tef @tef@mastodon.social

turns out autistic masking is a very effective way to have friendships that only feel like a burden

if i have to grind myself down, if i have go through the humiliation of asking for help and watching the disappointment, i guess i can do that

but, well, when it all goes wrong, and i'm expected to know how to fix it, well, i never learned any good coping strategies or masking for that

i almost feel like i could performatively apologize and get away with it—hit the keyword scans neurotypicals run—they've never cared for behaviour, it shows

i'm bitter, yes

and well, twitter feels like the accumulation of these awkward friendships, both the good, the bad, and the i-have-no-idea-where-i stand ones

i mean, the last time i posted there about "not knowing where i stand", someone, who i do not know where i stand with, replied to it

i really don't know how to handle normal people and what seems to be mostly performative gestures

that's my problem at heart, when it comes to making new friends

i can play at being happy me. talking and buzzing away on nervous energy. performing for the benefit of the group

and then i guess i get to disappoint people slowly, although some learn to see the thought i put in

even so, i'm tired of being a disappointment to people who barely made any effort to know or understand me

or folk taking advantage of my kindness

people look at me and see someone functional

even my close friends

people who have known me for a decade, still surprised at the whole "i don't have regular meals or sleep pattern" thing, or the whole "i have massive anxiety about leaving the house" thing or the whole "groups of people make my hypomanic" thing

turns out i'm very good at hiding being a wreck, but then again i don't post about how sometimes shitting is so painful it brings me to tears, so, maybe that explains it

truth is, i barely have any executive function, and most of it gets burned on not getting fired, paying my rent, that sort of thing

when it comes to the upkeep of friendships, even the non-performative stuff doesn't get a look in

last year, i made a choice "i give up on gmt people."

anyway, i now leave the house socially about 2-3 times a month. i work from home. i live by myself.

but on the plus side, i haven't gotten fired from work, i haven't burned out, and i still see some people

meanwhile, this year, i've made new friends, melted down in front of them, and let things escalate to the point where, if i ever bump into them, i'll likely make excuses and leave

it's been a very successful year.

then again, as much as i feel i could have done better i don't feel one sided about it

here i am, barely eating every day, not always sleeping, and people still think my problem is i don't try hard enough

i thought being in a group chat would make me feel less isolated, less feral, but it did quite the opposite

i got to see the lengths by which i don't fit in people's lives

spent months trying to lure people to the pub, eventually succeeded

too well. it was easier for the rest of them to go to the pub at the normal time, and go home at the normal time

even when i arranged a late evening, folk turned up early, and left when i arrived

i've just exhausted myself

as far as i can tell, everyone's moved onto groupchats

somewhat without me, but y'know, i do talk _a lot_

i tried being in a group chat once, but having random notifications, a permanent unread count did my head in

that and being confronted with how out of sync i am with the folks in my own timezone

waking up and seeing the eight hours i'd missed, then, after midnight, several hours of inactivity as everyone else, bar one, had gone to bed

not everyone. there's a lot of internet pals i feel good around, don't feel like i get misread, and well, those who i can be a little manic, or erratic around without sabotaging the friendship

it's rarely with allistics, although i find myself on thin ice around other autistics fairly often, too.

i've also spent the last year trying to rebuild a social life and have failed spectacularly badly, repeatedly, melting down and burning out over and over

so mixed feelings about the bird site, yes

i regularly feel the urge to burn down my twitter account and start again elsewhere

find the weirdos, chat about computers, and avoid the computer careerists using twitter as a linked in replacement

no longer in a weird situation where half my friends have 10-20k audiences and it feels easier to leave my account locked

that, or maybe just unfollow everyone and see who sticks around

hello fellow bird site users

wrote a blog post, go me

https://programmingisterrible.com/post/188942142748/scaling-in-the-presence-of-errorsdont-ignore

it's honestly one long subtweet

hi other twitter users

i got ansi escape codes working. so ugh. ugh ... ugh ughugh

with the pager, i have to extract columns, which means knowing if there's codes, and ugh ugh

so i cheat a bunch but it works! bold text! in my terminal, reflowing

without sounding all bret victor, i want to make something reasonably neat demoware, at the cost of intergrating with other components

i could get by with less, and git, and commonmark, and pandoc, and a Makefile

but the point of this is to show how high the bar could be for a command line tool, and how much you can get for free out of a framework

it might not be the nicest tool at the end of the day but genuinely, i think some of the nice touches will make for a pleasing demo

casually resizing a terminal and not losing your place, dropping out of scrolling to interact with command line output, filling out forms as you would in a terminal web browser like lynx/links

and then popping open a web browser and interacting with an admin interface, things like that

that said undo/redo makes for a cracking demo, too

next milestone is doing the line wrapping/ansi rendering of output

after that, yes, a static site generator. maybe even running a web server & rendering on refresh.

but the cli library is the fun bit.

it's not going to end up like gnu info, but i do like the idea of a man page you can follow links on, or even fill out a form with arguments.

heh heh heh heh heh

the command line framework, well, you'll have to trust me on how nice it'll end up

the static site generator? well, i do have code for tracking versions lying around, so, that's an option too

but when i was writing the version control system, well, this bullshit was the sort of shit i wanted to get up to, and it's really pleasing pulling together so many toy projects at once

don't even ask me what rpc bullshit this will lead to