Welcome To Autism™*

Now that it’s getting colder and dark so early here are some cozy anthropomorphic illustration by Chris Dunn to warm your soul:

the irrepressible yearning to soak your weary bones beneath the glorious spray of a long luxuriant hot shower, versus the unbearable repugnance of becoming wet

this is literally what large blocks of text look like to my poor adhd brain

once again for the bargain price of $6.66 i will present to you a Top 5 Childhood Misadventures: April Fool’s Edition

gerhard richter’s stained glass window for cologne cathedral (2007)

(Source: me on twitter)

*Though, this really only applies to more smaller tasks (such as doing the dishes). Giving very specific instructions for more complicated tasks can confuse and bewilder us more.

** And yes, ADHDers can take things literally too. Its not much of an issue for us as autistic folks though.

Autism Speaks Canada is "concluding its operations" on January 31st 2025!

As a kid, I wasn't taught any concept that there's a difference between wanting to do something, and enjoying it. I was a largely unsupervised kid with undiagnosed ADHD and parents who expected their kids to just raise themselves on their own. So when I was capable of spending hours drawing or reading a fun book, but couldn't even remember that I had homework, ever, I was told that I simply didn't want to do well in school. And who was I to question that, I'm eight years old.

Enjoyment and passion were the only forms of motivation I knew, and if I couldn't make myself either love doing boring math homework as much as I loved my hobbies, or force myself to push through things I hated with sheer willpower alone because I want to succeed so bad, then clearly I was simply not as good as all the other kids, who could do that. And that attitude carried onto adulthood. Every time I struggled to muster genuine love and passion into something, I thought that I just don't want it badly enough. Not to enough to love it, or to suffer through it.

Being medicated for the first time was a game changer. Like holy shit, so this is your brain on dopamine. And suddenly I wanted to do things, turned my life around, took up the passion career I had never dared to try. And when the first "honeymoon phase" of the meds wore down, the same fear came back - I don't like this anymore, do I not want it bad enough? What else could I possibly want?

And I shit you not I was literally 30 years old when I understood that life isn't just either loving every minute of pursuing a passion that you love, or joylessly dragging yourself through things that you don't even want to do. I can just tell myself "just because I don't like doing this doesn't mean I don't want to be doing it." It's not a mark of failure, weakness or lack of motivation, if sometimes the career you want to be doing just feels like having a job.