Still Here

What do you think of your life, as you look back on it? Of course you may be here for another 20 years so it may be too early, but I wondered about your opinion.

Hiya

I definitely won't be here in 2 years - this cancer is always fatal and the chemo is the limiting factor - when my body gives up. I will die.   I will fight to the end.

While not trying to 'big myself up', I have burned the candle at both ends.     I identify strongly with Roy Batty.     "I have done things you people would not believe!"

I feel very, very cheated of the life I have worked so hard to create.    I've said before, I was months away from 'Life 2.0' and it's all been snatched away.

I spent most of my life oblivious to how very different I was to everyone else - blindly performing technical miracles 'for the greater good' without any recognition - while actually being used and manipulated by those benefiting from my achievements.

I remember every detail of my life - like looking at a huge array of photos.- It's frustrating to not be able to share the highlights and extremes with everyone..    

Hiya

I definitely won't be here in 2 years - this cancer is always fatal and the chemo is the limiting factor - when my body gives up. I will die.   I will fight to the end.

While not trying to 'big myself up', I have burned the candle at both ends.     I identify strongly with Roy Batty.     "I have done things you people would not believe!"

I feel very, very cheated of the life I have worked so hard to create.    I've said before, I was months away from 'Life 2.0' and it's all been snatched away.

I spent most of my life oblivious to how very different I was to everyone else - blindly performing technical miracles 'for the greater good' without any recognition - while actually being used and manipulated by those benefiting from my achievements.

I remember every detail of my life - like looking at a huge array of photos.- It's frustrating to not be able to share the highlights and extremes with everyone..    

Donald Trump anyone ? 

Reading 'The Logic of Collective Action' about freeriders and the tradgedy of the commons helped explain how my thinking didn't coincide with clearly how others think, and how they operate. You can see the role aspies play, working for the common good whilst others freeride, and why.

Plastic said:

Yes - I definitely think we have a 'lifespan' when in management - I've measured about 4 years before the narcissists and back-stabbers can get their heads around our very different management style and find ways to screw us over.   

Then it's time to pull the ejector seat handle before they move in to surgically destroy us. 

That has got me laughing so much ~ definitely, although they can't actually get their heads around the fact that the survival of the fittest delusion is an obstructive delusion, and that cooperation needs to occur in house for the company and that competition needs to be kept in the market place for profitable efficiencies involving the team as a whole.

It is just that they know how to high-jack or sabotage the operating protocols that everybody has to use, which unfortunately limits their own time at the top too ~ particularly as being corpse-climber careerists rather sets as such the back-stabbing examples for their own demise. Yikes!?!

It just staggers me how productively inefficient and economically unproductive that way of living is, but then compulsive addiction patterns are somewhat infamous for not facilitating open mindedness nor any real prospects for long-term good health and wealth. The survival of the fittest delusion is after all pathological and sociopathic.

Hay hoe!

I always hope more people might read things like this and start working out that greater efficiencies with much greater returns are way more healthy and way more viable. 

Ah!

That makes sense, the 4 years. Kinda tallys with me. Never thought the autism intersected here but it's clear I manage in a very different way to anyone else, always eye on the horizon, always impact foccussed, always able to juggle/see the whole thing in my head, always deliver under budget, on or ahead of schedule, high tech spec but more importantly does what's needed. But yes, i give no space to normies wanting their status n power n control, acting out whatever so become a target.

And yes, i burn out.

Yes - I definitely think we have a 'lifespan' when in management - I've measured about 4 years before the narcissists and back-stabbers can get their heads around our very different management style and find ways to screw us over.   

Then it's time to pull the ejector seat handle before they move in to surgically destroy us. 

Plastic said:

Maybe it's the curse of Asperger's that I can work out what's possible beforehand.

I always thought of it as being a gift and a curse ~ with the gift side involving the success and the curse involving those who became or were just full on saboteurs when they did not get the limelight.

Plastic said:

I've always found failure in projects are due to poor planning in the first place.     Stretch goals are normally some middle-manager removing all contingency from an already impractical timeline.  

