I Passed the First Part!

I'm happy to say I'm on the way to becoming officially diagnosed with autism.

I got my initial screening results yesterday.  

I marked the occasion in my Minecraft tunnel.

A bat was screeching...probably in support.

I'm no more autistic than I was two days ago or two weeks ago. And I won't be more autistic after I finish the second part of the diagnosis process. This is just about getting validation...an official stamp.

An analogy I used with a family member today is:  In terms of getting vaccinated with Covid... It would be like the vaccine has gone into my arm.  But now I'm waiting for the nurse to fill out my card.

Being autistic is not the shot in the arm in this analogy.  I don't have anything to fit that.  Instead it would be getting the initial screening.  A psychologist has read about my life and looked at my test scores and said...Yes, you look autistic to me.  But to make it more official, I have to fill out more stuff and take more tests...AND have an interview.

Okay. Yes. There's a small tiny fear in me that I'm going to say something in the next steps that will make the psychologist say.  Oops. Never mind.  We totally fucked this up. You are not autistic after all.

Hopefully that fear will stay tiny in the next few months.  But back to the analogy...it might be like you've gotten the vaccine.  You got your card. You got photos of your card on your phone.  Yet....did you REALLY get the vaccine?  What if you had a bad batch?  What if an anti-vaxxer was posing as a nurse and injected you with apple juice?  

Yikes.  Thinking about this has me worried now.  Maybe I need to hold a spoon up to my forehead to make sure I'm properly magnetized.  

Wanting to Wake Up and Go Home

I've been struggling think of a way to describe the strange feeling I've had the past few months.

I came up with a description that might work.

Let's say for some reason you were stuck in a dream. Maybe you're in a coma.  It's not a horrible dream.  It's fairly okay. There are good parts, bad parts, mediocre parts, etc.  

You don't usually realize you are dreaming.  You go with the flow.  But sometimes you realize it, and though it's not a horrible dream, there's a part of you that thinks: Okay. This is nice and all.  But I've had enough. I want to wake up and go home.

Fortunately, I do NOT have this feeling 24/7.  It just comes in waves...usually once or twice a day.  And I feel like I'm having it less lately.  

In other news, we saw the movie Coda, and it has inspired me to slowly start learning American sign language.  I'm using this YouTube channel for that.

AND....

I finally managed to find my second City in Minecraft.  It involved expanding a map and then digging my way back home.  It took many hours spread over multiple days.

I went the underground route, because my lack of going to sleep gave me the extra terrifying threat of the night phantoms.

I did periodically surface carefully during the daylight hours to grab some needed wood and place some doors in various locations.  My idea was that I wanted doors in the overworld in case I somehow died underground. I wanted to have hope that I could find the tunnels again.  I have tons of good stuff collected in various places along the tunnels.

I tunneled all the way up into one of my skyscrapers.  

Though I was happy and relieved to find my way back to my city, I was a tiny bit disappointed, because I enjoyed the quest.  I realized I didn't want to end the tunneling.  So I've started a second route in the tunnel with plans to continue filling the map via underground.  

Map #41 which is an expansion of Map #35
The top left hand corner is where I got lost.
In the green space to the left of the desert, there
are two white blobs.  The northern, smaller one is 
my city. My two goals: 1. Make the white blob a 
bigger blob 2. Fill out the rest of the map.
Lots of building and lots of exploring. 

How would our world change if we knew for sure there was life after death, and it was easy for our dearly-beloved to talk to us via the Internet?   

The Dead are Online, a novel by Dina Roberts 

Found and Lost

I've had an interesting Minecraft experience.

So, here's the story.

A couple of months ago, I created a Minecraft survival world with plans of building a small city.  I wanted to build skyscrapers.  

I initially spawned in the midst of a rainforest.  I walked around trying to find a place to start the city...preferably not in a rainforest.  

The best I could find was a bamboo forest.

There was a lot of bamboo.  

