Autism

I was a teenager before smartphones were a thing.

Things I did when not phone, and no random book or comic nearby:

Waiting for bus: Running off to explore the plants behind the bus stop shed, missing the bus.

Waiting for bus: Trying to see if I could grab the bus stop sign and somersault by running up the bus stop shed wall. I could not, and faceplanted the concrete breaking my glasses.

On toilet: Grab shampoo bottles to read, comparing the grammar of the instructions.

School recess: Climb onto the school roof, get in trouble.

School recess: Try and kick the feet of a school bully while he was proudly demonstraring rhe roundhouse kick he learned to see if he would fall on his ass. He fell on his ass and we did not become friends.

The absence of a phone will not calm me down.

The phone is not the distraction, the phone is collecting the distraction energy and focusing it into a single point.

Those things are still better because they don’t fuel your dopamine addiction the way a phone does and are easier to look away from.

Heroin is obviously worse than coffee, coffee being addictive isn’t a reason to use heroin

Fuck me, how did you know it was that 2009 memory? There's a few from 2016, 2017, and 2019 that haunt me, but 2009 stands out in its horror.

There are 6,437,223 little islands of texture on the walls in my bedroom. I counted them.

How do any of y'all function with this distraction. I don't get it.

"Neurotypicals" :)

Thats a word i dont use every day.

Nah sure I do have trouble focussing.

Also did you know that thing you’re looking for is peeking from under that closet in your hall?

It’s more frustration than distraction at that point.

High school was pretty shit in terms of this, as I would be taking a short break, sometimes in the classrooms, sometimes in the study session rooms, sometimes on the way to a class, and a teacher tells me to put my phone away, even though nobody seems to bat an eye apart from the couple opportunistic teachers. Of course I’ll oblige, so it’s not taken away and I can’t access internet I need the rest of the day (the wifi was kinda dodgy sometimes) or take a rest, then I’d take it back out immediately when they leave.

And at parent teacher interviews, the teachers would say something like “he needs to ask more questions”, or “he gets distracted too easily”, but then say “his work quality is incredible, but took his time”. It’s as though they think the issue is because I used my phone in school when I shouldn’t have (according to local law banning phones in schools), but it was only because the days wore me down when I forced myself to be “normal” and get the work done in class, and I’d still be worn down (although less severely) after school if I didn’t make myself do work, since excessive background noise has really made it difficult.

Luckily, I finished like 5 or 6 months ago, so I don’t need to deal with that anymore, and university is treating me well, since it’s online and you just complete tasks as you go without deadlines, and I let myself get distracted when I need to so I’m more productive when I’m not distracted.