I’m a late-diagnosed autistic grad student. I’m not actually sure how this whole blogging thing works but I figured I’d give it a try.

Topics I’ll likely be talking about – masking, sensory issues (particularly auditory sensitivity), empathy (cognitive and affective empathy), and non-autistic people’s underlying subconscious social processing that creates misunderstandings of autistic body language/tone of voice.

We do in fact have our own body language and tone of voice! I can read an autistic person much easier than I can a non-autistic person because I know what I do/where I look when I am having specific emotions. For example, looking down doesn’t equal sad or nervous. Maybe there’s something on the floor, or maybe you’re daydreaming. That’s just a really small thing that I’m not sure many non-autistic people interpret correctly. There are lots of little things that happen like that, and unfortunately, they add up.

This is a nice picture that WordPress put up automatically, and a nice quote. 

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Kind of an ironic quote though, really. It’s quite hard to find good company in choppy waters (i.e. an assumed-neurotypical world).

And sometimes things go faster when you do things alone in a quiet room. 😛

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