I'm blogging about it now though, because relevant?
The author talking about his experiences compared to a list of autism symptoms. And me going.
"...Huh. The author sounds like he has the EXACT same issues that *I* have."
There are many, many comics from the comic that I considered linking to my girlfriend with me just saying "...THIS IS ME", though for whatever stupid reason I ended up deciding not to in spite of so many of them being so appropriate for describing me.
And as the author says himself, him having a sort of "write what you know/I know myself best" attitude, and from this, having put aspects of himself into basically all of his characters (which I'd know of all too well because I do literally the exact same thing), that makes a lot of sense.
What I wanted to cover were things he talked about, because I don't talk about them much.
But the ironic thing is...some time near the start of this year or thereabouts, half the things he mentioned in the comic I linked I was considering blogging about anyway. And with him talking about them there, a little hard for me to not instantly stop my bingeread and instead focus on writing the blog.
I relax via movement rather than standing still--like the author, I fundamentally cannot stand still in place. It's something that not only is physically painful, but mentally excruciating so I instinctively, reactively, add in some form of movement to it to make it work.
I love pacing and always have. It is something that I do to just...relax, focus my thoughts, to just get my brain in a good mindset for doing what I want to do; many of my best ideas came from a result of pacing back and forth and then just a spark of brilliance hit and then ignited because I was allowed to play around with a calm, collected, focused mind.
Many in my family fidget, but I am by far the worst offender; I am basically never not fidgeting. If there's no object to fidget with, I make an object to fidget with. If there's nothing to make an object to fidget with, I use my own body as my fidgeting material. (Which, to be honest, can be equal parts healthy and unhealthy. I can clean out gunk and whatnot that's accumulated, but I can also rip skin off in my fidgeting without realizing what I did until after I did it.)
I did have a speech impediment when I was younger, and while I was able to overcome half my issues, my issue with stuttering never went away in spite of having spent years at it and taking lessons to try and avert it. Is the main reason why I prefer typing over speaking; I just stumble over my own words which is much harder to do when typing. (Harder. Not impossible.)
But the main thing which piqued my interest?
The mention of oversensitivity to stimuli, and specifically how that relates to the author. Obviously, I have misophonia, so I know about that oversensitivity to a select stimulus, but what he described is something that I wanted to talk about because it happens to me every day I am at work.
I thought it might just be the unique acoustics of the pool deck at work, but thinking about it, it's probably just a me thing. Or an autism thing, more specifically. I am ridiculously sensitive to certain sounds, able to make them out when nobody else can. I fundamentally cannot filter out everyone talking, and it shuts me down entirely.
I think, ages ago, years ago, I wrote a blog touching on that, in fact, now that I think about it. I likened it to the Robert Downy Jr. Sherlock Holmes film in the dining scene, where he was exposed to so many stimuli and had no way of blocking them out. (I've also used it as a descriptor as being part of what curses Sloth in Phyrra and Cyrus; he has a souped-up version of that as a permanent curse on him for his sin, making his life a living hell as a result.)
But what the author said? I can verbatim quote and have it apply to me:
And yet, somehow, I often have trouble hearing what people have said and have to ask them to repeat themselves, which I find all sorts of weird.
I have this super sensitive, hyper-awareness with my hearing, able to hear the ever so slightest of details, whose hearing is sensitive enough to not be able to drown out all of that noise...and yet...when people actually speak to me, I have no clue what they are saying most of the time. Not because I don't understand the words they're saying (though that can happen, because duh, lack of social understanding), but because I can't hear them no matter how much I try.
They can say something, I won't get it, I'll ask them to repeat themselves, I still won't get it, I ask them a third, sometimes a fourth time, and if they haven't given up on telling me what it was they were saying, maybe I hear them. (At which point, then I have to process what they said correctly, which again. Challenging, because duh.)
I'm also uncertain about the sarcasm thing. Often at work when patrons tell jokes, I might not be able to tell, in large part because of the above issue (not having heard them until they repeat it, and their repeated version of it obviously won't have the same tone as their initial version did because they're trying to make me hear it, which I guess sacrifices some of the subtextual clues, or so I hypothesize), but I was raised in a family filled with deadpan snarkers, and am myself one. (Well, as often as someone like me can be one, anyway.)
Online, in fact, snark is my signature style. I'm fond of puns and whatnot, and I often attach the emoticon ':P' to it which ruins the snark, but I am a ridiculously snarky person who as part of the snark, inherently makes use of sarcastic comments and the like.
Misunderstandings are abundant, though, moreso than they should be.
Unlike the author, though, I know for a fact that I have no sense of personal space.
I also know that I am incredibly fond of tactile feedback. Like. I am obsessive about it. I tend to not like touching people (I don't have a sense of personal space, but I just...have an aversion to touching people? But it feels mostly like I don't know if it's appropriate more than anything else, unless it's a child in which case no duh I don't want to touch the child who I know has a runny nose and does the child thing to deal with it rather than the adult thing, and I am quite aware of the hypocrisy of that given I am an adult who still does the child thing to do but I guess I'm a hypocrite in that way), and I rationally know that surfaces everywhere are littered with germs, but...
...I just...like the feeling of them, even if I know they are germ-infested. But that said...I'm kinda selective with what I touch? I only touch certain things, and otherwise leave things untouched. Some things I just instinctively reach out to touch, even if I've never touched them before; other things I instinctively reach out to touch out of established habit; yet more things I just don't touch for whatever reason even if similar things I do touch.
Soyeah.
Just...got some more perspective on things that I thought were me-things, that might in fact not actually be just-me things.