Yearly Archives: 2013

Monday Morning Musings

Monday Morning Musings (8/26)

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Blogoversary!

One year ago Wednesday I made my first post on this blog. It was really scary until I realized that hardly anyone would see it . . .

Fortunately some people eventually found the blog and those people shared it with other people and things kind of snowballed from there. Rereading that post, I realize that my perception of what it means to be autistic has changed a lot in a year. (If you read that link, keep in mind that I had no idea what I was doing and I made some silly mistakes/assumptions that make me cringe now.) What hasn’t changed in the past year is my wish for this to be a place where people can share their experiences and knowledge and questions. You all have made that come true in ways I couldn’t have dreamed of a year ago.

Glitter stars for everyone!

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Mail!

Earlier this summer I wrote an article for a quarterly magazine published by Autism West Midlands so I was very excited to get a copy of the magazine in the mail this week.  Julia, who is absolutely lovely to work with, also sent me rainbow-themed bookmarks and stickers.

Rainbow-themed autism swag and my first print article!
Rainbow-themed autism swag and my first print article!

Continue reading Monday Morning Musings (8/26) →

Motherhood

A Little Something Different

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When I started blogging, one of the first topics I wrote about was motherhood.  Before posting, I gave the series to my daughter Jess to read because I wanted her permission before publishing such a detailed account of her childhood. I think she was a little shocked by some of what I wrote,  but she was fine with me publishing it. At the time, we talked about how it would be interesting if she wrote something for the blog from her point of view. She’s all grown up now, a thoughtful, well-adjusted adult with her own take on her childhood.

So, fast forward a year to yesterday morning.  I open my email and find that she’s sent me a post (which is right after this intro).  I was super excited because I’ve been hoping she still wanted to write something but I’m not the kind of mom who nags (much).

Also! Jess says she wasn’t sure what else people might want to know but if anyone has questions for her about being raised by an autistic mom, she’d love to answer them. You can leave comments or questions for her here or on my blog’s Facebook page. Maybe we’ll figure out some fun way to turn this into a mother-daughter conversation.

Okay, enough from me. The rest of this post was written by Jess . . .

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As a student in college a few years back, I studied identity, mostly related to race, which led to a lot of writing and talking about myself. Because my father is Korean, a lot of my discussions focused on him. One day, one of my professors asked me, “What’s your mom like?”

“What?” I laughed, surprised at such a vague question.

“What is she like? Does she live with you? You don’t talk about her.”  Continue reading A Little Something Different →

Work

Starting a Business Aspie Style (or What They’ll Never Tell You in Business School)

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This is the final part in 4-part series on self-employment for people on the autism spectrum and the one I’m most nervous about posting. I nearly titled it “Don’t Try This at Home” because when I say this is what works for me, I’m not kidding. Your mileage may vary greatly. On the other hand, don’t be afraid to experiment and find what works for you. Starting a business is far from a textbook undertaking and there are as many ways to go about it as there are successful business owners.

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If you’ve read this far, you’re probably still wondering, but how exactly does this starting a business work? You can find a ton of advice about starting a business online. I feel like it would be irresponsible if I didn’t strongly advise you to read extensively, across many different sources, to get an understanding of what owning a business involves. It pays to know how deep the water is before you dive into the pool.

Having said that, I’ve always been more of a learning on the fly kind of gal. If I can doggie paddle, I’ll dive in and figure the rest out as I go. You can only learn so much about swimming by standing on the pool deck watching a YouTube video.

I’m going to close out this series by sharing the five things I’ve learned in the deep end that go counter to much of the formal business school type of advice you’ll encounter elsewhere. Keep in mind that this is what worked for me–what played to my strengths. It may or may not work for you, but I think it demonstrates that doing what works for you is often more important than doing things the way you think they should be done or the way someone else has told you they should be done.

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1. Forget the Business Plan

If you Google “how to start a business” you’ll find lots of start-up checklists and on most of those checklists one of the steps will be “create a business plan.” I have a confession: the only time I ever wrote a business plan was last year, as part of an Entrepreneurship course. By that point I’d been a business owner for more than two decades.

I know that a business plan is necessary if you want to go to a bank or other investors for funding. Other than that, I’m not sure what purpose it serves. To me, it seems like a poor use of time. The business plan that I wrote for class required at least forty hours of work and I was just doing the minimum necessary to get a decent grade. If I was making a serious effort, it would have easily taken me five times as long. And still it would have been based on assumptions that inevitably go right out the window once you get down in the trenches of running a business.

As the old Yiddish proverb so wisely says: Man plans and God laughs.  Continue reading Starting a Business Aspie Style (or What They’ll Never Tell You in Business School) →

Aspie Traits

Catastrophizing Sucks

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Catastrophizing is one of those autistic traits that when I first read about it, I thought, “Oh, I never do that.”

How wrong I was.

