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Hi! New here, and based on the other posts, writing in the correct section. Hoping to make friends with like-minded people. Ha! Didn't write that to be literal, but I'm making it so now!

Oh, I guess I should say that I was diagnosed in May with autism... high functioning, the artist formerly known as Asperger's. I find high functioning to be an extremely ironic term, because cognitive abilities are hardly the only measure of function, but people like to name things. That isn't altogether bad. I wouldn't be able to ask, "Do you know the way to San Jose?" if there were no such place. Of course, if I only had verbal directions, I still wouldn't get there...

Anyway, to like-minded people (literally and metaphorically), I'd love to hear from you, if only to tell me that you, too, as a navigator, have frantically called out to the driver, "go left, go left," while pointing right, all the while wondering why he suddenly started ignoring you completely.

Welcome to WP!

Hello, nice to 'meet' you!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

Hello!

I don't give out directions, it's just plain better that way! I am new too.

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

When I moved out into the countryside, I was forced to utilize a different navigation system, navigating by landmarks. This is because generally in the countryside, the streets do not have street signs, there are no maps and there were not even street addresses. In the country we used Rural Routes and Box numbers in place of street addresses. The routes were the routes that a particular postman took in delivering mail and the box numbers represented the various stops along his route. It was only recently when our county adopted 911 emergency calling that the county upgraded to street mapping systems in the countryside. So how do you navigate without maps, street signs and street addresses. It is basically by landmarks. So I would ask an old timer where my desired destination was located. He would say, “go to Blue Barn Hill and make a right, go two miles, make a left, go three blocks cross a bridge and then turn right and it’s the second driveway on your left. The main problem with this navigation system was that Blue Barn Hill was named after the blue barn at the bottom of a hill. But the blue barn burned down 20 years ago, and the old timer failed to mention that fact.

Hi mau_tie,

Yes, you're writing in the right section. I hope you find like minded people here and people who like your mind too.

I too was diagnosed Asperger's in March this year and it has been a major shift in my understanding of myself. Has your diagnosis helped in understanding yourself better? Has it helped other people to understand you better? I hope so.

By the way. I like your comment "the artist formerly known as Aspergers". I haven't heard that before. Did you make that up?

I too was given the "high functioning" label, which I thought was bizarre. Especially, cause when I was diagnosed I was in a psychiatric hospital, after a breakdown from trying too hard to function as a neurotypical.
I prefer the term "barley functioning" or "occasionally functioning". I think it's a more accurate description of my real functioning.

It's a strange label, but I read somewhere that the term high functioning came about decades ago in the days when "autistic" meant the guy rocking in the corner murmuring nonsense to himself with with his hands over his ears, unable to speak and apparently oblivious to the world around him (I do have those kind of days). So when the smart people discovered autistic people who could speak and didn't appear intellectually disabled they needed a new label for those people, so they were labeled "high functioning". Which makes sense in that context, but the term has lost a lot of its original meaning.

Welcome to wrong planet.

Thanks everyone! I love your posts. Artist formerly known as Asperger's was mine, but feel free to use it in your daily conversation. It would be the height of flattery for me if, ten years from now, I overheard some teenager saying that. (Yes, I'm whimsical, and yes, I'm aware of it. I can't always be taken seriously!)