<![CDATA[A. B. England

<![CDATA[A. B. England - Blog]]>Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:57:52 -0500Weebly<![CDATA[Another Side of Meltdowns and Shutdowns]]>Tue, 11 Apr 2023 18:31:36 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/another-side-of-meltdowns-and-shutdownsFor those who may not know, April is autism awareness month. I wasn't originally planning posts in honor of the month, but something that happened last week started me thinking about something that's not often talked about

"But Amanda," exclaim those of you who read the title, "people talk about meltdowns all the time. Shutdowns not so much, but they're talked about plenty too."

And yes, meltdowns and shutdowns are discussed, but not often in the way I will speak about them today. When these facts of life as an autistic individual are spoken about, it's almost always in a completely negative light. The “symptoms” are all negative. You rarely hear about causes for them that are not wholly negative, and their purpose is also almost never spoken about.

They’re Not Just an Autistic Thing

Believe it or not, meltdowns and shutdowns have a purpose. Yes, they may be challenging to handle. Yes, they may produce self-harming behaviors when particularly intense. But at their core meltdowns and shutdowns are fail-safes built in to “reset” and protect the nervous system, and while more common in those of us who are neurodivergent, they are far from a solely neurodivergent experience. Push anyone to their limit, and they will go into shutdown or meltdown.

Why are they so much more prevalent for those who are neurodivergent than those who are neurotypical? That tends to come down to the individual’s baseline stress levels and how well their mental filters work. Let me use a couple of visual metaphors to explain.

Meltdowns Empty an Overflowing Cup

Imagine everyone's stress limit as a bucket. It’s there to collect and deal with all the incoming information and stresses to protect the nervous system as a whole. So in this illustration, the rest of the nervous system is the house the bucket sits in. The individual’s ability to deal with the incoming stressors is a connected tube that allows the bucket to shunt water into the house’s cistern.

Sensory input, new information, demands, and stressors are rain coming in through a leak in the roof. If the bucket becomes too full, it will overflow and cause water damage to the house.

Neurochemically speaking, a meltdown is a mental storm that burns off excess stress and energy in something of an emergency failsafe. It’s like someone disconnecting the bucket right before it overflows and tossing the water out the back door before hooking the emptied bucket back up.

In this metaphor, every day is a rainy day because each day brings its own stressors. Some days it's just a drizzle. Some days it storms.

Everyone's bucket is hooked up to the home’s cistern with a tap and drainage tube. These are things they do to blow off steam or otherwise keep themselves regulated. Some help drain off water faster than others, but they all serve to allow the bucket to deal with the incoming water in a controlled manner.

Generally speaking, neurotypical individuals have slower leaks in their roofs, which in itself represents the mental filters we all have to one degree or another. Those with autism or ADHD or other neurological differences usually have far more rain leaking in faster because we often have little control over when and how well our mental filters kick in and work.

Sensory aids like ear defenders and sunglasses can act like a patch for a few of the leaks. Stimming or spending time with special interests act like temporarily hooking the bucket up to a larger gauge drainage system. Sometimes it's just a tiny difference. Other times it's bigger. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to guess how well one will work in a particular instance or on a particular day.

Self-isolating can be kind of like using your hands to scoop out some of the water to give yourself some more time during a bad storm.

But as I mentioned before, the rain is constant though not consistent. No matter what you do, the bucket will eventually overflow. That can be a good thing though, even though it feels crappy before, during, and after because staying with high baseline stress levels and the neurotransmitter buildup that comes with it can eventually damage the brain if not corrected. That's why the body has programmed meltdowns as a way to force a reboot to reset the system.

Shutdowns Are a Surge Protector

Shutdowns are similar, but they work a bit differently. To explain shutdowns, let’s think of the nervous system as a hospital.

Because of the nature of the work they do, hospitals are built to keep running no matter what. They have systems with redundancies and backups to keep things chugging along even if one system goes down. The nervous system is similar. Yet, no matter how good the system they all have limits.

What happens to electrical equipment if it is kept running at maximum for a long time? Eventually something or other with burnout or break. Our minds and bodies are much the same. If you push yourself to the limit, your stress hormones will kick in to keep you going for a bit, but that can only keep you afloat for so long. Eventually, something has to give. That’s when shutdowns happen.

Let’s go back to the hospital analogy. Something big happened. The main power is knocked out, so the hospital's emergency generators are kicked on to keep things going. Emergency crews are dispatched to try and repair the electrical grid, but in the meantime, patients keep pouring in. The generators are kept running at max as long as possible, but soon enough, they start struggling and decisions have to be made on where to expend energy to keep the most important stuff running.

Power gets cut to the system supplying the televisions in patient rooms and the waiting rooms. Next staff go around and begin manually turning off lights wherever possible. Vending machines are unplugged, and so on.

Shutdown acts in the same way. More information is coming in than can be processed, so the brain begins shutting down “unnecessary” systems to free up “ram” for additional processing capacity. It serves the same purpose as a meltdown, but it takes a slower and somewhat more “gentle” approach.

Instead of dumping out and replacing the bucket, it sets a bowl over it and lets it drain before pouring off some of the water and repeating the process until the rain slows to a drizzle again.

Meltdowns and Shutdowns Have Their Positives

So, as you can see, while meltdowns and shutdowns can be unpleasant to experience, they serve an important function. Neural pathways are resilient, but they have their limits. Overuse or overloading a single pathway can damage it, so our bodies have methods of protecting them.

But did you know they can be triggered by pleasant and welcomed input just as well as they can adverse input?

I know this, but I still manage to get surprised by it all the same. I love working conventions. They’re fun, and I enjoy getting to see folks I have gotten to know working the local circuit. But conventions are also a very concentrated source of sensory and social stimulation. A two to four-day adrenaline surge ensures I don’t often feel it during the convention, but once it’s over, we’re all packed up, and heading home, that adrenaline wears off. By the time we get back home and unload the car, I’m usually on the edge of shutdown or already in it.

I have heard much the same from other autistics and autistic creators. Sometimes things we enjoy completely can lead to meltdowns or shutdowns because it is a lot of sensory input all at once. Even when we take precautions, they may still happen. Does that mean we should avoid concerts or conventions or theme parks altogether?

I’d certainly hope not.

Accommodations Over Total Avoidance

My point with this article is, not everything connected to meltdowns and shutdowns is negative. In a world that seems determined to pathologize absolutely everything having to do with any and all neurodivergence, that is something important to remember. Both can happen because of a combination of factors, many of them simply living life with a brain that processes information differently from the majority for whom the world is designed. They themselves are neither negative nor positive but simply exist for the overall well-being of the mind and body. They’re just a fact of life for anyone with a high baseline of stress and/or anxiety and should be looked at in a similar vein as anything else someone must learn how to cope with due to a medical condition or mental illness.

If you are prone to self-harmful stims or behaviors during meltdowns, please look for ways to keep yourself safe when you know you are close to having one. But take it from someone who has hurt themselves more by thinking meltdowns were something that should be stamped out entirely, it’s not really possible, and establishing your ability to keep from having them as a factor upon which to judge yourself is just asking for even more stress and self-esteem issues.

Sometimes it can be better, in the long run, to make it somewhere you are safe and let it happen or purposefully trigger it if needed than keep trying to push through until you just can’t anymore, and you explode into one wherever you happen to be.

]]><![CDATA[Updates and Answers]]>Wed, 23 Nov 2022 19:56:54 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/updates-and-answersPosting here or any writing progress at all has been halting and slow for a few years now. I have been open about my frustration at the lack of answers to new, severe physical and mental symptoms over those same years. I was diagnosed with autism, Chiari I Malformation, and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). Those diagnoses provided answers to several issues I have experienced my whole life. Still, they could not explain why I kept having what looked like myoclonus and dystonia episodes, involuntary movements or muscle contractions that pull you into odd postures, and cognitive impairments that seemed like the early stages of dementia with increasing frequency over the past decade.

I bounced between various neurologists, therapists, and a rheumatologist for almost three years now in search of answers until I was finally referred to the Movement Disorders Clinic at UAB last month. The neurologist I saw there reviewed all the imaging and tests run over the past few years, ran a few tests of her own, asked a series of questions, and finally diagnosed me with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND).

For more information on FND, visit the site my rheumatologist recommended: https://www.neurosymptoms.org/en/.