I catastrophize daily. It’s usually small stuff that blows over quickly–I’m not going to get to the post office before it closes which means I won’t get my important overnight package and I’ll have to go back tomorrow and everything will be delayed and I should have left home sooner and why did I take a right out of the parking garage instead of a left because taking a right always means waiting in more traffic even though it’s more direct well obviously it’s because I’m stupid and don’t think things through so it’s my fault if I get there too late but maybe I’ll be able to beg one of the workers who’s closing up to get my package because that worked once before and . . .

Next thing I know, I’m at the post office and it’s not closed. Crisis averted! Except this was a fake crisis, made up in my head because I was catastrophizing.

Snowballing a Crisis into a Catastrophe

I don’t mind minor catastrophizing. It’s annoying but not detrimental to my psyche like serious catastrophizing is. The serious type starts out small–like a case of poison ivy starts with just one little itchy bump–and gradually creeps up on me until I find myself taking a sledgehammer to my self-esteem.  Continue reading Catastrophizing Sucks →

Work

Pros and Cons of Being Self-employed When You’re on the Spectrum

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This is part 3 in a 4-part series on self-employment for people on the autism spectrum. 

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In business school, one of the first management skills you learn is how to do a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The idea is that by identifying internal (S and W) and external (O and T) positives and negatives, you can then set realistic objectives for a project or business.

Management 101 - the SWOT analysis (Creative Commons license, created by Xhienne |Permission= {{cc-by-sa-2.5}})
Management 101 – the SWOT analysis (Creative Commons license, created by Xhienne |Permission= {{cc-by-sa-2.5}})

Predictably, I have an issue with the way a SWOT analysis frames the “harmful” aspects of the model. I’ve found that weaknesses (and sometimes threats) can be just as helpful in achieving an objective as strengths. If you see a weakness as an opportunity to adapt, compensate or innovate your way around a problem, then that weakness is going to be helpful in the long run.

For example, because of my weaknesses in executive function, I’ve created all sorts of organizational systems and fail safes that make me far more organized at work than the average person. Not because I love being organized but because if I wasn’t super organized I would spend my days going in circles, accomplishing little. Out of necessity, I’ve taken a weakness and turned it into a super-competency.

So ignore the word “Harmful” at the top of the righthand column in the SWOT graphic. Weaknesses are challenges to be conquered, not obstacles to shrink from in fear.  Continue reading Pros and Cons of Being Self-employed When You’re on the Spectrum →

Monday Morning Musings

Monday Morning Musings (8/12)

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Doing What I Want Experiment: Week 2

Realizations from week 2:

24/7 self-improvement doesn’t work, or at least it doesn’t work for me. I’ve given myself permission to fall back on old habits occasionally if I’m feeling too vulnerable or uncertain. More on this in a future post because it feels important.

Convenience should not be a major deciding factor for fun activities. Fun or rewarding activities are worth investing extra effort in.

Being open to spontaneity is part of good decision making. “But I always . . .” and “But I never . . .”  thoughts are not.

Being nice to myself is a valid reason for making a decision. I don’t need further justification.

For minor decisions, I don’t have to make the absolute best possible choice, I just have to make a choice I’ll be happy with. It doesn’t matter whether the Mai Tai will make me fractionally happier than the Margarita or I like the blue sweater slightly more than the red one. If I’ll be happy with either choice, I can choose on a whim and be done with it. I don’t have to try to be more happy or as happy as is humanly possible as the result of a decision. Buying a sweater is not the same as buying a car.  Continue reading Monday Morning Musings (8/12) →

Work

The Challenges of Being a Self-Employed Aspie

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This is part 2 in a 4-part series on self-employment for people on the autism spectrum. 

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Aspies are faced with some challenges that can make being self-employed very difficult. The two biggest potential roadblocks are issues with executive function and uneven social skills.

Executive function affects things like planning, initiation of actions, problem solving and attention switching. If you have poor executive function, the lack of accountability inherent in self-employment can be a recipe for disaster. I’ve developed a lot of systems to keep me on track and impose order on my work day–things like keeping lists, using a dayplanner, creating artificial deadlines, setting alarms, making notes to myself, and rewarding myself for meeting goals.

No matter what type of business you have (or what type of job you do), executive function is fundamental to staying on track on a day-to-day basis. If you can’t master the basics of managing a daily schedule and completing tasks on time, then being your own boss will probably make you more miserable than happy.

The other big challenge is social skills. While it’s possible to structure a business or freelance position so that you have very little contact with others, that isn’t always the case. Some common freelance/self-employed positions lend themselves to solitary work and others require a lot of contact with people.

For example, a website like Elance makes it possible for freelancers and small businesses to bid on and complete jobs entirely online. I’ve hired freelancers and gotten excellent work done without ever speaking with anyone over the phone or in person. If you’re skilled in a field that primarily requires creating deliverables (websites, graphics, text, analysis, code, etc.), you may be able to transact most of your business without a lot of face-to-face interaction (if you prefer).

