Pandemic Living

Six months under quarantine due to the pandemic, I have learned a few things not only about myself, but about the world around me as well.

The first thing I have learned is that you cannot always trust the news. The news should always be taken with a proverbial grain of salt, as oftentimes they will swing heavily toward the panic side of the equation to get more views. I think that, after the pandemic ends, we should really reconsider showing both positive and negative viewpoints on the news instead of being overly cynical about everything just to garner extra revenue/viewership.

The second thing I have learned is that I have figured out who my true friends/family actually are. During hard, unprecedented times, we tend to see people for who they really are, and the true colors tend to surface in even the most genuine, authentic individuals. People that seemed friendly, cordial, and eager to help suddenly turned into toxic individuals overnight—and this may be due to political views (as everyone knows, this pandemic is occurring during an election year), views about social distancing, lockdowns, and breaching those rules, mask mandates, are even just simply animosity towards others as a form of jealousy, because of people not being grateful for what they have and comparing themselves to others.  I think a lot of friendships, romantic relationships, and even family have been lost during the pandemic. I also know that domestic violence was ramping up quite considerably during the height of lockdown in March.

Finally, I think it has exposed our political leadership. We need a better political leader to fulfill duties in all sectors of our world, and we need to keep better track of hazardous risks and diseases surveillance to the point where we scrutinize everything so we can hopefully prevent, or at least prepare, for future pandemics. They can definitely catch you off guard. I also think that listening to the science and warnings that are given is extremely important to create a happier, healthier, safer community for us all.

Aspergers and Dealing With COVID-19

As someone on the autism spectrum, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on both my mental and physical health, and has transformed my life in ways I couldn’t even imagine.

It has caused me to react mentally by realizing that this virus is quite serious, and that I need to avoid putting myself at risk of getting the virus. Even though the virus mainly kills the elderly and people with underlying health conditions, there have been a not insignificant amount of young, otherwise healthy people who have died from the disease. I am therefore concerned that I will be one of the outliers and die from it early on.

I also worry that the second wave will be like the 1918 influenza pandemic because people have been warning us of a second wave that will be deadlier than the first.

As for the lockdowns affecting my social life and employment prospects in positive and negative ways, I will first explain how it has affected me positively.

The lockdown has affected me positively by allowing me to focus on myself and put practice into things I did not have time to practice before, such as enhancing my skills in chess and jigsaw puzzles.

I has affected me negatively in many different ways, but I think the most important way is realizing I should have been born in an earlier decade. I feel like our generation of young adults has been gypped due to a lack of political leadership and various events that seemed to insert themselves into our lives.

I wish I had the opportunity to become someone significant. I feel like that hope is now dashed thanks to this pandemic.

Also, it has resulted in me losing touch with various friends as far as hanging out is concerned. Due to the quarantines, I have had to talk to my friends over the phone. While it does not feel exactly the same, it is a supplement. I hope one day soon I can see my friends again.

That’s all for now.

 

The Incel Phenomena (and how I nearly fell into the trap)

Hello everyone!

I am The Chessman and today I am going to briefly talk to you about a phenomenon that has been going on since around 2013 or so and that is the incel movement.

Now before I get into the discussion on why it is a terrible mistake to join this movement (even if you are single) and what steps these men can take to change their situations, I will explain what incels actually are because there are people who do not know what the term means.

Involuntary celibates, or incels, are generally men (and occasionally women as well) who want to have sex but for whatever reason which is not by choice, they cannot, but this is only one part of the definition of what incels are. They also blame women (generally, unless they are women, then they would blame men) for their problems and claim that it’s their fault when its really the incels fault for the situation they are in and they are not willing to change their issues, instead a lot of them will just sit around being lazy becoming addicted to video games as well as putting women on a pedestal .

In my humble opinion, even if you are a virgin and have never had sex I strongly discourage any guys (since that is the typical demographic that goes on these things) to join this movement as all its going to lead you down is a toxic path of misery which will lead to huge problems.

