You said that you're on the Autistic side of the spectrum, correct? It pains me to see so many people at support group meetings quit the labor force, do in SSDI disability and truly become incels. One way to beat it is a numbers game. If one has "hot" skills, one will get hired. Giving up is the stupidest thing ever. There are so many jobs in IT, that one can blow through job, after job, after job and still be employable. Over the decades, through sheer repetition, one learns to at least hang on for a year or so. That's long enough not to be questioned by future employers about it. The same principle works with incels. Giving up is stupid. Whether it comes to jobs or women, being in the wrong place is a recipe for failure. You don't want to look for a job in Mississippi and you don't want to look for a woman in Seattle. Look for a job in Austin and a woman in Bogota.
Psychedelics were a big breakthrough for me with my life on the spectrum.
I was so closed off and shut-in prior to my experimentation with psychedelics, afterwards the experience completely altered my perceptions, of people, of relationships, of just about everything. I was sixteen when I first dabbled with them.
I was probably around 24 when I stopped.
I didn't find out that I was on the spectrum until age 46, so I spent most of my life not realizing why I was such a weird kid.
Learning that I was on the spectrum was really more of a revelation than anything else. It just meant that all of a sudden, a lot of things I knew about myself and yet didn't understand finally made sense, but I made adjustments to compensate ages ago.
So with that being said, I didn't have an especially difficult time in the workforce.
I guess I did gravitate toward working for myself simply because it was much less stressful and much more liberating at the same time.
Still, I honed my skills as a videographer and editor, and then was interrupted by losing my entire business in the Northridge Quake 1994, went to a fallback career in IT and found myself in the labor force again, then got back into film-video again by around 2002.
I've always been lucky with the ladies, and it's not because I'm so great, but maybe because I do not know how to play the game and instead I have wound up being with a lot of women who fit a certain personality type. They didn't know how to play the dating game either, it seems.
Looking back, it seems like all of them have been at least somewhat technically or artistically skilled in some way.
My first real girlfriend was an artist who eventually became an art therapist and she is on the spectrum, although she too had no idea at the time. But if you talk to her for even a minute, it's obvious as can be.
My first real live-in girlfriend was first just an ordinary counter clerk in a drugstore but became a systems analyst at Burroughs. (computer corporation)
My first wife was a screenwriter, artist and business manager for another screenwriter and had been married to a well known movie producer before she married me. She was so artsy fartsy that everyone said her apartment looked like a museum, because it did.
And my wife that I am married to now (the keeper) was a diesel mechanic on a tugboat in the Navy and later became a copier repair technician.
So, if you look back on my life, no cheerleaders, no rock stars, no fashion models, no supermom housewifey types, no real estate salesladies, no CEO types, just a steady stream of somewhat oddball artsy-geeky-techie girls, none of whom invested a ton of energy in the dating game when young.
My periods of loneliness, such as they were, were entirely self-inflicted. Being a really horrible coke addict tends to make loneliness a part of your reality.
Thankfully that ended twenty-six years ago. (Holy crap, another year has passed!)
I think I just got good at seeking out the kind of girls I knew will be attracted to me.
They're awfully easy to spot, at least for me anyway.