FND is one of those conditions that is poorly known, often misunderstood, and difficult to diagnose because, while the symptoms are very real, involuntary, and debilitating, the cause does not show up on the typical scans. Most doctors will request an MRI or even an MRI with contrast, but since FND is a product of how the nervous system functions rather than an abnormality in its structure, these tests come back normal. It takes two fMRI scans (Functional MRI), one taken when symptoms are present and another when they are not, but the patient mimics them, for the source of the issues to actually show up on imaging.

This type of testing is a relatively new technology, so it is not available everywhere and is rarely done. This fact explains why FND is so poorly known and misunderstood. Clinical testing has only recently proven the actual cause of the symptoms.

Unfortunately, despite the assurances I received that it is curable when diagnosed, few are trained to treat FND, and not all symptoms have reliable treatments. Symptoms of irregular movements, such as those mimicking epilepsy, Parkinsonism, myoclonus, and dystonia, are those most successfully treated with a combination of cognitive and physical therapy. Considering the neurologist who diagnosed me worked for the Movement Disorders Clinic, I am sure those are the symptoms she is most concerned with treating, so her outlook is understandable.

Still, real-life testimonials make it clear improvements are more FND going into remission rather than being cured. Relapses are common enough they should be expected from time to time.

While the physical symptoms are my most noticeable ones and have been extremely painful at times, they were not the ones causing me the most problems. It's true I need a cane often enough to keep one close to hand. I don’t trust myself to use a knife in the kitchen anymore, and we've replaced our china with dishwasher and microwave-safe plastic dishes because of frequent accidents. However, my family can help me with physical tasks. They can’t assist me in thinking.

Difficulty recalling certain words or sometimes whole chunks of my vocabulary was one of the first cognitive symptoms of FND I began to experience a decade or so back. Then I started noticing more holes in my memory than I’ve always experienced due to ADHD's effect on memory encoding. Instances of severe brain fog and confusion began to manifest in late 2018.

The neurologist at UAB referred me to a couple of psychiatrists specially trained to treat FND. It's a problem with the function of neural pathways rather than their structure, after all, and cognitive behavioral therapy is the top method of retraining cognitive function available today. I called to set up an appointment naively sure it would be similar to setting up an appointment with any other specialist. It might take several months, but I would eventually be able to get one.

I failed to realize there are so few trained to treat FND that those available must be selective in who they treat, and my physical symptoms are far milder than most who seek treatment. Several weeks later, I am sure I am low in the triage queue if not removed from consideration altogether.

So, since my searches for other professionals who can treat it within a reasonable travel radius turned up no one, I began researching what has helped others with FND to try and take a self-help approach. I have had some success with the techniques for the physical symptoms, but the few stories of those with cognitive symptoms left me stunned.

There really are no stories of recovery from cognitive symptoms. The best ones celebrate preventing the worsening of those already present. The only advice seems to be to make peace with them, manage your stress, avoid overexertion, and try your best not to worry about them since prolonged stress and focusing on them causes them to worsen.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

I lost an administrative position due to the communication issues that come with autism and for daring to ask for the simple accommodation of written instructions to try and correct this. I switched to working as a freelance writer and lost my largest regular customers because persistent brain fog made it impossible to keep up with their required weekly word counts.

I have been unable to earn an income from anything other than residual sales since early 2021 due to physical and cognitive symptoms of FND.

I continue to try and write, but the days I have the energy and focus needed after finishing homeschooling are few and far between. According to the stats provided by Grammarly, I still write anywhere from 3000 - 6000 words a week, but they are not words written for stories or articles. The vast majority of these are in lessons created for the kids’ schooling, messages between us because typing what we want to say is often far easier than speaking, or using text to communicate during nonspeaking episodes.

I add to stories or the occasional article when I have good days. Sometimes I only manage a paragraph. Sometimes I have a really good day, and I manage to write four or five.

You can write whole novels in hundred-word chunks, but it takes months if not years to do so.

So that's where I stand. There are so many stories I want to tell. But translating thoughts into words is becoming more and more difficult, and it seems there’s nothing I can do to change that. The more I try to brute force my way through brain fog or vocabulary blocks, the more instances of truly nonverbal spells, where I still have complex thoughts but cannot translate them into words, occur. Even doing everything advised to help, there’s only so much I can do in a day. I suppose I must make peace with being a turtle writer in the extreme for the entirety of my career if it can be called that.

I may take to publishing short stories or collections of short works here and there between the novels. I have a couple I am chipping away at now when I feel able to write but too foggy to keep track of more than one plotline. Articles are needed for the sake of SEO and to help new readers find what work I complete, but researching and synthesizing what I find into original content takes as much focus as weaving several storylines together.

In short, I will try to provide semi-regular content for you all, but I can make no promises on the frequency it will be delivered. I hope you can understand.

]]><![CDATA[Stories and Rules for The Character Trope Challenge for Sims 4]]>Sun, 25 Sep 2022 10:14:03 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/stories-and-rules-for-the-character-trope-challenge-for-sims-4Okay. Okay, this isn’t the usual content on here, but to be fair, I was still having trouble with focus when I started this project. I have since changed meds, and through the magic of lower side effects, I’m beginning to baby-step my way back into writing stories and articles. It’s still slow going, but I’m managing to scrape together the focus to make headway for a little bit most days. So this is likely to be the last Sims 4 Challenge for quite a while.

This one does pertain a bit more to fiction and writing than the Color Spectrum Challenge did, and it gives the player both a bit more wiggle room and a higher challenge than the last one. It is still based around 10 generations, each affecting the next, but each generation is based on a common character trope. Since tropes tend to have a fair amount of variance across genres and even within the same, you are provided with a few options to choose between here and there.

I had a lot of fun while playtesting this challenge. You can even find some of my families and the builds from that play-through on the gallery under Tekaran_Lady. (You may need to tick the allow custom content or modded items buttons. They don’t actually have any CC, but I had MCC Command Center, Wonderful Whims, and the Better Schools mods installed when I uploaded them. Why that automatically counts them as having CC, I don’t know, but it does.)

If you decide to give the challenge a shot, please let me know how it goes. Or if you post about your games anywhere, send links. I would absolutely love to see what you make of the challenge.

The Character Trope Challenge

Generation 1: Fantasy YA Protagonist (a.k.a. The Chosen One)

You were just a normal kid growing up in a small, rural town when one day, this weird, glowing spot opened up under your feet, and you fell. You passed out due to terror and a lack of oxygen while tumbling through what you can only describe as a directionless vortex of light. You woke to find yourself laying on the floor of an apartment so empty it didn’t even have interior walls!

Before you could so much as get up off the floor, your phone chimed with an incoming message from someone you’d never met before telling you to make sure you paid your rent on time. How you were supposed to do that when a search of what you had on you revealed only an unfamiliar textbook and your phone?

Determined to figure out how to get back home from this odd world where things were the same but also completely different, you scrape by as best as you can, learning as much as possible. Too bad this one jerk seems to be just as determined to make things as difficult as possible.

Traits: Good, Clumsy, and either Family Oriented or Dog Lover
Aspirations: Renaissance Sim and Big Happy Family
Career: Politician, Scientist, and Secret Agent

Start as a teen. Move into a starter home or apartment, delete everything but the exterior walls and entrance, and reset your money to zero. Survive, gain skills, and make friends until you age up into an adult.
Either make the antagonist in CAS or pick a random sim with the evil trait. Then, either use MCC Command Center to cheat their relationship to enemies or actively make them your enemy. This sim represents whatever evil the protagonist is there to defeat.
- Your antagonist should always be a senior coworker at all three jobs. (You may cheat them into the 4th level of each job just before you swap to that career.)
- You have three options for “defeating” your antagonist.
  - Defeat: Save the scientist's career for last, become their boss, and fire them.
  - Redeem: Befriend and reform your antagonist. Get the friendship bar completely full and orchestrate an incident that will convince them to trade in the evil trait for another.
  - Enemies to Lovers: Follow the directions for the redeem option, but seduce them along the way. Fill the romance bar all the way in addition to the friendship bar.
During gameplay, rotate between the two aspirations until both are completed.
Make 20 good friends and maintain relationships with each of them throughout this generation. (They are your “found family.”)
Master the charisma, logic, and handiness skills. Reach level 8 in at least six other skills of your choice.

