It is a challenge to live in the modern world when your mind works in diverse ways. Life demands a great deal of organisation to survive respectably in an alien neurotypical society. I have spent a lifetime trying to figure out how to fit in and I really wasn't making any progress until I discovered that my mental approach to life was simply different.
The four main differences between myself and our modern regulated society exist within the concepts of time, sequences, boundaries and language. To connect with a world obsessed with clocks, repetitive work, dogma and nomenclature I have developed my own set of interfaces or strange habits.
My mind has little interest in the idea of timekeeping. It reacts very well to artificial deadlines such as exam pressure, but generally speaking it is driven by immediate focus and long term concepts. I have great difficulty with daily routine and all the usual tips, like making lists, are a total waste of time. Instead I have come up with my own aid which I call "Rooms". I use the objects in my household rooms as memory triggers to tell me what chores I have to do for the day. All I have to do is visit each room and give each object some attention. I have to be constantly on guard for hyperfocusing as I can go deeper and deeper into a task without knowing it and subsequently neglect other critical duties.
I also have great trouble with sequenced tasks such as cooking, assembly work, reading instructions and dancing routines. Of these, cooking has been the least avoidable so causes me the greatest daily stress. Unable to follow or remember recipes, I have learnt to "Cook on the Hoof" which means that I don't know what I am going to make until it is finished. The biggest challenge is to store a variety of ingredients in my larder which will contribute to an acceptable meal on the table.
My memory for dogma is absolutely appalling. Most people have a fairly stable notion of what is wrong or right but I struggle to set boundaries which are not tied to logic. Where folk do things "because it has always been done that way", I come a cropper because I must have reason. If reason can't be given and the sitution is critical, I am very happy to enter the world of faith for a short time. The trouble with faith is that it involves a certain type of memory chip which I don't have. Over time I struggle to remember what I am supposed to have faith in. Subsequently my logical brain has developed to be dominant and it drives most people up the wall when I get going! "Logic" works really well for me in my own world but can lead me into deep trouble in the "Neurotypical" world where rights and wrongs are based on historical precedent as opposed to moral logical reasoning.
Language is a real challenge for my brain and in particular verbal exchange is difficult. I find the telephone a nightmare and receiving vocal instruction is really tricky. Subjects at school which involved a lot of illogical nomenclature were especially difficult and my ability to perform well in these areas did not reflect my interest in those topics. As a child I was exceptionally lucky because my mother was a special needs teacher. When I was thirteen and off school sick, my mother was appalled by the illegible notes I had written from class verbal instruction. Never being able to keep up with what was being said I would scribble frantically. She asked me to rewrite them neatly and in the process I learnt the subjects properly for the first time. Immediately my exam results rose by 20% and academically I never looked back. Even today I have to write things down twice to comprehend what has been said.
My strange habits are time consuming and tiring but they only exist to help me integrate with the neurotypical world. I don't need them to survive in the natural world, a place where I am much more efficient. Clocks, rules, sequences and labels exist primarily for the benefit of efficient human interaction. Although I recognise their value in the neurotypical world, in my natural habitat I would gladly consign them all to the garbage.
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