Roch

So I can often temporarily change my energy, mood and personality. Unfortunately when I’m around parents that tends to make me bounce back. I just feel like they’re holding me back from ever changing and improving myself. I feel like I’m in a catch 22. I can’t change unless I leave my parents, but I can’t leave my parents unless I change. I have similar issues with making friends.

So I was labeled as autistic in the past out of convenience, but I was never actually diagnosed. So there’s no proof I’m autistic. Feeling autistic has ruined my life and stopped me from doing so many things in life. How do I stop this shit and stop feeling autistic or believing I am? I’m thinking of keeping a journal where I write about what makes me feel autistic in a practical way. Like I notice that visting certain websites, talking to certain people or acting specific ways make me feel autistic. So I’ll just write what makes me feel autistic and eliminate those things from my life as much as possible. So no more visiting websites about being autistic as they wouldn’t be helpful for a non-autistic like me, keep my living space clean as having a messy living space makes me feel autistic and many more things. I’ve read a bit of the book called ten pillars to self-esteem, but I’ll get back to it and do the exercises more.

I think I’ve been feeling extra autistic because I haven’t been meditating lately. I just can’t get into a good routine for it. I feel the autisticness as a tightness in my stomach, a block in my throat and difficulty with breathing. I just blocked and trapped inside like there’s a glass between me and the world.

I was babied a lot due to my supposed autism. I was constantly corrected, especially when it came to social behavior. So if I told a joke people didn’t like they would tell me I’m being “socially inappropriate”. It would often be in front of a lot of people. My so called peers did that shit to me as well since people loved to blab about my label. So I constantly feel like I’ll make a wrong move any second. Even in non-social situations.

What made you feel autistic in the first place? Unfortunately I associate authenticity with autism.

So awkward silences are annoying enough. I try to relax during silence, but one common problem I encounter is that people always ask me questions about stuff I don’t want to talk about. That includes questions like what what high school did you go to (I didn’t graduate and I don’t think that’s most people’s business), what year are you in (I’m auditing university courses and I’d rather not talk about that, how many hours do you work, where are you from(I’m always suspicious of people who ask this, are they trying to ask my ethnicity or do they think I talk/act foreign). I guess I can learn a lot from politicians. I like to have anonymous interactions and people always like to talk down to me. My best real life interactions are when I’m engaged in an interesting conversation that flows well and people don’t even know my name. I don’t know why I don’t like people knowing my name and I know it just makes me look weird. So I tell people my name even though it makes me very uncomfortable. So I often mumble and cringe when I introduce myself to people and I avoid it as long as possible.

So everyone talks about how bad it is to stifle creativity. No one ever talks about how bad it is to stifle perfectionism. Perfectionism might not be the right word, but I definitely notice it’s been an issue. I think it’s one of the main reasons I’m not succeeding in life. I remember an inceident from when I was about five or six years old. I was doing some kind of art project with paper. I had to stick one piece of paper to another. Everyone else was happy using one little roll of tape to roughly tack it on. I wasn’t. So I used way too much tape and they punished me for it. Yes I was being wasteful, but they probably could have offered me a glue stick. If I wanted to draw a straight line, perfect circle or stuff like that they could have introduced me to a rulers and compasses. But no. They want me to be satisfied with being mediocre. I think it’s partially Canadian culture. I also have a mom who is not Canadian, but she also stifles my perfectionism. I think I have an innate sense of how to organize things, but she likes to stifle it since she thinks I’m too rigid when I make a firm decision. This has lead to me being very indecisive in life. She’s the stereotypical messy artist type. It really drives me crazy. Because of her influence I kind of look like that to people as well. I’m into art and due to a bunch of bullshit I’m disorganized as well. I think people feel more comfortable seeing me that way. They pretty much see me as a dreamer rather than an achiever. Like when I was playing the accordion people focused on how quirky it was rather than the achievement aspect of it. Ugh. This might be why I get so embarrassed about my unusual interests. People are so fucking patronizing about them. I’m learning Hebrew at the moment and I avoid telling people. It’s a quirky language to learn, so I don’t feel like telling people. I might tell people once I want to start chatting with people and I can understand TV shows without subtitles. That won’t be for a while and I’m fine with that. I’m also studying Turkish for a trip to Turkey. I’ll probably tell people when I’m getting closer to a trip. Learning some basic phrases for a vacation isn’t so quirky. Even when it’s an “obscure” language like Turkish. So if I act casual enough about it no one will act weird about me learning basic Turkish. This post has mostly been a rant. I guess I want practical ways to deal with a culture that promotes mediocrity.

