VFW

Don’t forget to look me up on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter under “RealAutismSpeak” if you want to follow my daily exploits, for more than what I’m able to put out here–for the time–on this blog! Also on Clouthub, Gab, Telegram, GETTR, Minds, Truth Social, and Locals as well….might look into Substack too.

Friends, Autistics, Countrymen, lend me your ears! I come to b….ok, I’ll stop. Happy to announce to you, my dedicated followers, that I will be on vacation for the next two weeks (save for working this upcoming weekend), giving me some time I badly need to unwind, hopefully get to that Autism newsstand special, get other things done that I needed to, and a variety of other things. The reason for the title of this update is because….that’s where I just got back from. I met up with a former coworker of mine at the local VFW post in my town (Veterans of Foreign Wars) for an open event featuring music, prizes, and free food; figured what better way to kick off my Vacation, right?

Before I get into my brief experience there, lemme state that hopefully you’ll be hearing more from me over these next two weeks than you have the last week or so, cause I feel like–whereas I’m usually doing the work of like 3 people on a daily basis–as of late I’ve been doing the work of more like 5. So….kinda mentally fried, and really need time to unwind, and all that fun stuff. That being said, this past week I’ve also been busy trying to help out my boss at work with something for my staff, finding out suddenly that San Diego Comic Con was happening this weekend, and…..let’s just say a lot of people needed my attention for a lot of things; then, factor in that I know pretty much nothing about the VFW Posts, so my anxiety took over somewhat, to try to “prepare” myself mentally for the experience.

It erm…..I can’t bash myself too much for not handling it as relaxed as I want to, seeing as I did just get off a heavy week, so this was literally my first thing doing after my work week, not even relaxing a bit before experiencing this. I thought I’d gone to a VFW Post a little over 10 years ago for my previous ex-girlfriend’s Karaoke, but it turns out that was this place called Eagles (ya got a lot of these types of places around here, really), so it wasn’t the VFW; then I got more anxious when they said to park near this gas station, even though the gas station is on the other side of the street, there’s construction going on on part of it, and I wanted to make sure I was able to get a good spot before all the crowds came; I….sorta-kinda did, but by the time I got there, there was a huge line for food; didn’t bother me though, honestly….and they also didn’t have all that much I wanted, but I grabbed some burgers; as it was a huge line, I didn’t want to fuck around too much in line (initially), so just grabbing some basics to sit down and eat, after meeting up with my former coworker. I didn’t even see where the drinks were, so I just ate the burgers. It was very overwhelming, and very loud there, but I did manage to relax at least a little bit after a while, once I’d eaten, and kinda “cased” the place a smidge. One thing I’m learning about a lot of the social events is much of it comes down to “going with the flow”, but I don’t think we’re always in the mindset to fully pick up on that, with how overwhelming the whole experience can be.

That said, I did manage to win a prize at the wheel-spinning game (which was awesome; incidentally though, every time I spun the wheel, it kept landing on “free spin”, I’m dead serious), and it was nice watching some seniors do some line-dancing to the country music the DJ was playing there. I didn’t stay there too long; I chatted with my former coworker a little bit (though not so easy to hear him over how loud everything was), told him hopefully I could meet up with him down at the pier, first week of August, and we both left shortly thereafter; he was probably gonna come back later that day, I was kinda just there to meet up with him, say hi, and grab some free food. It was a nice experience in certain aspects though; when I was there, let’s just say I felt like I was surrounded by a crowd who really appreciates “small-town America”, and everything it stands for, and it kinda filled me with pride, honestly; and no, I haven’t heard the Jason Aldean song, if you were wondering, but after all the whining I hear from members of the “til-foil hat” community over several things, it was nice to be in the presence of people embodying the spirit of it, at least in my mind. And no…..they weren’t serving Budweiser, for those wondering.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you folks that update, and I should have more exciting updates for ya over these next two weeks. Don’ be a stranger now, we’ll chat more soon! 😀