The Pancake King – Page 2 – Life On the Spectrum

Living With Autism Part 8: Dating Relationships

What? Oh you had to know that I was going to get to this subject eventually! It’s a very fun subject. There’s a lot that you can find about the link between romance and people on the autism spectrum when you look it up, but a lot of these articles are written by people who are not on the spectrum and can only speak from their own research or personal experience with other autistic people. Why is this?

This is because romance is perceived as something that many autistic people simply don’t understand. Some may want it, but it’s intimidating to them. For anyone, being in a relationship means being self-sacrificial and having to put the other person’s interests above your own, which is something that autistic people are normally not fully willing to do at first. Because of heavy concentration on their own interests, it takes concentrated effort to be interested in what the other person enjoys or is engaged in.

It’s also hard for autistic people to read facial expressions correctly and discern the feelings of another person. One of the obstacles of an autistic person is that they normally can’t tell exactly what the other person is thinking or how he’s feeling, which can lead to anxiety if misinterpreted. Also, if an autistic person doesn’t understand how the other person is feeling, this tends to come off as rude to the other person.

I’ve only ever been in one relationship in my life which lasted for six months before she broke it off, but it was long enough for me to be able to speak from personal experience as a high-functioning autistic dating someone who was not on the spectrum. I was constantly concerned that my girlfriend was just going through the motions rather than having genuine feelings for me, and it didn’t usually matter what she said or did that could counteract how I felt, I always felt unsure. In the end it turned out that at least some of that was because she was drifting away until she finally broke it off altogether, but I can’t blame her entirely. It wasn’t until a couple months later afterwards that I was diagnosed and a month or two after that when I got the results in, so I know there was some miscommunication. The best I was able to tell her during the relationship was that I had a form of ADD, which honestly isn’t very informative and it didn’t explain some of my issues that came off as more autistic.

Now, I want to make sure to mention that the concept of two autistic people in a relationship together is out there. While it has been perceived as a very difficult thing to do, it’s not impossible. While one of the largest struggles two autistic people in a relationship can have is possessing some of the same social or relational problems, working on strategies together that can make it work helps the relationship flourish and personally I think it’s a beautiful thing when two autistic people make a marital relationship work. Whether the next person I date is autistic or not, my plan is to do some things differently, and I think these tips below can help people who are on the spectrum and would like to be in a relationship one day.

Map out a schedule – As weird as that may sound, getting a schedule made detailing the times you and your partner get to go out or simply even talk on the phone every week is an excellent strategy for granting the relationship stability for the autistic partner involved or for both partners should both be autistic. One of the most common traits in people on the spectrum is that they’re obsessed with having a schedule and making sure everything is done at a very particular time, otherwise they can become confused or anxious. I myself am not as obsessed with time in that way as others on the spectrum are, but I do believe that balance in time is required in order to make relationships work. If you have a schedule written out for every time you meet each week, it not only puts the autistic person at ease, it gives both partners the space and time needed away from each other so that the relationship can continue to feel fresh and not overbearing or exhausting.

Learn from each other where you draw the line – Being that I identify myself as a disciple of Christ, I believe that sex is saved for marriage, so I’m not even going to go there in this article, but what about other forms of physical touch or even the affectionate things we can say to each other? Autistic people are a mixed bag when it comes to physical affection. Some are absolutely not okay with it at all and it takes a lot of time and patience to get them to relax and others are actually a little too physically affectionate. I personally don’t mind physical touch even if I may act a little rigid once in a while when I’m hugged by some, but in fact it’s one of the things that makes me feel loved. It’s one of my ‘love languages’ if you will. However, I was very mindful about whether or not it was okay with my partner in my first relationship and I always made sure to ask before I went ahead and held her hand or something. I also tended to hold back a lot from saying affectionate or loving things to her because I was afraid of what the reaction might be. This is something that should be discussed among the two partners and decided what they’re comfortable with and what they’re not comfortable with so that they feel respected and honored. I know for a fact that this especially meaningful to the person on the spectrum because it makes the person feel more comfortable hanging around his partner.

