Twitter Is Like A Rubik’s Cube For Autistic People
I’ve fixed other people’s computers for 20 years, and in that time, the more they got to know me, the more they dreaded asking me questions about their problems. The more complicated the question, the longer that answer was going to be. They knew that they were in for a torrent of information, but they also needed that answer.
In hindsight, I almost feel sorry for them.
They told me this, some of them, point blank, because I’m also fairly easy going – “people-pleasing” is one of my autistic traits, so I’m happiest when others are happiest – and making someone laugh, or being a normal, non-corporate human being, tends to relieve everyone’s stress, and that makes people happier, so that’s what I try to do. I can very easily feel the stress of a room, and I practically need to change the stress levels to a more manageable level for myself. It’s beneficial to most situations, so it became a favorite coping mechanism of mine.
I’m sure to many it comes off as a combination of “know-it-all” and “cocky”, and I can see that, easily, but my reasons are selfish in a different way, as I hope I can explain correctly once this is written.
I was thinking the other day, and I thought a thought, about why I need to know the most about what I’m doing, why I need to learn everything, and also why my answers are very long-winded.
Autism causes a lot of us to need to know the most about something we possibly can, as long as we’re passionate about it. The longer we’re into it, the more we’re going to know.
Personally, I can’t help but be compelled to know more, but it’s not all because of the natural human competitive nature, though there is some of that. There’s also some parent stuff in there, about never being good enough, why an A+ wasn’t an A++, etc.
Mostly, though, and I’m not quite sure I’ve heard it described this way, is that I feel I’d be doing a disservice to the information itself, by not reiterating it in the most faithful, accurate and complete rendition possible.
Let me explain, for myself as well.
If I don’t know everything about something, I feel that I’m literally missing information in my brain. Now, it’s probably pretty damn hard to know everything about any subject, if that subject’s information never changed. With more people, more information, and more discoveries every day, I’d put it at impossible for any human in our current state of evolution to know 100% of any single subject.
That isn’t going to stop me.
It’s a compulsion, for many of us, for myself, certainly. It goes beyond passion, which is a hard thing to explain.
I’ll try my best to explain this as well.
I believe – though I’ve never experienced this – that people can typically stop thinking about things when they want to, within reason.
Not me.
I heard “Locked Out Of Heaven” by Bruno Mars 5 days ago, and my brain has found it such a delightful little tune, that the chorus has been in the background of all my thinking since I heard it. I love music, my brain knows it, so new melodies get a very high processing priority. My brain gets bored, eventually, and a new song, or a random pick will start again, but I always have a song playing in the back of my mind. Never stops.
Weird, huh?
It’s the same for, let’s say art, because that’s what I’m into now.
As long as my eyes are looking at things, I’m thinking of art these days. It might be more accurate to say that as long as I’m conscious, I’m thinking of art, much in the same way that that song plays forever in my brain-jukebox.
A new, 4-minute song gets 5 days of processing time. Transpose that into the art world, and everything that there is to learn; history, techniques, mediums, practice, books upon books, internet site upon internet site, and then you get an idea of what autistic folks set themselves up for when they finally decide they’re going in a specific direction.
It’s as mentally exhausting, as it is exhilarating.
So, my article title, well, you’ve probably gotten by now…
Brevity and autism can sometimes be mortal enemies.
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