I don't know if it's the weather...

[matrixrefugee]

which has been muggy and sticky, or my hormones, which are getting to the end of the cycle, or the fact that I've been having trouble sleeping on account of the weather and the ragweed pollen, but I've been in a vile mood all day: tired, cranky, hair-trigger, depressed...

I'm trying to keep the gloomy thoughts at bay: I've got four great sci-fi stories on my plate right now, which I'll start writing, one a week, beginning in October, once I start jotting some notes down... Ray Bradbury committed himself to writing 52 stories in a year, a story a week, the first year he started writing, figuring he could probably come up with a couple handfuls of good stories out of those: I'm gonna aim for four a month, since 52 is too intimidating a number right now. But then that little voice that "comes out of the woodwork in the hallway at night" (to quote Mel Gibson when he was talking about working on "The Passion") is whispering in my ear telling me that I can't possibly come up with that amount of stories and get even a third of them published, that I should just find someone to marry, but even that ain't gonna work because what guy wants to marry a scrawny, flat-chested brunette with Asperger's Syndrome...

Speaking of which, I had a bad Asperger's moment at work this afternoon: Someone's loaf of French bread fell out of the plastic bag (now parked on the end of the register) I'd put it into, and it fell to the floor -- fortunately without falling out of its paper bag -- into the next lane, nearly wacking another customer in the back. So the nearly-wacked lady turned around and teasingly accused me of throwing things at her. Unfortunately, my Asperger's flared up horribly at that moment and I completely misconstrued her playfullness, mistaking it for the real tongue-lashing that it wasn't: tensing up, apologizing in a panicked tone, cringing. I do this a lot: when I get depressed, I have a terrible time with people kidding around and teasing me. That's an earmark of Asperger's Syndrome, at least the atypical variety. Typical Asperger's may cause a person to underemote, or to have mis-timed emotional reactions: they feel too little, usually. But people with Atypical Aspergers tend to *over*-emote. A lot. What would mildly irritate or startle a so-called normal person annoys the hell out me, or scares me half to death (strange sounds, as a good for instance). For a while my mother thought I had manic-depression/bipolar disorder, but some of the earmarks of that tend to include risk-taking (which I definatly don't do!) or having simple auditory hallucinations: hearing whistling or buzzing sounds that no one else can hear (which has never happened to me either).

I sometimes wonder if some of the existential philosophers and sci-fi writers who dealt with ontological riffs (to use a term from a sci-fi writer's glossary on the SFWA website) might not have had a touch of Asperger's Syndrome or something similar. Reality seems fractured when you have AS, not to the point that you're paranoid or you dissociate, but sometimes it seems like you have one world, inside your mind/imagination, and that seems more real and comfortable, but then there's the outside world with other people and that seems at times screwy and nightmarish. Just from what I can tell from reading about his life story, Philip K. Dick seems to have had some of the earmarks of Atypical Asperger's (very sensitive, tended to keep to himself a lot). I'm also guessing the Wachowski Brothers may have a teeny touch of it: AAS people are more articulate than TAS people, and they can adjust to social situations better, but they often tend to avoid eye contact when talking with a person; I was just watching "The Matrix: Revisited", the direct to DVD, feature-length film that came out in 2000, which features behind-the-scenes footage on the making of the first "Matrix" film, along with interviews with cast and crew members, including the Wachowski Brothers.... and I don't think they really looked toward the camera once. They're also notorious for avoiding the limelight and dodging public appearances, to the point that some people consider them to be snobs. Just not true: they're the kind of guys who have several creative irons in the fire at once, and they stay out of the public eye because they're working on the next big idea. And I really admire them for that: I wish more people in entertainment could do that, instead of having to play the celebrity.

That does it, I'm gonna go work on some of my ideas! Ranting over now, I'm writin'!!

Comments

[ladynyks.livejournal.com]

Hmmh. I should check ppl's interest lists more often. I keep forgetting who's mentioned what, like Asperger's. Quoting and pointing toward this in my LJ. Oh, and more or less jokingly, I think you're mostly cool, but we must never discuss politics even though (or because) I'm not an American. I loved Clinton and loathed Bush from the start, instant liking and dislike. Just so you know.