I’ve been here around a week, came over from Reddit of course. I’m still hanging around over there, because I enjoy watching dumpster fires, but I’ve been pretty active voting and commenting here.

I came here four days ago and I’ve been commenting and voting on everything I see. I haven’t made any new posts but I’ve been pretty active otherwise.

I have one called Sunshine

I hate eye contact but I can do it. The problem is, I have to concentrate on doing it so much that it distracts me from whatever conversation I am supposed to be having. I finally just got a bunch of pairs of really cool sunglasses and started wearing them 24/7, indoors and out, night and day. It took a while to train my eyes and collect enough sunglasses that have different levels of tint to work at night/in dim rooms, but I love my sunglasses collection and being the mysterious sunglasses guy all the time. Sometimes it offends people for whatever reason, and if it does, I straight up tell them I’m autistic and it’s a sensory issue. That usually shuts them right up. I say it in a way that makes them feel like an asshole for mentioning it. “Well since it bothers YOU so much/since YOU have an issue with it, maybe I should explain…”

Tldr: hate eye contact, love sunglasses.

I’m a middle aged autistic guy and David Bowie always hits the right spots for me. He’s got such an outsider- looking-in perspective to his music that I really think he was a super highly functional autistic who just didn’t give a damn about masking.

I did a lot of therapy and getting misdiagnosed with stuff in my teen years and none of it was helpful. Talk therapy and group therapy actually probably gave me more trauma and drugs for conditions I didn’t have were pretty counter productive. I got a bi-polar diagnosis, did the whole lithium with blood monitoring thing, and hearing in my weekly group therapy the stories real bi polar people were telling was like that scene where Dave Chappelle goes to NA for weed. I’d never had a manic episode in my life. So I told that doctor I was just done and wasn’t coming back to see him again and he was like “That’s a bad decision, you’re going to regret it.” Spoiler: I did not regret it. Finally in my second year of college I had a professor on the spectrum who recognized what was going on with me and he recommended me to the University Mental Health services and gave them some info on me, and I got my diagnosis. It was actually a huge relief to finally understand what was going on, and knowing I am autistic gave me tools to better understand myself and my learning and socializing issues, but other than that, it hasn’t made a huge difference. I generally need some small accommodations at work but nothing major, and if I have to work closely with other people in group settings I like to let them know in case I do or say something puzzling to the normies, but other than that, it’s basically just nice to have an explanation, the knowledge to lean into my strengths and avoid my weaknesses, and stay out of overstimulation/highly social/meltdown causing situations.

When my band plays we get mobbed afterwards with people wanting to talk to us, buy us drinks, etc. I usually stick around for about half an hour then ghost out, disappear, and go home. I’m single, but not interested in dating, and it always makes the other guys in the band laugh at how that drives the ladies crazy. And some of the men too lol.