Sunday, Jul. 05, 2020 - 3:14 p.m.

Entry 2.
I mean I guess I have a nascent theory that masking is a cumulative thing. If you have to make a point of not hitting people with your stimming hands or eating more quietly or trying to remember not to interrupt for short bursts now and then, that’s fine and endurable. It’s when you have to do a number of things all at once for a long period of time, without respite, that it becomes a bad thing.

Accommodations should involve not forcing you to be in an environment where you have to do that all the time on multiple levels, for longer than you can take. How long that is depends on the person.

Like my one friend said, you can explain why it’s important to NT people, how they understand what your actions mean to them. And yes you should meet them halfway. But again it seems to me that so many times, when it comes to masking, all NTs have to do is remember not to take it personally. Whereas autistics are expected to try to do all these things that are hard to do. Accommodation one way is exhausting and effortful. Accommodation the other way just means cutting someone some slack. I don’t get why that’s harder. I mean, you don’t need to allow someone to infringe on your autonomy, but still. * Every now and then when I get bored like this I start to read stuff and I start to think again about writing a dissertation which is a really dumb idea. Wouldn’t be bad to find a way to channel that urge into something actually productive. I’ve talked about blogging before. That would become a demand and be horrible. I just don’t know.

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