So, back in October 2023, I finally got diagnosed with autism, which, I’ll be honest, I’m still learning about! I picked up this book, I Think I Might Be Autistic by Cynthia Kim.

I think this is more of a book for people who aren’t sure if they’re autistic or not, but so far it’s been helpful to me. I’m looking through it and seeing a lot of things that I didn’t realize other people experience. There are a bunch of different “symptoms” (I guess you’d call them that) listed in this book, and they’re in different categories like A1, A2, A3, B, C, and D, and honestly, I just thought I was a weirdo! Like this stuff:

• Do you struggle with knowing when it’s your turn to talk?
• Does praise make you uncomfortable because you’re unsure how to respond?
• When talking with others, do you tend to look or face away from them under certain conditions, such as when you’re thinking or when the conversation becomes emotionally intense?
• Have you been told that you often speak too loudly, too softly or too quickly to be easily understood?
• Do you repeat words, phrases or longer passages of speech that you’ve heard, such as from a movie or conversation partner? (either immediately or a long time after hearing the original speech)
• Do you use a lot of metaphors, especially ones that you’ve made up (that might not make sense to others)?
• Do you tend to get obsessed with certain topics, sometimes for reasons you can’t explain?
• When you’re interested in a topic, does it seem to take over many aspects of your life? (examples: you find yourself talking, thinking and reading about it, collecting and making things related to it, relating many diverse aspects of your life to it)

Earlier, I might have dismissed these behaviors as just being quirky or a “nerd.” But this new understanding is pretty eye-opening! For example, I recently wrote a post about doing a deep dive on Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where I went all out and bought the 40th Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray to see all three versions and the extra content on the second disk.

I did notice that more people interacted with my post about my pets compared to my deep dive into this movie. It was a bit disappointing because I wanted to share something that really excites me. Now, though, I’m realizing that my intense interests might not always resonate with everyone else, but that’s okay! I can talk about things I enjoy, and people who enjoy the same things will find my post and interact with me!

Please don’t think I’m complaining! I’m in a good mood and I’m watching the Director’s Cut of Close Encounters even now. I’m just puzzling out some things about how my brain works and working them out in blog form to get some feedback, or at least look at what I’m writing and make sense of it myself.

I’m going to see if I can find some blogs by some other autistics and start a conversation with other people, to see what they think and how they deal with their special interests.

I hope everybody is having an amazing day! And I hope that if you have a special interest of your own, you’ll let me know and we can chat about it!