Diablogue #17
Our intent is to publish once a week. However, sometimes too much is happening and Ken becomes overwhelmed. He needs to binge sleep instead of write. Our apologies. We will always try meet our commitment.
Helpful Hint: Contradictions are inevitable. However, with patience, perseverance, and help, there are ways to continually minimize their impact.
So, let’s diablogue:
Ken: I realize that contradictions are an inevitable part of my life. I continue to try to implement my own helpful hint. People cannot see the toll it takes on me to reconcile or explain the contradictions to people. It is exhausting, and sometimes it cannot be achieved. I do not know why most of them occur. But I am constantly looping them in my brain to try to find the reasons.
Christina: Like your extremely strong vocabulary, yet extremely weak spelling.
Ken: I first noticed that in school. One of the thrills of my childhood was closing my eyes, randomly opening the dictionary, and dropping my finger on a word. That was the word of the day for me. This was one way I attained my high vocabulary—through my fascination with words. However, in spelling tests or spelling bees, I usually could not spell the big words that I could speak, understand, and use in sentences.
Christina: And that’s still there today. Just today you wrote an email to me with ‘to’ in place of ‘two’ several times. You spell the way things sound—despite multiple exposures, you know, when you read, see signs, all the language everywhere—and you remember everything you see. So the spelling quirk is amazing to me.
Ken: Indeed this contradiction is still alive and well.
Christina: And you can’t explain it?
Ken: That is correct. Thank God for Spellchecker and Grammar checker.
Christina: Another contradiction is how you keep your workspaces at work so tidy, organized, and dust free. Yet your home workspace is a mess.
Ken: That is true. The only theory that I can come up with is that I need to be organized in order to be focussed and efficient. I am not subject to the distraction of looking for my tools if it is organized. I keep it dust free for obvious reasons. There are many customers’ devices there, and I am not alone in that work environment. Regarding the difference at home, when my work day is over, I have nothing left in me to organize and clean. I just want to rest and refresh.
Christina: For the past 10 years? No chance to clean your space?
Ken: Then there are other things to do. It falls off the radar. Not a priority.
Christina: Well, I hope we can finally completely clean up your home office this summer and that you will keep it that way—now that things are settling at work and home.
Ken: That is indeed my desire also. Speaking of my workspace, another contradiction I know I am guilty of is that I am generous and yet also extremely territorial. I surmise that is because generosity is by choice—I am aware when I loan something to someone. However, when someone takes something without asking, or without my knowledge, and I discover it gone, the demon of territorialism rears its ugly head.
Christina: And you don’t like being like that.
Ken: That is absolutely correct.
Christina: Like the time I went into your office when you weren’t home and took a power bar for my daughter. No big deal, I thought.
Ken: Later I discovered it was missing and asked if you have seen it. You told me you what you had done with it and I immediately went into internal orbit.
Christina: Not on the outside.
Ken: As often happens, there is an internal rage, but my immediate counter action is to exert extreme control, I do not let it out. Because I realize that this is ok, normal behaviour for nonspectrum people.
Christina: I was shocked when you told me how you had felt about that incident. How upset you were over a $3 power bar from the dollar store. Like, who cares?!
Ken: I was shocked also. And extremely embarrassed. Because of that incident and how close I came to losing control, I developed a workaround.
Christina: What is it?
Ken: I inform people of my peculiarly about borrowing things. I say, “You are free to use anything that I have as long as you ask me first, and when you are finished with it, you put it back exactly where you got it from.” Therefore, each of us is aware, and neither one of us ends up shocked, or shocked by the other’s reaction.
Christina: Well, after you explained this reality, I changed my behaviour too. I always tell you now, and no problem! …I think I told you that when we were thinking of this topic I went online and searched Asperger contradictions. Yours seem to be pretty common. It looks like lots of Aspies feel like walking contradictions. They mentioned things like being so kind in the world yet inadvertently unkind to individuals, finding it hard to start jobs then not being able to stop working, and hating interruptions yet always interrupting.
Ken: I find it reassuring to realize that I am not the only one struggling with these issues. Reading some of the other sites will give me new information and tools.
Christina: Ok, what next week?
Ken: Next week it will be the unintentional and hidden bias and torture by non-spectrum people towards those on the spectrum.
Next post #18 ~ Unintentional and hidden bias and torture of Aspies
"I Am Autistic." "I'm Not." A Diablogue 