Blogs

Hi guys, It's been a while. I'm just going into the last week of 1st term of uni, and I want to focus on a few things I've learned since returning to university: Homesickness Feeling lonely Keeping up with the course Working with other people Changing my diet Socialising Let's start off with the homesickness; a major problem I had in my first couple of years at uni. In a nutshell, I can honestly say I don't feel homesick at all anymore. I'm not sure why but I think I think it's down to...

I work a lot with students. The place where I work has a much higher than normal percentage of students with Asperger's. I sometimes think that has benefited me more in my quest to live with the condition than it has helped them. Through many interactions I've been able to see, through them, all the reasons why 'normal' people consider us socially awkward. I get it now. Recognizing the behavior is the first step in managing the situation (I'm not saying curing because that doesn't exist)....

Special Interests I guess one of the main reasons I have some doubts about having AS is that I don’t seem to have a special interest. I would love to have one actually but I don’t have the attention to stick to any one thing. When I was younger I was really interested in computers, I used to get books from the library and try to learn as much as I could about them, this was when I was 13 or 14 when most of my friends were doing more typical things teenage boys do. I loved the acronyms,...

Sarcasm I can often recognise when people are being sarcastic and my main issues are in my inability to respond appropriately to sarcastic comments. However this does not mean that I always recognise it, I can think of a couple of examples of when I got confused. The first is a comment that was made to me while I had a passenger in my taxi – a woman sitting next to me pointed at a book I had on my dashboard and said “you must be busy”. This caused me some initial confusion as I couldn’t...

Empty Head Empty headedness is something that happens to me whenever somebody attempts to engage me in a social conversation. I can get passed the initial “hello” and “how are you” but then it’s like my brain just freezes and there seems to be nothing in my head, absolutely nothing. The conversation has no flow to it, it’s particularly difficult if the person themselves is not particularly good at chatting and expect me to do the hard work. It is for this reason that I tend to keep my head...

Pattern Finder I remember counting the stripes on the wallpaper on my walls, but not just counting them, I would see the pattern of three thick stripes followed by one thin stripe and then it would be repeated. It would frustrate me if I got to the end of the wall and it ended in way which spoiled the pattern. I would randomly choose a small number and just count until I got to a round number, I wasn’t able to stop until I got to an acceptable round number. If I was counting in 3’s then 30...

Asperger Traits that I can relate to. Sensory overload This is something that I have experienced on a few occasions, mostly it’s auditory overload. There has been times when I’ve had to ask somebody “is it loud in here”? Which is confusing because you would think that somebody would know if it’s loud or not. The problem I have doesn’t seem to be with the volume but more to do with there being too many different noises at the same time. So for example being at home when I was younger I...

Job Interviews Up until this point most of the job interviews that I’ve had have been very informal probably because they have been low skilled positions but job interviews are something I really struggle with. I’m just not comfortable talking about myself, I hate it. When asked to talk about my skills I’m always far too honest, I always tell the truth which is of course that my skills are limited, that I have zero real world experience and that I take a long time to feel comfortable in new...

Work Life I decided to leave school at the first chance I got. I was 16 years old and my first job was working in an office, doing basic office type things, I won’t bore you with the details. You might be thinking why I would choose such a job if I don’t like being around people and have trouble socialising and you'd be right to do so. When I think back now it sounds crazy that I would ever choose such a job but at that age I still didn’t know myself very well and I was trying different...

Do I have Asperger Syndrome? I’ve always been a quiet and shy person, one of my earliest memories is of my mother telling people “Don’t mind him he’s shy”. For the longest time I have just assumed that this was a quirk of my personality. Some people are born with brown hair some with blond; some are shy and some are bold but recently I have started to think that perhaps this is not a quirk of my personality but rather a symptom of Asperger Syndrome. Of course people with AS are weird and...

These people just don't know how to communicate! We've had 2 meetings last week and yesterday morning with someone from a new care company that they said was taking over my morning care allegedly from next week, anyway the social worker rang Mum up yesterday. and said the new company were starting this afternoon 5 till 6, fair enough, if not for the fact that the previous company were also scheduled to come 4 till half 6! Because their contract ends tomorrow and nobody had told their...

I see so many people talk about trying to figure out how to have a normal life. For us, people with Autism, it's the stupid small daily stuff that makes life hard. Keeping a job, interacting with other people, picking out clothes for the day, it's all complicated. I don't have any magical solution for this. It's all in our brain and that's it. Well not quite. One of the most amazing things the brain can do is change. I'm not one of those people who says Autism can be cured. No, but I think...

Bought this week's issue this afternoon and the cover price has gone up from 57 p to 62! Only saving grace is that I checked the price of all the others and TV Choice is still the cheapest out of all of them so it's not that bad value. Until they put it up by another 5 p next year probably.

Did my Martial Arts grading yesterday tea time, I made about 2 mistakes, went in left stance when I should've been in right and vice versa, but other than that I thought I did OK. Anyway I've been to training tonight and guess what? I PASSED! Yay! Go me!

Topic. Applied online via a link on an email I got from an employment website, I kind of know where the place is in s4, somewhere between Page Hall and Attercliffe. The money's not bad for part time work, from about £9 to £14, but to earn 14 quid an hour means realistically I can only work about 8 and half hours a week to satisfy the rules of ESA. Plus I do a lot of shopping on Amazon so it could lead to generous staff discounts but I don't have the job yet and might not get it because I...