I guess I want a healthier alternative to perfectionism. But I find what other people think are good ways to get rid of perfectionism just make it worse. As an example I’d want people to give me a ruler if I want to draw a straight line rather than mocking or punishing me for wanting to draw a straight line. Even saying that you don’t *need* to draw a straight line or that no one can draw a straight line would piss me off. To me those behaviors are disrespectful and I think it’s people who want to drag me down to their level. I already have a lot of weaknesses, I’m sick of other people saying things are impossible just because they struggle with it. So now I don’t tell anyone about wanting to draw a straight line. I search *everywhere* I can for that ruler. Even when I think I’ve found the ruler I still keep things to myself until the ruler has demonstrated to me it can make me draw straight lines. I find that finding a ruler kind of tones down my perfectionism. Like I might notice I’m not drawing a perfectly straight line, but I’ll notice how much straighter it is compared to the wobbly and clumsy line I tried to draw freehand. And once I have the ruler I can research ways to make the line even straighter or even appreciate situations where freehand in fine.

I don’t really want to be authentic. I associate that concept with lack of success in life. I don’t think I’ve been successful in life, so to me being myself means continuing to have no success in life.

So I’d like to be more extroverted, spontaneous and less obsessive. I don’t really have friends at the moment. How do I find friends that have those qualities? Especially when I lack those qualities. Even making friends with people who are average on those qualities would be nice.

I just realized this when I got into spiral dynamics. Like a lot of people I had a moment where I thought I might be stage yellow. When I thought I was stage yellow I though to myself “Hey, you might have no friends or real achievements, but at least you’re stage yellow. Let those stage blues, oranges and greens live their life. You’re not inferior to them, just on a different stage.” I felt the same when I thought I was high IQ. I can only feel good about being different if it means I’m superior in some way. I don’t even think I felt that much more superior to most people when I thought I was high IQ or stage yellow. No amount of people telling me I’m different, but not inferior makes me feel any better unless I have a high IQ. To me being different or low achieving is failure, but being high IQ or stage yellow kind of neutralizes that failure. So to me being socially awkward and low achieving is fine when you have a high IQ, but it makes you a failure if your IQ is average. But if you have a normal social life and average to high achievements with an average IQ you’re just a normal person to me. I know IQ and spiral dynamics aren’t the same, but thinking I’m a stage yellow sure reminded me of thinking I’m high IQ.

I don’t think my introversion is that genuine. I withdraw from people because they don’t respond the way I like them to. So just social awkwardness. On the rare occasion they do I behave and feel like an extrovert.

I did it real life, but I didn’t score well. I wasn’t exactly well rested.

What’s a web of attachments?

So my Hebrew studies have been less exciting in a good way. I’m still studying, but I no longer feel euphoric when I do well or crippling self-doubt when I don’t do as well. Just the way I wanted it to be. To me both feelings are bad. When I first started out my voice couldn’t harmonize with the practice material. When I showed any resemblance of harmonizing with it I got pretty happy. After I bought an app for repeating sections of audio or video the whole approach changed. I discovered it was far more effective to go into even smaller and slower chunks that were often closer to a syllable than a phrase. When I did that I noticed my voice could harmonize with it sometimes. That made me feel euphoric. I still enjoy it when my voice can harmonize, but now I use it more like an indicator of what I need to work on. So if I can’t harmonize with something I’ll break it down more and practice what’s giving me problems. One problem sound is the R sound. I can sort of pronounce it if I concertate and I’m somewhat lucky, but it really messes with things. Like there’s a word with some fairly easy intonation for me. But if I concentrate on getting the R sound right I can no longer harmonize with the sentence. When I do harmonize with it I mess up the R sound. So I’ll practice the syllable with the R sound alone for a while. So far I’ve never been caught practicing pronunciation. Maybe I have and people were just left. I usually practice at around 10 pm. Tonight I had a close call. I was practicing and I decided to take a break to go edit some practice material. As I was doing that my sister ended up being within earshot of my room. So she would have caught me if I didn’t take my break. My mom has also entered my room at around 10 before, but so far not when I’m practicing. I also found this YouTube channel that reads Hebrew kid’s books. It seems pretty promising. It’s pretty cool because I can easily look up words I don’t know and it’s fairly simple. I don’t know enough vocabulary to truly understand them, but I think it should be good introduction to making my own flashcards. So far I’ve been using a pre-made 500 Hebrew word deck. I’ve heard it’s better to use your own deck, but to avoid excuses to not study I’m using that basic deck.