Relationships for anyone regardless of how they’re wired is definitely a tightrope, but if done right, it’s a tightrope worth walking and romantic relationships are possible for people on the autism spectrum, with enough patience and planning to get them through.

Living With Autism Part 7: Concerning Religion

It took almost a half an hour of research to get started on this post after I brought up the ‘new post’ page. Over the last few days, I’ve gotten more interested in the relationship between religion and autism, and what religion is like for people on the autism spectrum. A study done in 2011 (you can see the hard-to-follow statistics of in full here) showed that people with high-functioning autism are less likely to belong to an organized religion than people who are neuro-typical, and are more likely to create their own independent religious belief system. The study also showed that high-functioning individuals had higher rates of non-belief identities like atheism and agnosticism than those who were neuro-typical.

While I understand that scientific studies can only go so far in statistics within populations and particular groups, there’s one thing the people behind these studies consider that makes sense. Autistic people typically possess intellectual strengths such as ’emphasis on logic’, and believing what they see. In other words, having a very black and white point of view is a common trait that a lot of autistic people have. I’ve considered myself to be ‘grayer’ in the past, but I’ll admit that in some cases I can absolutely be very black and white.

I’m a pastor’s son. I practically grew up in the church and have attended an overwhelming number of churches in just the first twenty years of my life. I clearly remember the time when my mom sat me down and helped me accept Jesus into my heart. At the time, I was around nine or ten and I did it because it’s what I knew. I grew up being told that God is real and to believe in Him and to have Him in my heart. My mom made a daily morning routine for me to follow and one of the things on the list said to ‘do devotions’. Doing devotions was the one thing on the routine that I sometimes did not do. I can’t exactly explain the reason why, but there were periods of time when I didn’t read the Bible and pray in the morning and when my mom would ask me if I did devotions, I would lie to her and say that I did (yeah she knows about this, the woman always figures out the truth. Always).

When I look back on the ‘Christian’ side of my childhood, I realize that I was going through the motions a lot of the time. Because it was all real to my parents, it was real to me, because I looked up to them and believed what they told me, and yet there were still moments of rebellion, like when I wouldn’t do my devotions for whatever reason even when it was expected of me. As a fun fact though, my mom just recently told me that apparently I was able to cite the names of the kings of Israel in order to a point. I was fascinated with the facts, but the spiritual significance seemed to elude me. To this day when it comes to my ‘devotional time’ life, the longest streak I have reading the Bible consistently would be a week. Beyond that, my devotional time is very inconsistent and isn’t an ‘every day’ thing. I struggle with feeling much of a connection at church, and, this is nothing the worship team is doing wrong, the songs that are sung there just don’t inspire very much joy in me or creates any intimacy with God (the My Typical Worship Service Experience post gives details on that).

Whether autistic or not, every person reaches a point early in his life where he needs to learn not to copy and paste the belief system of his parents and ‘find his own faith’. Usually when a person goes on his own journey to find his faith and finds it, there’s a lot of peace the person can find because he’s established himself more as a unique individual with his own set of beliefs and though he may have questions or struggles at times, the person grows pretty comfortable in his own skin. That’s not the case with me. Every time I think I have reached a point where I’ve settled on a faith or set of beliefs, I still constantly question. Last year on June 8, I went to my then-youth pastor and asked him to help me recommit my life to Christ and claimed that I was ready to fully accept the whole concept. Afterwards, I managed to read the Bible and pray every day for at least a week and a half, tithed once, and got baptized, but afterwards I slowly resumed my usual routine and consistency (or lack thereof).

Now, I believe in God and I love Him. I love God as much as I can, and I believe that He has worked in my life in more ways than one because I believe that some of the ways I’ve grown and the experiences I’ve had can’t possibly be because of mere chance or coincidence. What I believe I’ve done (and am still doing) is that I’ve begun to form my own independent belief system that separates itself from modern Christianity in a lot of ways. I believe in God, and I believe that the Bible is true, but that doesn’t mean that I have issues with believing in something that I can’t see on a fairly regular basis. I’ve never seen God, therefore it’s hard for me to have a relationship with Him. How can I have a relationship with someone that I can’t see? I can see humans, therefore having relationships with humans isn’t a problem at all. I want a relationship with God and I believe I need it, but it’s challenging for me to get attached, and its been that way all my life. My youngest brother Hudson gets up to an alarm at 5:30 every morning so that he can have time to read his Bible and pray to God before he starts his day. At his age and younger, I was reading my Bible inconsistently and lying to my Mom’s face whenever she’d ask me if I did my devotions.

