@L T somewhat accidentally. At dinner with my sister and some of her friends one night, the topic of disabilities came up, and I opined something like, "I suspect I'd be diagnosed with ADD and/or ADHD if they knew what they were when I was 10." My sister said, "No, you're 100% Asperger's." I'd never heard of that before, and got curious, dug around to learn more, then tried to find someone to diagnose me. Hardly anybody in AZ works with Adults, and I ended up finding a child psychologist who agreed to do it -- I think more as a challenge for the person who was interning with her. After the diagnosis I kept reading and learning more, but it answered questions about weird stuff in my life that never made any sense until this diagnosis, and then they finally did. I was in my late 20's before I finally realized that I DO NOT THINK LIKE MOST PEOPLE! The dominant theme was people would regularly ask me why I'm so "weird and different" and why I can't "go along to get along"? The more things I'd do to NOT be like that, the more I was seen that way. I tried some different tactics here and there, and found a good way to deal with people in different situations was to take on being like a chameleon -- kind of like that guy in the movie "Catch Me If You Can" -- to sort of "fit in". It works ok for parties, networking meetings, and dealing with people like when I'm driving for Uber and Lyft. But longer term situations like at work always end up at the same place -- I'll get a review saying something like my tech skills are excellent but my colleagues don't want to work with me, and if I want to stick around, I'll have to adjust my behaviors to correct that. I got my diagnosis the same week as my review at my last job, and that was quite eye-opening. After the dust settled, I decided to just "retire" and get on Social Security. Now I'm working on how to leverage my gifts in ways that nobody will focus on the quirks. I'm getting very close to something.

If there's one thing I've learned from this diagnosis it's that I've spent the majority of my life being a "square peg" and having to deal with everybody and their brother convincing me that I need to "fix" myself so I can fit into their "round holes". I'm done with that.

what was this kid doing? Mostly I use mine for scrolling, but it often ends up selecting things unintentionally. I don't use it for note taking because it makes so many errors that it's easier to just type, and the formatting is terrible. I don't draw pictures or anything like that. It's not very good as a replacement for a mouse. The only thing I see people using it for to any extent is what you'd use a pen or pencil to draw stuff on paper. I'm mostly reading stuff and filling in forms.

This is quite timely given today is "Black Friday" when everybody is pushing stuff at huge discounts to help others "complete" themselves and acquire more stuff they don't need, even if they can't afford it. I've spent a lot of time over the past 6 months or so brainstorming with ChatGPT and Claude about different product ideas I've had that I could launch. It's interesting how the conversation always comes back around to the same idea -- something that taps into my gifts, my experience, my expertise, and seems to have quite a large market ... much larger than my initial concept. Here's a round-about way of explaining it: A few days ago I was on a webinar and at the end a guy did a short presentation on some software that was about something structurally the same as my idea, but a totally different context. Only in my idea, there are two parts, and his presentation only discussed the first part. I reached out to the guy who put on the webinar and asked where the second part was; his reply was something I hear over and over: "David, you're overthinking this!" These two guys are "sales" guys. The webinar and the tool were all about "making sales". The part that was missing was what happens AFTER you close a deal -- how do you fulfill it? It's like the project plan you need to create that lets you know what deliverables are needed, when, what they'll cost and when you'll get paid. This wasn't something you order from Amazon, it's an agency deal that locks in a client for 3-6 months of follow-up work, some weekly, some monthly. Not a word was mentioned about anything after the deal was signed! Yet he thinks I'm "overthinking" things because I want to know "what comes next?" Then later that day he posted a video saying how he's putting together a BF offer (today being BF) where he'll be launching a thing next week to help all of the folks on his list who he thinks are lost and having trouble focusing and closing deals, by setting up daily webinars where people can get more training and help on "making sales" and how to close more deals.

@L T yep, had that happen. I’m eager to hear your thoughts.

@Fil Ladden You guys seem to be missing the point. It's not about "my stuff". It all triggered this thought that "the future I've been planning for is here, and most of the things I've planned for are irrelevant." I'm sure everybody has different psychological reasons for holding on to things. Sometimes they are taken away for reasons outside of our control, like your house burns down or your storage locker got auctioned off or something like that. There are people who hoard things for whatever reason; I don't consider myself one of them, although I do have a tendency to buy things in part by rationalizing that I might use it more than once. This is probably more of a comment on American society, tho, because Americans have way more stuff than people in other countries and cultures -- they're far more likely to share things within their communities than Americans are. We seem to face the opposite: we accumulate a lot of stuff then have a hard time getting rid of it because nobody wants it. eBay started as a sort of online garage sale site. Now it's so flooded with cheap crap from China that it's hard to sell used things. Scammers only make it worse. Thrift stores are great for getting rid of most stuff, but one thing they don't like to take is old books other than mostly popular ones, like record / CD stores -- I've got over 100 CDs that I took to a place that only recycles records and CDs and they didn't want any of them. But again, that's beside the point. It seems I've gotten to a place in life where most of the stuff I've got is of no value to what I'm up to now, because it was "curated" as it were for some potential use "in the future". Now that I'm here in that future, it has no place. Making matters worse, I moved into a smaller apartment and there's not just less than have of the storage space here than I had before, but the cabinets are so small that I have nowhere to put my plates or many of my kitchen things. I don't want to get rid of them, but ... they just DON'T FIT! That's just weird to me. My sister suggested I just put them into storage, and I'm thinking ,"WHY?"

I've been a software developer my entire career, with a brief hiatus to clear my head. In 2020-21 I started to get curious if I might have Asperger's and found someone to diagnose me in late 2021. The same week I got my diagnosis I received my annual review at work. I had been reading up on Asperger's (now officially a form of autism) and when I read my review, it looked like it could have been copied from a case study of how Aspie's show up at work. I told the HR person to simply replace it with a comment to that effect and then re-do the review focusing on my actual work performance and not the effects of my Asperger's in the workplace. She said my boss refused and that was that. I pointed out that it's legally considered a "disability" under ADA guidelines and they were required under law to make "reasonable accommodations", but they didn't seem to care. Not wanting to get into a big legal dispute, I said I'd leave if they gave me a longer severance package. We arrived at a number and I left. That was in January. I turned 65 in July, and in late May I decided to get off of the trading time for money merry-go-round and start collecting Social Security, and so I filed in June. Unfortunately, I'm one of the majority of Boomers who doesn't have enough saved up to retire on, so I promptly filed for Bankruptcy to flush out a bunch of debts I could no longer afford to pay. Ironically, I blew what retirement funds I had accumulated over the years trying to AVOID BANKRUPTCY, and looking back on it, I'd say that was a BIG MISTAKE! Life goes in cycles, along with our finances, and about every 10-12 years I could have filed BK. Looking back, that's what I should have done instead of using my retirement funds to avoid it. For the record, you can use retirement funds to avoid a BK, but a BK cannot touch your retirement funds. A BK is not fun, and it's a bit like living in a financial hurricane for a few years (unless you have a magical way of recovering financially), but it does eventually calm down and get better.

@Fil Ladden I was actually planning to retire at 70. I kind of got thrown overboard and ended up in retirement. But since My Aspergers/autism diagnosis, I've come to see a lot of things I've been criticized for over the years have actually been gifts I have that aren't being expressed well. So for me, this has been about redefining who I am, and I'm making some great headway. So I've ended up where you're pointing at, but in a roundabout way. I'm really happy not having to be a player in somebody else's game, and am building the foundation of my own. It's a little messy and uncomfortable, but I'm OK with that.