Generation 2: The Bitter Child

Your parents made sure you had everything you could ever really need growing up: love, food, shelter, support, a good education, etc. For a long time, everything was great, and you were quite happy. Then the constant comparisons began.

No matter what you did. No matter where you went. No matter how hard you tried, you were constantly compared to your parent. Did something really well? “You’re a regular chip off the old block, eh?” Struggled with something? “Ah, come on. This should be easy for the child of (Gen 1’s Name).”

It was infuriating. Why could no one ever see you as your own person?

Gradually you became bitter and resentful toward your parents and siblings, who never seemed to mind being seen as little clones. You began to avoid everyone when you could and snap at them when you couldn’t avoid interacting, counting down the days to when you finished school and could move far away.

You’d prove to everyone you could be even more successful and beloved than your parent, and you’d be a better parent to boot, making sure your kids never felt like they had to be like anyone but themselves.

Traits: Jealous, Hot-Headed, and either Gloomy or Self-Assured
Aspirations: Friend of the World and Fabulously Wealthy
Career: Pick One (Politician, Athlete, or Business)

Be a middle child with a poor relationship with your parents and siblings.
- It can start out fine but begin to degrade in childhood or their teen years, depending on the inciting incident you want to begin their bitter feelings so long as you get the friendship bar either empty or into the red by the time they age up into a young adult.
- Cut ties upon moving out, and shift any and all family gatherings to being your partner or roommates’ families only.
Move to a new world, taking only the amount of money you have earned in your teens, just after aging into a young adult. (If you are working on the fabulously wealthy aspiration, it will show you the amount attributed to your sim up until that point.)
Master the writing skill and 8 other skills of your choice.
Alternate between both aspirations until you complete both of them.
Reach the top of your chosen career.
Write a “tell-all” biography of the parent from generation one, three non-fiction books about your life, and at least one motivational book.
Maintain strong relationships with all your children and grandchildren, encouraging their individuality.

Generation 3: The Rogue/Trickster

Even though few seem to get your sense of humor, your parent was always supportive of your pranks and adventurous spirit. You are you, and you can’t help being your authentic self, even if that self is sometimes at odds with the law.

Your parents seemed to have a charmed relationship and ideal, easy marriage, but you have always seemed to have a restlessness about you. “Itchy feet” your mother called it. Who knows whether your inability to commit to a single romantic partner for long is connected with your drive to always be on the move or not, but it’s led to some… interesting situations throughout your life.

Traits: Goofball, Kleptomaniac or Adventurous, and either Non-Commital, Evil, or Childish
Aspirations: Chief of Mischief and Serial Romantic
Career: Secret Agent or Criminal

Pull regular pranks on your parents and siblings while growing up, but make sure to maintain a good relationship with them regardless.
Alternate between the two aspirations until you complete them both.
Master your career as well as the mischief, charisma, and comedy skills.
Stay in one location growing up. Then move at least six times in your adult life, living in at least three worlds throughout your lifetime.
If you have Wonderful Whims or MCC Command Center, set risky woohoo to at least 25%, and always use that option and leave how many children you have up to chance. (Whether all of them live with you or with their other parent is up to you, but you should raise at least the gen 4 heir. “Pay” $1000 in child support each Sunday for each child who does not live with you.) - If you are playing without these mods, instead always use the try for baby option.
Have at least one side hustle going on at any given time.
Accidentally kill another sim with laughter.

Generation 4: The Cursed One

As much as your parent provided for and loved you, they couldn’t hide the fact they kind of resented you and your siblings a touch, which just seems dumb. It’s not like any of you asked to be born, after all, but you were figurative roots tieing them down. And if it was one thing they have always hated, it was being tied down.

If it weren’t for bad luck, you wouldn’t have any at all. That’s what some would say, but you figure it’s more a case of poor impulse control. Things cross your mind, and you just do them without thinking. Or, you are in the middle of doing something when it happens, and you lose focus and flub whatever it was you were trying to do. You try. You really do, but you just keep falling short of the mark no matter what you do.

Your whole life, it’s felt like you’re cursed. You’ve made peace with it, but you are also determined to break whatever “curse” has been placed on your family and help your children thrive.

Traits: Clumsy or Lactose Intolerant, Gloomy or Mean, and either Lazy, Slob, or Perfectionist
Aspirations: Bad Valentine and Successful Lineage
Career: Fast Food, Business, Critic, Social Media, and Freelancer

If playing with Parenthood, make sure you age up with the irresponsible trait and none of the positive traits.
Stay in the D to B student range throughout grade school and high school.
Alternate between the two aspirations until you complete both.
Work through the careers in the order they are listed. It’s perfectly fine if you stay at level one, but make sure you never attain better than level 5 before quitting or being fired from them.
Have three failed friendships and six failed relationships over the course of your life.
Get married and divorced during the same social event.
Master the parenting skill, play an instrument, and maintain good relationships with all of your children and grandchildren.
Have a “surprise” child very young.
Have at least two lot challenges active on every lot you live in from the time you move out of your parent’s home until you die.

Generation 5: The Comic Relief

The old saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” is rather laughable when you consider yourself and your parent. The two of you are about as close to polar opposites as you can get.
Then again, things didn’t happen by accident. You saw firsthand what a cycle of toxic behavior and festering bitterness over circumstances did to your parent and how hard they had to work to try and undo the damage. Things weren’t always great in your family, but you promised yourself early on that even if they never changed, the cycle would end with you. You studied psychology and applied what you learned in a type of self-therapy, and you took your angst and channeled it into music and jokes.

Lifting the spirits of others, first in your family and then in those outside your small circle, gave you a sense of purpose and filled you with joy.

Also, from the time you began to notice the problems your parent had, and more so since beginning to study and realizing the potential reasons for them, you have worried for them. They’ve resisted all attempts you’ve made to get them to seek therapy, sighting prohibitive costs and a lack of time. So you made the decision that you would “stay at home” to make sure they didn’t get themselves into too much trouble until they passed, got their lives together, or asked you to leave, whichever came first.

Traits: Loves Music, either Creative or Goofball, and either Family-Oriented or Childish
Aspirations: Joke Star and Musical Genius
Career: Entertainer

Alternate between the two aspirations until you finish both.
Live with your parent until you reach the top of your career.
Master all three instruments, comedy, charisma, and writing.
Write at least six songs, and publish a minimum of three comedy books.
Marry a loner sim in a career that works afternoons and evenings.
Be the best parent you can be despite your working hours limiting the amount of time you have with your children.
Make sure the home stays well maintained, the bills are paid on time, and everyone takes care of their health, especially your parent, who has never been that great at taking care of themselves.

Generation 6: The Lover

Your parents worked evening shifts for most of your childhood, so it was nice that you all lived with your grandparent. You and your siblings spent most evenings watching old movies with them, having them read from their novel collection to you, and listening to them talk fondly of all their past romances. Your parents made sure you all understood a lot of your grandparent’s past behavior wasn’t good. While you understood that, the wonder and fond recollections behind all those stories stuck with you.

You have always been expressive and more than a little extroverted. You love the arts, and your fondest dream is to have an epic love story like those in the books and movies you grew up with and live happily ever after with your one true love. If you can help your family and friends find theirs too along the way, so much the better.

Traits: Romantic, either Creative, Art Lover, or Bookworm, and either Ambitious or Jealous
Aspirations: Soulmate and Trusted Confidant
Career: Pick one (Writer, Painter, or Critic)

Reach the top of your career, and master writing, painting, charisma, cooking, and gourmet cooking skills.
Whether you pick being a writer or one of the other career options, write at least four romance novels but gift them to your spouse instead of publishing them.
While you do love your kids, raising children was never really part of your fairy tale dreams, and you have a hard time connecting with them. Have only one or two children. Provide for them, but have a “hands-off” parenting style.
Pour all your time, attention, and affection into your career and relationship with your spouse and friends.
Say yes to every invitation, unless you are already at a social event or work starts within an hour.
Keep a well-maintained flower garden and dabble at making arrangements to gift to friends, family, and others in your network.

Generation 7: The Baddie

You’ve always known you were different than everyone else. They frittered away their days on meaningless drivel while you worked toward building the skills and connections you would need on your climb to the greatness you deserve.

