works–or doesn’t. In the last post, I went way off the tracks as is my wont, and I never really made my way back to the main road. Who knows if I’ll do the same thing today? (I will. I always do.)

I was talking to my mother tonight, and she was lamenting that she hadn’t been shopping in a real store in such a long time. Nor does she really feel comfortable shopping online. She was castigating herself for not doing the former, putting it in very negative terms. I was saddened for her because of the huge amount of shame she was carrying because of it. And I understood because I did the same thing to myself more often than not.

She was shaming herself and saying she was getting agoraphobia as a reason for not going shopping. I stopped her and said that she had a lot to deal with, so it made sense that it would be harder for her to go shopping. In other words, it didn’t always have to do with mental health. This was something I had a hard time deciphering. Sometimes, it was my mental health issues acting up. Sometimes it’s something that anyone in the situation would do. And sometimes, it’s just the way my brain works.

In other words, it’s not always a mental health issue–though sometimes it can be, of course. Anwdn it’s not always my particular way of thinking. Sometimes, anyone would react in the same way in the same situation. It’s just hard to tell when I’m used to defaulting to there’s something wrong with me.

One thing I talk about with A is how to decide which flaws I want to actually change and which I’ve accepted. This is getting past the point of shaming myself for everything I think of is wrong with me. For example. I work to the back of a deadline. My mother and I used to have friction over this when I did editing for her. She would give me a date, and I would assume that was the date she wanted it by. It was usually a date far in the future, so I would file it in the back of my brain and move on.

A week or two later, my mother would ask how it was going, and then  be not happy when I said I hadn’t even started. We did this song and dance for far too long (Midwestern and Taiwanese cultures at work here) until I finally brought it up to her. She said that the date she gave me was the ‘last resort’ date. Secretly, she wanted me to get it to her about a week or two after she sent me the piece to edit.

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More about my weirdo brain, part five

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I want to talk more about my brain and how for the longest time I thought it was broken. And why it’s important to talk about mental health issues.

Side note: (And, yes, this soon into the post). There is a toxic positivity that pervades American thought that says if you work hard enough, you can overcome anything. Any time there’s a success story, it’s trotted out as proof that hard work and a positive attitude are all that’s needed to succeed. Which is not true at all. Yes, both of those things are needed, but so are luck, synchonicity, and did I mention luck? Luck plays a huge part in success, no matter how much Americans want to deny it, ignore it, or are oblivious to it.

Take my medical crisis. A few months before it happened, my brother had a friend who got pneumonia and went to the doctor. The doctor said because he could breathe, he should just take the meds the doctor prescribed. Then, the doctor sent him home. This was during the pandemic so hospitals were struggling with the overload of patients. My brother’s friend woke up in the middle of the night, unable to breathe. His wife called 911, and an ambulance was sent. During the ambulance ride, Regions Hospital called the ambulance to tell the EMTs that they, the hospital, had no rooms. The ambulance had to go to a different hospital, and my rbother’s friend had a heart attack and died.

A few months later, I woke up and could not breathe (Or I was still awake. It was three in the morning, so the latter is more likely than the former). I managed to call 911, and the police managed to get to my house in less than four minutes. How do I know? I’ll get to that in a second.

I managed to follow the instructions form the 911 operator. I kept talking to them while I stumbled to the front door. I unlocked it and then promptly passed out. I do not remember any of this, by the way. I had to be told about it later.

The cops knew to bag me when  they came because I wasn’t breathing. When the EMTs came, I had a cardiac arrest. I had another on the way to the hospital. Oh, and the thing I always forget or just tack it on as an after thought–the ischemic stroke.

I was unconscious by the time we got to the hospital. I stayed that way for a week. I eventually found out that it all started wiht me having walking (non-Covid-related) pneumonia. So my story was very much like my brother’s friend, except I got all the lucky breaks. This was ALL luck. Or as I like to say, I got through with the help of love, Taiji, and luck.