Faith has always been so complex to me with all its shapes, sizes, and colors, and all the different approaches that people make with it has frustrated me so much that I feel unmotivated to get associated with ‘organized Christianity’. I yearn for simplicity in my faith because of the cut and dry, black and white point of view that I have and am most comfortable with.

More About At the End Of the Day

Well guys, for the first time in forever (yes, I used a Frozen reference), I’m posting a second article on the same day. With the second draft of my book At the End Of the Day completed and currently being proofread and edited by a ‘vicious’ proofreader friend of mine, I am finally coming out and discussing some of what to expect from this book. My intention is for this book to have an ebook release on Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing, and I’m hoping and praying that this book will see a Summer 2016 release.

To start off, I’ll admit that I’ve attempted to write a good handful of books in the past. Some got their rough drafts completed, were half-heartedly edited a little bit, then never looked at again. Some just got their rough drafts done and that was that, and others didn’t even get their rough drafts done and were never looked at again. Yep, the life of a writer is not an easy one. Many ideas that pop into my head and sound like storytelling gold typically don’t end up on paper the way I thought they would and as result, they end up facing the axe and I go back to the drawing board.

I can promise you this though: At the End Of the Day is different. I came up with the premise and started the rough draft while I was still living with family friends for a while. The premise came to me when I was taking a free online fiction writing class and it challenged me to come up with the characters and premise (admittedly I never actually finished the class though). I started writing the draft, and was drawn into the world and the characters that I created, and what made this book more meaningful then the rest is that I made it far more relatable to me and my own life, which helped me come up with ideas to drive the story along. Also, I mentioned above that I just recently completed the second draft. With the exception of one short story I wrote a few years ago, never in my history of writing books have I ever even started the second draft of a novella/novel. It was always so intimidating to do that, but I’m happy to say that this time I did it, and it’s something for me to be proud of.

So, here is the summary of the book, the kind you would find on the back of a book or the sleeve:

Henry Sanders is a young “unique” man that keeps himself far apart from the real world to stay comfortable in his own. He braves his parents’ fights and he keeps to himself without any friends to push him any direction. He loves sitting in the park obsessively studying the bridge over the river, and he writes in a notebook that he takes with him everywhere. When a girl that he met once a long time ago suddenly comes back into his life and he’s sent to stay with his uncle and his abusive cousin for a while during the summer, Henry is forced to make decisions that will influence the people around him and his own broken self-esteem.

Ultimately I really wanted this book to focus on the mindset and psychology of a single individual as he goes through trial after trial. What I believe makes Henry great is that he’s like me in so many different ways. The way he thinks and processes things and some of his own experiences were things that I myself have thought and experienced, which made the book a lot easier to write because I found myself rooting for the character. Keep in mind that this book is purely fiction in the end, and while some of the experiences Henry goes through are also my own, a lot of the others are either exaggerated or things I didn’t go through at all. It’s a great mix of real life and fiction to create a compelling and down-to-earth story.

Something that I need to point out however is that while I identify myself as a disciple of Christ and I hope this book can glorify God in some form or another, this book is not for Christian audiences specifically. I wrote this book with the intention of it being able to connect with a broader audience. Therefore, the world depicted in the book is not sugar-coated and is not family-friendly. While I make sure to keep the content on a PG-13 level and try not to go too over-the-top, I have no problem delving into some pretty heavy themes in order to get the message of the book across. Henry has some qualities that a lot of you would probably admire and respect, but he goes through trials that some people may find difficult to read about, and Henry lives within a sad atmosphere where a lot of it is due to those trials. The world is ugly. The world is not completely comprised of Christians walking around doing everything right and not saying anything dirty or wrong (I will say right now that Henry is not a Christian, in fact he’s a self-proclaimed agnostic but he has his own moral system). So with that being said, I would say to be careful about letting younglings read this book.

