You can tell a lot about a person through their preferred art across the spectrum. Whether we are the ones to create it or not, aspects of our personality and thought processes influence the music, images, stories, and more we find ourselves drawn to throughout our lives.

I think we lose a lot when we remove artistic education from our curricula and skimp in areas where our children could explore the arts. Of course, there are arguments insisting different art forms can boost and bolster academic performance, but even looking beyond that, art and art education has much to offer kids and adolescents.

Today's flash fiction takes us back to the Icarus Universe a few hours after the events of "A Gift Horse."

You should not need to have read any of the other stories to understand this one.

I don't intend to turn this into an autism or ADHD blog, I promise. However, considering how much of my life tracks back to this pairing, I can't exactly talk about my experience with writing without bringing them up from time to time.

Both "disorders" have the strengths and frustrations, and there is a fair bit of overlap between the two. Yet, when both are experienced by the same person, this combination creates some unique presentations that can complicate the diagnosis of both.

This is one contributing factor to the majority of us autistic ADHDers being found "late" on average. One in particular is behind the largest of my current frustrations and why I missed a couple of weeks last month.

One of the more frustrating parts of "flying under the radar" long enough to reach adulthood before your difficulties become apparent enough for others to see them is the arsenal of maladaptive or faulty coping skills built throughout your youth. Quite often, you can sense they are not particularly helpful, or outright damaging in some cases, but after spending your life depending upon them, they are almost instinctive.

For those of us for whom everyday life can become overwhelming quickly on a bad day, we can fall into these poor coping skills before we even notice stress mounting. And let me tell you, that is an extremely frustrating place to be.

Stories, mythology and fairy tales in particular, have been a consistent special interest of mine as long as I can remember. At first, I listened or watched, as many children do before learning to read. When I had the ability, I would watch a movie or show again and again until I could quote every line by every character.

My understanding of the world, emotions, and how people interacted and thought was informed through this. I understood family members and friends by relating them to characters, using the way those characters reacted to predict how the people around me would respond. I used those characters and interactions I'd watched ad nauseam to cobble together the scripts and the mask I used to navigate the world.

Once I mastered reading, chapter books and novels became constant companions. In them I found a way to escape the sensory nightmare that was the school bus outside of staring out the window and disassociating throughout the trip. I found hundreds of new characters to fuel my imagination and build understanding, and novels went further into their mindset and thought patterns than movies and shows ever could, bettering my understanding of emotion and social interaction.

Unfortunately, this newfound joy and source of information came at a price.

We are back in the Icarus Universe today with a story set about a week after the events of "High School Never Ends." While the same group is involved, you do not have to have read the other story to understand what is going on.

Just know, it's a random bunch of high school kids who were out of town when the world decided to end. So now they're stuck with one another.

Today's story takes us back to the Myth & Science Universe about a half hour after the events of "Running from Nightmares." However, you do not have to have read any of the other stories in the series to understand this one.

There is a meme that has been circulating about Facebook and other sites regarding the first quarter of 2020, and I find it has been appropriate.

The first quarter of the year has been quite the roller coaster for our family and for many others we know and have heard from via social media. Of course, this impacted the goals I set for myself in several different ways.

So, let's get right to the point and see how this quarter went.

"The Blind Crossroad" is set in the Supers universe earlier the same day as "Off Night." The events in the story are connected, but they happen earlier, so there is no need to read the other story first in order to understand what is going on.

That said, it is a bit different from the other flash fictions in the series. When read alone, "The Blind Crossroad" can be considered general fiction versus the usual metahuman sub-genre of fantasy.

I just about never write general fiction, so I am a bit unsure of this one as a result.