So many others would be bitter and resentful of the borderline neglect you experienced when young, but you were grateful for it. Family outings, movie or game nights, and boring conversations would have taken up precious time better spent building your intellect and studying those around you to figure out how they tick. Foolish and frivolous they may be, but people can be handy tools.

Speaking of, you stumbled across the unpublished romance novels your parent wrote and stashed away for some unfathomable reason. They’re actually quite decent. It’s a shame no one is benefiting from their release. …Well, if they’re too self-conscious to do it, you may as well. Waste not, want not, right?

Traits: Evil, either Mean or Hot-Headed, and either Genius or Erratic
Aspirations: Public Enemy and Mansion Barron
Career: Criminal (You may switch to the Villian branch of the Secret Agent career after completing the Public Enemy aspiration.)

If playing with Parenthood, age up with the Insensitive, Argumentative, and Uncontrolled Emotions traits. Do not age up with the Good Manners Trait, and you can do as you please regarding the Responsible trait.
Alternate between aspirations until you complete both.
If playing with Get Together, use the club system to trick sims into working for you (i.e. painting or wood working clubs), and/or convince members of your household to ghostwrite books for you to publish under your own name.
Immediately hire a nanny upon having a child. Add whichever nanny arrives to the family and have them become a live-in nanny/tutor/housekeeper for all of your children. Hand off any and all childcare, household maintenance, and parenting responsibilities to them, only trotting out your kids to make yourself look better at parties and work functions. (You may use the cas.fulleditmode cheat to tweak the nanny’s traits, age, and appearance. Try to set them up as the type of sim capable of raising the next generation in a plausible way. This may include pertinent skills, though randomize known skill levels rather than setting all desired skills to high levels.)
Most if not all private interactions with the nanny or children should be negative. You’re the kind of parent/employer where perfect still isn’t good enough more or less. Dangle affection and acceptance like a carrot but never let them attain it outside of public appearances.
Master the charisma, logic, mischief, programming, and fitness skills.
Reach the top of either the Criminal or Villain (Secret Agent) career.
Only maintain relationships with individuals from whom you are getting something, be it attention, good PR, money, or free labor. (This includes your “friends” and family.)
Actively antagonize any and all good sims you meet.
Make at least three enemies.
Die in any manner other than old age.

Generation 8: The Warrior

Your childhood was…interesting and more than a little traumatic.

Let’s face it, your parent was a garbage sim who saw your other parent, you, and all your siblings as nothing more than tools to get what they wanted. You spent far too long trying to rationalize it away. If you could just be stronger, do better, maybe things would get better.

Thankfully, you and your siblings had at least one good role model and loving adult in your lives in the form of your live-in nanny/tutor, who was far more of a parent to you all than your birth parents.

The twisted thing is, you thought this was all normal until you went to school and made friends with other kids in actual healthy, loving families. This helped you see the flaws in yours for what they were, a narcissistic tyrant making life miserable for those they claimed to love and only doling out crumbs of affection when in public and pleased with your performance.

With this realization, you became even more grateful to your nanny than ever before, since they provided you with as much love and support as they could and tried to shelter you from the worst sides of your parents. You swore you would grow up to be like them and do everything in your power to protect those you care about. You studied and disciplined yourself, building yourself into someone who could stand between evil and those who cannot defend themselves.

Also, you vowed that somehow, someway, you would find a great love for yourself and build the happy, healthy, loving family you, your siblings, and your nanny deserved.

Traits: Active, either Self-Assured, Ambitious, or Creative, and either Loves the Outdoors, Bookworm, or Gloomy
Aspirations: Bodybuilder and either Soulmate or Bestselling Author
Career: Pick one (Athlete, Police, or Freelance Writer)

Grow up with a very poor relationship with the parent from Gen 7 and close relationships with your siblings. (You grow up being very protective of them and maybe your other parent, depending on their traits and behavior.)
Master the fitness, charisma, logic, handiness, and writing skills, and reach level 6 in three others of your choice.
Reach the top of your career if you choose the athlete or police career. Earn the freelancer award and complete the bestselling author aspiration if you choose the freelance writing career.
Achieve and maintain full friendship and romance bars with your partner, regardless of whether you choose to do the Soulmate or Bestselling Author aspiration.
Have at least two biological children and adopt two more. Build and maintain high relationships with them all.
Live in at least four worlds over the course of your life.
Keep in contact with your siblings, nieces, and nephews.
Host big family reunions on holidays and during the summer, and have outdoor games, grilling, and swimming and/or basketball be a big focus of them.
Pick writing, gardening, fishing, reading, or painting as a hobby and “indulge” at least once a week to destress.

Generation 9: The Sage

You grew up in a big and chaotic but loving family and traveled around a fair bit. Although you can’t complain about your childhood, you began to crave a far quieter and more settled life as you grew up. Yet, you could never shake the “itch” to learn as much as you can about anything and everything. Maybe that’s why you became obsessed with the aliens who migrated from their homeworld of Sixam.

They’ve always given off an air of being open with their knowledge, but they seem to all be masters of talking openly without ever actually sharing anything. Additionally, to public knowledge, no sim has ever been to Sixam or even really understands the technology they brought with them. You are determined to be the first to travel to Sixam and discover the secrets they’re hiding there.

While you have friends and enjoyed a few romantic dalliances here and there, you’ve never felt the urge to settle down. The process of gestation and birth creeps you out a bit, so you have never really wanted biological children of your own. Yet, it seems a waste to never pass on the skills and knowledge you have developed over the years, and you wouldn’t mind having some company now and again. So, you decided to adopt a child to raise as your own, whom you hope will one day continue your research.

Traits: Perfectionist, either Genius or Bookworm, and either Loner or Hot-Headed
Aspirations: Nerd Brain and Freelance Botanist
Career: Scientist and then selling plants, alien artifacts, and serums.

Master at least one instrument, logic, rocket science, handiness, programming, and gardening skills as well as two other skills of your choosing.
Use satisfaction points to purchase the mentor trait before you master the first skill.
Never have a lasting romantic relationship or biological children. (Unless you get abducted and become pregnant as a result.) Adopt at least one toddler or child and mentor them in at least two skills, helping them reach a minimum of level 8 in those skills before they age up into a young adult.
Leave the science career and move to a “remote” lot upon reaching level six. Make all your money from that point on via gardening and/or selling collectibles, alien artifacts, and serums that you make in your home lab.
Travel to Sixam and bring back cuttings from the alien plants. Splice them in your home lab, and once you harvest fruits and flowers from them, make a secret alien garden hidden in the Silvan Glade lot to protect your source as you continue to research these new species.
Live like a hermit upon moving after quitting the scientist career, but still offer help to any who asks you for assistance.
Write several (3-6) non-fiction books on your discoveries and gift them to your child rather than publish them.

Generation 10: The Outsider

You were adopted by a virtual hermit from a completely different culture than the one you were born into. While they loved you and taught you all they could, their self-isolation made it so that they didn’t think about helping you integrate into this new culture whatsoever when you were growing up.

You had no way of knowing just how much this oversight would impact your life until you moved out on your own. The excellent education you were provided has proven your greatest boon, and being useful causes others to cut you a bit of slack for being “odd” they probably wouldn’t have otherwise.

Never one to back down from a challenge, you simply add learning to acclimate to the culture you were adopted into to your list of life goals.

Traits: Geek, either Loner or Outgoing, and either Bookworm, Insider, or Neat
Aspirations: City Native and The Collector
Career: Pick one (Doctor, Freelance Photographer, or Unemployed i.e. make money via skills and collecting only.)

Don’t have any friends or close acquaintances outside of your parent until aging up into a young adult.
If playing with the Better School’s Mod, use the computer that allows you to attend lectures from home all the way through school. Spend any extra time either skill-building on your own or helping your parent with their work.
If playing as an occult sim, do not hide your occult form at any time throughout your childhood or for at least the first week after becoming a young adult and moving out. (Your parent was always cool with you as you were, so why wouldn’t everyone else be?)
Move to a more heavily populated world upon aging up into a young adult, and set out trying to make friends.
If playing as an occult, only ever hide your “true nature” when in public. Drop your disguise when at home. (You may wear the disguise only if hosting a social event.)
Have at least three failed relationships. If you marry, only marry a sim who loves all sides of you, especially if playing as an occult sim.
Alternate between the two aspirations until you complete both.
Master ten skills of your choosing.
Make 20 friends and 10 good friends before aging up into an elder.

