Anxious Nerd – Thoughts from August 28 to September 8, 2022

August 28, 2022

I think I used to be more of a nerd, but now I’m just a recovering nerd. Reading back on my Thoughts papers tells me how much of a nerd I was. I talked about working on computers and other nerdy technical issues I was dealing with. Today, my nerdiest issues are getting Patti back on the Internet when she mysteriously finds herself “knocked off.” I never really wanted to be a nerd. There were just things I wanted to do that required nerdy skills. I was always a hobby nerd. I never wanted a nerdy career. 3D animation was the closest I got to a nerdy career. I can talk to nerds, but they lose me when they talk about specific nerdy details. I enjoy nerdy things like science fiction and fantasy stories, but I couldn’t tell you endless amounts of trivia from the stories. This is why I consider myself a recovering nerd.

I was watching someone drive like an A-hole today and was thinking we should have reality police who give tickets to A-holes. These would be people who are not necessarily doing illegal things. They would be people who are just acting like A-holes. It would discourage people from developing into complete A-holes by discouraging minor A-hole behavior. You could give tickets to people being rude to others, complaining about stupid things, and acting as if they are in competition with every other person on earth. The reality police would force them to wear “I care about other people” shirts until their attitudes improve. “Other People Exist” shirts would also work. The biggest problem I can see in implementing this system would be the overwhelming number of tickets given to religious people. Religious groups would complain that religious people are being unfairly persecuted. Every good idea dies at the doors of churches.

August 29, 2022

I think Patti and I are adult children. Both of us have issues we haven’t dealt with from our childhoods. I pay the regular bills and Patti pays our monthly mortgage and our taxes. Together, we make up one full adult. I hope we can continue being the adult children we are. It’s so much more fun than just being adults all the time. If anyone is more of a child, it’s me. I still buy toys, watch cartoons, and decorate my office with stuffed animals. Patti watches some cartoons, but she isn’t as dedicated to the adult child lifestyle as I am. She works for the government with an adult salary and I work at an amusement park for more of a young adult wage. My job is fun most of the time and hers is not. Hopefully, I can make an adult wage for my childish ways soon so Patti can be more of an adult child again.

September 8, 2022

I haven’t written in my Thoughts papers in a while. The main reason is I’ve been creating thoughts from when I wasn’t writing Thoughts papers. The first of them was from when I was in grade school. I started a list of traumas from my life back in 2019, but I never actually fleshed them out. You already know this, but I decided they could just be Thoughts papers from when I wasn’t writing Thoughts papers. I’m focusing mainly on traumas because those are the only things I remember all these years later. I’ve heard people talking about their earliest memory in life. The earliest memory I could come up with was from the first grade. It could have been from junior first, but I chose first grade to avoid confusion. In case you don’t know, junior first was a class made up of emotionally stunted students like me who weren’t quite ready for first grade. When I later found out that everyone didn’t go to junior first, I thought it was because I failed kindergarten. As it turns out, it was probably the earliest indication of my autism, but most people weren’t aware of autism back in the 1800s (pause for uproarious laughter from my throngs of future readers).

As I added to the list of traumas from my younger life, I remembered more and more of them. I was anxious from my childhood into my adulthood. If I’m honest with myself, I was anxious until years after I started taking anxiety medication when I was about 40. Most of the traumas are humorous in hindsight, but a few are simply traumatic and hard to write about. My worst traumas centered on how hard it was for me to make and/or keep friendships. I was not a good friend. I contributed little to my few friendships. Not having friends makes you bad at being a friend.