Meaning

So this is going to be a very special post. I told myself that as soon as this blog reach a hundred I would post this. My blog is titled grayngrey for a reason. As a person with Autism, I see the world in black and white. It's not a conscious effort, it's ingrained into my very being. At least it feels that ways sometimes. But all that changed about the time I was eighteen. I had been black and white for years, even embraced it. But I would beat myself up tirelessly, I couldn't let go of any of my mistakes. After a moment with my parents after a particularly bad day, I discovered that my parents forgave me for my sins and that if they and God could do it so easily then so could I. I'm not going to stand here and preach to you but it is what if felt. I'm not going to try to convince you that God is the answer or that my religion is the answer to your problems. I don't want to be seen that way. But I will tell you that after eighteen years of being black and white, I became gray and grey. For me, I try to see the world in shades of gray. So why gray and grey? I have always seen Gray as a darker shade and Grey a lighter shade. I must say though, going from black and white to grey is a tough experience. It often felt like I was poisoning myself and even today I still struggle to see the grey in life. But I have accepted more things and have been able to move beyond autism because of this philosophy that has become my motto: Life is found between the gray and grey.

Diluted

I've always felt diluted in terms of my disability. I'm not very autistic, but I'm not independent enough that I don't need help. I can find a job, but I can't really keep it. Why? Because I miss social cues I guess. It's not like I can't find a job, I just need help in the social aspect. But since all the social norms and rules aren't written down, I don't know what they are.

Diluted: 1. Make (a liquid) thinner or weaker by adding water or another solvent to it.
2. Make (something) weaker in force, content or value by modifying it or adding other elements to it.

That's what Merriam-Webster says. I'm not fully autistic and not fully...um...normal? But who wants to be normal? Normal is overrated. So am I less human? Nah. If I'm not less of something then I must be more of something! That's right, I'm a better human being than most people. Wa ha ha ha ha! Forget X-men, I'm the next step in evolution. Ugh, Okay enough of that joke.

I definitely don't have a disease, it's not something that can be "cured" in the normal sense. Maybe it's more like a birth mark. Just something you have to live with. LOL.

6/18/13

Today I met with my job coach again with my mother. I gotta say, sometimes I feel more like an art work being discussed by two people. What are my flaws? What are my strengths? What the heck was the artist thinking when he made this? lol. And, like a work of art, it's really weird if I put in my own opinion.

Motivation

Generally speaking, people that have ASD have problems with motivation. For me at least, this leads to procrastination and eventually panic when I realize I haven't done what I was supposed to do. Buy I graduated from college, you don't get a degree without a little discipline. So here's what I did.

I have a plan: I want to be creative in some shape of form preferably in video games (see my other blog). However, these jobs require a lot of work, so what I did to motivate myself throughout school and college was to gather info for my stories.

My degree is in history, so while I do enjoy history and reading (I am VERY good at history, lol) I looked for things that caught my interest while taking important notes.

Per example: while studying Chinese history I found out that the rise and fall of emperors depended on the Yellow River (yes I know it's an awful name). Why is this river so important? Well, first of all it flows through China. It's kind of like how the Mississippi river is important to us or what used to be the importance of the Panama Canal. The river was important to farmers and to trade. If the river flooded it would destroy many homes and towns. This disaster could be avoided if the emperor had control over the people and had them make barriers and dams. Should the emperor fail in this endeavor, the people would most likely start a coup. It wouldn't be long before the Emperor was dethroned by his own people or by rival politicians. Failure to properly prepare and control the river equaled failure to rule. Now keep in mind It's been 3 years since I've read Chinese history so I'm a little rusty. This is just my annotated version.

So I'm sitting there in my class thinking "This is really cool! An entire empire dependent on whether or not a leader could prevent a disaster. This would make a great story!" So I've begun to include this idea into my story.

This is what motivates me. The hope that someday I could use this knowledge to be creative. That's what worked for me though, I don't know how to motivate other people but it might work.

Get money like in a game

Why can't I get money like I can in games? You just whack an enemy and loot them, that's it! Ugh, whenever the days get bad like this I start to wonder if I would be richer if my job was like a game. Course... I would be breaking into houses, walking around A LOT, and fighting for my life on a daily basis. On second thought, maybe I should just look for a regular job. I would like to be able to use power ups though. Lets see those customers complain when I log a fireball at them. LOL

Social situations

I don't know how to interact with my parents sometimes. Mom says that sometimes you just need to be with someone without talking and enjoy their company. I know this sounds really selfish but autism says "unless I'm the center, I'm not interested." I don't understand how you can just be in a room with someone without really talking to them. Unless you're on public transportation or a waiting room, you should probably be talking with people. But maybe I'm just thinking about this too much. Or, more likely I've misinterpreted Mom's meaning. I do that a lot. lol

This is one of those days where I'm happy but kind of depressed at the same time. I wonder if I can keep a real job. I mean, how hard is it to screw up a job at Kroger? I dunno, I'm going to go play Skyrim and call it a day.

6/7/13

Today, I met with my job coach for the first time in a few months. He said that based on my Kroger experience there were two problems that cropped up. First, I couldn't do tasks without asking a coworker first. I constantly asked for my next task instead of looking for work to do. To be honest, I was trying to help my coworkers but I should've looked for work. The other thing I did wrong was that I became distracted easily especially in the toy area. I really need to stop looking at those toys when I pass by them while conditioning the aisle. I guess I just like going back memory lane. But I should've just avoided the toy area and found something else to do. Besides that, Jay said that I was doing right 95% of the time. I was on time, did what I was told and got along with the others.

So my mom's idea for a job is for me to work with a travel agency that takes people to Japan. I would get geeks and people on the autism spectrum to go and give them a tour. I'm already trying to learn Japanese, emphasis on try, and can learn about the great gaming sites in Japan and take them there. Now if I can just find a place that will let me go to Japan.

6/6/13

Alright, six views, that's a great start. So yesterday I got a call from my job coach. He was sick and forgot to tell his work who neglected to tell me. So I basically spent an hour in traffic with no air conditioning in the car. Nice... It doesn't matter though, I'm hopeful about our next meeting. Tomorrow my coach will be picking me up and we'll head over to the local library since my car is gone. The green car that my sister and I share died this week despite the new used engine we put in it a few years ago. So my mom is going to give us her car and the new used car we buy will be for her. Just as well, we get the car whose air-condition doesn't work LOL. My dad and I went to look at some cars at, oh whats that place called? Some car lot with the tag line "the way buying a car should be." I dunno, I can't think when I'm watching Property Wars while writing. :p Back to my coach, he's a nice guy but we had some problems with his company. I'll explain more later when I can figure out how to properly word it but I was able to write down most of the conversation so maybe I should post that and see what people say about it. Well, I hope tomorrow will go well, I need to cook something soon or I'm just going to pop in a pizza. If I don't prepare food, I just go for pizza.

First post

Ok, this is my first time I ever made a blog. To keep it simple, I'm John and this is my blog about my life as an autistic person and my search for jobs. I'm going to try to update every time something significant happens in my job search. That being said, I have already made posts about my job search but never posted them on a blog before. So I'll occasionally put in older stuff that will usually have a date on it so you won't get confused. I'm also using this to improve my own writing skills so I hope to see some improvement. I also hope this helps someone who is or has a child who has autism.