However, I’m also not afraid to mention God or make references to the Bible and church either. God does get mentioned in the book and there are some interesting spiritual themes sprinkled throughout the book that I believe Christians will appreciate but will also not be a complete turn-off for nonbelievers reading the book. My hope is that Christians will be able to read and understand or learn where I’m coming from with the material. Most importantly, despite the dark material depicted in this book, I’m happy to say that this book also offers hope, even in the darkest of circumstances, and the ending will at least leave you feeling satisfied but also, I hope, challenged. I can’t wait for you guys to get to read this book later on down the road. Just be patient and I will keep you guys up to date!

Living With Autism Part 6: Obsessions

When I was a kid (I believe I’m old enough to say that now), I was addicted to and obsessed with video games. Even after my parents limited my freedom to play so that I was only allowed to play on the weekends, I would still play four to five hours straight on Sunday afternoons while my parents passed out (for a long nap) upstairs. While that may not actually seem like a long time to some very dedicated gamers today, this was before a time when playing video games as entertainment on YouTube and getting payed for it was a thing.

Through long video game fasts that typically lasted six months to a whole year, and even going so far as stowing the Xbox away in the garage, my parents were successful in influencing my addiction. Today, I currently only play two games (Minecraft and Tomb Raider), and even so I only play them once a week. I’m still not sure if its because of a subconscious restraint or because I simply get bored with games fast. I still love certain video games and I love some of the work and effort that’s put into making them. These days however, I watch other people play video games on YouTube more than I play video games myself.

In an article from the National Autistic Society you can read in full here, obsessions, repetitive behavior, and routines ‘can be a source of enjoyment for a person with autism and a way of coping with everyday life’. There really is no limit to the items and things that autistic people can be obsessed with. An interest in collecting is quite common too which can sometimes be hell for the person’s bank account (refer to Living With Autism Part 5).

Now, video game addiction is absolutely not just something that autistic people can have a problem with, I understand that. But it wasn’t enough for me to just play them. Sometimes if me and my brother had to visit Dad’s office at church, we’d take the video game manuals (remember those?) with us to look at the pictures or reread certain sections even though we pretty much knew how to play the games inside and out. Video games would take up quite literally about 80% of my thought process, and as you can well imagine, it drove me nuts whenever video games were taken away from me. I was a pretty rebellious guy, so getting that taken away from me was fairly common.

But it didn’t end there. One obsession always seemed to be able to replace another, and it has been that way to this day. It’s not something that I was able to grow out of, it tagged along with me. When I wasn’t obsessed with video games right around that same time, I was obsessed with Spongebob Squarepants (I know). I’d watch the episodes on a very consistent basis, read Spongebob books, write my own Spongebob books, get toys, and even have a good number of dreams about it. It would typically dominate my thoughts and it was mostly what I’d talk about. Still, despite all that, I have to give Spongebob massive credit for being what brought me and a good friend of mine together. Can’t argue with that.

Through the years, the obsession went from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings to a web series called Red vs Blue and so on and so forth. For some reason I was always into the big franchises. I’d want to discuss everything with myself as well as with others who have seen and experienced that stuff themselves. My dad would comment that I never seemed to ever get enough and he spoke truth. How many times will I rewatch the same fight scene in The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug before I feel like vomiting because I can’t stand to look at it anymore? How many times will I repeat the same lines of dialogue to myself over and over again to practice the voice and delivery before I feel like trying to practice a new impersonation? When will I realize that there’s simply nothing more to analyze in the ending from the game The Last Of Us? When will I stop asking nerdy questions right now?