You could argue that Taiji was on me–meaning that I actually have worked on it. It’s something  I have done and continue to do. But the other two? I had no control over that. Oh, sure. You could say that my friends and brother love me for me, which is about me. However, it’s still not something I actively did, if that makes sense. And luck? Well the word itself is self-explanatory.


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My brain and me, part four

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Let’s talk more about how my brain is weird. I’ll give a very recent example. Tonight (last night? About five hours ago), my carbon monoxide detector/smoke alarm went off. I thought it was four quick, sharp (and loud) beeps in rapid succession while the lights flashed green. I looked it up, and four beeps meant CO. Before I go any further, here’s my post from yesterday.

I’ve had one go off before, and it was because it had reached the end of its life. I read a lot of conflicting information about the beeps, but I finally decided that calling 911 and just explaining the situation as I did the last time was probabl yfor the best. Three policemen came, and I explained what happened. We tested the detector/alarm (I had put the two batteries in wrong, so we put them in the riht way and tested it.) It was actually beeping five times. We counted several times. That meant it was at the end of its life, but why is it so close to the actual alert for CO, I don’t know.

They checked the gas levels all over my house, and there was nothing. The lead cop told me to buy a new one (I only had one) and to monitor how I was feeling. I knew the basics–flu-like symptoms, dizziness, etc. The lead cop told me that I really don’t want to turn chherry red.

I’m not overly concerned, but there is a nagging thought in the back of my mind that maybe there is gas somewhere. And I should have tried harder to get the detectors (I’m getting them tomorrow morning). I don’t think that’s so unusual, but I don’t know.

That’s the worst part of having a weirdo brain. Not knowing what is normal and what isn’t. I don’t think this is that unusual (to be worried even though there’s no real reason to). The higher the stakes, the more the worry explodes. And even though the chance of dying from CO poisoning is minimal, it’s impossible to detect except for with a detector.

I don’t know if I’m overreacting or underreacting. Or maybe just reacting? It’s so hard for me to gauge. Also, I’m tired AF because I only got three-ish hours of sleep last night. So knowing whether I’m fatigued or not is not that possible. I was joking with the lead cop that who wasn’t fatigued these days? He had a girlfriend and a child, so he knew all about tired.

He sent his cohorts back to the cop shop to get the CO monitor, and we chatted while they were gone. I learned about his prior jobs and how he ended up in New Brighton on the night shift. It was a nice little chat, and I proved I can be normal when I need to be. Granted, I had a vested interest in keeping the cops on my good side, but still. I was able to talk like a normal person, and that felt good.


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Me and my brain, part three

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Let’s talk more about me and my broken brain. I say that with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but I still half-believe it. Or rather, I know that I think very differently than most other people. I have accepted that, and I’m mostly ok with it. The hardest part is when I say something that I think it totally vanilla and get an outsized reaction to it. That’s when I completely retreat into myself and shut down. I hate when I’m trying my very best, and it’s still not good enough.

Which, honestly, is how I feel most of the time when I interact with the normies. I’m always calibrating what I should say and what I shouldn’t. And usually erring on the side of not saying something if it’s even close to questionable. That’s why I’m miffed when I say something that I consider safe and then I get shit for it, anyway. Oh, and here is my post from yesterday before I go any further with this post.

You know what’s also frustrating? Neurotypical people saying that everyone has to mask or hide parts of their true selves at work (or other times). While it’s true that everyone has to mask to o certain extent, it’s the extent and amount of effort that matters. And it’s discounting how much more neurodivergent people have to mask than normies.

Side note: I could say that about any minority, by the way. It’s a point I wish normies would truly internalize. Minorities have to go the extra mile-and-a-half past where they (the normies are) just to be considered equal. Plus, we always have to make the calculation of how much of ourselves we can show. In some ways it’s better now than it was when I was in my twenties, but in many ways, it’s much worse.

One of the big ones is queer issues, especially trans issues, obviously. It’s horrifying how quickly and viciously the current administration is attacking civil rights for queer people. Every time I check the news, they are trying something or the other to do harm to me and my kin. It’s reached the point where I don’t want to hear anything on the news because it’s just going to make me angrier.

