Hi! My name is Alexandra and I’ll be your guide on this journey through my experiences as an autistic woman.
My blog here has been through some changes over the years, not unlike myself! From the early days on Blogspot, through the transfer over here to WordPress. And now perhaps the biggest change of all, from Married, With Aspergers (a title that felt increasingly distant from where I am in my life today) to My Autistic Dance.
It’s not only this blog: I’ve evolved myself and you can read about that in here. I started out, like many of us do, knowing little about autism and possibly even less about myself. I’ve been growing and learning over time and I think that shows in my writing.
I began as just me, setting out on this journey alone. (Well, I was married but the journey documented here is my own). Along the way I met fellow travellers, other autistic folks writing about their own journeys. Some good friendships have resulted, while other people were on paths that took them off in a different direction.
The most important thing I have learned on my journey is that I am not alone. I am part of an extended family of autistic people: my neurotribe. I feel at home among my people, I belong. And that feeling of support has given me the confidence to be myself.
The best thing about life today is that I am free from having to fit other people’s ideas of who I ought to be. It’s been a weight off my shoulders, it’s brought me a lot of joy. It’s inspired me to dance. I hope you’ll join me for a while on my journey.
My Autistic Dance 
I really like the design of your new blog! It’s crisp and clean.
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😀 Thank you. I tried to keep it simple and uncluttered.
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just saying hello, I am also married with aspegers, and blog because I enjoy writing and connecting.
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aspergers…you’d think after 1.5 years of spelling it everyday, my dyslexia would take a break. lol
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Hmmm. Nope. My brother’s never does 😉
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Hi there! Good to “meet” you & thanks for stopping by. 🙂
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Introducing myself as I have commented more than once in your blog:
Female, programmer, not married, not Aspergian as far as I know, but I’ve always been odd and lately I’ve been recognizing I have far more Asperger traits than the average person. From what I’ve gathered so far, I seem to be in the middle between NT and Aspergian.
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Hi XYZ! Odd isn’t that unusual among programmers in my experience. Probably why I never stood out too much 😉 Besides, NT is a very broad category.
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I’m not a programmer, although I know a fair bit of website stuff like php and mysql (and html which is NOT programming, it’s markup. I slap web developers who insist it’s a programming language with a large fish). But I mainly work with programmers, which is fun because compared to them I’m a social skills wizard. Which is how I ended up in tech support. 😛
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I’m now thinking of carrying a large fish around with me. I’m guessing the type of fish isn’t as important as it being large and preferably wet? At the risk of incurring piscine wrath, I will venture my opinion that CSS does have elements of functional programming. (*ducks and hides under desk, peering out occasionally in case of rapidly approaching fish*)
Programmers are a lot like children: we like toys (Ooh! Shiny!), are easily bored by things that don’t interest us (yawn) and can spend hours at a stretch working on something that the rest of the world would find unimportant (if they even noticed it existed at all).
I *love* the tech support guys where I work: they protect me from the customers 😉 Plus, after spending 3 months doing tech support myself I appreciate how hard some of the work can be. And that was *without* answering the phone!
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Yep, that’s exactly how I see my job: distracting the customers so the programmers can do the REAL work. I’m good at it, I know enough techie stuff to solve most things by myself, and on the rare occasions that I need to ask the programmers to fix something for me, I can give them a pretty good translation of what the customer says the problem is. I love my job.
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Absolutely agree. Insulate the programmers from disturbances. After all, my blog doesn’t write itself 😉
I even write *code* sometimes! Real code. With curly brackets and stuff.
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Also, by the time I got to your last paragraph, I’d completely forgotten about the fish. Lucky escape. 😛
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I’ll try to behave in future. Honest. 😉 (*contrite-ish, despite struggling to contain my laughter in the middle of the office*)
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I approve of the large fish (in my mind, autisticook now looks like the fishmonger from Asterix hitting the bard (yes, I often use comic imagery as my thinking language, though my brain is very multilingual, both fortunately and unfortunately)).
Before programming, I have been in academy, and there people are a lot like children (and very odd) as well. I find ways of getting into environments where I am far from being the weirder one, I guess. However, I have worked outside academia and programming too, and there I used to behave as a very different person (very reserved, always quiet, always in my corner). When the ration of odd/not-visibly-odd people is too small, I seem to go into pself-protective mode.
And thanks for all customer service people who let us do the rprogramming part in peace 😀
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(Where it says academy, it should have said academia, sorry).
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No problem: it made sense to me. 🙂
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*giggles*
The fishmonger is called Kostunrix in the Dutch version, which can be translated to “costs a pretty penny”. 😀
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It’s Unhygienix in English and his wife’s name is Bacteria (in keeping with the theme). Hopefully this won’t be taken as insulting given XYZ’s earlier comment!
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Perfectly applicable! After all, getting slapped with a large cold clammy fish is supposed to be unpleasant. The unhygienic aspect only adds to the fun. (Maybe I could threaten to breathe on people?) 😛
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Glad it is not taken as insulting 🙂
I wonder what is the name in French…
Well, I checked and it is Ordralfabétix, which is used in many Romance language translations, it seems.
