*HOW I VIEW MYSELF*
I once had a lot of potential, a 2-year degree, a 4-year degree, and three masters degrees. By comparison, I'm nothing now. Just a USPS rural mail carrier, out in the middle of nowhere. I am specifically an "RCA": rapidly-yet-meticulously sorting and arranging nearly 500 families' mail bundles with care, driving my standard Honda Fit like a crazy person on fire instead of using a mail truck, invading people's privacy all day long with a smile and a wave, and getting paid for it. The sun is not in the sky during most of my commuting, and I barely have enough strength to drive home everyday, and barely enough income to cover my only expenses: food, phone, fuel, and vehicle maintenance.
Three decades ago, I was playing with Legos and Transformers, obsessing over Calvin and Hobbes, and eventually owning more than 21,000 comic books, most of which have since been sold. I was playing soccer (from 4-16 years of age), and was in the Boy Scouts (from 8-20 years of age), including an annual leadership position I was elected to at 18, by just under a thousand people.
Two decades ago, I designed websites, I played my guitars all of the time, and I collected books. I still have my guitars, and I currently have just under 10,000 books in my home library, 95% of which are non-fiction. I also amassed just under 4,000 CDs and DVDs. I expect to sell some of these things as the upcoming years pass me by.
These days, I have nothing to do with any of that, except that I might touch a book at some point each month. I am not the same person that I once was, for I am not in the same circumstances.
*WHAT AUTISM IS*
From birth, all people have data entering their brain from their five senses. They perceive other people and interact with them, and store memories of these interactions and the associated sensory data.
However, Autistic people have too much information coming in from their senses, and that becomes very distracting. Typically, an Autistic infant will be extremely sensitive to sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. This sensitivity will be so distracting that the infant will be mostly unable to pay much attention to people and to interactions with them. Therefore, this sensory overload negatively impacts their social development, and may even completely prevent it.
On one end of the Autism Spectrum, are the people who typically react very intensely to most of their five senses. They have very limited social skills, and have various psychiatric disorders as a general result of their lifelong communication difficulties with normal people. They very rarely can live independently, and have difficulty with many common everyday tasks that most people take for granted.
On the other end of the Autism Spectrum - where I am - things are the same, but much less intense.
*HOW AUTISM AFFECTS ME*
I am Autistic, and specifically I have "High-Functioning Autism" (or HFA). On the spectrum of Autism, HFA is on one end, just above the more famous "Asperger's Syndrome" (or AS), and it is on the opposite end of the Autism Spectrum from the extremely debilitating classic forms of Autism. If you have ever seen the television show "Monk", the lead character is very similar to who I am, except I don't have a caretaker or his superhuman memory.
People with HFA (and people with AS) are mostly unable to think from another person's perspective, and therefore cannot justify nor understand: dignity, respect, empathy, privacy, and boundaries. Where the "high-functioning" part comes in, is that I can fake it all pretty convincingly. That is, unless I am under stress (tired, sleepy, hungry, concentrating, ill, in pain, etc). Then, as I focus on removing the stress, I lose track of my guesses of other people's thoughts, and of how I should behave to match other people's expectations for my behavior.
Because of this "losing track due to stress", I have lost nearly every opportunity and friend that has crossed my path. Numerous people with whom I have interacted with, have suddenly vanished from my life. Employment status and durations of employment have mostly been awkward.
Words used by normal folks to describe nearly all HFA's and AS's include: arrogant, child-like, condescending, funny, generous, grown-up child, ignorant, inappropriate, loving, loyal, naive, playful, rude, selfish, socially dumb, sweet. It is indeed a peculiar combination of terms. Inside our heads, HFA's and AS's perceive ourselves as good/caring/courageous people. But due to the clumsy (as perceived by others) way which our personalities are expressed in a social context, we are occasionally perceived as bad/eccentric/dangerous people. The philosopher Sartre states, "Hell is other people." And for HFA's and AS's, that is too often true.
*WALKING AND CHEWING GUM*
I have an overwhelming desire to tell people well-structured explanations of things that I believe are important. I was intending on using that to earn a living, by being a high school mathematics teacher. But my intentions were derailed by my autism.
A person can both listen and learn if: they like you - charisma - if they trust you - character - and then if they can share a perspective with you - mutual empathy. Empathy is present in all people, with the exception of people on the autistic spectrum, which includes all psychopaths. Thus, I cannot share a perspective with another person. Charisma is an unteachable skill and an inherent talent. I have this, thankfully.
Communicating character is dependent on how clear a personality is reflected in speech and action. Autistics construct their communication as they talk, and on the high-functioning end of the spectrum where I am, we get pretty good at doing it quickly. But if there is any distraction - stress - the communication seems "off". The performance aspect of the communication becomes clear, rendering the non-verbal portion of communication "unclear". And classrooms are full of stress and non-verbal communication. That's just how the job works.
So, I could get high school students to like me, but not to trust me, nor to share a perspective with me. If a communication style has no interactive portion - writing, reading, reading aloud, giving a speech - I shine. But regarding the physical presence and involvement required of teachers, I am too awkward to be effective.
*NOT ABLE TO GIVE UP*
In addition to my autism, I faced another dilemma: I couldn't relate to somebody who didn't want to know something, which turned out to be nearly every kid in high school. I was only good at it when the listeners were just like me: wanting to learn everything factual, while disregarding everything social. As a student teacher, I realized that most kids just didn't care. They would sit there, waiting for nothing, having already decided what was important in life and what wasn't.
In college, the students pay, or somebody else pays, for students to be there. So, they are more likely to care about learning. But unless a new teacher gets a doctorate in something, or is exceptionally brilliant, or is highly experienced or famous in the field, a new teacher is not permitted to start teaching at the college level. So I was locked out of this arena.
Once a student truly believes that they cannot learn something, they forever worry that such failure will embarrass them. And they rationalize that not learning anything is less risky. Unfortunately, I cannot understand why anyone would want to persist in not understanding something. I know that they feel this way, but I just can't get inside their head to reverse-engineer why that is. If I could, I might have found a way to be an effective teacher.
Once I experienced the differences between myself and most everybody else, especially during my third-and-final attempt at student teaching over a decade, it was easy to walk away when Very Important People told me to. However, I did not "give up". I "permanently paused", relying on my distant death to strip me of this occupational fantasy.
*POETIC DECORUM*
I harbor quiet ambitions, few accomplishments, and a nervous fear in my eyes. Once dreaming of a wife, a well-paying job, and my parents being happy grandparents, well, not being permitted to enter the fields of my five college degrees ended that. With only honesty, patience, and dependability to offer, I am but a rusty old truck, abandoned in the woods, earning less than I cost, with no one to care for me as I diminish.
My interests endure: Christmastime, walking in the woods, The Transformers, Calvin and Hobbes, Def Leppard, book collecting, the Bible, guitar-playing, Blade Runner, astronomy, and the technology of Apple. I wanted to be a Christian, and I wanted to be a rock star, and I studied both relentlessly for many, many wonderful years. But there is no reality beyond our own.
I know enough in most subject areas to cause damage, but not enough to build things of value. A tangled mess of wires wrapped up inside a tired pile of muscles and bones, I am kept alive by both a river of blood refreshed by food and air, and by the decisions I make, hidden behind the walls of my mind, far off in the distance, nearly lost along my dusty trail of precious memories and sharp reactions.
End of line...