Well, the thing is that Qadgop the Mercotan is a doctor, your reaction also shows the he is right.
No, really, I was a lot like you; what you need to get is that you should not feel that odd, because when I was young I also got the idea that I might be an alien, and not the kind that is from other countries, but an extraterrestrial. What you need to get is that even that feeling you have is not unique.
How odd I was and felt? Remember that scene in the latest Spider-man movie? The one with Peter Parker stopping a student from bullying another while **all **other students were just telling them to fight? Imagine it with even more students, and I was Peter Parker before getting spider powers. It helped that I was a senior then and I was not then trashed by the bully, nor by the sea of other students that just wanted to see a fight, their looks were enough for me to realize that I was lucky that day but It felt good that I made a difference.
So don’t feel bad about being different, it is actually an interesting thing, but also keep perspective, there are millions like us too.
I’m 32, and while I’m in some ways much better off than I was then, I have some of the same problems, and in some ways I’m worse, because I’m frustrated at the lack of progress and worried that it’s now a permanent situation.
And some people perceive (truly) that people your age act like people your age; maturing, changing, and not yet what you are going to be.
You will be different, and most people feel less restless, irritable, and discontent as they leave their 20’s. Not all, by any means. And new problems replace the old ones. But overall, outlooks change and life seems a bit easier to live.
I believe you when you say you are a different. Just because I generally accept people at their word rather than arguing with them that they are wrong.
The question is what are you going to do about being an alien? Does it bother you enough to change? Do you think you need therapy? Are you looking for ideas to connect with like-minded people?
Or are you just looking to kvetch?
I think you’re receiving not so helpful comments because we don’t know what you’re looking for.
Well, I think everyone you’ve ever met would say they have felt strange and unlike others at least at times. If you think about it, we have to have some individuation. We’re not ants or worker bees or Emmets from the Lego Movie.
One of the things I think we all tend to do is make the exact details of our differences more important than they really are. But unless someone is acting deliberately to quash their individuality, we all have things, big or small, that set us apart from others.
I’ve always been very prone to excitement over things that make other people’s eyes glaze over. I can say that my way is obviously superior, which is false. I can say that I should conform, which is pointless. Or I can say that it’s okay to have this difference and that having this difference makes my life more fun and interesting.
Obviously, if the differences run more toward other people liking peanut butter and you liking to eat moon rocks and other people, things become more complicated. But so far, it seems like you’re pushing back against a specific suburbanesque mindset of 2.2 kids and a house and football every Sunday. I don’t have or do any of those things, and I’m not particularly unusual.
25-30 hrs a week is really a minimal amount to work. It’s less than a quarter of your waking hours. Even 50 hrs a week amounts to only half of your weekday working hours. Not a bad tradeoff if you consider you get in return:
Sense of purpose
Money
Social interaction for better or for worse
Skills/experience
But yeah. I’m sure working half as long for a quarter of the wages is loads better.
50 hours a week just isn’t feasible for some psyches. I can’t stand having that much of my free time eaten up by work. Drives me absolutely batty. I made a lot of little promises to myself over the years that improve my life. For instance: I’ll never take a college class on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, check. I won’t take a job again where I have to tuck my shirt in, check. I won’t take a job again that routinely expects more than 40 hours a week, check. His goal in life can be to get or create a job for himself that only requires working 30 hours a week for a decent amount of money. Hey, look at that, my husband has one of those! They’re not impossible to find. Besides, he can find out himself just how much he cares about that life goal and how much effort it might take without anyone’s interference. Life kind of handles that on its own. I would certainly rather take less hours over more pay myself.
Anyway, don’t believe any bull about babies, houses, and football. Many of us “grow up” into never changing our minds about that stuff. Hell, here on the Dope I think I remember a thread/poll showing that a majority of us never had children and never plan to.
Would you say it just isn’t feasible or rather just isn’t preferable? 25 hrs a week amounts to 5 hrs a day. What meaningful work is there that only requires 4 hrs a day and off on weekends?
There are lots of little social niceties about my job that I don’t particularly enjoy but it’s trivial. I don’t understand why there’s a hard cutoff at 40 hrs, or 30 hrs, or 100 hrs. To openly declare “I shan’t be working more than X hrs a week” seems petty and childish to me.
I don’t mean to personally attack you, your husband, or the OP’s line of work. I just take offense to the idea that people who work 9-5’s are somehow dullards who are duped into wearing ties and slacks and don’t know any better. It’s a job. We do it. Some/most of us enjoy it. On top of the satisfaction, the difference between an extra hour or two a day trifles compared to the benefits: monetary or otherwise we receive.
The myth of the office drone seems to be fertilized by this idea that some faceless corporation is perpetrating some great evil by boxing up our populous of snowflakes into cubicle-traps. It’s a dumb argument.
How did you nail what? The OP didn’t say he was diagnosed with anything, and there isn’t anything “Asperger’s” about the content or style of his posts.
I’m fucking sick of Asperger’s being used as a catchall term for anyone who is the least bit unusual. It’s demeaning to those who have the diagnosis, and it pathologizes individuals who may not have anything wrong with them except a bit of immaturity.
