Sometimes the first step isn't "design the ideal business." It's "what's one thing that's draining me that I can remove this week?"That's a legitimate place to start. Moving toward the less bad thing, over time, that starts to grow.

@hauchvonstaub I think neurotypical people have no idea how exhausting communicating with them is for us. Not only on the high levels like doctor appointments, but already on the lower levels of their game of assumptions like small talk with the dog people in my conservative neighbourhood.Beagle Lumi doesn't care who is on the other side of the leash and I want him to walk together with his dog friends, so I have to do the small talk. And sometimes when I am distracted because of Lumi, it happens that my monotropic mind drives me directly into a dead end, which leads to an inner dialogue like "Fuck, they won't understand this, because they are not autistic. They will judge you. But you can't explain it to them in detail, because they can't process it, because they are not autistic..."In situations like this I use a trick that I learned during my time as an account manager and during job interviews. I don't lie, but I am not as precise as I naturally would be as an autistic person and leave room for interpretation. Because the neurotypicals love their assumptions, most of their communication is based on imprecise information and assumptions, so I let them make their assumptions and they are happy.Later at home I often get a bad conscience, because I wasn't as precise as I could have been and that's kind of lying and this causes the stress you described. But then I calm down, because Lumi needs his dog friends and this is just the way the NTs communicate.

@Nonya_Bidniss Thank you form posting this. I found it really enlightening.

@LehtoriTuomo @autistics I've noticed that if I like someone, I still watch them even when I'm speaking, not necessarily eye contact, but just their face in general (which to most is close enough to eye contact). If I dislike someone, it's almost impossible for me to keep eye contact with them nowadays, even when they are speaking (though I often do watch lips, as that helps me comprehend what they are saying). Unless I'm really angry at them, then I will hold quite the intense eye contact while menacing them

@JoBlakely @sasutina13 @KatyElphinstone One of my favorite things anyone has ever said of me, and this was said with affection not malice, one NT friend of mine who loved gossip once exclaimed in frustration "You're so annoyingly unknowable!" To this day I'm proud of that moniker But as with anything I find funny, there's definitely a lot of truth in it, I am pretty unknowable, especially to NTs. I guess we all are. And we all know they fear what they can't know...

@hmm_cook This is very well stated, Heather! Thank you for raising awareness.

@oscarjiminy Just the next town over, Kuopio, and haven't moved yet, just starting to gear up to it, and I'm already frozen with the enormity of all the stuff, especially bureaucracy involved I suppose I can setup a housewarming dropin hashtag when I actually have moved in

@Andii AI slop much? "this isnt X; it's Y" phrasing@oscarjiminy

@urbanfoxe @KatyElphinstone this. And it’s very hard to explain to many people that sometimes I am not doing something (generally considered empathetic) not because I don’t care about other person(or creature)’s suffering - but exactly because it is so painful I can’t function while feeling it