I was talking in the Discord I’m in about dating. I mentioned that I haven’t dated in quite some time in part because the last two times I thought about dating, rather big events interrupted that train of thought (the pandemic and me dying (twice!), respectively). I know it’s superstition, but I’m worried about trying for a third time.

Also, I’m overwhelmed every time I go on the apps. There is just so much there, I don’t really know what to do. One person in the Discord suggested doing backstage steps first. Such as writing out what I was looking for to make it clearer in my mind. I told her that was what actually worked for me, anyway. Breaking things into micro-steps, I mean.


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How my brain works (or not), part two

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For the first forty years of my life, I thought my brain was broken. I didn’t think like other people, and for the first few decades of my life, I thought that meant there was something wrong with me. It didn’t help that I had very old-fashioned Taiwanese parents who were more than willing to criticize every aspect of me. I was too loud, not feminine enough, too fat, just too much in general. Here is the post I wrote yesterday in which I wrote a lot about politics. Which is a side tangent, but also not a side tangent. Which I also said in the post.

I thought I was worthless and broken when I was a kid until I was in my twenties. Hm, scratch that. It was until my mid-thirties. Then, I started taking Taiji, and that helped me feel better about myself in agonizingly tiny incremental steps. It wasn’t until about five years ago after my medical crisis that I realized I was probably autistic (with the help of a friend who was also autistic).

I thought I couldn’t be because of how strong the stereotypical depiction of an autistic person as a young, hapless, white man who stims, can’t look people in the eyes, and makes clueless comments all the time is so pervasive. Oh, and that he has little to no empathy. It’s the last one that made me think I had no chance at being autistic. For several years, I thought that I might have ADHD because that fit better. The lack of focus until I hyperfocus. The scattered attention. Those were the main ones.

I knew there was something wrong with my brain–I just wanted to figure out what it was. This is one of the arguments I’ve had with K. She thinks that there is too much emphasis on…how do I phrase this correctly? We are both proponents of mental health awareness. She’s just less enthused about how much it’s emphasized now. She said we dealt with it as kids and figured things out. I pointed out in a snappish tone that some didn’t figure it out. Like me.

I spent so many years thinking it was me when it mostly wasn’t. I mean, it’s always partly one’s one fault because no one is perfect. However, the way I thought was not my fault–or rather, it wasn’t because my brain was broken or wrong–it was just different. And had I been told this when I was a kid, I would have had a much easier time in life.

You would think that having a psychologist as a mother would have made these things much better for me, but that would only be true if she was a good psychologist. Which, sadly, was not true. Her flaws as a human being interfered with her ability to be an effective psychologist. In fact, she went back to Taiwan so she could escape some of the constraints she faced here in America. Like mentioning religion in a session.

Honestly, the vast majority of my self-esteem issues stem from her constant and persistent criticism of every part of my being. I cannot name a single thing she liked about me when I was a child. I was never enough, and she pushed me to do a wide variety of things I didn’t want to do. Like a typical Asian mom, my brother and I had to take music lessons. I did piano for a few years and then cello for eight or nine years. dance lessons for twelve, and I played ping-pong, volleyball, and softball. Not on a league, but just played them. Oh, and tennis.


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Overthinking it v. thinking it through

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I tend to overthink things. By a lot. I’m not talking about spending five more minutes on something than I should, but obsessing over something that I should just let go.

For example, gender. I have talked about it ad nauseam, and I know that it’s not good for my mental health to do so. I also know that for whatever reason, I can’t ever come close to understanding gender. Sometimes, I feel like I’m about to grasp it, but then it slithers out of my hand.

Then, I say to myself, “I’ve made my peace with it.” I may even believe it for a minute or two. However, the dissatisfaction slithers in, and I’m in despair once agian. What is gender? Why can’t I feel it or understand it? Why am I such a freak–yet again? Just once, can’t I be normal?

