When I started this blog, the idea was to take a list my dad had when he was teaching high school sophomore English, he would write a topic upon the board and we could either write for fifteen minutes about the topic, or he had given all of his students a list with over 500 topics they could write about. My original idea was to write for fifteen minutes on each topic from the list of 500 topics, but then something kind of cool happened. I found that I didn't need the list. I had enough to say without feel inspired from the list. Here at post 125, I think I am going to start taking a topic from that list every now and then. I will have to change the topic sentence a little bit because the topics are sometimes geared towards a high school student's point of view, but they are easy enough to change to relate to me, so that's what I am going to do.
So, now that I have that out of the way, the topic will be "What is your favorite time of the year".
As most of you know, I have Asperger's Syndrome and the best way I can explain it to people, especially my 12 year old son, Elliot, is that my brain is still wired and in working order, but the pathways through my brain travel in different ways that make sense to me, but not a lot of sense to those who don't know me very well. While I hate some of the symptoms, some of them are very beneficial for me. Being obsessed with movies helped my life go in a way where that "symptom" isn't such a bad thing. In fact, it helps me out quite a bit.
I was talking to a new film critic at a movie screening last night, and she had her notepads and pens. I introduced myself, and she asked me why I didn't have my pen and notepad. I told her that when I am watching a movie, taking notes takes my mind off of what's going on in the movie, and more concerned with writing and having it be legible, and that I actually have a great memory, not to mention, I record my podcasts and write my reviews right after I get home, and so everything I have just seen is still playing in my mind a little bit, and she told me that she can't remember well enough to be able to do that, but she was an excellent notetaker. I was a little jealous.
So what does that have anything to do with my favorite time of the year? Most people who suffer from depression and anxiety go into their depressive state when winter comes around. It's cold, the days seem shorter because of the earth's rotation, and for some reason, people get really depressed during the winter. In fact, studies have shown that more people commit suicide during the month of December.
Now back to my brain with Asperger's Syndrome, my depressions and anxieties start hitting me in the latter part of spring, and continue through the end of August. So, like I said, my brain takes different routes to where the thoughts and motor skills I have take a detour, and I end up in the same place, just maybe a different time of the day, week or year. My depression hits me in the summer, but when I go outside near the end of August, and it isn't too hot outside, not to mention my families love for sports, especially college football, Autumn is my favorite time of the year because my depression starts to go away, the air is cool and crisp where a hoodie or sweatshirt is fine, but still too warm for a coat. That's my favorite time of the year. It means the depression, for the most part, lets up and I am able to make my way out of the funk eventually.
The only issue is I know that the closer it gets to summer, the more stressed out and depressed I get, which starts the worrying a little earlier than I would like. I do like the warm weather and love to do outdoor activities. I really want to get into enough physical shape to start snowboarding again. I love it and miss is tremendously, but my 42 year old body is starting to tell me that if I want to have any fun, I have to discipline myself, and again, that discipline in my brain with again take a short detour to where I need to figure out how to get my brain to have the right thoughts at the right times and right ways to motivate me which may be different from the normal neuro pathways most people have, and I think knowing that is half the battle. (Remember when kids cartoons on Saturday mornings used to tell us things like that right before a commercial break?) (Have you ever lived in the world when Saturday morning cartoons were a cool thing?) I wasn't a fan of G.I. Joe, but I remember the commercial breaks coming up because they would tell you something like don't do drugs, they ruin your brain, and now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
Wow, so as you can see, even in this post that was just about my favorite time of the year turned into a post about how my brain works differently, and I might be weird sometimes, but weird isn't always bad. Without weirdness, there are tons of things in my life I would be missing out on if I had a "normal" brain.
Well, if you are all still out there reading my posts, as I hope you are, I hope you are doing well. If you aren't reading my posts, then you won't know that I just wrote this. I hope that my posts still have interesting things, or fun ideas. I love sharing what I love and why I love it. If it's inspiring, I will keep doing it. I could just do it for me to practice more of my writing as a creative storyteller over a blogger, but we shall see. I'll be back soon with another post,,,,,,,hopefully!
Uncky Nate- Out!!!
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