My spouse is NT, which has been great as we complement each other.

Most of my friends are on the spectrum though, because we have a similar range of interests and tolerance for social interaction.

All yums.

New characters are resources too. The word doesn’t have to be limited to spendable currencies like “lumber and gems”.

I wear my normal earbuds but just don’t turn them on. Blocks out enough of the high pitches but I can still hear what’s going on.

I get along with Autistics better, but mainly because we cope with social situations in a similar way.

In my case, we play a lot of board games and video games. We can socialize without requiring smalltalk or eye contact. If there is no such activity planned, we don’t get together, and nobody is offended.

Yup… This is why I went into engineering.

This art stuff is too far beyond my simple brain.

I got my PhD in engineering just fine. Had to push myself to make a few connections and meet regularly with my advisor, etc., but doing research was really well-suited to my hyper-focus tendencies.

However the opportunities I had tutoring/teaching did not appeal to me at all. I pulled it off, and I enjoyed sharing my knowledge and being the “expert” in a room full of freshman students, but I would be highly stressed all morning in anticipation, and then out of commission for the rest of the day.

So, I opted to move into industry mainly to remove the expectation of teaching regular courses and the dependency on networking to successfully claim grant funding and collaborate with other academics. (Also money)

Several autistic-spectrum friends also left academia but stayed in research in some form, and are doing really well. A couple stayed in academia. One is doing great, and the other basically destroyed his marriage due to the stress.

Probably depends a lot on the specific responsibilities of your chosen academic field as well as your individual point on the spectrum.

“Living fuels” as opposed to fossil fuels?

Pretty recently.

When the majority of people I grew up respecting decided to use their religion as an excuse to participate in or support a terrorist attack, a lot of things started unraveling pretty quickly. Turns out none of them actually cared about what Jesus wanted, but rather what that news station said.

With so many of my old friends and church leaders telling me hate was the answer, the cognitive dissonance didn’t have any ground to stand on anymore.