I always called them 'Challenge Anneka's' ~ after the late eighties and early to mid nineties TV program where Anneka Rice got a medium sized financial bung and had to pull off a large resource outcome all big and charitably for some hard up community or social group and such like (basically the TV advertising thing with local businesses to do charitable acts with their goods and services ~ involving the 'pretty-woman' effect).

The irony of pulling a 'Challenge Anneka' was of course that most of us were not pretty women, and nothing charitable was actually going on! It was all quite evidently about the company profit margins and getting the next pay scaling, although I was completely content with my wages and was only ever interested in achieving greater operational efficiencies and a friendly work atmosphere ~ all big and prosocial.

This is where the above mentioned saboteurs got vexed into action and I ended up getting ousted from the company, which was actually quite pleasant and really luxurious as I had never earned so much money nor had I gotten severance pay before.

The basic problem was that I was in middle management and the upper management could not work out my approach to things, as they were aside from one completely competitive with a few being full on dark-side narcissists.

But as you state about middle (or line) management removing contingencies from project timelines ~ often to make life easier for themselves and harder for others career wise in lower management etcetera, that can pretty much be the strength of it at that or those level of things.

For upper (or area) management though 'stretch-goals' are their portfolios of credentials and are strategically sought or planned in order to remain at the top of the league for however long or short a duration that might remain the case (in the proverbial piranha and shark territories of business and all that). 

Unfortunately in my case several years after the aforementioned managerial discharge with severance ~ I had up to which picked up a few too many bad habits, as all I had on the go were sequenced stretch-goals and my business as such came fully to a complete and utter crash and burn ending!

My Aspergenesis and Executive Planning Disorder were really starting to make themselves known, as my business ending involved my social camouflaging and personal masking becoming my most debilitating psychological breakdown. Me faking it as a neurologically typical person had come to rather an end. Getting diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome nearly two decades later just made complete sense of it all.

Maybe it's the curse of Asperger's that I can work out what's possible beforehand.

I've always found failure in projects are due to poor planning in the first place.     Stretch goals are normally some middle-manager removing all contingency from an already impractical timeline.   

Plastic said:

I'm still adding things to the bucket list - some are more likely than others but in business they call them 'stretch goals' (I've never really understood it - if something was possible then it's not a stretch goal - it's just normally lazy staff finally got their acts together?)

The point of 'stretch-goals' is to really test the limit of what is possible and go for what might seem impossible or improbable, such as going for high risk innovations that really push the boundaries of creditability and make new ground or become game-changers and all that.

I'm still adding things to the bucket list - some are more likely than others but in business they call them 'stretch goals' (I've never really understood it - if something was possible then it's not a stretch goal - it's just normally lazy staff finally got their acts together?)

Some are easy-  I've never had a Nando's,      My daughter says it's completely cromulent (Simpsons) so I'll give it a go.

Others are doubtful - one last Disney Florida trip to do Rise of The Resistance and Flights of Passage rides with my daughter - personal closure - we're both huge Star Wars & Avatar fans.     We have a very narrow window in September this year or March next year - depending on me being functional, covid, general world craziness, weather etc etc.

Yes, look at Stephen Hawking, he was only given 2 years or so and ended up living to a ripe old age!

I'm sorry you feel cheated, it must be a horrible feeling. But I'm glad you did some amazing things and you're a Roy Batty!

Plastic said:

I'm a visual thinker - I find it very hard to write - you've probably noticed most of my sentences are short and abrupt - I have a sea of possible answers swirling in my head and I pluck one from the abyss so I have to edit my responses to make sense of them.   It's very time consuming.

We are very much alike then in respect of finding writing difficult, as it takes me ages to go through the multiplicities of my perspectives ~ and come up with an adequately edited and abridged version of them that is not a 'too-much-information' overkill session.

Plastic said:

I don't think my English is good enough to get my thoughts on paper-  it would look more like an Excel spreadsheet of random sentences.