I think a question a lot of people ask is why do people like me have this odd, obsessive fascination for stuff that, to a lot of you, doesn’t matter? Well, the answer is very simple but would probably be disappointing to you. The answer is: I don’t know. That’s it. I don’t really know why I have these strong feelings towards stuff. If I was to give you another answer that’s at least semi-satisfactory, I’d say the reason for having these odd obsessions is connected to the fact that it’s a method in coping with real life. It’s actually relaxing. Very rarely am I transfixed on my obsessions and feeling like I want out. It’s an escape from the chaos of the world that I want no part in. Having a very particular thought process and a very particular structure in routine every day helps me stay focused and hopeful.

Does it sound like a comfort zone? It definitely does, but that’s something that autistic people are very fond of, and they typically don’t want it any other way. There are autistic people like Raymond from the great movie Rain Man that wants everything set in a particular way, and it’s harder to try and get the person used to a new schedule. It’s something that needs to be dealt with with patience and understanding. The link I put in the third paragraph offers some very helpful ideas in helping autistic people sort out those issues, especially if you’re a parent raising an autistic child.

To visit the National Autistic Society’s full website, click here

Living With Autism Part 5: Numbers!

NOTE: I just recently finished the second draft of my novel At the End Of the Day and have handed the document over to a good friend who has agreed to proofread it for me. Though I believe the book still needs a lot of work, I’m excited for it to see the light of day for the public.

One of the things that has been very stressful for me lately is my reckless spending habits. After living with family friends for a year, I moved back in with my parents, and since then, my spending habits have gotten worse and worse. I’ve grown more reckless in the ways I spend my money because of the sense of familiarity I have living with my family again and the fact that I feel safer being in the same environment as my family. I feel like my spending habits won’t have as hefty an effect as they did while I was living independently.

Here’s the thing. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about finances. I know next to nothing about it. My dad had me read two books on managing finances a few years ago, and when he quizzed me on the information in the books, I was barely able to give him any solid answers even though I had just finished them. I don’t understand the real consequences of being low on money until I’m between a hundred and two hundred dollars and I think ‘uh, I don’t have a lot of money to pay for my college textbooks’, and I don’t understand the significance behind stocks.

I think that my inability to be very good with money is connected to the fact that I’m pretty terrible at math. Numbers just isn’t a strength of mine. I tend to love words. I love reading them and I love writing them. They give me a sense of purpose and it’s a powerful way of getting people to think.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how all of this may apply to autism. Well, not every autistic person is like Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory. Some autistic people are highly intelligent and can do math. I used to live with a couple that has a nine-year old autistic boy that has extraordinary talent in complicated mathematics and can easily do hard math in his head without needing to write it down on paper. That’s not the case with other people with autism. I personally have serious issues with math. I barely got through geometry in high school and didn’t even get to get started on Algebra II. Again, I’m much more of a words person than a numbers person. Autistic people tend to have their areas that they’re simply not cut out for, and while to a lot of other people it’s mostly seen as merely an inconvenience, autistic people see it as a serious obstacle and can get easily frustrated and angry that they can’t figure something out, and it’s made worse by the fact that they can’t seem to learn and understand it the same way that other people can.

I’m in the same boat. I can’t learn certain things the same way others can and sometimes can’t bring myself to learn it at all. Mix that with the lack of motivation people on the spectrum can have for things they struggle to care about despite the consequences they know are there, like failing grades if it’s a school issue, and what we have is something complex and hard to deal with.

To be honest, there really isn’t exactly a point except the fact that I’m explaining all this to raise awareness for people who are possibly unaware. Having to deal with people on the spectrum can be frustrating for teachers and parents and just regular people alike, but think of an autistic person having his own set of weaknesses just like other people have their own.

My next semester at college starts next week and in the weeks leading up to that, I dropped out of one of the classes I signed up for, which was a math class. After having failed to pass Math 080 last semester and then signing up for 081 for this semester, it became clear to me that that wasn’t a good idea. I decided that for the time being, the biggest goal for me is to take classes that will help me start and further a writing career while trying to do everything I can to get some of my writing published in magazines this year and so forth. Worse comes to worst, I won’t get a degree in the end, but I learned that you don’t need a degree to make a career out of writing, and a writing career is exactly what I want to have.

