Welp. Had a conversation with my psychiatrist (who's gotten the paperwork from the psychologist). Apparently #MelindreaIsAutistic >.> <.< (obviously not a shocker, and it's not fully in my journal just yet, but that's because he needs to summarise things). Or, to be more precise: both he and the evaluator agree that I fulfill the criteria for the autism diagnosis.

I think the most interesting thing he brought up was that us autists generally see details rather than the big picture (the specific test had to do with an odd geometric figure that you had to draw and then remember the details of to draw from memory), which makes a lot more things tiring, since you're needing to keep a lot more things in your memory.

He didn't give examples, but it occurs to me that that could be part of why we often like routines, and probably also why things might require more spoons/energy/spell slots.

Because if you just keep "need to brush teeth" in your mind, that's going to be a *lot* easier than "need to get toothbrush and toothpaste. Put toothpaste on brush, add a bit of water to brush. Do the movements on the outside of the upper row, outside of the bottom row, inside of the upper row, inside of the bottom row ... etc".

Now, an upside to this is for instance in art, where one often starts with a more abstract detail--if you're making a portrait you don't start with the entire outline of the body, you start with shapes for head, torso, upper arms, lower arms, hips/butt, etc. Or in programming where one might get stuck in the weeds ... but breaking a large problem down to smaller problems is a way to get a lot better code.

@actuallyautistic