:: Like so many autistic adults who are diagnosed later in life, my past clicked into focus once I was diagnosed. All of my awkwardness that led to bullying and more—I didn’t realize how much I blamed myself for those things. Why couldn’t I have been stronger? What was wrong with me? I didn’t realize that I never had a chance because I never received support.
:: Coming out from under a crushing deadline doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy. It can mean the opposite.
:: I can laugh about it now, but I have never forgotten how it felt to have sent an email with the intent to make the world a better place, to have received praise in private, and then to have been humiliated in public.
:: In 24 hours, the truth was before us, a truth that had probably been there all along. Sometimes things just die.
:: Today, when this fear of death hit me, I realized that I’ve been carrying these thoughts around in the back of my mind for so long that I can’t remember when they started. Perhaps two years of pandemic, of living under a shroud of death, has created this pall.
:: The best jobs give their workers agency, and those workers tend to be happy They get to be creative, and come up with neat ideas, and execute those ideas. Whereas jobs where workers do not have agency tend to have workers who burn out.
:: We don’t get many opportunities to seize pure joy. And this was the purest.
:: “Can I shut the door?” asks the pencil. “Sure,” I say. I don’t want anyone to see me here in this place, so shutting the door is a good idea. Then I repeat what I said in the lobby. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. Really. This is a waste of time.”
:: There are, indeed, expected ways of communicating with editors of public venues that you can’t possibly know unless someone tells you—or you learn the hard way by making mistakes. You would probably prefer to avoid making those mistakes.
Award-winning author, speaker, and expert on mental health and disability.
