SUCCESS

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Anyone who quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson is my friend for life

RW Emerson is the one person in the world I've something in common with. Too bad he lived before me.

"If you strike at a king, you must kill him."
Friends for life Greentea!
To the OP:
I'm 37 and struggling. Can't hold down a job. Live with grandma, pay no rent or utils in exchange for helping take care of her and her house (she's 92 and won't go much further). Never had a girlfriend, still plugging away at trying to get dates. Been trying to take advantage of low expense living situation by traveling anywhere I can afford, and working on my art. I have made a dent in the art arena; a number of people are fans of my work but they're all poor like me so a career is a long way off. I dabbled in trading commodities but was undercapitalized and couldn't do much better than breakeven for years; then I had to quit that and use the few remaining funds from that for living expenses. I'd love to restart but I need twenty grand to do it properly and I don't see how I can get that much money. I can manage money, I just can't earn it working for others. Work is a huge nightmare for me. When my grandma dies I'm screwed, the family will sell the house and need me to move on. I could never live with my parents again.
The definition of "success" varies. I have yet to succeed by either society's definition or my own.

My life would be considered by most *average*, but I consider myself very blessed.

Most of our lives we were undx'ed, the condition didn't exist so there was just exclusion and ridicule and aloneness for us. We're probably the age group least likely to achieve 'success'. We are a 'one-off' generation. The circumstances in which we lived no longer exist.

Had I known of the condition as a young person I would have made different choices. I think the thing that stands out to me career-wise is that you are more likely to succeed or be happy in self employment and I would have tried to go down that path.

Postperson, that is so true and well said!

I presented the word success with quotation marks. The "success" i was refering to was the success as being defined by society. The money-family-job-relevance thing. But we all know that society can go **** itself.

It is a concept with multiple definitions, but the most correct seems to be happiness. Eachone achieves happiness on their own way. Everyone has their own plan to achieve it. And i think that among aspies, money is not a big part of it.

So i reformulate the question:

Are you an happy adult aspie?

I think that success is relative. I don't know how to measure it. Everything that I was using to measure it has lately been blown completely out of the water and proved to be a worthless and non quantitative measurement.

"You may ask yourself..." sorry the OP was reminiscent of the Talking Heads song...I was picturing the viddy in my head as I was reading the post. You know, David Byrne chopping down his arm asking things about beautiful wives and beautiful kids and beautiful houses...

In some ways I feel hugely successful. In others I feel a total flop. I guess that you just have to look at it and decide how you feel about it. Has AS interfered in some of my ultimate plans? Of course, it has. Has it held me back, made me feel as if there were no acheivements in sight for me and made me feel like getting out of bed would be an insurmountable odd that I so could not do that day? Yes, ma'am I have felt this way.

The more pertinent question is: do I let it hold me down or do I keep trying? Do I give in to it and run screaming? Well, okay, sometimes, but more importantly did I let it keep me from trying to accomplish it? No!

We can't use neurotypical measures for our successes. We have to measure them on our own scales. What is successful for me is not what is successful for you.