]]><![CDATA[We Now Have Discord!]]>Mon, 05 Sep 2022 16:15:36 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/we-now-have-discordI set up a discord server yesterday. I mean for it to be a place where anyone who enjoys science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and everything in between can come talk about those things and find others with similar interests.

To be frank, I have kind of gotten sick of how the Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube algorithms pick and choose who is "worthy" to connect with their communities on a regular basis. It has gotten to the point where if you aren't spending half the day posting on them or have thousands of followers or views, you are basically yelling into an empty void. Even with Discord, you have to have 1000 members on a server before you can make it searchable, but at the very least, those who join a server can see all the posts on said server.

So, come join me on The Tekaran Lady server. We can meet up in the Living Room channel for general conversations, talk about stuff that's genre specific, and in general, have conversations with friends without having them get buried in an endless sea of unwanted ads.

]]><![CDATA[Learn and Adapt: On Dealing with Increasing Communication Issues]]>Tue, 29 Mar 2022 23:22:44 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/self-discovery-isnt-always-easyThe last few years have been interesting, to put it mildly. A series of events, frustrating struggles, and worrisome symptoms put me on a path of self-discovery that has been helpful in understanding much of my life and why I struggle with certain things. Overall, it has been helpful, but it hasn’t been easy.

I have already spoken at length about being diagnosed with autism at 38 following a burnout severe enough to cause a “regression.” I have talked about increasing issues with being able to speak, and sometimes even write, which drove me to visit doctors, receive specialist referrals, and undergo numerous tests that found a Chiari malformation and hEDS without giving answers about the cause of my communication difficulties. As it turns out, all we can really do is eliminate any physical causes of the symptoms and then take our best guess at what is going on based on similarities to others with similar experiences.

There are no tumors, no obvious neurological damage, and no evidence of deficiencies, diseases, or injuries commonly known to cause similar communication issues. They are not due to anxiety or specific situations, so situational mutism is out as an explanation. Our only option at this point is to conclude it is most likely related to being neurodivergent or, less likely, something not so commonly associated with these specific symptoms.

So, I began looking into stories from other autistic individuals who are sometimes speaking and sometimes non-speaking. In doing so, I learned there is a huge spectrum of semi-verbal people out there we don’t hear much about, from those who speak very little to those who speak most of the time with some level of difficulty or lack of fluency much of the time.

The more I looked into it, the more a big chunk of my life began to make a bit more sense. I’ve mentioned before how I never realized I had non-speaking episodes until I was an adult because I so rarely wanted to speak at all. I only began forcing myself to speak more often because I kept getting forgotten for lunch breaks at my first regular job. After a few years of doing that, I almost began speaking compulsively out of anxiety.

Looking back, I have noticed a pattern with the amount I speak or write in a given day and when I have increased difficulty with fluent speech.

The times when I speak little, I often write far more. When I find myself needing to speak often, I begin having difficulty writing and/or speaking after a while. I find it’s a lot like spoon theory, but rather than “spoons,” I seem to have a limited number of words for the day.

Like with the “spoons,” it all centers around energy. Translating our thoughts into words takes energy. How much it takes varies based on stress levels, environment, the amount of focus required, and the method of communication used. For instance, writing takes less energy than speaking for a casual conversation because you are just translating the concepts into words rather than adding in the factors of nonverbal communication and tone. Yet, formal writing for articles or storytelling takes a lot more focus than a spoken conversation the majority of the time. The more complex the ideas being translated are and the more important tone, expression, body language, or grammar and word choice are, the more energy and focus it takes.

Understanding this, it is little wonder my most productive years writing were the ones back in middle and high school before I began forcing myself to talk more. No wonder my ability to work on professional writing or fiction diminishes when I need to speak more than usual. It also explains why I began having increasing issues with non-speaking episodes or worsening fluency during my busiest times freelancing.

In short, I have never been as “fully speaking” as I thought. I have always been semi-verbal, I just didn’t know what that was at the time. I just saw myself as quiet.

I’ll be transparent for a moment. It’s taken me weeks of chipping away at it off and on to complete this post. In that time, new developments have happened. Late in the evening on March 12, I went non-speaking, as has become my normal over the past year. But this time, I did not regain the ability to speak the next morning. That ability did not return until midday March 20, though I had to fight through a severe stutter to say anything.

Over the next few days, the stutter seemed to be improving a little at a time, but on into the afternoon Friday, my ability to speak at all cut out in the middle of a sentence and has yet to return. Along with this, I have been experiencing a lot of peripheral nephropathy in my arms, legs, and face as well as sporadic, involuntary movements of my arms and head. Whether this is connected at all remains to be seen, but this is the first time such has coincided with a prolonged non-speaking episode.

My reasons for sharing are two fold. The experiences of other neurodiverse individuals have helped me far more in understanding why certain things are difficult, uncomfortable, or downright painful over the past several years. So I tell my own on the off chance it could help someone else.

Secondly, it is not to make an excuse but to perhaps explain why there will likely continue to be large gaps between posts here and publications, at least for the next few years. As mentioned before, we are a homeschooling family. Homeschooling requires a great deal of talking, whether physically or through a text-to-speech app as we have been having to do for the past couple of weeks. My first priority is my children’s education, so if I only have so many words available for use in a given day, that is where they will be used.

Thank you for “listening.”

]]><![CDATA[Rules and Storyline for The Color Spectrum Challenge for The Sims 4]]>Fri, 17 Dec 2021 18:16:21 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/rules-and-storyline-for-the-color-spectrum-challenge-for-the-sims-4The “Not So Berry” challenge for the Sims 4 created by LilSimsie and AlwaySimming inspired this one. It has a similar structure, but I have tried to make it completely different at the same time.

Like the “Not So Berry” challenge, you have a backstory and several goals for each generation. Also, the generation heirs embody a specific color somewhere on the light/color spectrum. I decided to start with black, as the absence of color, and go through the visible light spectrum until the challenge finishes with white, a combination of all colors in the visible light spectrum. I wasn’t entirely sure where brown was supposed to fall, so I placed it just after black since that’s where it seemed to fit the best.

Screenshot of two teens and three children doing their homework around a dinning table in the Sims 4.

The gen two heir of my own play through and their siblings doing homework after school.

You don’t have to necessarily make your sim’s hair, eyes, or skin color match their generation’s color, though you can if you’d like. I was thinking of it more as that color is the sim’s favorite color, so it’s probably one you would find throughout their wardrobe and how they decorate their home.

I also thought it would be fun to see a vague plot running throughout the generations. The original heir starts the challenge with a fairly tragic backstory with the odds stacked against them. Each following generation grows progressively more settled, stable, and healthy. Each heir’s growth and flaws influence the next generation.

As a helpful note and to tie the overarching plot together, have each generation write in a journal and make sure to have each heir collect the journals of the previous generations. You will need them to complete the final generation's challenge.

I don’t have anywhere near all the packs, so many traits, aspirations, careers, skills, and collections are not included. The packs used include Seasons, Cats and Dogs, Get to Work, City Living, and Parenthood.

* Note: While play testing, I discovered notebooks revert to unused following the death of the sim that owned it. But I still had the 10 Gen Heir write in all the others once and pretended they were reading it for the sake of the storytelling.

Generation 1 - Black

You were left orphaned when you were just a toddler. No one ever told you what happened or anything about your birth family, and you don’t remember anything from before you entered the foster system. Unfortunately, you have suffered from undiagnosed kleptomania since your early childhood. Your tendency to swipe random objects led your foster families to think the worst of you.

No one ever really bothered to teach you manners or much of anything useful, and you ended up bouncing from one foster home to another until one day, you couldn’t take it anymore and ran away with nothing but the clothes on your back, what money you managed to squirrel away doing odd jobs, and a determination to work your way to the top by any means necessary.

Because of the way you grew up, your fondest dream is to adopt as many kids out of the foster system as possible and give them a better life than you had. You know the route you ended up taking wasn’t the best, so you promised yourself you’d do whatever you can to hide how you are supporting them from any children you adopt and be the best parent you can be along the way.

