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03-19-2024: Do I Have Autistic Burnout or What?

(Warning: This is blog mention me ranting about life, harassment, grooming, politics, the Israel-Hamas war, Donald Trump and swearing. Please take care before reading on.)

My mind is stuck.

I want to do things, but my mind won’t let me. It won’t let me watch my anime that is hogging up my MAL backlog list, play the numerous video games that’s piling up on my backlog, read the fanfics of my favorite franchises and special interests on AO3, draw my favorite characters and write fanfics about them. I can’t even do anything about my OCs either as the only thing I can do is write my timelines about them and hope to God that I can remember them when I do get to it!

Some says that this might be executive dysfunction, which haunts many autistic people, like me. Other says that this is the work of burnout, which causes me to be more frustrated and tried than before thanks to the world being a terrible place. But wait! I mention that I’m autistic, so regular burnout doesn’t apply to me as there’s autistic burnout, which is nearly the same thing as burnout itself. But the main difference is that autistic people is caused by stress from masking and living in a neurotypical environment that doesn’t accommodate needs of autistic people, compared to regular burnout. I hear that autistic burnout can last for YEARS and it can cause some people to lose basic skills such as cooking, cleaning and even bathing themselves, which make me scared as it could happen to me and I won’t know it until it’s too late!

I think I have autistic burnout as it’s the reason why I haven’t had a job in over a year due to having meltdowns from not having accommodations at my last job (along it being a toxic environment where there is a huge turnover). Then I keep hearing on the news that the job market sucks right now with the numerous people getting laid off in the tech department (which I’ll get to, soon) that been occurring in the past year and that AI is going to take over the autistic “friendly” jobs such as data entry, copywriter, proofreader and legal assistants, which discouraged me from applying them anyways, knowing that I’ll just get replaced. I’m worried that I might never have a job again since no one wants to hire me due to having a huge employment gap in my resume from not having a job and keeping one for six months!

It’s so bad that I have to apply for SSDI, in hoping to get some relief. But then I hear the horror stories on the Internet that you can only allow to have $2,000 in your savings and if they see that you have more than that, they stop sending you money and force you to pay back all the money they gave you! Then there’s the issues of trying get accepted in the first place as SSDI likes to reject you for numerous reasons. I know they rejected my application last year, which caused me to have a huge meltdown, thinking that I’m not worth it and that I should just suffer and die without getting help!

I think I have autistic burnout as my normal special interest of video games and Nintendo isn’t cutting as it used to be. In my last blog (which was a bit too long and triggering for some), I mention a LPer (Let’s Player) that I used to watch and that he was the reason I got into video games. Well, it wasn’t until two months ago; he was outed as both a creep and a groomer by many (with receipts!), which devastated me and caused me to have my first meltdown in months! He was one of the few YouTubers I respected and now that’s gone.

This caused to think very hard on what I should do now as I (still) haven’t got over it and wondered if I can continue to like video games because of him. I know that I stopped watching LPs and Twitch streams because of the scandal. It didn’t help that I was suffering from burnout from trying to catch up on his latest videos, which occur long before the scandal broke out.

It also doesn’t help that in the last year, I keep reading depressing articles of video game developers are getting laid off from their jobs due to gaming companies saying that they can’t "afford them", before increasing their yearly profits to please their investors. This makes me angry as those developers worked in blood and tears on the games that they made, just for them to lose their jobs for the sake of profit!

Last year, there were so many good games that came out, but we can’t even celebrate that as those same developers who worked on some of those games, lose their jobs even though it made the gaming studio money. I feel like stuff like that is going to cause people to stay away from video games companies and go indie instead. It’ll even cause people to stop liking video games in general because it turns out that video game companies are as greedy, like the rest of major businesses. Like, why bother enjoying games knowing that the same people, who made your favorite games, are now jobless. For me, I think it’s wrong and it's causing me to think twice about supporting video games.

Then there’s Nintendo, who just a few weeks ago, shut down a very popular Switch emulator which anger their fans to the point that some lost their respect for the gaming company (and that it wasn’t the first time they send out their ninja lawyers) and swore off of buying their products.

I remember making a long rant about what Nintendo did on both Tumblr and Cohost that not many people can’t afford their latest consoles and games and they have to rely on emulation before mentioning that they need to stop abandoning their old games as soon the new console comes out. I think I made one person angry on Tumblr as they called me out on my post that people can’t afford the Switch as they mention there’s the Switch Lite, which is $100 cheaper than the original model! While I do agree on their statement, I end up deleting their comment anyways as I didn’t have the energy or the mood to fight back.

The comment got me scared that I believed the assholes are going to come after me for my unpopular options. And this was Tumblr, which is supposed to be safe to mention stuff like that, compared to Reddit and Twitter! It was after that, I decided that I should be a little careful on talking about those “hot takes” in the future to prevent something like that to happen again.