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Howdy! love your blog by the way!
Anyhow, a blog that i am an admin of ( the adresss is http://asdcommunity1.wordpress.com/) is compiling a list of “Awesome Autism Blogs” and i think that we need to include yours on this list. This list basically works as a kind of directory, so people can hear more about similar blogs about Autism/ Neurodiversity.
If you want to be involved, please reply to this comment!
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Thanks! You’re welcome to add my blog to your list.
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Hi Ben,
I like reading your blog because I have a 17 year old son who has Aspergers. He finds it impossible to talk about how he experiences the world, so I try to learn from others. I am trying to get him to engage with the idea of life beyond school and computer games at the moment, it’s a struggle for both of us. I fear he will never really be self sufficient.
Thank you for your insights. BTW Im a business analyst (software) living in Melbourne Australia.
Kelsey
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Hi Kelsey, thanks for stopping by. While I can’t comment specifically about your son’s situation — everyone is different — I know that I find it so difficult to think about my own future: I just can’t imagine anything other than tomorrow being much like today. Self-sufficiency is an ideal: the truth is that most people, autistic or not, are not fully self-sufficient. What is more important is to identify the areas where somebody needs help and try to provide them with support for those; to make sure that there is somebody they can feel comfortable approaching to ask for assistance. I’m glad you find my writing helpful, and wish you both well.
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Something that I read on another autistic adult’s blog (I need to look up the exact quote because I keep paraphrasing it) discussed the point of independence versus self-sufficiency. Independence is the ability and being allowed the possibility of making your own choices, of setting your own priorities. For her, she said it was being allowed to choose what to have for dinner, even though she needed help getting it into her mouth. (And yes, there are autistic adults who need that kind of help and yet are verbal enough to write blogs about their life. It’s not a case of “if you can’t do A, then you can’t do B either”). And she said that self-sufficiency was different, because nobody she knows is self-sufficient. Her aide has kids in daycare (supervised by another person). Her mother takes the bus (driven by another person) to come visit her. Everyone relies on society to take care of stuff that they can’t do. Only farmers grow their own food. So her point was, why strive for self-sufficiency when it’s completely normal to be supported? We just need support in different, sometimes additional ways. 🙂
However, I do understand that you’re worried about your son. I think most parents are worried that their kids will never be able to take care of themselves, but you have more reason to worry. Being an autistic adult is hard. But it’s not as bad as some professionals make it out to be, either. Sometimes it just takes us a little longer to learn necessary life skills. And *every* 17 year old would rather sit in their room and play computer games than start a job. 😉
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Update on the Poetry Group: I am going to have to put this off till next week. I began my new work schedule and I am tired. We have the list and if either of the two that submitted ideas as to how to set up this group would like instead to “take over” I am all for that. Just email me or comment here and I actually hope someone takes me up on this offer. I wanted to be a “participant” not the leader on this. But I will help construct the format of the group and provide the “platform” obviously for the setup and if no one volunteers I will group people next week and simply set a date to have your poem posted, maybe a label and tag we will all use, and a date to try and have reviews done (a week shouldn’t be hard). I will wait and see what kind of responses I get here.
I am going to tag this post with PCG1 for now.
-Opinionated Man
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I enjoy your kind and thoughtful blog. I have tribe on Triberr, Autistic Souls and sent you and invite. We are a small but gentle group, I hope you will join us!
Lori Degtiarev
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Thank you Lori: I’m honored. I’ve already responded on Triberr.
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Woooo! Thank you so much! 🙂
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Tribe? More social things to keep on top of? *runs around in circles*
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I’ll visit you at your site for details.:)
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Hi! Just wanted to say I’m happy I found your blog today, it’s not everyday I come across something interesting. I’ve met many in the software development field who are Aspies too, so it makes me wonder what it is about that career that appeal so much to an Aspie. I suspect I’m an Aspie and will also be pursuing a career in software development soon, so it just makes me wonder…Anyway, keep up the good work!
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Thank you, and good luck with your career!
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Hello, I love this blog so much, I have aspergers, and am FTM transgender, and I live in hampshire too! It’s nice knowing theres someone out there that also has ASD and is trans. I dont know what I’m accomplishing writing this but yes, I think this blog is great
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Alex, your blog is currently included on our Actually Autistic Blogs List (anautismobserver.wordpress.com). Please click on the “How do you want your blog listed?” link at the top of that site to personalize your blog’s description.
Thank you.
Judy (An Autism Observer)
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I just read ‘The Wall..’
This sounds made up but it was an almost identical story to experiences I’ve had.
Headphones straight on, team meeting about the previous day while people are talking in another corner, all of the shutdown symptoms almost to the letter, and how it made me feel.
Surreal, to read someone else’s words describing such a highly private, personal and unusual experience and perspective.
How very articulate of you. It feels weird. Like I’m outside myself looking in. Wow.
I’ll credit you for inspiration if I write about my experience.
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