Traits: Kleptomaniac, Slob, Evil
Aspiration: Public Enemy
Job: Criminal

Start as a teen with the kleptomaniac and slob traits. Move into an apartment furnished with only the cheapest materials. The maximum starting materials are: 4 lights, 2 counters, a stove, a fridge, a toilet, a tub, two sinks, a couch or sleeping bag, and a trash can. Reset your money to $1. Keep this apartment until you become a young adult.
Master the criminal career and complete the public enemy aspiration.
Master parenting, mischief, and photography.
Adopt at least two children.
Have an eight sim household at some point in your life.
Complete the snow globe collection.

Generation 2 - Brown

You grew up in a loving but chaotic household. You are grateful for being adopted before being old enough to remember your time in the foster system. You are even more grateful to have had a parent who understood how hard it is to live with and manage mental health issues.

However, you kind of wish they hadn’t had so many kids. You escaped into the outdoors as much as you could and found your most peaceful moments while out fishing, but that didn’t stop you from developing a dislike of children in general. (They’re just so noisy and messy, something that triggers your anxiety and makes your mental health worse.)

You moved away from the city hoping you’d find happiness in a quaint, rural environment and took an office job to have regular times you could go fishing to your heart’s content. You never planned to have children at all, but sometimes life happens. You might as well make the best of it.

Traits: Loves Outdoors, Erratic, Hates Children
Aspiration: Angling Ace
Career: Business

Start as an infant or toddler adopted by generation 1.
Move “out to the country” upon becoming a young adult with a maximum of $17,000 starting funds. (If gen one's family funds are under $34,000, take only half when you move out. You have to leave some for the rest of the family and other kids after all.)
Master the fishing, gardening, logic, handiness, and charisma skills, and master the business career.
Complete the angling ace aspiration and the fish collection.
Have only one child and reach parenting level 5 solely through raising them.
Go fishing every weekend, and take a fishing trip in each world you have access to at least once. (Include the Forgotten Grotto and Sylvan Glade.)

Generation 3 - Red

You never had the relationship you wanted with your parent. They tried their best to be a good parent and hide their stress from you, but you saw it anyway. It didn't take you long to figure out it was kids being around rather than work like they'd always say, so you never brought friends home from school until you were a teenager.

However, keeping distance between your friends and yourself made life rather lonely, so you spent as much time as you could visiting with your grandparents. Your youngest aunt/uncle became your best friend with all the time you spent over at their house, and the feeling of connection you had there permeates your happiest memories. Maybe that’s why you always stayed a little childish, even into adulthood.

Traits: Art Lover, Mean, Childish
Aspiration: Painter Extraordinaire
Career: None - Make money only through painting, writing, or busking.

Become best friends with your youngest aunt or uncle.
Move into a Needs TLC, Spooky, or Gremlins apartment in San Myshuno and stay in that apartment throughout your young adulthood.
Master the painting, baking, and handiness skills and complete the painter extraordinaire aspiration.
Try all 27 recipes at the City Living food stalls.
Cut ties with your parent when you have children, and don’t let your kids meet the heir from generation 2.
Have at least three children, and have all of them age up with four positive character traits. (Do not send them to preschool/kindergarten if you are using the better schools mod.)
Save up enough to give each child at least $10,000 starting funds when they age up into a young adult.
Build and maintain close relationships with your children and grandchildren throughout your life.
Complete the poster collection.

Generation 4 - Orange

The reason your parents and your grandparent from generation 2 had a falling out was always a mystery to you, but your parents made sure you had a great childhood and learned how to manage your emotions early on. You tend to be happy-go-lucky most of the time as a result and love making others happy. Because of your temperament and love of spreading joy, spending your life as an entertainer was a no-brainer.

While your mischievous nature and the continual fatigue and discomfort from a chronic illness make keeping up with the hours and maintaining relationships difficult, you love your career and the life you built. You work to balance what you want to do and what is physically possible while finding creative ways to work around your weak points.

(The lazy trait in this generation is a stand-in for some of the symptoms most chronic illnesses have: i.e. fatigue and discomfort that worsens with physical activity, not actual laziness. It’s just the closest I could get since we don’t have physical disabilities in the Sims.)

Traits: Cheerful, Goofball, Lazy
Aspiration: Chief of Mischief
Career: Entertainer

Complete the chief of mischief aspiration and master the entertainer career.
Have four failed relationships throughout your life.
Master comedy, cooking, mischief, piano, violin, and guitar.
Marry a slob and maintain a well-kept home and garden despite this and how crummy chores leave you feeling.
“Pay” $3000-$8000 in “medical bills” each Wednesday after becoming a young adult. (Use a random number generator to determine the exact amount.)
Live in four worlds over the course of your life.

Generation 5 - Yellow

Growing up as the child of a successful entertainer, you grew accustomed to the finer things in life. Too bad your chosen career takes a long time to build up to a decent wage. You love your job, but the pay makes creating the life you want so much harder.

Seeing your parent struggle to find love squashed whatever romantic sentiments you might have had as a child, and you quickly become frustrated in your attempts to build the life you want. So why not marry for money?

Traits: Creative, Materialistic, Foodie
Aspiration: Master Chef
Career: Mixologist

Master the mixologist branch of the food career and complete the master chef aspiration.
Move out as soon as you become a young adult with only $5000 in starting funds.
Marry a well-to-do adult or elder while a young adult and stay with them until they die. (If they had children before you married them, grown or not, the home and half of the household funds are to be reserved for them as their inheritance and does not count toward your home/reserve for requirement five.)
Master the cooking, gourmet cooking, mixology, and charisma skills.
Build a home worth a minimum of $100,000 and have $50,000 in reserve.
Move to another world following the death of your spouse.

Generation 6 - Green

You always admired your parent’s dedication to discovering everything they could about food and mixology, but you could never understand how they managed to stick with one interest. ADHD might make some things more challenging, but it also gave you a deep love of many different things.

You have ping-ponged from one hyperfixation to another and back again throughout your entire life. This transience helped you build a little skill in many areas, but it also gave you a fear of commitment. You get restless and stressed out any time you find yourself spending too long with a hobby, a job, or in a relationship.

Traits: Bookworm, Bro, Noncommittal
Aspiration: Freelance Botanist
Career: Athlete, Gardener, and Business plus one of your choosing

Wait until reaching adulthood to have your first job. Gen 5 is definitely the kind of parent to tell their kids that school (and skill-building) is their job.
Reach level 5 in the athlete, gardener, and business careers and reach at least level 3 in one more of your choosing.
Have five romantic relationships throughout your life. Get engaged at least once and break up at some point during the wedding event.
Have a meticulous garden from young adulthood until completing all of the other requirements of this generation.
Reach level 8 in six skills and level 5 in three others.
Master gardening, fitness, and logic.

Generation 7 - Blue

Books were something that was never lacking in your childhood home. Reading and playing chess with your parents are some of your best memories from growing up before perfectionism drove you to bouts of depression. A need for constant mental stimulation drives you to become a scientist, and the desire to recapture that childhood joy fuels your desperate need to write and share stories with the world.

Unfortunately, you work yourself into a massive burnout that ends both your science and writing careers one right after the other, making the end of your life a budgeting challenge.

Traits: Genius, Gloomy, Perfectionist
Aspiration: Bestselling Author
Career: Scientist

Master the scientist career and complete the bestselling author aspiration.
Master logic, handiness, writing, and gardening.
Complete the feather collection, and visit Sixam.
Have all your children age up with the emotional control and responsibility traits.
Retire upon reaching level 10 of the scientist career and live only on your pension and continued royalties. Save enough to give the next heir $10,000 in starting funds when they age up while leaving enough for the rest to live on.

Generation 8 - Indigo

Your parent was a creative and introverted homebody, and you were born their polar opposite. Creativity has never been your strong suit. But you love people and crave company, be it from friends, romantic interests, or strangers.

While you may have started studying comedy in an attempt to help your parent’s persistent depression, you fell in love with making people happy via the only creative outlet to work for you outside of cooking. You toyed with the idea of becoming a comedian as a teen, but despite your outgoing nature, you get horrible stage fright. It’s much easier to talk to a camera than a venue full of people staring at you, so you found a career in social media a nice compromise.

Traits: Outgoing, Neat, Romantic
Aspiration: Friend of the World
Career: Social Media

Master the social media career and complete the friend of the world aspiration.
Never develop writing, painting, or any music skills past level 3.
Master comedy, video gaming, charisma, mixology, gourmet cooking, and baking.
Have two failed relationships before marrying an unflirty sim.
Get divorced after your spouse catches you cheating with someone you met while working from home.
Have your relationships with the heir for generation 9 become strained following the divorce. Whether this happens with any other children or not is up to you.
Live in five different worlds during your life.

