Category: autism

The Beautiful Changes

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Of the stanzas of poetry I have read, forgotten, and re-remembered, there are few.

This one, from Richard Wilbur’s most notable verse, stands out today:

the beautiful changes / In such kind ways
I often cringe at change, as is the predilection of autism and my experience. It is far more brace than embrace.
But many things have changed since I last wrote. The time away put distance to my eyes—and despite my physical nearsightedness, I’m a farsighted soul, and the steps away sharped and focused things both outward and inward.
Here are three changes that came into view.
Fatherhood is a changing endeavor. Now with three kiddos, I at last embraced that I’m less in control of the routines. It is OK. Where I more often found comfort in control of the minutia, I had to reframe my autistic experience to find peace in the larger parts of the map.

“Sleep? This might not happen at this time, but it will happen at night.”

“Breakfast? Ugh, it’s late, but at least it’s happening.”

Even the good things are stressful. Can I confess a thing? I stopped all my blog work for the last four weeks and it vaporized my stress and magnified my peace of mind. 
How?
I enjoy creation, but the stress of delivering for and on a time was more impactful on my autistic psyche than I thought. In a way, this very blog is its own stressor.
Obligations are taxing, and I’m in a higher tax bracket than I thought. But now I know.
My autistic experience is comparatively easy. Since the murder of George Floyd, I’ve had a bit of a reckoning, a sobering one:
“What about the black autistic experience?” 
My perception changed for the better, where I realized more clearly that I still benefit from some privilege being a generic white dude, despite being patently autistic.
I don’t want to leave that change as is, and I’m more earnestly exploring ways to be a better ally, and a better one for people of color, especially on the neurodiverse spectrum. While I might suffer a bit from a bias that kicks in once people interact with me, I can’t imagine it kicking in as soon as people see or hear me.
And that needs to change.
The Life Autistic will change, too. It already has. There are plenty of topics yet to explore. Challenges to confront. Causes to support. Cadences to adjust.
But from here, perhaps it’s time to brace less and embrace more these beautiful changes, in such kind ways.

The Life Autistic Takes a Baby Break

You know me and how I feel about change. Sometimes it truly is the best thing in the world.

We were excited to welcome our third daughter into the world on Tuesday evening – baby, momma, and sisters are all doing wonderfully. On that note, I’ll be taking a short little pause from the blog and spending more waking and half-waking hours with our new addition and with the fam.

I’m eager to share more about this experience in time — while COVID-19 has definitely colored this event differently, it’s been helpful in light of some of the autistic-level challenges I’ve had to negotiate with everyone else’s excitement about a new baby.

More to come! Thank you all for reading. 😄

“Let’s Get Down to Business” – When Autistic Attributes Turn from Disadvantage to Strength

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For the longest time, I thought one of my more autistic working attributes was 100% detrimental.

Now it’s probably 95%, but I’ll take the win.

As a manager, I had a hard time with some of the meetings with other managers. We all got on fine, and while I was not often abrasive, I started showing my struggles it came to getting things started.

It might be a human thing, but I could tolerate the small talk and warming up the room only so much before feeling tension and getting short with everyone. Sometimes it felt like meeting to generate a spark of ideas and light a torch of actions, only neither of those things would happen.

With my more rigid, purposeful autistic attributes, it irritated me.

“We’re here to discuss X and take away Y, but fifteen minutes in, we’re still on ABC. Okaaaay…” 

I can be fun and lighthearted when my mind says it’s time. But when it’s “business time,” a lot of that colored pencil gets sharpened to a point prepared to trace, draw, dot, and poke.

“But Hunter, this kinda sounds like a regular person thing. How does that—”

When you’re a focused, laterally thinking person, imagine how you’d feel when those attributes get shut out because people perceive you as ‘impatient’ and ‘short’ for being more routine and purpose-driven.

When a meeting is just to BS and have a good time, you better believe I can play along and fill that half-hour. Sorta. But when it’s getting in with ideas and getting out with action, I’m there for the reasons stated. It just locks into my mind, and it’s hard for me to pivot out and away from that.

That didn’t help.

Until last week.

I met to help coach a friend on some interview prep in a 30 minutes session. Within the first 30 seconds, I was onto my practice questions and scenarios. I figured he would appreciate my economy of time and purpose, even if I dove right into the thick of it.

What I didn’t expect was what he said afterward, more or less:

“Hunter, one of the things I appreciate about you is that you can get straight to business when it’s time to get straight to business. Thank you.”

I’ve never heard it put that way before.

Pretty much my whole career I thought that attribute was doing me more harm than good. In many ways, and in many less-than-fair blemishes on my reputation, it has.

But this time, it didn’t.

Maybe this is another time we need to embrace the hidden strengths of autistic attributes. Where that one person getting uneasy in a brainstorm isn’t being bored or otherwise unworkable. Where your creative thinker isn’t actually checked out.

We’re just ready and waiting for someone to say “Let’s get down to business.”

(So if you ever need to defeat the Huns, you’ll want us along with you.)