Not a typical post today, which may not be a bad thing since my typical posts feature screenshots of electrical outlets and the back sides of random computers in whichever Call of Duty or Resident Evil or whatever I’ve just played.

If that’s more your thing, come back later and there will be another one of those.  Though I think I may start the Remastered Halo next and I’m pretty sure there won’t be any electrical outlets to make fun of in that one.

Rest assured that I will look for them.

Rather I wanted to take a minute to ramble about the fun time I’m having navigating the “behavioral health” system which is a lovely name for it.  Kudos to whoever came up with that one.

Several months back, my wife noticed that I was not dealing with the challenges of a new job very well.  Which is, really, putting it mildly.  I was basically signing off every day in a state of stress that bordered on panic because I had so many things to do and at the end of the day I didn’t feel like I’d finished any of them.

So, because I’m a modern guy I decided I would talk to a professional and see if they had any advice.  That’s what you’re supposed to do these days.

And that professional was like, “uh, I’m not qualified to diagnose this but gosh you are checking all the boxes for ADHD.  Let me send you to someone who is.”

And the second professional confirmed her suspicions and we have been talking about coping strategies for it and trying a bunch of meds that are supposed to help me focus.  None of them have been great.  Some of them make me throw up more than others.  I don’t like those ones.  I’m not sure if the one I’m on now is helping or not but I feel awful when it wears off so it’s probably good while it’s working.  I’m scheduled to try a higher dose next and maybe that will be even better.

I’m not actually sure I remember what I was like before I started trying all the meds.

At one point he casually commented “hey, have you ever been evaluated for autism?” and I was like, “no, I haven’t but I’m pretty sure that’s not me” and he sort of let it slide and told me that regardless of what the answer was it probably didn’t matter because I was a dude in his 50s and this is the sort of thing that they really want to figure out early in life so they can put you in the right schools or whatever.

But in addition to the meds, which I’m not sure are great, he sent me to a counselor who was actually great.  We did 8 sessions where he just let me complain about things and gave me some gentle suggestions.  It is seriously amazing to have someone to talk to who will just let you talk and not interrupt.  I try to remember not to feel guilty about this because it costs a couple hundred bucks a session and I had better get to talk without getting interrupted.

After about six of those sessions, he casually drops a “hey, do you have any reactions to textures that other people don’t seem to have?” and after like a half hour of me telling him about how paper feels he ALSO asks if I’ve ever been evaluated for autism.

So that has been interesting because suddenly I am looking at weird stuff I have done all my life and it has explanations.

Some of it has cutesy Gen Z names, which I hate.

I am not “stimming”.

I am pointing at the things you can’t see so they know I know they’re there and won’t come closer.

There is a difference.

But it turns out that things like my reaction to paper textures, or the way I can’t remember / can’t picture faces, or my tendency to pick up random objects and spin them are all common autism things.  And this has been really kind of a bombshell.  Like, it doesn’t make me any less of a spaz but after over fifty years I know the source of my spaz nature.

I think it also explains a lot of why I fell so in love with Japan.  It’s a culture with a lot of rules, and those rules are written down for tourists so you know which side of the escalator to stand on, and how to use chopsticks and how to do things so you don’t cause too much meiwaku* for everyone around you.

* Translator’s note: meiwaku means “hassle”

Or in other words, having grown up being very oblivious to societal norms and needing to understand them by trial and error and making a lot of mistakes along the way, it’s really nice to experience a culture that comes with an instruction book.

Anyway.  That may have gotten a bit serious. Let me lighten things up by explaining the single most annoying thing about this, which is that whenever I have spoken to a real life friend and explained, “hey I have mental behavioral health professionals who are telling me these things about me, isn’t that just so weird and random…?”

NOT A SINGLE ONE HAS EXPRESSED ANY SURPRISE.