I’ve always disliked how obsessive I am. It causes so much suffering for me and it’s such an unattractive personality trait as well. I do find passion to be an attractive personality trait. I know I’d also be happier if I were more passionate. I think I do lack passion. I just need to figure out how to do this.

I’ve been feeling pretty shitty lately. I found it very hard to get myself to meditate. Today I meditated twice. I also noticed I spent too much time on language learning sites. So many crazy people and toxic mindsets. I also start to doubt my process more. When I doubt the process of stuff I do I just feel more unhappy in general. My mindset is probably pretty toxic as well. Like why am I so terrified of having an accent? I guess it’s drove me to research ways of learning new accents. I actually enjoy practicing accents and new sounds. I just enjoy languages in general as you can see. I discovered part of the problem is that my dad sees language learning as Serious Business TM. It drives him crazy when I joke about learning a language. Since he’s so uptight I get so worried about making mistakes and can’t really have fun. I’m just trying to remember how fun learning languages is. But the outside world makes it hard. I guess I need a thicker skin. I just feel like shit and I know it’s chemical. A week or so ago I would have been over the moon over my progress on the accent and intonation exercises. But now it’s become normal for me. I’m still trying to figure out how to get to my goal. But I guess I have to let the universe do some of the work. I still get signs and synchronicities related to Hebrew, but I still don’t really know why it’s relevant for me to learn it. I just suddenly felt like it four years ago or so. I guess I need some cosmic justification for some of my interests. Mainly because I’m largely embarrassed about them. Still don’t completely understand why. Partially because a lot of these interests just don’t fit with who I want people to think I am. I want to be all outgoing, doing a lot of stuff and not having narrow interests.

So I have OCD tendencies. Which means I have a tendency to overthink things and my thoughts often go in circles. So I often think I’m being truly introspective or developing myself when I’m just having an OCD obsession. How do you balance this?

I kind of want to briefly talk about my eyesight. It’s been an obsession for a long time, but it’s pretty relevant to my life. I’ll try my best to summarize, but if I’m being honest it will probably still be long. I just want to process this obsession without ruminating. I think my vision issues were first noticed when I was a child. I couldn’t catch balls, but I had a bunch of other issues as well. So I got my eyes tested at five years old and I apparently had 20/20 vision. So they just assumed I had perfect vision and life went on. I do remember being interested in vision and eyesight since I was a little kid. But this interest has also caused a lot of pain. It’s pretty much my worst obsession. I have moments where I want to be an optometrist, but I don’t think it’s good for my mental health. The trouble started when my dad tested out my vision. I could not read a distant sign that he could see, so apparently that meant I needed glasses. I was actually pretty excited and happy. I also leaned too close to the computer. I still struggle with this to this day. I just struggle with seeing detail. Don’t know why. I like going on my iPhone because I can hold it close to my face. People are confused why I spend so much time on my phone, but have trouble reading books or seeing computer screens. It’s because I can hold it so close to my face. I love to read, but my vision issues make it hard. I do score pretty well on vision tests and I’m not worried about going blind. But at one point my mom was. So at nine years old I got my eyes tested. Since they called it a test I thought I had to “try my best”. I leaned forward in my seat a lot and squinted and guessed at the letters. So he didn’t find any vision problems. He told me I wouldn’t need to get my eyes checked for several years. Unfortunately after that I started to make fun of kids with glasses. Mainly because I wanted to make myself feel good about my “good vision.” When I was eleven years old I was going with my mom to her eye exam. Me and my sister spontaneously decided to get our eyes checked as well. So I remember him using machines the last eye doctor never used. One machine showed a balloon going in and out of focus. When it was my turn to get my vision checked I started reading the lines in a cocky way. It was easy to see. Until I got to some really tiny and impossible to see letters. I thought it was those letters at the bottom of the chart most people can’t read. The eye doctor went silent and I asked him if I needed glasses. I had some doubts about my distance vision and I thought I might be slightly nearsighted. Instead he told me that my left eye has bad vision and it’s farsighted. I would need to wear glasses to read and watch tv. At the time the glasses were pretty weak. My right eye had no prescription and my left eye still had a weak prescription. I found the glasses awkward and they never quite felt natural. I was also self-conscious about wearing glasses. After that I got a different pair. I regretted getting that pair. The new prescription wasn’t much stronger. I was even more self-conscious about my new glasses and I also felt they were too weak to be helpful. One time I tried wearing both of my glasses on top of each other and I actually kind of liked the vision I got. On my next appointment my prescription got a lot stronger. At least in my left eye. My right eye was pretty much the same. But when I did the math I realized it was pretty similar to what my old glasses were put together. With that new prescription I got a contact lens for my left eye. I enjoyed the improved depth perception and vividness, but I quickly noticed vision problems. That made me go through a crazy ordeal I’ll mention on another post