Overall, I would personally go on a no pilled regimen because even the bluepill phenomena is hard to be believed because truthfully, anyone who says its factual needs circumstantial evidence to back it up and I have not seen it.

What these incels do not realize is, first of all, the attitude they possess is not going to get them laid because truthfully the majority of incels are insecure and desperate, and women can smell it from miles away. Also they think their only option and the only thing which will satisfy them is actually getting laid. Well they do have other options like hobbies, friends, spending time with family, surfing the internet, getting a job, exercising, etc but will they actually take these options? Probably not. It is absolutely hopeless to change their minds.

I will never become a part of that movement because its just propaganda to me and has no meaning. I think most of what they say is false, because its not backed up by concrete evidence. They are believing what is most likely a cleverly constructed lie.

I have Aspergers and I know people say that they are the most common types of people to become incel and join the movement because they have immense trouble making in particular irl connections with other people. However, if I sequestered myself into that pool of negativity, I would not even have a slim chance of getting a gf or friends that would enjoy spending time with me.

So if you are a virgin, I would suggest that before you go off the deep end and do something like this, think of the consequences.

I almost fell into this trap a few years back but pulled myself away because I realized all it was, was simply a plethora of negativity that I did not want to be a part of.

A Day In The Life of Having Aspergers

Hi All!

As I referenced in a previous blog, I have Aspergers Sydrome, which is now formally known as autism spectrum disorder. I am going to describe how this, as well as two other conditions (one being newly diagnosed) are impacting my life, mostly in negative ways.

I seem odd or out of place to most people I encounter. This world is basically alien to people who are on the autistic spectrum. Its like to the NT population, there is something about us that they see that obviously we can’t see because we are different than them. My life has been nothing but torture since day 1, I started with having huge blowups and meltdowns, finding out I had a significantly severe food allergy also. Both of these teamed up when I was younger to make my life a nightmare you wouldn’t ever dream could be a reality in this world. Let me start off with my school years. I, for a long time, was homeschooled by all different teachers in which only the first one I had fit perfectly, the rest were either too bossy, too tough, or had some sort of fetish for bringing in unwashed stuff for our projects we used to do for my Science classes. In third grade, my mom had decided she had had enough and began homeschooling me herself. This began until I entered public school in Grade 4. While, apart from one incident, Grade 4 was decent, Grades 5 and 6 (which I started after that) were nothing but problematic. Every day there was always an issue with the school and the biggest reason was because they didn’t want to provide me adequate services for functioning like a school aged child. We ended up suing them for a lot of money.

This was also around the same time my mother and my father got a divorce because supposedly my AS was making everything in the house more difficult to handle than it should have been, and like a glove filled with water bursting open, the pressure just ended up being too much to bear after some time and my parents, my dad in particular, couldn’t take it anymore. So there ends the first chapter.

The second chapter involves middle school and high school. I was homeschooled again for 7th grade because the new middle school didn’t want to honor our commitments for services for me to utilize. So my mom had had enough. We decided to move to a new town in 2005. However, when I started at the new school for Grade 8, they wouldn’t even let me into the school! My mom was dismayed and fought as hard as she could to appeal their decision and finally they agreed. In November 2005, I entered 8th grade. However this is only the beginning of the hell I’d face up till now, which I will come to later on in this passage.

