Hello, I'm new here, and would like to introduce myself even though I'm terrible at it. I'm originally from New Jersey, but am now living in the UK with my boyfriend who is originally from NYC. We are both Aspies and sort of "escaped" to the UK to get away from hectic and overpopulated NY and NJ. We made the mistake of living in London for a bit (just as hectic as NYC), but now reside in the seaside town of Brighton. However, we are going to end up moving back to NYC sometime next year because it turns out we miss having a sense of familiarity, and feel very lonely and far removed from everything.
Ever since we came here, we had no luck making friends, and I had trouble finding work for awhile. In London I worked in some high-end retail shop in Kensington where the clients were very rich, mean, and demanding, and I lasted there about a month. My bf works as a baker and doesn't mind his job much because it's very routine. I now work as an assistant for a local jewellery designer, but it's only for a few hours a week, and I basically work out of her kitchen on a laptop. It's nice not having to deal with many coworkers and/or annoying customers, but at the same time it's very lonely. I make and design jewellery myself, but I'm nervous about setting up my own business due to the whole "bureaucratic" aspect of it (like filing taxes as an independent business, pricing your work, dealing with people's money, etc). When I lived in NJ, I managed to hold one job for a pretty long time (4 years), and it was at a university working as an assistant secretary for an international student program. I found the students to be polite and pleasant to deal with, and my coworkers knew that I was very shy on the phone and had a hard time dealing with face-to-face inquiries, so they "took over for me" for that stuff and let me do all the data entry work. My coworkers were also much older than me, so it was more comfortable working with them than with younger people. I hope to find another job like that when I go back to NYC, but I'm not exactly sure what sorts of places are Aspie-friendly. I did some internet research, but it hasn't been very helpful, so I figured that fellow Aspies should know best.
Ok I'm finished rambling for now. I apologize for the lengthy introduction! :[