When relatives ask, "what have you been up to lately?"

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First, relatives ask, "What have you been up to lately?"

I give a confusing answer because I do not know how to generalize my various activities into a single category.

Then, relatives ask more specific questions, "Where do you work?" "Are you dating anyone?" "What do you do for fun?"

I cannot answer these questions either, because I cannot work, I do not know how to socialize let alone date, and none of my hobbies ever turn into something "productive".

All of this, I then have to explain and excuse. "But you graduated from university." "But you are socializing now." "But it is so easy." (Disclaimer: they are not trying to be rude here, just asking for clarification on this.)

I never try to hide my autism; I never lie about my autism diagnosis; I do not hesitate discussing, in fact, I will even volunteer to discuss, my autism diagnosis. But, I am not very eloquent (especially during face to face) and stumble to explain my autism or non-neurotypical lifestyle (or any other topic really).

I love all my family; all my family love me; I want to talk with them about my life, but I do not know how.

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31st of July, 2013
Diagnosed: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Auditory-Verbal Processing Speed Disorder, and Visual-Motor Processing Speed Disorder.

Weak Emerging Social Communicator (The Social Thinking-­Social Communication Profile by Michelle Garcia Winner, Pamela Crooke and Stephanie Madrigal)

"I am silently correcting your grammar."

It doesn't seem like a good answer because you know you can do something better with your life. You sound like you are at the same position in life as I was when I was about your age. I eventually did get pull myself out of it, but I wish I had had the ability to do so sooner.

If I were you, I would plan on starting community college in the fall, start working on getting a driver's license, and try to normalize your sleep schedule. When I was younger, there weren't many programs for people in their late teens and early 20's, but these days there are, which should provide you with plenty of opportunities to socialize with people your age.

Your local community college probably has their fall class schedule online right now. What you should do is find out when registration is, and meet with one of their academic counselors to determine what classes you should enroll in, and work out a course plan that will lead you to your career goals in life.
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okay. society puts on a lot of pressure to go to college. they act like college is 13th grade. they act like everyone that goes to college succeeds. they act like everyone that does not go to college fails. wrong. jobs/zuckerburg/gates aside, other people without college degrees financially succeed.

after the 2008 recession, the proportion of people with Bachelors and higher degrees, working at jobs they were overqualified for, grotesquely increased. likewise, the cost of college tuition is rapidly increasing, at a rate that is much faster than the rate that minimum wage is increasing.

professionals that work at school - instructors and counselors, tend to tell everyone to go to college. when i was 20, i told a UCSD psychologist that i wanted to dropout school (b/c i was flunking structural Engineering) and join the Air Force. she had the nerve to tell me that people that have Bachelors degrees earn an average of one million dollars per lifetime than people with high school diplomas.

however, statistically, it don't make no sense to "average" together all the college majors, and all the colleges. Electrical Engineering and Liberal Arts ain't the same. State and Stanford ain't the same.

my cousin got a BS in Aerospace Engineering 10 years ago. since then, he has been more or less unemployed.

someone told me he got a MS in Math. then he was an Tenured Instructor at Community College. in math. then he worked at Oracle 17 years as a Software Engineer. then his whole division got laid off. so he had to work at Trader Joes. stocking shelves. about 15 dollars an hour. as of about one year ago.

all things equal, someone with a degree has more vocational prospects than someone without a degree. (fine).

however, all things ain't equal.

seriously i wish i were to have taken that into account, before wasting six years at homophobic UCSD. Fifth year undergrad, flunked out Structural Engineering. the school would not let me register for more classes, b/c i got too many quarters below the GPA quota. unless i majored in something else. ended up with a BA in Cognitive Science. which i was (also) not good at. and which i did not particularly like. and which did not have many jobs attached.

nobody stuck a gun in my ugly fat stupid head and told me to go to college.

nobody paid me minimum wage to go to college.

tricks

peer pressure

my precious lil "parents" just assumed that i would go to college. and i did. and i grossly regret it. seriously.

furthermore, many college graduates have a lot of loans. and some of them default on loans. defaulting on loans causes a lot more problems, than just not having a degree.

look up "student loan horror story".

the internet is riddled with them.

think about what kind of job you want to do.

college is a risk. with the risk, you could do better and you could do worse. you have to do proper research before taking the decision.

certainly i wish that i had done research first.

