i live in an apartment on the 99th floor of my block

one of my most peculiar habits is the urge to spend when i'm broke. and i'm not one of those people perpetually broke-- my life is fairly at an average pace, meager in the big picture but substaincial in my world. but when i'm down to my last dollar, i just want to fucking splurge. i don't know where it comes from. denial maybe? a reaction to the stress being broke induces? i don't incur debt (anymore), but it's still ridiculous. like, if i'm going to break even at the end of the month for whatever reason, i'll make sure it's EXACTLY FUCKING EVEN. another habit: obsessive evenness/literal reality.

i was going to start writing about one of my best traits to counter the poor reflection i've already given myself in this post, but i'm curious about this "literal reality." my dad (who everyone diagnosed in my family with asperger's) had a very literal hold on reality. broke meant $0. grocery shopping at 3am meant 3am... exactly. thinking patterns in time generally progresses in a systemic way. this can get annoying. also charming, but definitely frustrating when expectations are not met. although i'm not as bad as my dad (his case estranged many people), i have traces of it-- everything in my private life/personal domestic life works on a schedule that i naturally make myself. par example, go home after work, rest for exactly one point five hours, shower, work for 4 or so hours, eat for point seven five hours, shower, in bed at 11 or 1130 to the minute. of course this sounds really insane and boring, but left to my own devices and solitude, this is pleasurable to me. encourages my workaholic mentality. but of course as i've grown older, i realize that doing this is not always "cool" (but always productive!) and trained myself to work myself out of the kinks of my schedule, as much as it sometimes pain the neurotic in me. but it's the only way to feel incorporated into the real world. but conversely, my private scheduling curates my savory "inner life."

but moving on to another aspie trait, a much more pleasant one in my opinion, and somewhat of a cursed blessing, and touching back to what i originally started talking about in this post (and and and and....), is my ability to utterly ignore reality and real responsiblity, mainly financial and anything socially binding. also an inherited trait. for example: debts and harrassments from the bank never bother me, bills are meaningless, money is nothing, jobs are useless, everything is harmless, love is all. not on the normal "i'm ignorant about the world and everything sucks" way, but in a much deeper, recoiling, antisocial, escapist way. this is something i always constantly have to train myself to pull away from, this dirty habit, because as i'm growing into a responsible adult (ha!), these things don't fly and instead stick to your credit score (which i can already tell one day will never matter to me, and never mattered to my dad-- a renter for life). i hope being aware of this now and seeing images of the years upon years of unopened bills my dad accumulated over the years on the top shelf of his office growing up (can you say fire hazard?), that won't be me. and even as a result of his neglectful habits, he also neglected good things too pertaining to the real world, such as growing stocks and dividends from general electric from like, over 30 years ago, which my mom is still dealing with until this very day, getting the refunds for them one by one.

hmm, i wonder... maybe i have asperger's?

i think i should really try to write a book about my dad.