Studying Hebrew has been going fine. I’ve been having trouble finding the motivation and energy to practice pronunciation, but it didn’t go too badly yesterday besides not spending a whole half an hour. I’ve been dealing with too much health stuff, which is just a topic I’m not all that interested in. Because of my poor sleep I’m not sure how worth it practicing pronunciation would be. It seems like Hebrew and Judaism as an interest itself has involved so many synchronicities. It’s like the universe is telling me to go in that direction, but I don’t know why. At one point they were everywhere and driving me crazy. I’m continuing to have motivation to study, but I’m not as motivated to journal. This is my issue with writing. Sometimes I’ll write a lot and sometimes I’ll barely write anything. I’m just not consistent enough for a regular blog.

I always have an obsession. Right now it’s jews and learning Hebrew. If I’m not careful I’ll end up talking way too much about it or any other thing I’m obsessed with. Why do I feel compelled to talk about it? How do I make it look like a casual and normal interest? At the moment I’m really putting more work into pursuing my interest than I have in the past. I find part of the reason I’m embarrassed about my interests is because I’m incredibly obsessed with them and at the same time not really committed to working at it. So if I’m not careful I’ll end up talking about Hebrew non-stop, but actually be shitty at it. Being shitty at it isn’t so bad if you’re not obsessed and kind of wishy-washy. But sadly I’m obsessed. I don’t actually know too much Hebrew at the moment, so I don’t like telling people I’m learning it. I don’t know how well my “work hard at your secret hobby to avoid talking about it” strategy is working, but I’m sure enjoying my hobby. Even though it involves more work.

I think I’m an example of it. I’ve never been into scientism, but people are often surprised to find out about my spiritual beliefs. Partially because I’ve been mocked for my beliefs. I don’t like looking crazy or irrational to people. I can also be too much into logic and over analyze things despite my beliefs. I’ve also never had any mystical experiences. Maybe I’ve experienced the flow state at best and a few weird thoughts during meditation.

As someone who gets fascinated with foreign cultures I’ve always been terrified of being like a weaboo. Why do people hate them? Why are they weird to people? I know their intense obsession with anime and Japan repulses people. Why? Several years ago my obsession was Iceland. I got really into Bjork and other Icelandic music. Eventually I ended up learning Icelandic. I never got anywhere near fluent. I was so embarrassed about my obsession with Icelandic. Mainly because I knew it wasn’t a practical language to learn and I didn’t want to seem like a weaboo! Right now my obsession is the Jews and I’m embarrassed for the same reason. Borat along with some Jew related synchronicities started that obsession. Right now I’m keeping quiet about it. I’m quietly learning Hebrew and listening to a shit-ton of Israeli music. I also like to watch Sacha Baron Cohen stuff. So scared of being like a weaboo. I probably won’t tell people about the Hebrew until I’m semi-fluent. Which I know will take awhile. I don’t care. I just don’t want to look like those weaboos.

Maybe I’ll learn French for real one day. I actually understand French better than Hebrew at the moment. I grew up speaking Spanish and studied French in school.

Ugh. I’m failing so badly at hiding it. I’m just too obsessed with learning languages! So I joke about learning French and Arabic to hide that I’m learning Hebrew. I’ve been trying to use that energy more for actually studying and less for sharing it with people and torturing them. I don’t want to be like those weaboos who constantly talk about Japan.