Ark-5

I’ve integrated a Boox e-ink tablet with my Linux system using syncthing. Not taking is a treat and can be done right onto PDFs or e-books.

Oof yeah, the work environment sounds rough. The industry I’m in overlaps a lot with queer, and neurodivergent folk, which helps set the tone of a lot of interactions for sure.

I really relate to the being “one of the more engaging folks”. I’m very good at being interested in new information, which often translates to people talking to me when they should be talking to the whole group. That is super draining because once it’s started I feel a bit of a responsibility to maintain that so the person giving instruction doesn’t get thrown off.

The part about first impressions is interesting to me. I feel like people that are that quick to write someone off aren’t really people I would personally want to hang out with. Obviously in a work environment that is tough because you’re around them no matter what, but yeah, seems like those people aren’t very accepting or accommodating.

Have you considered talking to your employer about potential accommodations? I read an article recently about a bunch of adults that finally brought their diagnoses up to their bosses and it actually went really well.

Thanks for the kind words at the end of your reply. Keep on keeping on!

Some of what I’ll say has probably been said, but here are some of my thoughts.

I really struggle with small talk. Like I would rather sit in silence than exchange useless thoughts/information, so a lot of the “standard” ways society makes conversation just really pain me, even as just a start for more interesting conversations.

I’ve remedied this in a few ways. The first, as others have mentioned, try to find something about the person you take interest with. Getting into fashion has proven to be a wonderful tool for this for me. It’s very easy to find an item in someone’s outfit I like. If it’s an interesting piece of clothing or jewelry it probably has a fun story behind it. So much of the clothing that actually gets sold these days is really bland I feel, just overpriced basics. Many actually neat pieces are vintage or at least second hand, and often come with stories of where they were from or how they came into someone’s possession.

I’m not saying become a fashion girlie, but a lot of people carry indicators of their interests in some way. Stickers on water bottles or pins on bags. I love seeing someone with a sticker from the same fandom as me, or a pride pin. Even if it’s just a “hey I like your pin”. Getting in the habit of stuff like that will just help you approach people, and make you more approachable.

Another thing I’ve started doing more is smiling at people. This was something I had to get used to as I started passing more, but most people that were not socialized as men often smile at one another in passing. Even just actually looking at people. Like I don’t feel as weird observing things I find interesting, because worst case if someone notices me looking at them or something, I’ll just smile. Show some joy, people will often join. I feel like there was this period where I assumed I was “smiling wrong” and just looking like a creep, but idk, I’m just smiling in the way that feels genuine to me, and most people seems to get it. From there if more interaction happens then I got back to my first point.

Between these two things I think I’ve just become a more socially accessible person. I’m good at being interested in things, I had to get better at noticing things I can take interest in.

Finally, it is tiring. Make sure to take care of yourself. If your social battery is empty, don’t be social!! As I’ve lived more of my truth, with both my autism and my transition, I’ve naturally fallen in with people that are also very accessible and accommodating. If I need to have a non-verbal night with friends they won’t question that and in fact we all know enough sign language to make that very doable.

You’ll start meeting people that you mesh with!! It is absolutely tough putting yourself out there, and you’re clearly putting lots of thought and effort into this. Keep going!

I use foot, it’s very bare bones, but I’m using zellig to get all the QoL features I could want!

Yeah, I was running it through Tailscale too. I’m definitely closer to a newbie than I am a self hosting vet, so there’s likely some fault of mine that made things not run so well.

Yeah I had my eye on this a few months back when I was looking for a FOSS windows Remote Desktop alternative. Between the security issues, and generally struggle to get it working well, I eventually went to a sunshine/moonlight combo for shockingly high performance screen sharing that can even handle basic gaming if need be.

Dreams of Code on YouTube has a video for a full start to finish arch install specifically including full disk encryption. While my computer is far from “slow” it’s also nothing crazy, and other than adding a second password to my bootup process, the decrypting really doesn’t take long.

Oh damn. Okay, realizing that a lot of my “pickiness” with clothes was actually a ‘tism thing opened a lot of doors, but also turned into a bit of a rollercoaster. I started my transition at the same time as it really clicked I was neurodivergent so my desires to explore fashion I felt I had been robbed of clashed with my sensory stuff.

I prefer tighter under-things, not going into detail why, but hopefully y’all can piece it together. Most of my shirts are 100% cotton, mostly looser and cropped shorter because I’ve got a tiny torso. I hate it when I feel like a shirt is sticking around my hips and has to pull itself up when I lean/twist. So loose flowy tops generally, unless I’m going for a specific fashion moment. This extends to bras. Usually softer “t-shirt” bras, but I can put up with something less comfortable so long as I look particularly good in it and I’m not wearing it for a full day.

Pants have been a journey. I used to get really bad eczema on the backs of my knees, so for a long time I only wore shorts. Year round, rain, shine, snow. Jeans in particular were a real struggle as a kid. I grew out of my eczema, so I’ve forced myself to at least try a lot of the pants I hated as a kid again. This made me discover the wonderful world of second hand jeans. The big reason I couldn’t handle jeans as a kid was I would be trying new, un-broken in, jeans, and they are just waaaaayyyyy too scratchy.

Outer layers. Idk, so long as my base is comfy, I use outer layers as fashion opportunities.

Oh v necks or at least relaxed neck line shirts only. Normal t-shirt neck lines feel like I’m being choked, and not in the fun way.

I got long winded, I think that’s most of the specifics I usually deal with.

Worse, but I think a big part of that has been giving myself the space to have those sensory response moments, and just like understanding myself better, being more patient with myself, stuff like that.

Yeah, I’ve largely figured out how to change all these settings from configs for myself, just always on the lookout for a nice gui. I’m slowly working to make a Linux experience I can install for my relatives that makes the transition from crapware Windows relatively painless.

Ah, so being on Hyprland means I can’t really gain access to this, right?

I’m using Wayland, where do I find this settings gui?

I’m currently fairly attached to my instance, but I’m so glad this is happening!! Might make a second account just to give y’all the numbers!

Yeah, by my understanding this is by design. However, there’s nothing stopping you from running multiple instances for each user account on a computer, assuming you are running Linux and are using the Syncthing CLI. Probably can’t do that on windows though.

Yeah, I’d also generally prefer to use my front matter for my global tagging and sorting so I can keep my templating consistent. I’m not explicitly opposed to adding more, but in an ideal world I’d keep my front matter pretty trim.

I’ll do some experiments of my own with data view and such to see if I can get some good functionality.

Could you elaborate on “move to obsidian”? I’m already storing some recipes in my vault, but I would be interested in further features like shopping list generation and other filtering options.

A fellow Rust enjoyer I see.

vtop is nice too since it still is very readable in small windows.

As of now I ran moonlight on Windows, so I might not be able to help a ton. I just started my own Arch (by the way) install that I plan to revisit getting moonlight running on, but I’m not even at a desktop environment yet.

I’ve found using software meant for gaming often works better for this application. My personal choice is moonlight. I run it behind Tailscale so my connections never leave my devices. Even over cellular it’s snappy enough for non gaming tasks, and if I need to check on my dailies in a game or something similar, it handles that much better than any Remote Desktop product. I messed around with rust desk and could never get it quite working and didn’t feel comfortable using the public servers at the time. So I swapped to moonlight and it serves me well.

Games on Whales is a containerized version of moonlight that I struggled to get working as well, but I thinks that’s because I’m a docker beginner.

Syncthing and KoReader. I also have a few android eink devices and this system works great for me. When I need a better interface for organizing/editing metadata of files I use calibre which also has some plugins to help free your files from proprietary epub readers.