Generation 9 - Violet (Purple)

Growing up traveling around with your social media influencer parent gave you impeccable taste and let you build your social skills. You love them, but you never quite forgave them for cheating on your other parent. Your relationship was never the same after they got divorced, and you swore you would never let something like that happen to your family again.

As much as you might not like to admit similarities these days, you are just as outgoing as your estranged parent. As much as you love cats, being alone with none but your pets for company is one of your biggest fears. You want nothing more in the world than to be surrounded by family and friends who are happy, healthy, and successful.

Traits: Good, Cat Lover, Snob
Aspiration: Successful Lineage
Career: Style Influencer

Master the style influencer career and complete the successful lineage aspiration.
Maintain full friendship and romance bars with your spouse from your wedding until one of you passes.
Maintain close friendships with all of your children and grandchildren.
Master writing, photography, charisma, and painting skills.
Have at least one cat from the time you move out of your parent’s household until you die.
Live in a different world than the one the gen 8 lives in once you move out.

Generation 10 - White

You had an almost picture-perfect childhood and parents who encouraged your interests and passions even though that old, familial restlessness resurfaced in you. Ever shifting obsessions molded you into a jack of all trades, but you love that about yourself and wouldn’t change anything.

Your teenage rebellion was born from the sheer boredom of a “too perfect” childhood, and it became your biggest regret. You got caught up with the wrong crowd and in over your head. It took years, but you eventually worked your way out of the hole you got yourself into and turned things around. The guilt eats at you at random times throughout your life, but it’s a dirty little secret you will take to your grave.

One of your intellectual whims led you to discover and devour every old journal you could find in your family library. Reading about the incredible journey your family took over the last several generations as each learned and grew from the lessons taught by the one before awed and inspired you as you lived yours.

Traits: Geek, Music Lover, Active
Aspiration: Renaissance Sim
Career: Criminal, Tech Guru, Doctor

Reach at least level three of the criminal and tech guru careers, and reach at least level 8 of the doctor career.
Complete the renaissance sim aspiration.
Master two instruments, video gaming, logic, and rocket science.
Go from best friends to enemies with two of your childhood or teenage friends, i.e. the ones who led you into that ill-fated teenage rebellion.
Build a rocket during your adulthood, and visit Sixam to fulfill your dream of recreating one of the adventures your great-grandparent had.
Read the journals of all previous generations. Only read the one of your parent and grandparent following their deaths.

Play on normal lifespan, or give it a shot on short lifespan if you want an extreme challenge. Mods such as MCC Command Center, Better Schools, Slice of Life, or Wonderful Whims are fine to use, but avoid skill, money, and needs cheats. The exceptions are "resetting needs" in the event of glitches, randomizing a spouse's skill levels to even out the skill lag unplayed Sims have when using the Better Schools mod, move objects, the original money reset, and cheating your money down each Wednesday for the orange gen.

I hope you enjoy the challenge.

If you happen to do let’s plays, drop me a link. I would love to see what you make of the play through.

]]><![CDATA[So That Happened…]]>Sat, 11 Dec 2021 15:25:42 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/so-that-happenedI think I'll avoid the usual end-of-year and new year posts. I seem to end up jinxing myself by writing about hopes and plans for the coming year.

As you probably guessed based on that opening paragraph, 2021 ended up being another rough year. It is the main reason I haven't posted here since January, and I have been almost as inactive on social media as a whole.

The issues with non-speaking episodes and aphasia I mentioned last year continued to worsen until writing anything became difficult enough to force my departure from freelancing by the end of April. I received a neurologist referral before the end of 2020, but there were no appointments available until March. That started an almost year-long bout of visits, imaging, bloodwork, trials of different medications, and visits with even more specialists.

Despite the incidental discovery of a Chiari I malformation and hEDS, we still do not have definitive answers regarding the cause of these aphasia and non-speaking spells. But, I do at least know why I have lived with tinnitus, chronic pain, and the seemingly random loss of sensation or function in extremities since the mid-1990s.

The best guess is autistic burnout is causing aphasia and some non-speaking spells, which explains why they worsen with stress or overload. Other times, we believe the inability to speak is wholly physical.

EDS, or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, is a group of related genetic disorders affecting collagen, one of our structural proteins. The type I have, hypermobile EDS, is the most common and mildest form, and it primarily affects the joints. The collagen holding my joints together is stretchier than it should be. The faulty collagen causes them to stretch too far, slide around, and dislocate.

The working theory is my top two vertebrae can periodically shift and pinch the root nerves extending from them, effectively cutting off my control of the fine motor control needed to form words or paralyzing the vocal cords themselves. It persists until the joint shifts back into place and relieves the pressure.

The difficulty I have articulating before and after some non-speaking episodes supports this theory. Additionally, non-speaking individuals can often still sing and use echolalia since different brain regions control these skills. Yet, there have been times I would end up in a convulsive coughing fit if I tried to sing or use echolalia during an episode because the vocal cords would not respond.

It is also possible periodic changes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulation or intracranial pressure due to the Chiari causes some episodes. Chiari I is a congenital malformation of the skull resulting in pressure on the cerebellum and spinal cord as the lower part of the cerebellum descends into the top of the spine.

The cerebellum plays a role in our balance and essentially smooths out our sensory perception and muscle control. A compromised cerebellum makes controlling your movements difficult, and your perception of the world begins to feel like trying to run a first-person video game with a massively outdated video card and insufficient RAM.

All of this has been to say, 2021 was a year of discovery where I managed little outside schooling the kids and surviving. For a bit, between the onset of odd symptoms and discovering they were the result of a bad reaction to my pain management medications, I wasn’t even sure if I’d manage that most days.

The bulk of the creative work I’ve managed throughout the year has gone toward product development and branding for reviving Contented Comfort as Contented Comfort Designs. Much of the revamp was the brainchild of my eldest, Rio, who wanted to use skills built over the years to help others with neurodivergences, anxiety, depression, or other conditions. Rio came up with the mascot, logo, and banner design. I’ve simply been working on the web copy, artwork for our card lines, and developing a natural toothpaste recipe we can mildly flavor for those who cannot tolerate the overwhelming flavors in most commercial toothpaste.

Iggy, Contented Comfort Designs' mascot, says, "Hi."

While I have periodically attempted to return to writing, both fiction and nonfiction, doing so is still far harder than it used to be. My ability to focus to the degree needed is weaker than I remember it ever being before, so the time taken to form arguments and make them coherent has grown dramatically. It doesn’t help that I need to take periodic pauses to try and search out words I know I have in my vocabulary somewhere but cannot access through memory alone.

I have managed to start on a few fiction pieces, but I rarely manage more than a dozen or so paragraphs in a given day. So releases will be ridiculously few and far between unless and until I can regain former levels of focus, concentration, and language fluency.

I think this disparity between what I can think up and what I can express is why I turned to The Sims 4 over the past year and a few months. I started telling stories to myself using dolls and toys the same as most kids. What is The Sims but a modern version of dolls with a basic AI adding in a bit of chaos?

Funnily enough, I think that has been at least partly responsible for what fiction writing I have managed this year. Creating engaging storylines within the game, even when set strict parameters by challenges I was playing, built my confidence back enough to try after multiple failures had decimated it.

I might not have posted let’s play videos of these stories as I talked about, but that doesn’t mean the stories never happened. I grew frustrated with the editing software I have. Embarrassment at the obvious processing delay I have and how near impossible it is to hide in videos added to that frustration.

I’m playing with a new idea to manage let’s play videos and make them engaging anyway, but I don’t know if it will work. After thoroughly enjoying a particular legacy style challenge, I have created my own inspired by it, and I would love to be able to share a play-through of it. Yet, I know most will not enjoy watching the game given how long it takes to process the interaction wheel, so some means of compensating for this is necessary.

Nevertheless, I have shown some improvement over the past month or so since swapping pain management medications and continuing to recover from autistic burnout. I hope such will continue once we are past the stress of the holiday season and launching Contented Comfort Designs in late January.

Now, enough about my year. I want to hear how yours went. Please tell me down in the comments.