Mt. Diablo Unified School District offers Bridges program for special ed. age 18 to 24. public school.

my precious lil "parents" did not send me to get diagnosed. if they were to have done so, i could've gotten six years of free job training. at public school.

six years is a long time. even the longest Advanced Individual Training in the military active duty is (about) only 2 years. or so. something like that. what jobs Bridges trains for, i do not know. but, seriously, fancy. suspect that whatever it was was much better than UCSD Cognitive Science.

thus i can't forgive my precious lil "parents". even after one of them dropped dead two years ago. even after the other one got stage four colon cancer diagnosis. 2 years ago.

likewise, all things equal, getting a drivers license is better than not getting one.

but not all things are equal.

anyone can get in a crash at any second. some car crashes cause physical injuries and death to pedestrians, drivers, and other parties. some of that damage is permanent. car crashes are expensive too. the slighest scrape and it is like. whoa.

yeah i get really anxious. more anxious than usual, while driving too.

got my drivers license at age 20. legally could've gotten it at 16.

do some resaerch about a good driving instructior. one experienced with anxiety/autism/what have you.

alternatively. and this might be too expensive. but maybe just move somewhere with better public transportation.

if you live some places, you can't get to work, the grocery store, school, or much else, without a car.

in some places, there is heavy traffic and few parking spots.

You are correct that going to college is not a guarantee of success in life. It gives you tools with which you may be able to build success in life. You are also correct that it's not necessary to go to college to build success in life, however Mark Zuckerberg is not a good example of a successful person who did not go to college, because the truth of the matter is, he did. He attended Stanford, and while he did not complete the program, Standford and other universities were integral to the success of Facebook. Additionally, the others you mentioned are rare exceptions which arise due to statistics. The majority of people who find success in the western world these days without a college degree are people who went to trade schools or who managed to learn a trade somehow, and were both wise and lucky with their money.

Why did you fail out of the engineering program? There may be ways to salvage that.
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https://answersafrica.com/zuckerbergs-d ... duate.html

Harvard gave Mark Zuckerburg an honorary degree and invited Mark to make a speech at commencement ceremony.

yes, zuckerburg/jobs/gates are rare exceptions.

but there are plenty of people with bachelors degrees working at retail stores and at restaurants. those people are not exceptions.

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/na ... 54473426/1

according to the article, cited above, half of people with BA/BS degrees are working at jobs where they are underemployed.

why did i fail Structural Engineering? yeah i wasted a lot of time and energy trying to figure it out. failure to maintain adequate GPA. found it hard to learn. esp on quarter system. something like that. did not get diagnosed with autism til age 21.

yeah anyways that was over 10 years ago.

can't do nothing about that

except go crying to Licensed Clinical Social Worker

try as hard as i can to obsess less over the past and more over the current situation.

At least they don't ask you 'How are you keeping these days?', which is probably even worse to hear.

At least they don't ask you 'How are you keeping these days?', which is probably even worse to hear.
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two years ago, Aunt Audrey from Chicago came for my precious lil "mom's " funeral.

she asked if i had a job. answered no. she said that was ok.

it's like, thank you very much, Aunt Audrey, for giving me permission to be unemployed. oh wait. that's right. you do not have to give permission. your permission is meaningless. what if you were to have said that it is not ok to not have a job. then what? if you were to have told me that, that would not have magically given me a job. okay?

seriously some precious lil "people" are so full of themselves.

but whatever.

went to the California Autism Federation. nine years ago. its website said it gave job training. so i asked a man. and he told me i came to the right place. wrong. he told me to go to a certain woman. she had a big ego. "what have you been doing with yourself?" one condecending woman had the nerve to ask me. "looking for a job." and then she told me good luck.

and that was it.

but whatever.

it ain't illegal to have a big ego.

and she did not do anything creative, extreme, or illegal.

so what she has a big ego. plenty of precious lil "people" do.

then what?

in her defense though, what difference does it make?

what could she have said or done that would've had a favorable effect from my perspective. maybe something. but there wwas no law that said she had to do that.

besides, what if she did something, then what? whooptie do

some precious lil "people" have the nerve to say "may i help you?" as if they are so morally innocent they have never done jack wrong.

and i am 34 years old right now

the older i get the more i feel like precious lil "most people" are not worth the cost basis analysis it takes to interact with them

especially extroverts

Keeping myself from submerging back into the dark liquid I'd been splashing around in for years sometimes hoping to drown, sometimes paddling for a horizon (realizing I'd been skimming the surface all my life, with a thin layer of glass separating me but there'd been leaks all over the place getting worse and worse) is enough of an achievement for me to adhere to. I just say I'm 'focusing on my progress at a pace that I'm told is necessary', it's modest and shuffling compared to most people but I have complex issues so I have to accept that this is my path.

I dread that question whether it be family or others asking it. What do you say when you do little other than the internet,watch tv, eat,drink and sleep ?

The thing is though, i feel it's asked not with genuine interest, but with malice, trying to figure out how much of a loser you are, and making the other person feel better about themselves

I just tell people that I've been working and I still work at the bank. What am I supposed to tell them?

I dreaded this before,but after reading up on alot of stuff I realized alot of times its just polite small talk.So I now have a "between job" line prepared and then quickly change the subject to them,and everybody knows people love to talk about themselves alot.

It gets even worse for me when they start the interrogation with, "Long time no see!", followed by this question. Does that imply that the questioner wants to know what i have achieved in the months or years since i last saw him/her?