How Feeling Sad For Others Can Actually Be A Blessing

You all remember that amazing Pixar film that came out earlier this year? Inside Out did a beautiful job of presenting how it’s okay to be sad sometimes, because being sad can allow you to express how you feel to someone that you love and trust, and it takes a lot of weight off your shoulders. We can fight to be happy 24/7, but it’s almost impossible when there’s always that sadness that keeps pulling you down, and you have no choice but to either keep it bottled up, or spill it out and let someone hear you.

I wrote in a recent blog post that I have trouble feeling empathy. I only analyze what I can see or feel myself, and I think very little about how someone else may be thinking or feeling at a given moment. With this in mind, that doesn’t mean I’m not at all a stranger to sadness, in fact it’s a trait that keeps up with me often. The most common reason for me feeling sad personally though is that other people often tend to put me in that place. This isn’t usually because other people are treating me poorly or putting me down, it’s because when I see that they’re miserable or when I can detect that they’re ‘down in the dumps’ through their tone of voice and the way their eyes are behaving, it makes me feel sad for them. When they tell me things about them and how they feel, that’s what puts me in that place.

I see feeling sad for other people as a gift. Can it feel like a curse sometimes? Absolutely. Who actually ever wants to feel sad? Who wants to go to bed at night thinking about someone and just wants to start crying? I don’t, but I do anyway. So what are the benefits of feeling sadness for other people, and what are the pitfalls?

Benefits

1. By feeling sad for someone, this means you have compassion for another person. You don’t want this person to struggle or feel miserable or even hopeless. You’ve either cared about this person for a long time or you’ve just recently gotten to know this person and have come to care pretty quickly for him or her.

2. Having compassion for someone usually means that you’ll feel motivated to take action somehow and try to find ways to make this person’s day a bit better and be there for that person in any way you possibly can. If action is actually taken, it can be very rewarding for both you and the person you’re thinking about, although it’s meant mainly for the other person’s benefit, not for yourself. Sure you probably feel good, but this is about the other person.

3. If you’re a Christian or religious in some other way, you may feel motivated to pray for the other person. Prayer is one of the most powerful and most intimate tools when it comes to wanting to help another person. You don’t even have to tell the person that you’re praying for him if you don’t want to, though it might make the other person feel a little better because it’s an indication that you have him in your thoughts. While prayer is a biggie, I recommend that you don’t use it as a quick and easy alternative so that you don’t have to feel like you have to take action yourself. If you’re fully capable of being there for the person or helping that person, then use prayer for when there’s nothing else left, and all you can do is stand back and wait. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with praying while you’re doing, but don’t rely on that one hundred percent. I personally believe in the power of prayer, but I also believe in the effectiveness of offering a hand to support someone if you have the ability to do so.

Pitfalls

1. Like I said, nobody likes to feel sad and go to bed with that feeling. I’ve gone to bed crying on weekends because I went through whole weeks of listening to other people’s stories and sometimes the problems those people have feel like my own burdens that have just been placed on my shoulders. So while I strongly believe that feeling sad and compassionate for other people is a blessing, we may tend to use that blessing in a way that can make us depressed. There’s the danger of obsessing over other people’s experiences and feelings and it can all deeply affect us and make us sad in an unhealthy way that affects our own lives, and then we have to worry more about ourselves then the people we’ve been thinking about.

2. Another issue is that when other people entrust us with their stories and are willing to be open with you, there’s the danger of feeling like we’re their ‘savior’ that’s meant to rescue them from their problems and that we’re the only ones that can do it because we ‘know the person better than anyone else’. These are all lies that must be recognized, and when they are, we need to ‘kill’ those thoughts immediately.

We may be meant to help others to the best of our ability, but that doesn’t in any way make us other people’s saviors. We plant seeds and we contribute in this time we’re granted to be in these people’s lives, but we have to be content with what we’re able to do and have the strength to let go when it’s time and let others and God do what else is to be done in their lives. Believe me, it’s not easy, but it’s necessary. And don’t worry, many others will come along whose lives you can work to touch, trust me.