I started to make a ground for my city.

I decided to use polished diorite (which I sort of regret. I wish I had chosen gravel instead).

I started working—alternating between mining, chopping down the bamboo, and replacing the dirt with the diorite.

I also started a small wheat farm and did some other exploring.

Then one day, I got lost and couldn't find my way back home.

I tried and I tried.

Then I gave up.

I found a....

I think it was a forest biome?  

I'm not sure, actually.

I just know it wasn't rainforest.  Though there was rainforest very close by.

I started a new city.

I repeated the mistake of using polished diorite as my ground.  Then I started working on the skyscrapers. I have a polished granite one, a stone brick one, a polished andesite one, a deepslate one, a stone one, and a brick one.

A couple are finished, some are close to finish, and others are going to be works in progress for awhile.

Oh, and I plan to start some new buildings as well. 

Though I love building.  I've also had the itch to explore.  And I've been REALLY into creating maps.

I don't know what it's called. But with the maps....

You can put a map into a cartography table along with some paper and then expand the map.  Well, it shrinks the area that you have already mapped and then leaves extra space for more mapping.  

I'm doing a really bad job of explaining this.

Maybe I should add that with mapping, you start with an empty map.  Then when you walk around your world, the empty map gets filled with the places you are visiting.

So....

I had fun creating various maps and then expanding then.

Each map gets numbered.

When I got to map #35, I decided to make copies of this particular map.  Then my secondary goal (first being building of skyscrapers) was to completely fill out map #35.

And in filling out map #35, I hoped to finally find my original city location.

It's become almost like a holy grail to me.  Or...like the lost city of Atlantis.

In the past week or so, I've taken many treks.  I've built little houses to protect myself at night...sometimes sleeping and resetting my re-spawning in them and sometimes not.  I took precautions against losing my second city by putting copies of #35 in various chests along the way and also in some of the houses.   

This way if I respawn somewhere and find there is no longer a map in that particular house, I can walk around aimlessly and hopefully find a random chest with a map #35 in it.  

Everything was going fine.

Until one day, I was exploring, and I went to check the map and saw I had gone off map.

This has happened to me with other maps, and I was able to quickly get back onto the map and find my way back.

But this time.....

No such luck.

Night was approaching, so I decided to go underground to continue my getting-back-on-the-map with much less threat of encountering the hostile mobs.  

I mined and I mined.  I walked and I walked.  

No matter how far I went, I couldn't seem to get back on the map.

Note:  My little map curser seemed to be stuck onto the top left side of the map, so my guess was that I had gone too far north and too far west.  So I thought heading to the south and to the east would remedy that.

But no.

The little map curser wouldn't move.

Well, then it did move but it moved further up on the map.  ???!!!!!

I decided to take another tactic. 

Another note: I should mention that though I had the map with me, I did NOT have a compass.  So I found myself some iron and some redstone.  I made a few compasses. That's how I was able to head south and east.

Since going south and east wasn't helping, I decided that I would go north on the compass instead.  Going north on the compass is supposed to bring you to your original spawning point.

Neither my old city or new city are at my original spawning point.  But I know (hope) that it is at least somewhat close to both of them.  I didn't travel THAT far in finding either of my cities.  

I followed north on the compass for awhile.

I decided, though, that I should probably start heading upwards and out into the over-and-above world.  Though I had enough materials to survive for awhile, I knew soon that I would need more wood for tools, torches, chests, etc.  You can't often find underground.   

I went up and then out...cut down a few trees.  

I went back under.

Then for some reason...I went back up and out again.

I saw torches in the near distance...which means I had been there before.

I went out....took some steps towards the light.

Guess what I found?

My original city!!!

I opened up the double chest I had left there and found all kinds of goodies.  For some reason, there were multiple shears. I guess I had hopes of finding sheep close by.  

It was really nice to find my old city.

My original city beginnings

Now I have to try to find my new city.

