ApathyTree

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Corn

I’m very very amused that this is called “field of corn”. I mean of course it is, but that’s just very dryly funny to me.

Genuinely good advice.

I was on a trip with my partner (I am female, partner is male), and when we got off the train to go home, we had a flat tire.

He is not handy at all, and got super flustered and frustrated and was going to call AAA, and I was like umm.. you have a spare in here, right? Time to learn how to change a tire! Pop that trunk!

And so I made him do it, and walked him through how, and now he knows for next time, yay! I’ve also fixed his dishwasher, patched drywall, several other plumbing things, etc. only thing I wont touch for someone else is electric. I wont even do my own unless its a plug-in thing.

He, in turn, helped me with building my computer and doing various software stuff I could probably do on my own but didn’t know how.

So even if those skills aren’t super useful for you directly, you can and will use them with other people and you can pass on the knowledge. I mean I learned to change a tire as a very young adult, from an off-duty cop who stopped to help on the side of the highway. I knew the basics, but he showed me the full process. And since then I’ve taught two others, but haven’t needed it for myself.

Wouldn’t put it past him tbh. Rich people are super weird.

I have aphantasia as well but I do actually have something sort of like a memory palace.. kinda. It should be completely useless when I’m awake, but isn’t. I have a dream town, and every place I’ve dreamed about more than three times in the last ~20 years is there in a surprisingly consistent and exceptionally vivid way, like logging into a mmorpg, but spawning in random places. If not for it being easily recognizable as “my town”, I’d struggle to tell it from waking reality because that’s the only other time I experience “sight”. It’s genuinely unsettling sometimes, when my brain makes a new place, to not know if I was dreaming. Maybe that’s why I revisit places until they feel comfortable and familiar and get incorporated into the town.

I say it isn’t completely useless because I use spacial memory to “go places” when awake. I can’t see it, but I know what’s there if I go there, the same way I can mentally count the windows, and know what’s around them, in my house without visually touring the house; I think about where I go to open windows on a nice day, and count the stops.

I can’t put things into the town purposely. Locations or objects, unfortunately. Everything has to already be there if I want to make use of it. But if I can find a useful thing on my spacial tour, I can make note of where I found it, or move it to somewhere more useful. Like the finding the windows exercise, but, to continue your example, I happen to recall that next to window 3 is a Christmas cactus with pink heart-shaped flower buds, and I choose to ”move it” it to the 7th window of my tour. (And yes, if I make note that I’ve moved something, it does stay there when I dream, so that’s really neat)

Genuinely not that useful for things people probably normally use a memory palace sort of thing for, like short-term memories, (finding useful objects is difficult, and sometimes requires a lot of in-dream exploring, which takes actual time) but somewhat useful for certain long-term things, like numbers or recipes. And as a bonus, when I forget something, I’ll often stumble across it in my town and be reminded. Like the recipe for my mom’s cheesecake is the literal ingredients just sitting on the counter in the pocket floor she lives in (she’s a nightmare I had often enough to join the town’s residents, but I shoved her in an impossible floor so I can avoid her). I put that recipe there because I like to modify it, and I often forget what the base recipe is. It’s not written down in the normal sense because I’ll lose it, but it’s simple enough for a representation like that to be easy to hold onto.

But I’ve had similar frustrating experiences with people telling me to visualize things for whatever reason. Like nope, my internal computer is GUI-free. Text output only, with a screen reader. Not even multiple voices, which I hear is a thing most people can do, just the one default reader voice.

On the subject of not being able to visualize people, if there’s someone you haven’t seen in a long time, do you falsely match other people up with the description? For example, my mom died when I was 23, and I’m almost 40 now. It’s been so long that I genuinely don’t remember what she looks like unless I’m looking at a photo. But I know her general description, and when I see other women who fit the description I -feel- that they look just like her even though they usually don’t, actually.

According to the article they changed the procedure to require 2/3 keys, so at least they learned that lesson.

My friend has done this, and says “not remotely worth the effort, unless you want survival skills”.

I do this with lychee candies from my local Indian grocer, and every pocket I can wiggle one into without the owner noticing. Thankfully they are quite small, and come in completely sealed little wrappers (so no humidity melting).

Or when the server brings the check I’ll give them a candy, like they often do.

Spreading joy one random sugar hit at a time. Not even 40 but totally understand the impulse.

I’m so so so glad I don’t have this problem.

I definitely lose most stuff the second I set it down, but never things like drink or food.

Car rides when I’m not driving are super hit or miss for me for this one.

Mid-conversation I’ll start drifting off in random thoughts starting from who knows where, and by the time I snap out of it it’s been so long it’s awkward to resume a conversation.

How do you explain that you spent the last 45 minutes planning out exactly how to repurpose parking garages across the country as hydroponics farms (because of the slope, strong building support that can handle a lot of water, and wiring for lights) when public transit or ride share takes over, when the prior conversation was about beer/breweries? While driving through the plains of Kansas.

It’s barely in the realm of possible to explain, because you start to explain and then the other person goes “how on Earth did you get to that from there, while here” and then you stop and think about it and entirely forget why you were retracing your steps in the first place..

Edit to add pic and re-word for clarity.

Took a really long time after “nevermore” to learn more words, but I’m pumped it happened anyway!

Thanks for the reminder to apply for disability upgrade. I’ve been putting it off for a few weeks because it’s such a pain, but I really need to do it.

Does Germany have any sort of patient translation services? I think that’s available here for many languages, but you may have to qualify for it, not really sure how it works.