The answer to that is a most emphatic no. There is nothing about me that is normal. Not my hobbies to my lifestyle to my pop culture tastes to everything else. I have mostly gotten used to it, but it niggles at the back of my mind now and again.

Especially in a time when my federal government is actively hurting me and mine. I have said that I’m relieved at the last time I had to declare my gender on my driver’s license that I chose F. Even though it’s the first time they included NB, and I would have chosen that if I was thirty years younger. This time, though, it was right before the elections. There was much muttering from certain people* about the queers something or the other blah blah blah I always close my ears at this point.

I will say it’s always amazed me that people can get so wound up at a tiny minority of people who have no impact on them at all. Not directly. And, no, “they’re ruining women’s sports” or “they’re a menance in the women’s bathroom” are such bullshit.

By the way. Those arguments are never made in good faith. Do you know how I know this? Because the same people are not concerned about domestic violence abuse victims, the vast number of sexual assualts in America, or any other array of issues that face women, nonbinary people, genderqueer people, agender people, and, yes, indeed, even men in this country. The only time the conservatives roll out ‘but the wimminz’ bullshit is when it comes to their transphobic bullshit.

Pardon me if I don’t believe them when they bleat about caring for women when the do everything they can to make life harder for women in so many ways*. Pardon me again for giving such heavy side-eye at the faux concern.

Here’s the thing. There always has to be a bogeywoman the pols can point at so the slavering masses. For me, it started wiht  Reagan and the ‘welfare queen’. Thus began the stereotype of the black woman trying to game the welfare system while driving a Cadillac to said welfare appointments. Reagan also systematically further disenfranchised gay men during the first AIDs crisis, but I’m not going to talk about that, either.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Look, part three

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(And other indies). That’s the subtitle, but I didn’t want to make the actual title too long.

I have one thing I need to say right away. Get rid of limited inventories. Completely. In the year of our largess, 2026, there is no reason for a limited inventory. When I played Skyrim (Bethesda), I only installed one mod. Well, two. One was to add snow because I love snow. But the other more important one was the infinite inventory for the horse. You can bet I downloaded that mod tout de suite.

If I remember, that game was especially egregious. It’s a vast open world game, and you could only dump your stuff at one of your houses? I think? And the fast travel was limited. I felt like I could only go two steps before filling up my inventory. Oh, and you could loot everything in every house.

Once I installed the endless inventory horse mod (you just dumped everything into your horse), it made the game 100% more enjoyable. I didn’t have to worry about picknig things up and where I was going to put them.

In Coze Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), the inventory is so limited when you start out. So is the storagce in your tent/the fire. This is the same as the first game, and it was just as annoying then. There is no reason for it. I mean, I get that there’s an emotional reason for it, but all it does in make me irritated/mad/upset. Oh, and here’s the post from yesterday in which I explored my mixed feelings about the game.

I do wonder if it’s just that it’s easier to code that way than to make it endless? I don’t know why that would be, but jI know roughly nothing about coding. I will say that in this game, my motivation dwindles and dives when it seems like every three seconds I have to  stop and move things into my storage or sell a bunch of stuff.

In the first game, at some point when I was rolling in money, I could max out my storage and buy chests to plac e them around the island. That was a stop-gap solution that I didn’t like because I never knew what was in which chest. I think you could access items from the main chest from any of the chests if you already had them in the main chest (the storage at the fire).

It was a mess, though. I really was hoping it would be one of the things that would be improved for this game. Alas, it was not. As far as i can tell, it’s exactly the same. A frustratingly small inventory that fills up in about five minutes. At least you can stack the same items, but only up to a certain amount of them.