High school brought new challenges, especially since I was becoming attracted to the opposite sex. What I didn’t realize until much later was that most girls, don’t like our type. They for some odd reason think we are outcasts and want nothing to do with us. They don’t even want to look at us, as just staring at us disgusts them to no end. This problem really started becoming apparent in 9th Grade. I developed a crush on a girl in high school and things went well at first, until I asked her out. She told me she had a boyfriend and because I didn’t know any better about women back then, I kept pestering her and she brought her mom in to talk to us as it seemed like borderline stalking, when really I just didn’t know how to communicate in the proper frame of mind. When I entered my sophomore year of high school, the crush had ended and I had made two new friends. I eventually ended up being friends with them until much later but then we parted ways as they moved far ahead of me but I’m not spoiling that now! 10th Grade started off well but brought even further problems thereafter as I started rebelling against the students for not being accepted and deliberately did different things I shouldn’t have done just to tell them how mad I was at them for disregarding any type of presence I had. I had a terrible aide– one who defied all physics of being friendly, she was beyond mean, she didn’t care about how I felt or what my disabilities were all that seemed to be in for her was the pay. So we removed her but by this time it was already too late to turn back the clock and reverse the damage I had done. For the rest of the year I was on a half day schedule at school with an awesome aide which adapted well to my speculative needs, but by this time I had also made the biggest mistake of my life, one I will always regret: leaving the mainstream and entered a special needs class at another campus affiliated with the one I had gone through my sophomore year at. This begins my junior year. I felt terrible I was in a class with people who couldn’t even make a sentence to save their lives. What I had noticed however was the absence of hard work and frustration,. The teachers in this group actually worked with you to finish your work and get it up to standard, this exact reason is what led up to me getting straight As in senior year. I strived for my best in senior year, and earned it causing me to be exempt from final examinations for the rest of the school year.

Once I left senior year, everything changed again, and this begins chapter three. I entered a program for kids ages 18-21, however I felt the right route to take was going to my local community college to pursue a major in special education, and this caused my delay which I’ll also regret forever. This place taught you job and life skills to people with special needs who needed extra assistance in the real world. I began working during this time. The first year I had a job at the borough halls in the town I lived in and the town where the old high school where I graduated from resided. Both of these jobs loved my work ethic but sadly due to the ending of school they ended abruptly and my efforts to return to these jobs have as of now failed to materialize. My second year at this program however I finally began to become more independent. I attended a community college and worked volunteering with special needs kids, a job I love to this day. People at my college always used to shun me during this time due to my disabilities while I got along reasonably well with the kids in the special needs program. My guess as to why the kids at my college never wanted me to be accepted was because even they too sensed something was off about me. I had crushes on multiple girls and all had given me the same excuses: “I have a boyfriend.”, “I’m not interested in you.”, or “Sorry I’m busy, maybe another time.” It really left me furious as I wondered how all the other non-Aspie men in my school had picked these girls up so easily. Despite my shortcomings socially, it didn’t stop me from focusing on my schoolwork, in fact it made me better at doing schoolwork because I focused intently on my work, which girls hated, .but they were all immature people and weren’t worth being friends with, let alone trying to get a date out of them. Some of the guys were, OTOH, nice but a lot of them had turned on me later in the semester after finding out how weird I was. In my third year of the special needs program I continued going to my community college but my favorite part of the day was working with nonverbal kids at my first high school. I never thought for once in my life i could serve as the role playing teacher. I had done a good job aside from a few mistakes but due to my graduation from high school I couldn’t keep the volunteer jobs and they fell by the wayside.

Chapter four begins with me continuing community college. The problem of being shunned by others was getting MUCH worse to the point where almost every person in my school ignored me and thought I was weird. I used to cry on my car rides home from school and had wondered why this was happening. I had also developed a prominent hunch in my back at this time which prompted a doctor visit several years later. I had started doing my college courses online after the last semester after high school because of three reasons: one my mom could no longer drive me to the college, two nobody there accepted me and three the work was easier to do online rather than in person. It ended up however being more isolating than I thought.

Today is June 18, 2015. At this point in my life I am 23 years old. I now have a part time paid position at a grocery store, as my old part time job at a department store didn’t work out they way I had initially made it out to be. The working world is the same way, nobody at my job wants to even face me or even talk to me with the exception of a couple of introverted people. In fact all the extroverted people wanted to do is use me or ask me for favors i.e. just wanting me to cover their shifts which makes them ruder than roots and I had to block some people including a girl who blocked me for no apparent reason other than maybe because I had a huge crush on her and she had a bf who she wasn’t getting along with at the time made me want to ask her out at the APPROPRIATE time no less. She, like all the girls at my college who I had previously asked out said no. I have had a few girls in my life but all of them seem to vanish quickly once they find out what type of a person I am. So this ruined the dynamic of my job. Then all the other kids followed suit and that combined with bad customers and a crappy job which makes you exhausted makes me feel like complete and total crap and like a failure every single day. All I do now is game, collect hot wheels, listen to music, and wonder why I’m not accepted as a whole by the general population, because of a condition I never asked for. This illness is a curse and one day I hope someone can develop a cure for it as I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. It caused so many arguments including one recently today that I now have to keep my mouth shut and not say a word. I have lost pretty much all of my friendships for various reasons i.e. we no longer connected, they relocated, or moved too far ahead of me. I only have one true friend left and while this one hasn’t gone away yet, I’m having a bad feeling about the eventual status. I am so alone and nobody realizes it because they don’t understand this “condition.”

