I'm "Kiwiwriter," and I was diagnosed with Asperger's in 1999. I'm 51 years old, married, live in Newark, NJ, with my wife of 19.5 years and daughter of 17.5.
My wife is an unrecognized genius and my daughter is a recognized genius...she's off to college in Maine in two weeks, with a fistful of awards, intending to do either orthodontia or computers, 11th in her class at Newark's top science high school. Prior to marrying my wife, my life was pretty much a rolling disaster because of Asperger's, and I've still had many disasters since then. The last year of my life has been a major nightmare for reasons I'd rather keep private.
My day job for the past 16 years has been writing press releases for the City of Newark. I'm on my fourth mayor. Despite having an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School for Social Research, I earn less than first-year administrative assistants...I haven't had a raise in 11 years.
My interests are baseball (Yankees and Giants), history (mostly WW2), and writing (I do articles on WW2 history and am doing an e-book on the subject). My memoir on surviving Asperger's was shot down by the publishing industry.
It has been a hard life and I have caused little in it but chaos for the people I love and received in return a great deal of condemnation and ridicule, some of it justified, some of it not. The definitive judgment of me was rendered by my father many years ago, when he was flogging me at my mother's behest (she was a borderline narcissist with more issues than Time magazine). He said, "If you continue on this course, one very cold morning you will wake up and realize nobody in the entire world gives a damn whether you live or die." I often feel that's how my life turned out. It is ironic that my father was often my biggest cheerleader.
My wife is not a big fan of me being on internet forums because I often wind up getting into flame wars with people, so I doubt I will be here very often. However, enduring Asperger's is one thing I can talk about (Opening my mouth has often got me in trouble or resulted in ridicule, as I say), so I may turn up occasionally.
The only other thing I can say is that I learned my writing from Frank McCourt (my teacher in high school), Walter Lord (the author), my instructors at my MFA program, and Roger Clemens, when he pitched for the Yankees. I learned my professionalism and work ethic from Ron Guidry and Mariano Rivera, and I guess I got my furious temper and relentlessness from Paul O'Neill and Will Clark.