]]><![CDATA[New Year Updates]]>Mon, 04 Jan 2021 16:29:58 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/new-year-updatesAnyone who has been here for a while knows I'm not big on making resolutions for each new year. 2021 is no different in that regard; however, after the train wreck that was 2020, I do want to take the occasion to try and get things back on track.

Picture of a little dog laying beside a larger dog.

The addition of Gumball to the family was perhaps one of the best parts of 2020.

I doubt it's any secret my mental health has not always been the best. I foolishly thought finally having an autism diagnosis as of late 2019 and the ability to self-accommodate would help resolve most of it. It certainly provided answers for the whys behind a few things, but it did nothing to correct what has been confirmed to be the chronic anxiety and depression I have experienced since at least the age of ten.

As I was with autism, I masked and managed to be "high functioning" until I just wasn't able to do so anymore. I "regressed" and lost a lot of skills and executive functioning throughout the year until C. L. finally, after literal years of trying, convinced me to seek help.

I was raised to be afraid of medicine that "screws with your brain." ADHD, antidepressants, and more were vilified and those who had need of them shamed whether they took them or not, so I was extremely reluctant to seek help let alone help that might come in the form of medicines.

Even after being prescribed, I was skeptical and frightened. I spent the first few months convinced the only thing they were doing was making the occasional difficulty I experience with words worse.

Then I forgot to take them for a week and realized the difference. Funny how some changes are subtle enough it takes artificially inducing a quick change to notice them.

It took forgetting my SSRI for a week to realize how much of a difference it made.

I eventually went back to freelance writing to help make ends meet at the beginning of December. At that point, I hadn't written a word since the first week of August, and I was terrified I would fail.

I was slow at first, taking four times as long as it should have required to complete each article. I experienced my first fully nonspeaking episode since March about a week in. It lasted for almost 48 hours, and I had moments where even my ability to type was affected. I had to ask for an extension, but I made my deadlines.

It hasn't been easy, clawing back from being so rusty, but I've been doing it. I'm still struggling a bit to create and establish a routine that works with the freelancing and homeschooling and tending the home and tackling my own projects. But at least now I have the energy, and I can scrape together the executive function to limp along most of the time.

I miss creating, and I need it back in my life one way or another.

I know this poor blog and my old YouTube channel both have been hit or miss at best over the years. I can't promise I will make it back to posting on a completely regular schedule. Homeschooling my kids and the freelance work still have to take a higher priority, I'm afraid. (We all have bills after all, and as much as I love this blog and the YouTube channel, neither one produces much if any income at present.) But I do plan to try my best for both.

I miss creating. True, it's not as easy as it once was, but I need a creative outlet in my life like I need air. So I'm getting back in, with caution.

I'm shifting my posting schedule here a bit to accommodate the YouTube posting schedule. I'll be posting articles and whatnot on Mondays to make room for the Sims let's plays I plan to upload on Tuesdays. Flash Fiction Friday should remain the same, and I will be starting a Speed Build Saturday series on the YouTube channel.

Thumbnail of an angry teenage girl staring down a guy in a leather jacket. Title reads,

"As the Multiverse Collides" is a Sims 4 let's play series where characters from all of my fictional universes live in the same few cities. Series premieres January 19, 2021. New episodes every other Tuesday.

You see, The Sims 4 started being something of a new special interest for me toward the beginning of the summer. I grabbed a couple packs when they were on sale, and being the sap I am, I spent a good couple months creating Sims versions of my characters.

Fast forward, and I've replaced the townies in the four Sims worlds I currently have with characters from all six of the universes I write in. The "let's play" videos I mentioned earlier are turning out to be something of a "real world AU" soap opera where these characters are somehow living in the same community regardless of when or where their original stories placed them.

I finished recording and editing the first episode yesterday, and it's scheduled to release on the 19th. As you can see, something happens that has Mab from the Myth and Science series rather peeved.

I'm not sure yet whether I will attempt to link some of these videos here or not. It is a rather odd idea, but I find trying to figure how the characters would interact with such massive changes to their background a fun exercise.

Again, I can't promise I won't disappear again. Even with the aid of an SSRI now, I do still have bad days, and the issues with speaking and utilizing words at all have continued enough we are investigating whether or not it could be a side effect. But I do promise to try my best.

2020 was the year I fell hard enough to finally cry out for help. Hopefully 2021 can be the year I get back on my feet and relearn how to walk.

]]><![CDATA[Thoughts on Own Voices]]>Tue, 04 Aug 2020 11:00:00 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/thoughts-on-own-voicesI began looking into the autism hashtags on Twitter in late 2018 and early 2019 between beginning to suspect I might be autistic and before seeking a diagnosis. Like most social media sites, Twitter uses algorithms to determine what to show you, even from the people you follow. So an interesting thing happened as I broadened my searches from just writing related topics to autism and ADHD.

Tweets and hashtags related to the own voices movement, most specifically those related to authors with autism and ADHD, began popping up in my feed. Before then, I hadn’t heard of such a thing.

Even then, it didn’t really hit me exactly how much some of us needed such a thing until I discovered certain characters had autistic or “has ADHD” tags connected to them on AO3. Generally, these are characters who are coded in such a way people “head canon” them as having autism or ADHD or some other disability or neurological divergence. I’ve been on something of a Batman kick for the past year or so, and some of the stories under the autistic Tim Drake and autistic Damian Wayne tag hit me hard.

Never in my life had I seen characters exhibit some of the behaviors I have had longer than I can remember. Things I learned super early on I needed to hide to do if I didn’t want to be punished or shamed for were shown as, not always healthy perhaps, but normal and understandable. I saw characters who think along the same lines or experience the world in a similar way, and the sense of belonging, of being “normal,” was so overwhelming, it had me crying.

I had already realized I’d coded the protagonists for both of the main plot lines in The Icarus Project as autistic without setting out to do so. In fact, that was part of what got me thinking perhaps I ought to seek a diagnosis since that happened through giving these particular characters some of my own “flaws.” (Read autistc traits I was punished or ridiculed for exhibiting.) Realizing this for what it was, I have placed drafting Icarus on the back burner as I practice writing these characters in the way they deserve to be written.

Reading own voices works and participating in conversations about how different groups, even ones we belong to since not everyone experiences everything the same way, expands our understanding of others and ourselves. I seem to have had, “Oh, so that’s why I do that,” moments four or five times a week since starting this journey almost two years ago now. I have discovered parts of myself buried since I was teeny tiny and found better and healthier ways of coping through it. It has made me a better mother, and I have hope it will make maintaining friendships easier moving forward.

We are living within a revolution within the media whether we like it or not. We have been for some years now. As respected as the big five publishers, and smaller publishing houses, still are, one good thing we stand to gain from such gate keepers becoming less all powerful is an increase in the opportunity for such voices to be heard. I greatly encourage those of you looking to broaden your reading horizons to search for own voices authors from a variety of backgrounds. There’s no better way to increase understanding than to simply listen to those who have lived an experience.

]]><![CDATA[Back to Basics: Onomatopoeia]]>Tue, 28 Jul 2020 11:00:00 GMThttp://www.abengland.com/blog/back-to-basics-onomatopoeiaToday’s lesson covers a very simple form of figurative language. An onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like its meaning.

Examples would include words such as boom, bang, crunch, clatter, crackle, hiss, and buzz.

Comic books and comic strips have made use of enough onomatopoeia it has become rather cliche. Who hasn’t seen a panel of a superhero punching a villain with a big “pow” written out in colorful bubble letters?

Within the medium of comics, such uses have double impact because the onomatopoeia corresponds to the auditory sense while the visual of the font and colors chosen for the word itself give visual cues as to the feelings the reader should infer the characters are experiencing.

The nature of onomatopoeia should give you an idea of its use. While imagery most often invokes the reader’s visual sense, onomatopoeia is used to trigger a reader’s auditory sense. It can create atmosphere and a sense of timing though this use since, even though the words used for onomatopoeia are usually short, not all of the sounds they invoke are as well. Additional descriptors such as droning or constant or rhythmic can be used in combination with an onomatopoeia to further their meaning and add to the overall scene.

Examples:

The droning buzz of bees filled the garden.

Rain pattered on the window panes as the night wore on, combining with Fluff’s rumbling purr to lull little Maggie to sleep.

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