Dude ~ your English is way more amenable than mine in terms of being meaningfully short, concise and to the point. The thing I find amusing is when people complain about how long my posts are after I have spent ages editing and abridging them. I look at your writing and imagine that one day I might achieve something similar, maybe before even the next life! ;-)

I'm a visual thinker - I find it very hard to write - you've probably noticed most of my sentences are short and abrupt - I have a sea of possible answers swirling in my head and I pluck one from the abyss so I have to edit my responses to make sense of them.   It's very time consuming.     

I don't think my English is good enough to get my thoughts on paper-  it would look more like an Excel spreadsheet of random sentences.

Plastic said:

I'm glad you understand what I'm talking about - it's like needing to do the Vulcan mind transference   "Remember".  

" Your mind to my mind... your thoughts to my thoughts..." and quite a few of us Aspie types do appreciate a good read, and your writings do make for good readings and conversations quite obviously.

Plastic said:

It's feels like an overwhelming need for 'approval' - to lay out all my life, errors and successes to be judged by everyone as 'you did your very best against extreme adversity"

Well in terms of how people feel about their needing to share the summations of their lived experiences ~ that's obviously a different horses for different courses sort of thing, but as far as doing your very best against extreme adversity and all that ~ that is the aspie way as we have to go to far greater extents just to get by in life or even just to lag behind, I mean blimey.

Just being communicatively Aspie amongst other Aspies though so very much a state of approval in it's own right ~ what with getting to fit in with misfits likewise and otherwise being essential social oxygen to the previously deprived, where we get to facilitate, identify and affirm each other's senses and sensibilities like in some cases as never before.

Plastic said:

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"

Do otherwise perhaps than to become just as a drop merging back into the ocean of consciousness in time to come ~ but leave also your written history in a more complete sense to become further threads in the very much richer for it tapestry of life for others too. It helps so much, most especially if you want to too! :-)

thanks

I'm glad you understand what I'm talking about - it's like needing to do the Vulcan mind transference   "Remember".     

It's feels like an overwhelming need for 'approval' - to lay out all my life, errors and successes to be judged by everyone as 'you did your very best against extreme adversity"

"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain"

Hi Dave

I have a mass the size of my hand on the peritoneal wall - roughly where me left elbow touches my abdomen - there's lots of secondaries all along the transverse colon - like Christmas tree lights on the PET scan.  

I have many pulmonary embolisms in both lungs.     

They say it's currently inoperable but I'm getting a second opinion next week.     I'm up for anything weird or experimental - ideally to help me, but if it helps others, all the better.    

I'm young, strong and I have the ability to power through adversity - they say that is an advantage.

If, by some miracle, I survive another couple of years and the cancer is controlled enough, there is a very high-risk operation - with just a 50/50 survival rate - which will chop practically everything out - bowel, pancreas, perineal sack etc. - and hot chemo fluid is poured into the cavity - but I'm not convinced that 'living' after all that would be a life worth having.

Plastic said:

I remember every detail of my life - like looking at a huge array of photos.- It's frustrating to not be able to share the highlights and extremes with everyone.. 

I have spent substantial amounts of time with people in their final days thoroughly enjoying the 'photos' of their life, experiences and everything with them, so maybe ~ rather than being frustrated with not sharing the highlights and extremes of your life ~ feel free to do so here as matter of significance in respect of social histories, which are always of much greater relevance when they are put on public record for others more in general to appreciate also, perhaps?

And of course - happy birthday!

Never say never. I had a patient once who was riddled with bowel cancer spread to his liver, proven on excision biopsy. He sold up and went on a world cruise, went on some weird diet, finished the cruise, went on anothe selling all and was still OK. I saw him when admitted to hospital for tests after the cruises and there was NO EVIDENCE of his cancer!  Miracle or weird.....

You've often sounded very similar to me and my on/off best mate and especially at the beginning of my journey that was validating that someone like me could identify with being in the AS community.

I'm sad you didn't get to life 2.0. It's funny when I left my job 2.5 years ago and started hanging out with my first real aspie friend that's what I called it, Life 2.0. It's been good, at times exhilirating, and times bautiful and full of awe, and many a time not that much different to Life 1.0! We adapt to the new norms and although I'm following my lifes passion and vocation even of course it becomes hum drum too.

Do share your photos and stories with people. Having our life storiy heard by someone is life.