[3W4DW] 16. What are you glad you did but haven't really had a chance to post about?

[kaberett]

The first thing that comes to mind is something I've been pleased about for quite a while now, but don't feel comfortable (or perhaps safe? I can't tell) posting about here, though I've discussed it with quite a lot of you elsewhere. (Curious? Feel free to ask - on IM or in PM or by e-mail - but it's not going in comments here.)

Other than things I've made the conscious decision not to talk about, I can't really think of things-that-make-me-happy that I don't talk about?

-- ah, no, there we go: neurodiversity and its interaction with community-building.

At this rate, if I ever get denise to write me a reference for anything, it's going to read something along the lines of "Alex does all the tedious organisational shit that everyone else HATES and they get perverse satisfaction from and THANK FUCK FOR THAT, basically."

Here are some things I enjoy doing that Rah and Kat and other staff actively hate, or are time-consuming and lower-priority than everything else on their overfull plates, or:

• tagging dw_suggestions for easier transferral to Bugzilla.
  
• cleaning up feeds to minimise the number of duplicates, make sure everything's pointing at the right place, etc.
  
• running through 'zilla to pull out lists of babydev bait for dw_dev_training.
  
• prodding dw_volunteers into spitting out code tours for dw_dev.
  
• wiki updates, whenever I stumble across things that are wrong/out-of-date/missing and have the brain.

Plus there's the community-building I do outside of active dev-community work - like signalboost, like trying to leave comments on posts more of the time, and so on. That's nice. It gives me a space to get out of my head on the days when I can't get out of my room, and that's incredibly valuable.

... which is a bit of a distraction from my main point, which is this: one of the things I love about DW dev culture is that my neurodiversity, my brain quirks, are not treated as obstacles that need accommodating: the fact that I enjoy these tasks that other people are desperate to offload isn't viewed as weird (at least not in a negative sense...); it's just A Thing that happens to be Really Useful. And that is some of why a diverse volunteer base is a good and valuable thing to have, and why accessible volunteering is good and valuable.

But I'm afraid I'm going to stop that train of thought there, before it turns into the second half of the essay that's currently in the works. ;)

Comments

[ghoti]

If you ever need or want help with the neurodiverse tasks, I am all about helping :-)

[shehasathree]

Cool!

[pipisafoat]

the tedious organisational shit that everyone else HATES and they get perverse satisfaction from

YES. I do all the filing at my sister's workplace, 2+ hours away from where I live, because the tedium and clear-cut organization of it is soothing. It's just so delightful. There are rules that are always followed; if they aren't followed, I can FIX IT right then and there without asking anybody about it. (also, the alphabet is pretty well predictable.) I can spread things all over the floor without questions. I can put on podfic in my ears and nobody interrupts me, and the work requires little enough brain that I can follow even relatively complex plots. Also it's nice to prove to myself that even though I am a disorganized wreck in general, I can keep important things in order even when the people who are supposed to do that can't. that I am useful, that I can do good and helpful things, that one day I will generalize this skill outside of that office and into my own life. (well, the last one is still a theory, but whatever.)

[hairyears]

Interesting. I sometimes regret that I never joined the glittering throng of the DW con community.

[azurelunatic]

It is Helpful! :D

And it is a constant source of delight to me that you relish in these tasks, because they're getting done, which increases the amount of Fun in the local area, and you're having Fun doing them, which also increases, yadda yadda. It pleases me to see a task and its doer well matched!