Smoke blogs. Quite a bit.

[Smoke]

Hello,

Recently - as in the last few months - I've shut down a few old blogs and things I never use any more, and have started some new and (hopefully) more useful ones.

Letters from Aspergia is my blog about Aspie stuff.
I Could Make Something Out Of That is a blog alledgedly about craft and cooking, but also contains rants and, in the most recent post, a video of Jeremy Clarkson reporting from a tomato fight.
Tea & Geraniums is my writing and literature blog, which I tend to update in sporadic bursts of activity when I go through a creative patch. Or when I remember.
The Wallpaper Experiment is just somewhere to stick desktop wallpapers I've made, because they're not worth the hassle of Flickr or Deviantart. I'm hoping to make a few bob from the page ads, but don't really mind. It's mostly just a toy.

[Bella]

I loved Busting Through Writer's Block. Really useful too.
The aspie blog is particularly interesting and I plan to read some more. It reminds me a little of the style Evilzakkie used on his Zakkie Rants Blog.

Also, I just figured out that we're exactly the same age. I suppose this disproves Astrology. *smiles*

[Smoke]

I've been tarting up the Letters from Aspergia blog - what do you think?

http://lettersfromaspergia.blogspot.com/

I've tried to keep it quite plain and simple (and sensory friendly!) while making it look a little less like a standard Blogger template.

Only problem is, I'm going to be epically busy at work from now til doomsday, so updates will be few and far between. I'm thinking of digging out some of my old poems and setting a new one to post every week or so, but I think they're all a bit self-piteous and not reflective of where I'm at now. Argh.

[Bella]

Looks good Smoke. I found it interesting how you spoke about your lack of body awareness in the Paddling blog post. I know that being bad at sports and mimicking other people's actions is something that a lot of people on the spectrum have trouble with (including me). I'd never thought of it as being linked to not having as much body awareness though.

[Smoke]

Hi Bella,

I've started a reply about six times over the last few days, and never had my thoughts in order well enough to form a coherent response!

I think body awareness has a lot more to do with the core business of autism than it's given credit for. For instance, if your body or face doesn't recognise what shape it makes when it experiences a certain emotion (or if it doesn't know what shape to make, or it doesn't make any shape) then it stands to reason that you're going to have trouble recognising that same shape in others... hence trouble with body language, reading people, knowing when it's your turn to talk or your listener is getting bored, all the stereotypical Aspie stuff.

In my experience, most autism 'therapies' go straight for ZOMG SOCIAL SKILLS!!!111 without first ensuring that the brain's got the infrastructure in place to actually process the lesson the therapy's trying to impart.

I'm really discouraged with emotional stuff at the moment. From my perspective, I'm a very emotional person and I think I go about emoting all over the place like a drama queen, but I've been told by several reliable sources that I actually come across as quite cold and aloof. Also, I know that when I'm stressed, overstimulated or out of my depth - hello, every attempt at socialising ever! - that apparent unfriendliness gets worse. I've had a few reminders of that lately, and it really, really hurts that I want so badly to make friends, but can't because I'm neurologically incapable of making a good enough first impression that anyone'd want to get to know me.

[Tigger_the_Wing]

Damn, Smoke, I wish you weren't so flippin' far away.



I'd love it if you could stay with us for a while and interact with a large group of fellow Spectrumites. You wouldn't need to over-act facial expressions, etc. around us the way other people expect. You'd find that a lot of us don't have more than the slightest flicker of our internal emotions showing externally.

And it doesn't matter.

We tend to use words by themselves to communicate with one another, more than other layers such as gestures, facial expressions and/or tone. We are more likely to pick up very subtle signals from each other far better than obvious ones from NTs, because our subtle signals are likely to be authentic. Whereas NTs can deliberately portray emotions that they aren't, in fact, feeling; which confuses me no end.

Any chance you will ever find yourself in Canberra?

[hedgehog]

Hi Smoke, I've just been reading your "letters from aspergia" blog, and I was interested about your sensory profile and your visit with the OT. Em also went through the same thing recently, she got a high score in the "Vestibular" category, due to her rocking & flapping. The OT said she thinks this is because "Em does not know her own position in space, and this is why she does these movements" - I must admit I don't understand this comment at all . Did your O.T cover any similar issues, and do you understand what our O.T was saying ?

To me Em always flaps and rocks when she's particularly happy/excited/engaged or interested in an activity etc. I said this to the O.T, and she said "Ah but the movement may be helping her to focus all her attention " .

[Smoke]

Tigs - I hope so! It all depends on 1. time 2. money and 3. organisation, all of which are in short supply in la maison del smoke at the moment. Especially the last two.

Hedgehog - it makes complete sense. I don't generally feel like I'm "in" my body properly. I'm just tenuously attached to it, I'm usually not totally aware of where it ends and what its range is - so I under/over reach when I go to grasp things, trip over steps, that kind of thing. If I'm engaged in a sedentary activity like computer using, for instance, I'm probably aware of my head and my typing hands, and my forearms which are resting on the table. The rest of my body doesn't really 'exist' for me at that moment, unless there's some sensation so severe - heat, cold, pain - that it gets my attention.

Simple pressure-bearing exercises help, like doing mini-push-ups off the tabletop or wall. They have to be done hard enough that all my joints hurt a bit, and I'm therefore aware of them. The pressure is providing vestibular feedback, apparently, helping remind my brain where my body is.

Personally, my 'vestibular' stims are different from my 'emotional' stims. Weight bearing stuff like the little push-ups fall into the former category, rocking and flapping the latter. They're less 'heavy' than vestibular stims. I have certain ones I tend to do when I'm watching something good on TV. They're somehow related to emotions, but I don't really understand how they work. The OT's theory that it's about trying to full focus one's attention doesn't sound bad, but I think there's more to it than that.

[Smoke]

Hello all, long time no type!

Update on the whole blog front.... I Could Make Something Out Of That and The Wallpaper Experiment have both been killed off - wallpaper because I just lost interest, the other because the whole rigmarole of doing craft-blog style posts with multiple photos was just too much like hard work.

I now have a tumblog, because I'm a bit of a hipster at heart. It's just a random collection, mostly of cool photos I've found through the eleventy billion RSS feeds I follow: http://artsieaspie.tumblr.com/

You'll see the tumblr has a "shop" link, which brings me to my newest projects....

Things are a bit tight in Smoke Central at the moment, on account of an unexpected and rather messy inter-city move and a house-selling contract falling through, which means at the moment I'm paying a mortgage on the old place AND rent on the new place. So, to keep ends meeting and make a few bob for Christmas extras, I now have some side-hussles going on via Fiverr and Madeit.

Fiver, if you haven't encountered it before, is hilarious: it's a vast array of mostly ridiculous goods and services on offer, with everything $5. So, if you want someone to send you a photo of your url written on her feet, or your sign on a name propped up against a green Lamborghini, or your name carved on a leaf, it's the place to go. I've set up shop over there wielding my reiki and card-reading skills: http://fiverr.com/anaspiechick

I've also got a Madeit shop, which is like an Australian version of Etsy except with less pretension and fewer Chinese wholesalers. I've got an assortment of bits and bobs up there, mostly jewellery: http://www.madeit.com.au/artsieaspie

[aliengirl]

Hi Smoke,

Sorry to hear you're in a difficult financial situation. Having to pay for 2 homes must be very challenging indeed.

I'll definitely have a look at the links, and am really interested to see your jewellery. It's my bedtime now, but I hope to have a look tomorrow evening.

Take care,

AG