I’m worried that thanks to the 3 different events related to gaming, I might be losing my special interest in video games in general and worried that I can’t find a replacement for it. You can see that I haven’t been playing video games as much as I used to. If you see my gaming log on one of my pages, you see I beat 20 games last year; now, I only beat 4 games and it’s March. Same time last year, I beat my 10th game due to having so much free time from quitting my last job and having the energy to do so. I still want to beat 10 games as it’s my main goal each year, but I’m worried that my autistic burnout won’t allow me to do so and that it might be time to give up and abandon video games in general.

I think I have autistic burnout I’m angry and sad as I keep seeing the Palestinians are dying of starvation and getting bombed on, which our government is allowing it to happen and that I can’t do anything about it! It’s the lack of justice which makes me angry as autistic people are more likely to have a strong sense of justice. Seeing the Palestinians die for no reason other than being themselves, makes me want to scream! It also makes me ashamed of being an American because while I have access to food and shelter and not have to worry about being in a dangerous environment, they can’t and isn’t even allow to leave the area, which means they are dissent to die anyways!

I mention in at the end of the year blog that I might be planning to vote 3rd party to show my disgust over our president handing bombs and weapons to the Israel government, who’s basically committing genocide to the Palestinians as we speak. I mention to my mom about my plan to vote 3rd party last month and she went AFTER ME, saying “don’t do that” as I’ll be throwing away my vote if I vote 3rd party and “Trump might come back because of it” and “it’s not Biden’s fault that Palestinians are getting killed for just existing”!

Of course, I don’t want Trump to become president again, but the same time, I don’t approve what Biden is doing and wish that there are better candidates who will support the Palestinians and force Israel to ceasefire! I know that because of that, I decided to sit out the primary votes in March (since my state didn’t have the uncommitted vote that some people used to protest Biden), but I’m planning to vote early in the general election in October and hope that the war end to the point that I can vote for Biden without feeling “guilty” for voting for a war criminal.

To make me feel better about this, I’m doing everything I can to support the Palestinians. I’m boycotting all those who are supporting Israel. I haven’t step foot in the McDonalds that near my house since last October due to the Israel branch handing out free food to the Israeli soldiers, who are murdering Palestinians, like it’s a game to them. The other reasons why I stayed away from that the local McDonalds are due to having bad management and it gave my nephew food poisoning to the point he had to go to the ER! You think the last sentence doesn’t relate to this, but it does as McDonalds is just a terrible business overall and that I should stick to local restaurants instead, who some might even have fundraisers to support the Palestinians!

I also (mostly) stayed away from DeviantArt due their owner is an Israeli web company that support the war and even made the news late last year, for firing an Irish worker, who supported the Palestinians in their the work group chat. I won’t even support this year’s Eurovision (which I got into recently) because Israel is in it and many are calling the singing competition to kick the apartheid country out (which they refused to), like they did with Russia when they invaded Ukraine in 2022.

But the few things that I can’t do (but want to) is to spend money on the eSim cards that the Palestinians need to call their love ones and to report to the media on the terrible things that Israel government are doing to them as I don’t have a job or income that’ll allow me to do so; same thing with me buying pro-Palestinian stuff that will support the Palestinians as I have lack of money to do so. Then there’s the fact that I can’t go the pro-Palestinian protests that take place in my area because mom don’t want me to go alone, fearing that there might be trouble and that I might get arrested, which will cause me to have a huge meltdown over getting in trouble for doing the right thing by protesting.

But one thing that I should be doing, but won’t is giving up Coke as the company is supporting the Israeli military. I know, I know, I’m a big, fat hypocrite; I should be drinking Pepsi instead as its pro-Palestinian, but I hate Pepsi as it doesn’t taste right to me! I blame my autism for having a sensitive tongue that allows me to taste the difference between Coke and Pepsi products. And that I hate major changes, as forcing myself to switch soda brands due to one of them is supporting genocide, makes me feel anxious to the point I might suffer a meltdown just from thinking about it! So for now, the next time I buy another overpriced Cherry Coke from the gas station near my house, another Palestinian dies from a bomb that is dropped by the Israel military, who knows that Coke-Cola has their backs.

Now if I do have autistic burnout from all the events I mention, then what? I don’t feel anything different other than being more tired than before. So much that I rather stay in bed all day and not get up. I still know how to cook and do basic chores, but how long until that can’t do those things either because of autistic burnout? And how long will this autistic burnout last? Will it last for the rest of my life until the day I died? Or there’s a chance I had it for years and I didn’t notice it until now?

If I do have autistic burnout, how will it end? Do I have to give up a few things to get me cured of autistic burnout? If I’m “cured” of autistic burnout, how long it’s going to last until it comes back? Can I eventually go back doing the things I love? Or will it be gone forever as the guilt of having a sucky life due to being autistic takes over me.

Or is this actual burnout along, which means I’m overexuated as usual, which is a bad habit of mine?

I don’t know. I’m tired, sad, scared, loss and hopeless. I don’t know what to do and I think it’s going to be forever. I wish things will get better, but it won’t base on how things are going on in the world.

It sucks and there’s no way out of it.

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