On the other hand, turning your skill into a career may require you to interact with lot of people on a daily basis. If you’re an expert bicycle repair person, you’ll have to talk to people about their bikes to find out what work needs to be performed. But–oh–wait! I bet an someone with a special interest in bicycle repair would love nothing more than talking to people about repairing bicycles!

That’s another benefit to turning a special interest into a career. I find business-related interaction to be less stressful than general social interaction. If I’m talking to someone about a project then I’m in my element and can navigate the conversation fairly confidently. I’ve even been interviewed by writers for articles and books in my industry as an “expert” and actually enjoyed those opportunities. It was fun to talk about a subject I know well (even if the interviewers had to keep reminding me to slow down so they could understand me).  Continue reading The Challenges of Being a Self-Employed Aspie →

Cognitive Function

The One Where I Talk to Myself About Shame

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You’ve been putting off writing this for a while, haven’t you?

Yep.

Weeks?

More like months.

And how’s that working for you?

Well, I wrote posts about functioning and the verbal-nonverbal disconnect and executive function to avoid what I really wanted to write about.

Which is?

Shame. All the things I’m supposed to be able to do. The ways executive function undermines developmental expectations. What it means to be independent and what it means to be developmentally delayed and why those two things are not mutually exclusive.

Because I don’t live “independently.” I never have. I don’t know if I could or not. I probably could if I had to, though maybe not as successfully as I’d like to pretend.

You’re doing it again, veering into an easier topic to avoid that shame thing a little longer.

Right. Shame. Hang on.

shame

Hey, enough with the Googling! Get back here and write something.

Relax. I needed context. How about this:

Shame is rooted in our perceived defects. When those defects are revealed to others, we see ourselves in a negative light. Shame creeps in.  Continue reading The One Where I Talk to Myself About Shame →

Monday Morning Musings

Monday Morning Musings (8/5)

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Doing What I Want Experiment: Week 1

Some reflections from the first week of my “What do I want?” experiment:

The first two nights I dreamt about making decisions. My brain is  uber-serious about this experiment.

Side note: I’ve been having weird disturbing dreams all week. Not sure if that’s related to pushing myself out of my comfort zone with decision making or something else.

Decision making seems to be a multi-step process:

1. realize that a decision is required
2. sense my wants
3. align the wants with possible options for fulfilling them
4. choose among them based on convenience, preference, etc.

. . . okay, clearly more work is needed on the “just feel it” part of decision making

I made two big decisions:

The first was emotionally hard. I was proud of myself because I overrode my instinct to make the other person happy. It took a lot of effort but I felt accomplished when I decided to do what would be best and healthiest for me.

The second was a situation where I would normally have defaulted to making plans based on what the other person was doing, but I overrode that and thought about what I really wanted. The end result is I’m going to be doing something in the fall that I find a little scary but exciting.

I tried setting a 30-second time limit on minor decisions. Meh. I need a better strategy for minor decisions.

When a decision feels frightening, it might be because I don’t have enough information so I should ask for more details.

Funniest moment: The Scientist was rearranging the couch/hassock for TV watching and asked where I like to sit. I replied “however you like it is fine—no, no, wait, wait, in the hole” which he magically understood as “I like to sink into the crack between the cushions so put the hassock where I can do that and still put my feet up comfortably.” The magic of being married forever. Also, look at how I caught myself defaulting to his preference and changed strategies – yay!

Key realization: I’m an adult. I can decide how to use my time. If I’m bored, I can actively choose to do something else. This probably sounds stupid but I’m throwing it out there because it was a revelation to me.  Continue reading Monday Morning Musings (8/5) →

Executive Function

Procrastination or Executive Function Fail?

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There’s a spot on my kitchen floor, a little cluster of dried reddish drips. I don’t know what it is. If it’s from 3 days ago, it’s tomato sauce. If it’s been there longer . . .  who knows.

I’ve walked past it dozens of times. I look at it. It annoys me. I wonder how it got there. I wish it would go away. It doesn’t occur to me that I can make that happen.

The greasy smudgey fingerprints on the cabinet that I can only see in exactly the right light? The 8-inch long thread that’s been hanging off the bathroom rug since the last vacuuming? The dryer sheet on the laundry room floor? Same thing.

What is this? Why can I sit here and catalog all of these little annoyances yet I still do nothing about them? It’s not like fixing them would take a huge amount of time or effort.

In fact, to demonstrate how minor they are, I’ll take care of them right now.

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Done. It took me less than five minutes to wipe down the kitchen cabinets, trim the thread and toss in the trash, pick up the dryer sheet, and clean the spot off the floor. I bet it would also take only a few minutes to vacuum up the bits of dirt and grass scattered in the entryway from my running shoes.

But I’m sitting writing and not doing it, aren’t I?

Maybe later.

And this is how days go by and I keep right on walking around the mess, getting more and more annoyed by its existence yet still not doing anything about it.  Continue reading Procrastination or Executive Function Fail? →