Yearning For An Era With Less Technology

Author’s Note: Sorry its been a while again. Most of my writing lately has been strictly dedicated to penning the second draft of my novel At the End Of the Day, with almost 20,000 words done already after just half a week. Its been quite a journey, and I’m excited to share some of it with you guys in the near future.

Yes, there are a lot of articles out there about rising concerns for the briskly growing age of technology in this day and age. We see how technology takes over people’s attention and plays so many different roles in the lives of others. I’ve spoken with friends around my age and ‘older people’ about the concerns they have for the next generation regarding the use of technology and how prominent it is in our lives.

Technology is one of the reasons why I feel like I was born in the wrong time (though I understand that this is the age God intended for me to live in). I use technology but I don’t love it. In fact I hate it. The prominent use of technology in our culture is so overwhelming to my senses that my senses had to train themselves to block most of it out. I’m thankful to God that I can be disciplined enough to tune out a lot of stuff that tries to grab my attention. Still, I wish we lived in a less technological era. I personally can’t stand those bright screens. Why did people have to make them so bright? While there are absolutely advantages to technology that makes our lives easier, there are some things I wish we can do without, and rely instead on certain other things. Here are a few examples for fun:

Instead of having iPods, I’d like to have a Walkman – Admittedly, my interest in Walkmans piqued when I went to the theater last year and saw Guardians of the Galaxy. What I find embarrassing though is that I just now had to look up the name of Star-Lord’s ‘listening device’ because that’s how out of touch I am when it comes to the old. Anyway, while a Walkman does require batteries, I think it just looks more fun. It can be strapped to your hip, it plays music, and it’s just a sexy thing in my opinion. I’d love to see Walkmans become a thing again and iPods less so. While I know that something like that happening is merely wishful thinking at its finest and nothing more, there’s nothing wrong with dreaming.

Can we please go back to writing letters as a normal thing? While I understand the convenience of texting if something quick needs to be said, I miss letters. Yes, I wrote letters when I was a kid. That was how I was able to connect with people right around my age who were from the other side of the country. While texting or Facebook Messenger can be done quickly and with very little thought dedicated to it, writing letters offers a more intimate solution to sending people words. It takes time to think your words through when writing letters, and the more time that’s spent writing a letter and making sure it’s exactly the way you want it, the more meaningful the written word can be to another person. Personally, I hate texting and I’m normally constantly editing my texts and reading them over and over again to make sure I’m satisfied with them. That’s why I still call people if I just want to talk.

Now the interesting thing about me being only twenty, things were different ‘back in my day’. Back in my day we had VCRs, CD players or radios, and the closest thing we had to some kind of iPod was an MP3 Player. I wrote letters to pen pals and though I used email, I didn’t use it very often. So yes, even though I’m only twenty, I have experienced the great changes that society has made when it comes to communication, and I wish it was simpler. A lot of older adults say that technology has been getting in the way of relationships being able to form or develop, and that real genuine social interaction is dwindling. Personally, I can argue that the situation is rather different. In my own personal experience, while I have seen technology take control of a lot of lives, I’ve also been noticing a growing awareness amidst people like me that aren’t as big a fan of technology and that recognizes the effects technology has on people. I’ve discussed it with people right around my age and it’s comforting to know that the entire current generation isn’t completely subdued by all of it. Hopefully if the number of people who think like this increase, we can see a future that relies less on technology and more on forming intimate relationships worthy of our time.

Why I Decided To Stop Watching ‘Gotham’

Note: This is something a little new that I typically don’t do on this blog site, but I honestly couldn’t think of another site I have where I can publish this.

There have been a lot of articles written in the recent past by people who have decided to stop watching shows like Game Of Thrones. This is normally because they feel convicted by certain things they’re seeing onscreen while watching the episodes (which, in the case of GOT, I’ve heard more than enough to know to stay as far away from that show as possible). I’m going to explain why I’ve just recently decided to stop watching an ongoing show called Gotham.

