managing social skills is like fixing a boat at sea.

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I feel like since discovering I am autistic I am constantly questioning my instincts,
and trying to find a new way to look at the world
perhaps through a more adapted Theory or Mind kind of gaze,
but I am constantly bumping into things and refactoring old
strategies and it's exhausting.

Bleb.

I gave up fixing said boat.

Instead, I have to learn how to surf with said pieces of that boat and have to rely on the waves instead of the winds and sails, and the oar may or may not be with me.

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I am attempting to build a robot submarine out of the boat.
I will be able to effortlessly disappear then reappear in another part of the ocean!

Yes it can get that bad. Seems to get a lot worse when I've been in my "fortress of solitude" for too long and the social skills have atrophied. My life is dead easy as long as people don't get the chance to screw with it. The changeover from that to the "real" world can be quite a shock. I've experienced just that lately - I don't know how society manages to find so many curveballs to chuck at me. But everybody else seems to sail through it.

I like your metaphor. Best advice I have, try to keep socially active at the level you can cope with. Use it or lose it.

Yes, it it is exhausting, which is why some stores offer special hours for those on the spectrum.
It may help to do only a little at a time. Sometimes a store will be really busy. I'll turn around and come back later!