For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
A 3-way light switch circuit.
How the actual fuck? (gestures vaguely)
Sarcasm.
Functional programming.
Not getting overwhelmed and burned out all the time.
Complex boss fights in video games. Multiple stages with precisely timed keypresses, being able to track multiple things simultaneously while also dealing with random changes, being able to do quick gear changes, etc. I don’t know how the hell people do it.
Programming fast.
When I program for my personal projects it takes hours to get very little done.
I’m gonna go meta on this one:
I don’t understand how some people just know that they can do things from the get-go. Like from their early teens on.
It took me until age 50 to understand who is holding me back: me.
There’s very little I don’t think I can grasp now. Anything another human can do, so can I. I could have been a doctor or a musician or a chemical engineer or Michelin starred chef if had believed in myself like other people do.
How??? Why did they know they could do these things???
Dancing. And even something like swaying or tapping one’s foot to a beat is hard for me unless the song makes it super obvious. Most people seem to just intuitively get all of this. Plus I don’t have good coordination or spatial awareness, where I still routinely run into doorways in my home and such. And then add social anxiety on top of all that. A nightclub might as well be a torture chamber.
Slippery/sliding/rolling things underfoot.
I wanted to learn how to skateboard when I was a kid. I tried for several weeks, with a friend trying to teach me. I got tired of hurting myself, and gave up.
I know people don’t “grasp it easily”, but most people eventually get the hang of it, and it doesn’t seem to take them long.
Over the years I’ve tried roller skates, ice skates, and skiing. And, failed at all of them.
AHA.
Meaning, of course, Ad Hoc Abbreviations.
Personal space
Empathy
A sense of community
Mainly, having a sense of purpose.
I’m autistic, a ton of things.
While I’ve become quite good at making friends, I am catastrophically bad at romance.
I’ve achieved one night stands here and there but whenever I get really into someone I end up acting like a nutcase due to anxiety/catastrophizing and I badly fumble. It feels like I can get someone hot that I don’t relate too or a fem friend that I’m not attracted to and that’s it and its agony.
Swimming.
Swimming two lengths of the pool was a requirement for graduating high school. They got me a college student tutor. I tried and tried and never got good enough to pass. They let me slide, I suppose because they could see I was trying.
Sportzing generally has never been my thing. I learned to ride a bicycle without a problem, and I can throw and catch a frisbee. That’s about it.
