As you know if you’ve been keeping up with my work stress lately, in all the upheaval of COVID-19 I have been moved from my usual no-contact-with-people information synthesis duties and instead put on phones. PHONES. Luckily, I’m not answering them – a decade in […]
Today is Autistic and Neurodivergent Coming Out Day. So I’m going to give you my story. I am autistic. I have always been autistic. I did not become autistic when I got my diagnosis at 35, nor did I spend my adult life to that […]
Socialization isn’t easy for most of us on the autism spectrum. Every interaction is fraught with unspoken cues that we may miss, having to watch the tone and volume of our voices, all that social calculus. Often, we try to mask our way through it […]
Autistic relationships have all the same problems as NT relationships, plus a few that are specific to the spectrum. Dating other autistic people can ease some of those issues, but it’s no guarantee that things will be better. I dated a fellow Aspie (undiagnosed) who […]
As the saying goes, clothes make the man – or woman. As autistic adults, we can use this idea to our advantage to give us more confidence in social or overwhelming situations. When we feel good, we can cope better. When we feel at ease, […]
One of the common stereotypes of autistic people is the idea of the human calculator. I blame Rain Man for a lot of this, but characters like Sheldon Cooper haven’t helped. The truth is, we’re not all incredible at math. In fact, some of us […]
One of the common stereotypes of autistic people is that we don’t cope well with change. We require routine, we’re incapable of spontaneity, we always need to know everything that’s going to happen and nothing must deviate from our plans lest it cause a meltdown […]
Do you ever wish you could wear a badge that says “I’m not unfriendly, just autistic”? Most of the time, I’m perfectly happy to be a solitary creature. I stay home and knit or write or watch the same movies and shows over and over […]
I LOVE Halloween. It is absolutely my favorite holiday. I love dressing up, watching old horror movies, and decorating my house with macabre details (if I’m honest, that’s year-round, but I digress). But when I was a kid, sometimes Halloween was a swirl of brightly […]
I’ve felt like an alien most of my life. Even before I knew I was autistic, I knew I wasn’t like other people. It’s a common theme among autistic people, leading to books like An Anthropologist on Mars, forums like Wrong Planet, and a great […]
