From our neurodivergent readers - real employment experiences of autistics and Asperger’s

“What works for me as a 37 years old high functioning aspie for work is to have a lot of variety in my work so I won’t lose interest or change jobs often. I only take jobs that are below my level so I don’t need to take work home and don’t have to stress about taking classes or having to perform too much when I have a bad day/week and such, you could say low-wage blue-collar jobs fit me too. Sometimes call center, I did some electronic shop managing as well.

And with colleagues, I feel its best to not have too many or not at all. Usually, for most aspies, colleagues are the worst and give a lot of stress concerning social interactions and especially the group pressure or those team building things, they are the worst. We’re not a team player by design.

But I learned to walk amongst the humans very well over the years. I like to think I possess a lot of different masks. Especially since those jobs kinda gave me a huge dataset to work with concerning human interactions. It was a long but really good learning process. 

I consider myself to have it easy due to me being over philosophical and a lot of data. So I do a lot of thinking about it in a weird objective way. Almost like I know how to live like a human. But I’m not willing to by choice. Or because it takes too much effort.

I have a cab driving gig now. It’s perfect.”

Submitted by anonymous aspie.

Want to submit your own experience? email me to erikbrodch [at] gmail [dot] com