no such thing as too many. expand the garden until it eats your entire yard. then start sneaking into neighbors yards at night and planting seedlings.

came here to suggest journaling as well. and if you’ve already had a good experiance with it, all the better. during my divorce, the only other person i felt connected with offered to “help fix me” if i’d just give them a pass on all my established boundries. i declined and we parted ways. filled at least two books that year but it gave me a place to talk outside my head. it was enough to get me to each next day. that gave me time to let connections with other people develop on terms i was comfortable with.

debain, with xfce if i need a desktop. mostly because i started on xubuntu. started learning sysadmin stuff when all i could afford was a potato with salvaged computer components shoved in it. xfce considered that excessively over powered. ended up loving the way i set up my xfce env, and probably wont change it much over the next 20yrs because theres no need. so when cononical got extra gross it was easy to just move to debian and carry on with my life.

the artist’s website (or actual indy label), bandcamp then piracy in that order for me. if i can pay the artist, i’ll pay the artist. then it goes on my jellyfin server. bandcamp and the brooklynvegan have had some great lists. my kid has recently discovered music is more than background noise in video games and thinks vinyl is cool though. he’s hooked hard on rise aginst so i’ve had to add the local record shop then ebay into the mix. my bank account isnt happy and i will likely buy badtimerecords entire vinyl catalog for myself now. dont let your kids get into vinyl folks its a fucking trap!

the empty walls with only the few things i needed was my default. then i was married to a trash goblin for awhile. so now i’ve got artwork up and plants everywhere. but every single thing has a place it belongs and every surface is clear. completely empty spaces feel weird now but it cant be chaos piles ever again.

im in 4b and it’s doing that 60 degree temp change in a day thing. snows then melts, then snows then melts. throwing down native stuff thats been in cold storage right now and reminding myself the warmth is a lie.

halfway through responding i talked myself out of my own opinion on this. language changes and i think “on the spectrum” is coming to the end of it’s usefulness. it was helpful for a time but now i only use it at work in the context of “i’m just grasping for language that will make you understand how to communicate with me”.

On the spectrum is a helpful middle ground when exploring the topic though. And it was a very helpful middle ground when every discussion of autism seemed to devolve into clinical diagnosis vs awareness that the medical system in most countries is a dumpster fire. getting my son diagnosed took very little effort. when i looked into it for myself 6 yrs ago, the clinician was helpfully blunt with “look unless you need accomodations dont put yourself through this yet. theres one person in this state who can diagnose in adults and it’s a 2 yr wait list to start the 1 yr $1200 out of pocket process”.

a friend got her offical diagnosis about 6 months ago and the process has by her description, improved and shortened significantly. so i may explore that again. at this point outside work i just use autist/autism, but at work i still use spectrum. I do agree the language is aging out of broad usefullness, but i don’t believe it’s something i’ll be bothered by for a long while still. i get your frustration with it. I think we’re in that be kind and let people use the language they’re comfortable with period for the spectrum. it may die off or it may become elder millenials term for ourselves as aspie has for some genxers who grew up before the spectrum entered the dms5.

i deleted my world account back when some of the active posters in 196 started pushing for a move to that instance. i have precious little free time to burn on the internet. on world i was wasting that time with “just asking questions guy” or maintaining a block list of accounts who’s say “I support that in concept BUT this real world human actually existing is too far!”. it was facebook without ads and brought zero value to my life, so i left lemmy. very relieved to see the 196 community chose to stay here. this instance is the only reason i decided to give lemmy another go.

good start this year. got my peppers and slower flowers started under the growlights. seeded another section of the yard with tall grass and native flowers. and im adding my first bee hive this summer, ordered a nuc from a local farm that breeds for harsh winters. should be a good year if the weather would stop toying with my heart.