I could easily find it, actually, by letting myself be killed.  Then I will spawn back into a little house that is in the map #35 area. The problem with that is while being lost, I have picked up a ton of stuff....lots of materials for my skyscrapers plus a lot of iron and other lovely things.  If I die, I will lose it all.

I could craft another chest in the old city, put my goodies in there, respawn, and then hope to find the old city again later.

But instead, my plan is to expand map #35 some more and hope that the expanded map will include both the old city AND the new city.  

To do this, I need a cartography table and some paper.  For both of those, I need sugar cane.

I found three pieces of sugar cane and planted them.  I'm waiting for them to grow; then I will eventually be able to make an expanded map.  

Hopefully.

Once I make my way home, I'm still worried about not surviving the trek....and then losing all my carried treasures.

So I think I'm going to craft a lot of chests and put various amounts of the treasures in the chests along the way.  That way if I die, the treasures won't all be lost in the oblivion.  I'll have hope that in future explorations, I'll be able to find some of the stuff.

And I'll also keep some of the treasures with me...in case I do happen to survive my way back to my city.

Well....that's my tale.  It will probably be incredibly boring to anyone who doesn't play Minecraft and probably boring even to most people who do play Minecraft.

I'm hoping that I explained things well enough that, at the very least, my future self won't be bored reading this post.  

In other video game news:  Tim and I have been watching Mythic Quest.  I'm loving it.  It's making me want to play one of those types of games.

I think the one in Mythic Quest is modeled after World of Warcraft.  I'm not attracted to that type of setting.  I'm wondering if there's any that have settings I would like.

I wouldn't mind a Western, maybe?  

Oh!  You know what would be awesome?  A massive multiplayer roleplaying game that is based off some of the Mario Kart tracks.  I would love the water park one.

For now...I will probably just stick to playing Minecraft and Mario Kart.  

P.S-Bad news.  Between writing this and proofreading this, I grew enough sugarcane to make enough paper to expand the map.  It didn't work the way I wanted.  What I have now is an almost completely blank map with my curser still stuck in the upper left hand corner!  This map is now #39.  

I'm not sure what to do next.  

If anyone has any advice......

I'm Doing Great! I'm Okay. I'm Falling Apart

 I feel like such a confused mix of emotions lately.

Because of that, I'm not sure I can get my thoughts together in a coherent way. So I think I'm going to do a numbered post of related and unrelated things.

1. I've cried at bedtime at least 4 times lately.  I was going to use the phrase "Cried myself to sleep" but that's really not true.  The crying prevents me from falling asleep, because my nose gets all snotty.  I have to stop crying and blow my nose; then fall asleep.

Two times the crying was due to hyper-empathy related to my nieces/nephews.  Once it was for missing Jack who is at college.  The other was for missing Disney World.  

2. I feel I have an idea now about the difference between sadness and depression.  

I don't think depression is limited to only those who have been officially diagnosed or those who fail or struggle to function or those who have been feeling very sad for a certain minimum of time.  I think depression is a sadness that also involves hopelessness and a loss of joy in all the areas that used to bring us joy.  

I have been depressed before.

BUT....

I realize that when I'm feeling bad lately,  I am feeling sad but not depressed.

I still find joy in things that I love.

I still feel hope.

I'm just sad.  Sometimes.

3. I miss life before the pandemic.  

I'm a little late to that sadness, I think.

I think with the 2020 stuff, my main feelings were anger, excitement, fascination, and fear. Well, and there was also some relief.  Because though I often stayed home in the pre-pandemic days, suddenly this was a GOOD thing rather than something to feel guilty or embarrassed about. 

4. I have very uneven empathy.

Sometimes I have hyper-empathy.  And at times that feels absolutely crushing.  I think sometimes I feel more pain when something happens to someone else than if it was (or is) actually happening to me.  Like if it's happening to me, I can handle it. But if it's happening to someone else, I feel like I'm drowning.  It can get to the point where I wish to not exist anymore.  