On a side note, remember I mentioned earlier my back was hunched and that I went to the doctor to check on it? Well I did a couple of weeks ago. I turns out it is a permanent curvature of the back called Schueremanns Kyphosis which I have in addition to a food allergy and the AS curse. This now leaves me a target for bullying and teasing by my coworkers and other NT people I come into contact with. Right now the only people I am getting along with are people in the disabled community, for the most part. I have started seeing a physical therapy place for my back which is now one of the highlights of my week and a therapist who is helping me with CBT. I hope one day I do get a girlfriend, friends, drive (which is taking its time), and have my dream job. Aspergers may stand in my way but I’m not gonna give up on these dreams even if its a long and bumpy road to get there.

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post, and I hope to make many more in the future.

Matchbox and Hot Wheel Car Collecting 101

This is for all out there who collect or want to start collecting the little toy cars that have been made since the late 1950s.

Please buy low, sell high. This is the best way to make a profit on these vehicles

Keep them in box. Keeping them in the package will mean they will last longer and will be worth more later on. Some cars that costed only $1 when they first came  out now cost over hundreds of dollars. Too many of the earlier releases are cracked due to card condition. Most newer releases never usually see the light of day in the package, because they are worthless. Take the #271 Funny Car as an example of this. Normally, that car was everywhere on the #277 package, and of course loose. You could find it for as low as one penny, and many were made. However there is a version of this car on a special #271 package worth over $3,000. Reason for this is because only twelve were made, and only six are known to still exist today. People have paid $3,000 for the #277. Don’t dare do this. Also take the #51 40s Woodie. Its worth as little as $5-10 on 80s packages or loose, but on the #51 package its worth between $1000-2000 dollars.

Also a special series of cars called the Backpack 5 pack was produced in Canada for airports back in 1997. The cars consisted of old Corgi castings modified into hot wheels

Cars that came in the 5 pack:

Porsche 911 Targa (Green)

Ferrari Testarossa (yellow)

BMW 850I (Red)

Ford Sierra (Blue)

Mustang Cobra (Gray)

These are near impossible to obtain, being some of the rarest hot wheels of all time. And as the proud owner of three of these particular cars (blue sierra, red 850i, and yellow testarossa) I can say they are also among the most expensive, besides the Airport Food Hauler from Mexico (?)  (please verify this) and the Matchbox Chrysler Voyager Promo and The Chrysler Jeep Cherokee Promo. The German Christmas World Rallye Spielset cars also rank right up there, but aren’t as costly.

Hope you enjoyed that brief tutorial on these little toy cars! Happy hunting!

Living with Aspergers Syndrome

Day to day life with Aspergers is extremely difficult. There is a high demand to be like everyone else and to try to fit in properly with others. There is also need to conform to varieties of different types of settings. We us Aspies have trouble adapting to specific changes in routine, and if too much is asked of us, we go into automatic sensory overload. Some people don’t understand what we go through day by day, but hopefully a good understanding of the syndrome will develop in the next decade or so.

I have hopes to succeed, and I know there are Aspies out there who do. They are few and far between, but they are still out there. However, that doesn’t mean we aren’t all unique individuals. Everybodys different. We all have certain strengths and weaknesses. We all have different levels of functioning, too. Question is, which suits us best? I guess maybe adapting to different surroundings. A lot of us are also depressed and anxious. We need therapeutic help.