To start off, for those of you who don’t know what Gotham is exactly, it is a show that airs on FOX that is set in Gotham City from the DC Universe. It takes place long before Bruce Wayne becomes the Batman and is essentially meant to tell the origin stories of Batman’s greatest enemies like the Penguin and the Riddler (although technically, the Penguin becomes the Penguin, like, after the pilot episode, so yeah). It is meant to show the state of Gotham City to emphasize why the city really needs a hero like Batman, and we’re seeing it all through the eyes of Detective Jim Gordon before his days as commissioner of the GCPD.

So with that, let’s get into the details. For one, I’d like to point out that this show is TV-14, a stark difference from the TV-MA rating like Game of Thrones has. Over the past few years however, I’ve learned that the TV-14 rating can, in many cases, be the equivalent of a light R rating from a film perspective. In the case of this show, this would indeed have a light R rating if it was a movie.

This show has been going on for a season and a half now, and while the first season was fairly held back in terms of content with the exception of a few moments here and there, the second season has been one string of senselessly violent sequences that almost never ends. Limbs are hacked off, people are stabbed repeatedly, blown up, and set on fire with shockingly very little censorship in the process. The more graphic violence is off-screen just barely enough simply so that the show can maintain its TV-14 rating. Some particularly gory moments in recent episodes (yes, spoilers technically ahead) is when the Penguin stabs a woman repeatedly in the chest as she screams (it’s behind a door with a shaded window, but we still see enough and hear enough to comprehend the terror of the moment), a cannibal who works as a hired assassin bites into a female officer’s neck and keeps tearing until she dies while her fellow officers are trying desperately to get him off of her, and a man’s arm is chopped off as punishment for something that I don’t really remember nor do I care to remember and we see the bloody stump where his arm used to be. These are just to name a few. Violence is something that remains a subject of deep debate regarding its role in storytelling and entertainment. Sometimes violence can actually be used to great effect in a story to send an important message across. Most of the violence in Gotham however, never feels like its there for anything except to be complete shock value. A lot of times, there’s no point to it. It’s easy to tell when violence in a show has meaning and when it’s just shock value, and the latter is what I’ve felt all the time with Gotham. Yes, bad guys do bad things, but how many times do we have to see it happen before the writers feel like we’ve seen enough to get the point? They haven’t reached that point yet apparently.

I understand the universe of Batman is a dark one, but remember Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy? I remember very little blood in those movies. In fact, Nolan was much more focused on telling a deep and sometimes thought-provoking story without the use of graphic violence to try and get the point across, and whenever there was violence, it was used sometimes in a pretty powerful way that prompted emotion.

Unfortunately, I’m not done. The second thing about this show that’s made me decide to stop is its portrayal of women. Most women in this show are either mentally insane, always getting abducted and can barely defend themselves, or are simply there to be eye candy. While there are very few actual sex scenes and little nudity here, enough bare skin can be seen to make me feel uncomfortable, especially being that it’s in a setting where the people are real. Jim’s ex-girlfriend Barbara is a psychopath obsessed with getting married to Jim, but has no problem sleeping around with both men and women that are willing to have her. One of the women she encounters is the sister of the current central villain, whose only motivation is to kill, and get jealous when she sees Barbara making out with her brother. Most of the random women we see in the background are typically prostitutes or strippers, and the camera makes sure to take its time lingering on those poses. Again, there is no real value or meaning to this. There are some women in my life that I consider to be fantastic and talented people, and I would honestly feel ashamed if they watched this show with me, so with that in consideration, neither do I feel that I should watch it.

Gotham is absolutely not nearly as terrible in terms of content as a show like Game of Thrones is, but it has enough for me to say ‘no’, and for good reason. If you watch this show and you don’t feel convicted by it like I do, I’m not trying to discourage you from watching it. Everybody has their own different set of convictions. In my case, Gotham isn’t for me. While a few good things stand out to me in this show like Sean Pertwee’s performance as Bruce’s beloved butler Alfred and Robin Lord Taylor’s performance as the Penguin, they still don’t justify the content. Any morals that the writers try to insert into the show are drowned out by the content and even normally feels heavy-handed to begin with, as if they’re almost an afterthought to try and give this show heart. Batman, I don’t care that you’re Batman, this show is not for me.