Daily Life

What can I do?

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I can’t think.

Sometimes things become bigger than they should. I get into a spot where I am trying to process what is happening. I am trying to make sure I am making the right decisions for everyone, but I can’t think fast enough. Thing move faster than I can process.

Often at the end of the day, I am exhausted. After I drop the children off at the gate, I need time to reflect, or process. I know I have to write a notice home to parents. sometimes it is for the whole group. Sometimes is is individual parents, to praise or inform of difficulties their child has had. If it has been a difficult day, I cannot do this immediately. I need time to process. What did I do right, or wrong? What can I do better next time? Could I have done better? How? What do I need to do to help these kids?

One of the things I have to unlearn is that it is not always my fault. Growing up, All miscommunications where blamed on me. I was not clear enough. I didn’t say things fast enough. I wasn’t assertive enough. I was too blunt. My tone of voice was wrong. My face was wrong when I was talking.

Often, I have moments in the middle of the day, where what I planned is not working. I have to switch gears and try plan B to explain things. Then Plan C. When Plan H has failed, I am left lost. Sometimes well meaning people come up and ask me what they can do to help.

I am left at a loss usually when this happens. I cannot begin to think about how they can help. I am at a loss. I am still processing what went wrong in the first place. My prepared response is always. “I don’t know right now. Can I get back to you?”

If I get 2 or 3 people asking me back to back, like today. I just… I don’t know. I can’t even think yet..

I know then mean well. At least one does. I may have misread the other’s face. To me their face was saying “Why can’t you do this on your own?” Again, I may be misreading.

I have now taken an hour. let me start again.

Too many things.

When communication isn’t clear, I don’t just feel confused—I start blaming myself. Doubting myself. Spinning. Many autistic people prefer written communication—and I can see why. Emails can be great, because people take time to think about what they are writing. They look back over an email and edit for clarity. Instant Messaging can be terrifying and I still dislike it.

People text brief messages that are often misunderstood, and there is no review before sending them. Last night after work, I got a string of messages from my administrators. No context. No details. Just enough to make me feel like I’d done something horribly wrong.

I spent the whole night replaying the day—trying to figure out where I’d overstepped. I knew what I’d done, but not why it might be a problem.

In the morning, more messages: “Let’s meet.” No explanation.

I asked for clarification. Nothing.

You know how deer freeze in the headlights of an oncoming car? They aren’t being reckless—they’re overwhelmed. Their brains stall, trying to process what’s coming at them. That’s how I felt. Stuck. Not knowing what to think, say, or do.

The meeting was more positive than I had anticipated. But up to that point I was terrified. The team asked how they could help—but the truth is, as I’m still processing, I have no idea what I need. That is something that needs to be planned. If you show up and ask me what I need help with in that moment, I’ll freeze up.

I have students who freeze up like I do, and I’m not always perfect at giving them the time they need. I also have students who try to take advantage of that lag, which helps no one. I want to give them the space I sometimes don’t know how to ask for myself. But like me, they don’t always know what they need in the moment. And like me, they’re still learning. We’re not being difficult—we’re just trying to keep up with a game that moves faster than we can think.

Button Mashing Through Life

Autism, Daily Life, Games, Memoires, , Leave a comment

Back when I was just a lad—you know the expression: knee-high to a grasshopper and all that—I used to play video games. (Not so much anymore.)

There was this one fighting game I played at home or at friends’ houses. It had almost no story. Just street brawls between characters from around the world. Nobody cared about the plot—except me. But that’s not really the point of today’s post.

You’d press buttons on the controller, and your character would attack, block, jump. If you pressed the buttons in just the right order, the character might throw a fireball or do a spin kick across the screen.

I could never pull that off.

More than once, I got accused of being a button masher—just frantically hitting buttons and hoping something cool would happen. I’d try to do a special move, and my guy would just… punch the air or crouch awkwardly.

So I fell back on the basics: jump, block, basic attack. Over and over. It was apparently the wrong way to play. “Cheap shots!” they’d say. “Come on, learn the moves!” But if I didn’t do it my way, I couldn’t play at all.

Then it got worse.

They released a Turbo Edition—it had more characters, sure, but the real feature? Speed. Everything moved faster. I barely kept up before, and now I was just mashing buttons in panic.