It really disturbs the flow when I have to stop every five minutes or so to sell off a bunch of stuff or stash a bunch of items. Another small gripe is that when you run out of space, you simply cannot pick up the new item–so it lays on the ground where it is. And there is no marker to let me know where that is. I have in the past not been able to find something that I could not put in my inventory. It’s not a big deal when it’s a common resource, but if it’s one of the spirit logs (the reward a bear gives to you when you finish a quest for them. You give it to Flamey to make him stronger), then, of course, I want to find it again.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Look, part two

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I’m back to talk more about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). In my post from yesterday, I was reluctantly admitting that I wanted something more from the game that I wasn’t getting. I compared the game to a favorite hoodie in that it fit well and was comfy to be in as you lounged around the house, but it wasn’t a looker nor was it something you’d go to, say, work in. It’s the same hoodie you’ve worn for the past ten years, and it’s just something you hold onto no matter what.

And yet, you know you should throw it away at some point soon, but your heart screams at you not to do so. So you ignore that voice and keep on wearing it–taking care to wash it gently to slow down the wear and tear.

I think I’ve pushed that metaphor about as far as I can without breaking it. My point is that I have been playing with a lingering sesse of, “Is this it?” Everything that was in the last game was in this one as well. The bears you have to help. The resources you have to forage. Mr. Kit’s store and its ever-expanding inventory. There were a few differences, but I wasn’t that happy about it, one in particular.

It’s the one where when you do the repeated chores like mining ore, you see the corporeal forms of your fellow  Spirit Scouts as they help you do the chore. I hope there’s a reason for it that will be uncovered later because right now, I find it quite pointless. Doing those chores don’t take much time individually–it’s more the sum of doing them all. And having a helper on one of, say, six chores doesn’t really help. If it were every time, maybe? But doing it this way just irritates me.

One thing from the last game that is in this game as well that I really like is Mr. Kit’s daily array of clothing and hairstyles. They change on the daily, and I try to buy…well, in the last game, I just bought them all. In this game, though, I’m buying the ones I like–and all the special ones whether I like them or not.

As I was playing today, I still had that small feeling of, “Is this all there is?” It’s weird because I was enjoying my time (comfort food), but at the same time, I wanted something new. Oh! One more QOL change that I really appreciated is how they deal with the food. In the first game, there was a baker bear (who I really liked, by the way) who was actually really terrible at cooking/baking. I found that highly amusing, and I liked talking to her. I will admit, though, at a certain point, I just wanted to get on with my cooking and baking.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit–A Quick Look

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I’ve finished the next day in Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), and I want to talk about it, and here is my post from yesterday that talks about it somewhat, but also about series in general. More specifically, how I think series go on for too long.

I want to talk about how sequels are in a no-win situation. I’ll start with Dark Souls II. It was destined to fail, really, because–hey, wait. I just did a quick Google, and while I can’t get an exact number for how many copies of Dark Souls II were sold, it’s at least several million (inclidng Scholar of the First Sin).

But, for many hardcore FromSoft fans, it’s the game not to be named. I, myself, enjoyed it a great deal as long as I didn’t think of it as a Dark Souls game, really, and I’ve certainly played it many more times than I’ve played the first game. It hasn’t aged the best, but I still go back to play it every now and again.

My point is that it’s really hard to make a sequel that pleases the people who love the first game. Why? Because it’s a no-win situation. If you stick too closely to the first game, then people are dissatisfied beacuse you’re not innovating (especially since the first game* was so different that the other games of that time), but if you change it too much, then people don’t like that it’s not like the first game.

This game is like my favorite hoodie that I wear constantly around the house. It’s worn in to fit my body, and it’s super comfortable. There are holes, yes, but I pay them no mind because they’re not showing anything inappropriate.

I really like wandering around and picking up resources all over the place. I can get lost in the little things, which is the joy of this game. I have to be careful, though, because it can become a burden if I allow myself to be dragged down by every little thing.

I think the point of giving the player so many things to do is to let the player pick and choose what they want to do. You’re not meant to do everything all at once, but that’s how my brain works. I want to do it all, and I want to do it all now. I am not good at delayed gratification, and I never have been. I mean, I can do it if I have rewards and such, but just for the sake of it? No.

I like the characters I’ve met so far–even the snooty one who speaks very formally. However, I don’t feel the pull towards any of them that I did in the first game. It’s early days, though, so I’m comfortable with waiting.


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