Other times, I eerily lack empathy.  I'm like completely cold-blooded.  I think this most often happens when I read the news.  I feel like a psychopath sometimes.  

But sometimes it's also about my selfishness greatly overshadowing the empathy.  For example, someone dies and I'm thinking less about those heavily grieving and more about whether we're going to have to go to the funeral and how that's going to be stressful and how that's going to interrupt MY life.

5. Despite my whole post about reasons not to seek an autism diagnosis, I went against my own brilliant advice and am in the process of seeking a diagnosis.  

Now I feel uneasy about talking about autism, which is one of the reasons I've not been posting lately.  Autism is one of the main things on my mind, but I don't feel okay writing about it.

It's one thing writing as someone who is MAYBE-Autistic or PROBABLY-Autistic.

It's another thing writing as someone who might be officially stamped as NOT-Autistic.

And I feel that's the label I'm going to get.

It's not that I don't think I'm autistic.

And it's definitely not that I think the diagnosis-people I've turned to are bad at their job.

It's more like I feel it's my destiny in life to be endure rejection.

I feel I'm going to be rejected. I feel it's going to hurt a huge amount. And I feel it's going to be another time where I pretend to the world that I'm okay about it.

6. Though I have a lot of sadness related to changes in my life...and the world in general, I cheer myself up by reminding myself that life always has changes.  What I miss about a year or two ago is very different from my life 10-15 years ago.

A year from now is probably going to be very different from today.

And the changes will probably be good and bad.

If I think back to times that I miss, there are also things about those times that I don't miss.  

7. The nostalgic feelings brought on by some music is often overwhelming for me.  It's like an extremely inviting pool that I want to jump into...but once I start dipping my toes in, I feel like I'm drowning in a mix of longing and sorrow.  

8. I'm REALLY into Minecraft lately.  I have (complicated) rules for myself to keep me from playing all day and night.  

I really love it, though.  It's probably another reason I've not been posting lately.

Right now I'm doing a mix of mostly building and exploring/mapping.

9. Tim bought us a Nintendo Switch and we played Mario Kart.  That brought feelings of nostalgia, but it was, fortunately, a very good nostalgic feeling.  Just the music...and the starting sounds of the game....it made me feel so wonderful.  

The scenes in the game are so beautiful.

10. If I get rejected from autism, I'm going to buy myself a virtual reality.  Well...getting rejected from the initial screening will save me a lot of money. And I'm going to use that money to cheer myself up.

11. I really want to dedicate as much of my life as possible to getting lost in fictional worlds...reading books, playing video games, watching TV shows, etc.  

If I get accepted by autism, I may want to also get more involved in autism-pride and all that.  So I'll take some breaks from fictional worlds for that.

Every so often, I tell myself that even if I'm not autistic, I will want to help people who ARE autistic.  But no.  I'm lying to myself.  I'm going to feel too rejected and resentful.

If I get rejected, instead of going Maleficent, maybe I'll start a support group for all the other people who thought they were autistic but got rejected.  

12. I might continue with screenwriting; though I think it's my destiny to get rejected from that as well.  But I might as well try...just for the hell of it.

13. If I get accepted by autism, I imagine I will be so overly happy.  I think I will almost want to have a big party or something.  Or maybe...I'll just go to the library.    

I imagine my college-age self reading this post and being really shocked and confused.  Or maybe she'd be amused, thinking that I'm being sarcastic or joking.  But I think if I sat down with her and explained things, she'd understand where I'm coming from.  

I really wish the Me's at different ages had each other....as a source of support and entertainment.  I think we really need each other.  

Well...Yeah. I do have my younger selves to look back on.  But I think it would helpful if I always had support from my older selves as well.  It would be nice if the communication was two-way instead of a one way kind of thing.  

14.  The song below does a great job at describing how I've been feeling the past few months. Or really....what I'm longing to feel.