My friends got so good that they’d put the controller on the floor and play with their toes against me. One friend even disabled special moves entirely—and still had better reflexes.

It felt like the whole world had mastered this game. Meanwhile, I was barely hanging on, mashing buttons and hoping for a lucky win. It was frustrating. Honestly, I still can’t play real-time combat games. I just don’t think that fast.

But this isn’t just about video games.

Social Button Mashing

Growing up? Socializing? Going to school?

I was button mashing there, too.

Other kids seemed to know how to play the social game. They’d banter, joke, move from game to game, conversation to conversation, like they had the manual. I didn’t. I was just doing random things and hoping they were the right ones.

People made jokes, and I’d laugh—if others did. I usually didn’t get the punchline until an hour later. People told me things, and I believed them… until I found out later that I shouldn’t have.

My older brother used to ask me, “Do you want a USA?”

He never explained what that meant. The first few times, I said yes. I eventually learned that “USA” stood for Unexpected Sack Attack. A literal kick in the crotch.

It took me a few times to understand that it was always going to be a kick in the crotch.

So if I flinch when Americans say their country’s name, now you know why. And I apologize.

I spent years trying to play the game I thought everyone else was playing. I stuck to the same safe moves—repeat, duck, cover. But that’s exhausting. And lonely.

Turn-Based Thinking

That’s why I started playing role-playing games instead. In those games, nothing moved until I was ready. I could breathe. I could think. I could pause the world and plan my next step.

RPGs were like puzzle games where emotions and decisions mattered. I loved that.

And for a while, I believed that maybe I could learn how to be “normal” from these games—how people talked, how they handled problems, how they grew. They gave me space to try on different roles.

Looking back, I wasn’t just trying to win—I was trying to keep up. Trying not to fall behind in conversations, in friendships, in growing up. I wasn’t ‘playing wrong’—I just had a different controller, and that’s an important distinction.

Eventually, I realized something even better than games though.

Books were the real key.

Books didn’t judge how fast I turned the page. They didn’t expect instant reactions. They let me live someone else’s story for a while. And somewhere in all those pages, I started figuring out my own.

Blankets

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There is something amazing about a blanket. It is calming and comforting. Everyone should have a blanket.

I look back at Linus from the Peanuts comics. He was always seen with his blanket. My family used to call it a security blanket. He used to wear it as headgear or use it as a whip, but for me, that’s not realistic.

Ford Prefect from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy always carried a towel.  In a way, it was his security blanket. But of all the uses mentioned, wrapping yourself up tightly wasn’t one of them.

I read and hear a lot about weighted blankets helping neurodivergent and autistics out. When I  was younger, I loved heavy blankets, and for years I never equated the two.

A heavy or weighted blanket puts a constant warm soft pressure on your body. That pressure helps you feel safe and calms you down when stressed.

For me, it is like a full body hug. A hug from someone who never judges you, never demands anything,  and never needs to break the hug until you are ready. I particularly enjoy snuggling in a blanket.

Unfortunately, when I got married, I didn’t have the words to explain my need for blankets.  I had always assumed everyone loved them like I do. My wife was raised without blankets. Where she was raised, in the tropics, blankets were more of a status symbol.

For the first few years of marriage,  my side of the bed had blankets at night. And even today on warm nights, she doesn’t use blankets. And heavy blankets are only for cold nights.

We have both adjusted to each other’s needs. Sometimes, with two different blankets on the bed.

But blankets are not just for beds. Our living room has a couple of thin blankets.  On stressful days, I will return home and cocoon myself on the sofa. Or half cocoon on medium stress days.

Cocooning is when you wrap the blanket tightly around yourself.  It gives the same comfort as a weighted blanket. I may lay down completely cocooned and isolated for a few hours.

On less stressful days, I will half cocoon. I wrap the blanket tightly around my legs and lower torso. Then I can drink tea or use the remote control to watch TV.

When in this mode, the TV is mostly for white noise. It doesn’t really matter what comes on. As long as it takes my mind off the day.

Tonight, I am up at a lodge for a church retreat with my family. My children and I are delighted that there are heavy blankets on all the beds. Just sitting here with it is relaxing.

Goodnight, I hope you all have amazing blankets