Okami_No_Rei

"Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most.

That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies.

You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not.

You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in."

• Hub, Secondhand Lions (2003)

The ball was a colorless wireframe. Color wasn't necessary for the scenario.

The person was genderless. Gender wasn't necessary for the scenario. They looked like a wire frame skeleton of a person.

The ball was roughly the size and density of the smallest size bowling ball.

Table surface was circular wireframe with four legs. Material wasn't filled in as I wasn't trying to model for friction.

My imagination doesn't tend to fill in unnecessary details. Too much wasted processing power. I also don't really envision things. Like, I don't "see" them in my head. I feel out the shapes and weights and other physical properties relevant to the scenario and let my intuitive understanding of physics roll the scenario forward.

Like, I know the ball rolled until it fell off the table, it fell some distance, then bounced off the floor three or four times with a sharp crack, as I filled in that the floor was concrete as soon as I needed to know how it would bounce, and the sound it would make filled in naturally from there.

I genuinely don't know whether how I think qualifies as aphantasia. I don't really imagine visual stimuli, but my imagination is very thorough for sound and feel.

I default to my subscribed feed, which only shows the communities I'm interested in, and when I finish browsing that for the day I switch over to the All feed so I can find new communities to subscribe to and block communities to filter out the ones I'll never be interested in.

I would flip my gender to female and ensure that my hair would match my Dad's hair color. Fix my chronic pain and IBS if I can, assuming those are genetic. Fix my singing voice. I ended up the shortest of my siblings, so double down on that and drop a few more inches off my height. I'm 5'8" now, so 5' even to 5'4" seem nice. My grandma's that height, so the code is in there somewhere.

Farming? Really? Man of your talents?

I like the smell of ammonia. I use ammonia based cleaners almost exclusively. Bleach smells like nothing to me, like if TV static was a smell.

I dislike strong perfumes, and I hated doing laundry for a long time and would put it off as long as I could before my grandma introduced me to scentless detergent. I don't use scented dryer sheets either. I shouldn't be able to smell my clothes after a wash. It's gag-inducing.

How much time have you spent being single?

Most of my life. I've had two serious relationships and one complicated one, none lasting more than six months. My last relationship ended in late 2019, so it's been 4.5 years. I'm 33 this year, and have been single for about 31 years total.

If you’re currently single: is it by choice or circumstance?

Bit of both. I choose not to invest my time, money, and energy into pursuing a relationship, but sometimes that choice feels forced because I don't have enough time, money, or energy to spare for pursuing a relationship. If it happens, it happens, but I'm not proactive about it because I'm focusing on work and my hobbies. If I ever find myself financially stable without working full time I might have time to actively pursue a relationship, but that's not in the cards right now for my autistic ass. I spend almost all my free time recovering so I can go back to work.

I joined a LARP community and I go to board game and DnD meetups specifically to meet people and keep my social muscles healthy. Hopefully I'll find a partner in those circles someday, but no luck so far. The unfortunate reality is that every girl I meet is already in a relationship. I have made a lot of friends, so mission accomplished as far as that goes, but the folks who say that joining hobby groups and hanging out with people who share your interests is the best way to find a partner are full of shit.

Finally, both of my serious relationships ended on good terms because my partner felt I did not communicate enough with them, while I felt the amount of communication they were expecting was too much for me to maintain, which made the relationship a source of stress and anxiety for me. We broke it off, and I'm still good friends with one of them. This is a problem with me that I'm not sure how to fix, and it's very much not conducive to a healthy relationship. I hope I can find a partner who's comfortable with that some day, but it's made me leery of jumping into new relationships.

Do you / did you enjoy single life?

No, but I don't enjoy dating life, either. Life in general is an unending stream of demands, and I never get enough time to stop, breath, and reset. That's true while I'm single, and it was true while I was dating.

What are / were the pros and cons?

Pros:

• My living space is my own. Everything stays exactly where I left it, and I can decorate as I please.
• I eat when and what I want. I can cook or eat out as I choose. Meals don't need to be a production, and if I want to stock up and eat the same thing for weeks on end there's no one to complain about it.
• My time is my own. I can schedule things whenever and I don't need to coordinate calendars. If I need to travel for work I can drop everything and just go.
• No fucking kids. My niece, nephew, and soon to be 2nd nephew are plenty.

Cons:

• I'm so lonely. So very lonely.
• Porn addiction. I have a high sex drive, no healthy outlet for it, and it's an easy dopamine hit for stress and anxiety relief.
• Financial stress. I'm barely getting by on a single income.
• Constantly questioning my identity. I think I'm some flavor of aromantic sex-positive asexual, and I suspect I'm bi and/or trans, but I've got no partner to explore my own gender and sexuality with. It's hard to tell how much is real and how much is my mind spinning off the rails with nothing to latch on to.

Is / was partnership a goal of yours?

Yes. I'd like to settle down with a fellow introvert so we can be alone together.

I remember having the Batman Forever and Batman Knightfall audio books on cassette back when I was a kid.

I listened to them so many times the voice and cadence of the narrator is permanently burned into my subconscious. I still quote them from time to time without really thinking about it.

He come to save!

Firewatch has been on the periphery of my attention for a while. I've heard generally good things about it, but it didn't actually pique my interest until Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe

I figured if it was good enough for the Stanley Parable devs to feel it was worth referencing, it must have been an indie gem that I was sleeping on. I was wrong.

Firewatch was a recent purchase for me which I mildly regret.

As a walking simulator it's wholly dependent on the quality of its story, and the quality just isn't there. It starts strong but the ending is rushed and without a coherent resolution. It does so much work to set up multiple dramatic mysteries and then haphazardly solves half of them out of nowhere and forgets the rest in the final scramble to finish.

Nice graphics. Great voice acting. Neat concept. Needed more time to cook and left me feeling like I wasted my time getting invested in the story.

A recent release? Diablo 4 I guess. I don't really regret it since I knew what I was in for. I bought it to play with my best friend, and we had fun together until he got bored and frustrated. My hopes were high but my expectations were minimal and it still barely managed to meet them.

I use it daily for connecting it to my car stereo, and about once a month when I mow my lawn or have to fly on a plane. I'll never buy a phone without one.

I prefer wired headphones. I don't want to worry about keeping them charged, and the few pairs of wireless headphones I have tried died or had the buttons stop working after a few uses from getting waterlogged with sweat, while I've been using the same pair of $6 wired headphones for 10 years without issues.

I don't care for Bluetooth or USB audio connections as they don't always work intuitively, they might take multiple button presses to set up, and every manufacturer seems to think they need to be set up in a slightly different way, while the auxiliary audio cable just works with no setup.