Varying abilities

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The better I get, the better I notice how worse I can be.

When I appear really talented at something, it confuses people to no end that my abilities in a different situation are pretty much of the opposite quality.

I literally could do higher maths suddenly one evening, but had 'forgotten' all the next day again. Same with riddles which I love doing. But either I can solve them in minutes or not at all.

Or I'm able to talk perfectly at one time and then, when I'm somewhere else with other people, I can't form a simple sentence and start to point and just say nonsense.

And the better I get at social interaction - I think I can dare say that I got pretty good at it in the past year - the worse I am at it in other situations too.

I sometimes really notice a worsening in interaction. As if I'm suddenly all the more disconnected and can hardly interact with others.

Every time I hear people saying to me 'well, you can do THAT so you MUST be able to do THIS too' it makes me crazy. People said this to me since forever. If I could control what I can do and when I do it, then I'd make sure to be the best at everything.

I have no idea when I'm able and when not. I can either do it or not do it and it's beyond my control.

Starting in my teens, I was pretty much the same all the time before I now improved so rapidly again. Now my abilities waver like crazy.

Is this something people can relate to, explain to me or am I going mad here?

It's all in what you focus. If you focus on what is important to you, then you will have the most happiness. I think the difference between us and NTs is that many NTs can do all of those things at the same time.

I've had very similar experiences in my life. I think it has to do with our intense focus on specific things. For example, I can become interested in a certain topic and become very well-versed in it and it becomes an obsession. But that will only last a few weeks or even days and then all of the knowledge goes away and I've focused on something else. And everything that isn't under that laser-like focus suffers. I even had a period of my life where I had a lot of good friends and got pretty good at socializing. The funny thing is, I didn't have a computer that whole time (computers are my aspie obsession). As soon as I got a computer again, everything shifted.
But anyway, I think I know how you feel and can definitely relate.

Yes, that's exactly it. And I've come to the same conclusion in my life. I am much happier being the nerd sitting alone on his computer than being the social butterfly at a bar or party.

I can definitely relate.

"We're all mad here." - Alice in Wonderland

I can definitley relate as well. Sometimes in social situations I'm almost NT-like, and then I have another conversation and I'm so clueless about what to say. Sometimes taking care of my life is easy, and sometimes it's hard. I've always thought that getting to whatever optimal level requires a lot of energy on our parts, and we can't always spare that much energy to be as good the next time.

If you mean acting like NT's do in conversation...yes, it is very exhausting.

Amen to that brother!

I can definitely relate. My abilities vary a lot between good and bad days. If I'm tired, frustrated, in a bad mood or just having a bad day it's like I lose the ability to do simple things I don't usually have major problems with.

There are days when I have relatively few problems and then there are days when I can't seem to get anything right. On those days I find it a lot harder to talk and interact with others and my motor skills get a lot worse (making me ten times clumsier than on a normal day and making simple tasks difficult to execute).

That drives me nuts too. I've heard this too many times. So few people can understand how one's abilities can vary between days and how I might be able to do something today, but be unable to do something similar tomorrow.

In addition to AS I also have physical problems/disabilities that vary from mild to severe and cause my physical condition and endurance to change very often. That confuses people a lot and some people find it hard to believe that my physical condition can vary so much between days/weeks/months. There are times when I can barely walk at all and there are times when I can even go hiking without any major problems. There are times when I suffer from a lot of pain and there are times when the pains are better, etc.

People don't understand how I can have major trouble interacting with others today when I could do it yesterday without noticeable difficulties, and how I might be able to bike 10 km today but maybe have difficulty walking short distances next week.

I relate to what people are saying here. For me, the unevenness derives from how my sensory processing is going. Some days, it's a huge effort to talk with people--like yesterday, I just couldn't get any energy going at all. Today, I didn't have much of a problem (because I took yesterday off, stayed home. slept, ate, read, wrote...).

There are so many variables: Was the store I work in crowded or not? Was a customer very loud or talking on his cell phone close to me? When I got home, did I rest or did I dive into the next task? How much did I sleep? What time? For how many hours? It goes on and on. I can't keep track of it. All I can do is monitor how my sensory processing is going and make adjustments (like leaving a noisy room, or taking time alone after a busy day).

You are definitely not going mad. I don't think any of us are mad. We're just dealing with a hypersensitive nervous system responding to sensory stimuli not within our control.

It's really thankless trying to explain that to people who just want to know why we can't be brilliant every day. I try to give my attention only to people who understand that I'm not a machine.