Strangers

      So I've realised that I haven't written any posts about autism for a few months, which is strange as according to the title of this blog one third of posts should be about it. So here is one related to autism, and the issues of living with it.
      One of those issues is strangers. You see, once I know someone I come off as a confident prick, who obviously has some sort of problems but it seems more likely to be narcissistic personality disorder than Asperger's. But before I get to know someone I come off less as someone with stone cold wit and more just stoned. A combination of not responding and lack of eye contact gives many people the impression that I'm high. The hair probably doesn't help either. But for the most part I don't come into contact with people I don't know so it's not that much of a problem. But when I do the physical sensation is one of near panic. My heart rate shoots up, I lose focus and become so self aware that I often forget to respond. When I do respond I tend to murmle my words which never form anything longer than a sentence, while often relying more on head movements to convey meaning. Once the brief encounter ends I can usually hear my voice playing back in my head as I watch the confused person who had the misfortune to speak to me attempt to work out what I just said while wondering whether I am suitable person to ask advice from. After this I tend to resume staring into middle distance while thinking about the mysteries of the universe. Or shoelaces.
      After that barely structured drivel you have just read, I leave you with this: http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=474

Asperger's symptoms & me

I haven't posted for a week because I was on a school residential trip. I meant to finish this post before going but ran out of time. The fact that it's been another week since then is because I kept forgetting to do the post.

Anyway, this post is about how autistic I am, sort of. I'm going to go through the different symptoms of Asperger's on wikipedia and see how I fit in with each one. This isn't me diagnosing myself, I'm sure I have Asperger's, but seeing how aspergic someone would find me to be.

The first thing on the list is social interaction, which is then split into the different impairments. The first one is a lack of demonstrated empathy, which it says may be the most dysfunctional aspect of Aspergers. I think I've got this a bit as I don't use to many facial expressions in a conversation and can come across as insensitive. Except for the times that I just don't care what the other persons going on about. Then I'm just being insensitive. It also mentions impaired nonverbal communication such as eye contact, facial expression, posture and gesture. I think I'm fine with all these things, so let's move on.

Next part begins with "People with Asperger syndrome often display behavior, interests, and activities that are restricted and repetitive and are sometimes abnormally intense or focused. They may stick to inflexible routines, move in stereotyped and repetitive ways, or preoccupy themselves with parts of objects". I sometimes spend days at a time cataloging all the different types of doorknobs in the world. Or maybe not. I'd say the closest thing I've got to this is my interest in guitars, but not really that much. I have more collectic interests, being interested in lots of stuff but not obsessively so. As for routines, I can't stand the bloody things. I would hate having total order all the time. However microroutines, which are little repetitive movements or rituals, are a slightly different matter. I don't really do them as much as I used to and when I did them it was when I was feeling stressed. An example is when I was typing if I pressed space and didn't immediately write something after it I would delete the space and the last letter of the last word. If it was a two letter word I'd also delete the first letter, the space before it and the last letter of the word before it, and so on. I'd sometimes delete whole sentences this way. But as I said, I don't do this any more.

It's next part is speech and language, which I don't really have any issues with. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I practice speaking a lot.

Anyway, take what you will from this post. I'll probably start another one soon.

People

I have decided show what the world would be like without autism. People with autism include Gary Numan, British singer and songwriter, Craig Nicholls, frontman of the Australian garage rock band The Vines, Vernon L. Smith, Nobel Laureate in economics, Heather Kuzmich, fashion model and reality show contestant on America's Next Top Model (pictured, because I really should have a picture of someone, so why not make it a model?) , Satoshi Tajiri, creator and designer of Pokémon Pocket Monsters,Daryl Hannah, American actress best known for her roles in Splash, Blade Runner and Kill Bill.

People who may be autistic but where it is hard to find a diagnosis include Steven Spielberg, Dan Aykroyd, Syd Barret, Michael Palin, Bill Gates (they can't all be winners) and many others.

People from history who are speculated to have been autistic include Mozart, Michelangelo, Newton, Darwin, Orwell, Einstein, and anyone else who was ever important ever. However, how many of them actually were is a matter of dispute i.e. a couple of people look at everyone important in history and say "hey, look, this guy was shy, he must have been autistic" and no one takes them seriously.

The two to be taken most seriously are probably Newton and Einstein as their personality traits closely mirror those of autism. A case against Einstein being on the spectrum states that he had a good sense of humour, which he couldn't possibly have had if he were autistic, as we all don't understand humor, and we all see in just ones and zeros. Also, we don't understand sarcasm.

(due to several NT's inability to understand sarcasm I have decided to put a mention of the fact that some of the above text is humorous and should not be taken internally or literally. (that was also intended to be humorous, as I was using word play. OK Kenny?))(so just to clarify, some aspies can understand sarcasm and humor. NT's on the other hand, i'm not to sure about anymore.)

Me and my blog

I am 14. I am British. I have asperger's. I am not a stereotype.

The purpose of this blog is to write about my life and opinions, and to let people know the truth about autism.

Autism is a difference in the thought process, not a set of thoughts, so my opinions won't be the same as all aspies (people with asperger's), auties (people with autism) or speckies (anyone on the spectrum), in the same way not all nt's (neurotypicals, people with a "normal" mind) will have the same opinions on things.