About

Hi everyone. Well whenever I meet someone new on the internet I’m always curious to know a few facts about them: Where do they live? What do they do? Do they have families? What about hobbies?

That, at least, is what I personally like to find out about someone I just met on the internet. Although I realize privacy is very important in such a public space like the Net, I find knowing things such as where the person lives and who they live with helps me to situate them better. To get to know them more. To become familiar with the context that they live in and maybe even if there’s a possibility I might even bump into them at the supermarket hehe.

So to answer these questions about me, here goes.

I’m a single mother with 2 sons, both of whom have Asperger’s although I only recently realized my youngest also belongs to this special collective of people with this specific set of characteristics.

I’m from Canada originally, born in a small village near Montreal and raised by 2 university professors-research scientists. So how’s that for an overdose of Academia haha?

Perhaps because both my parents were university professors, I grew up talking since an early age like a university professor myself. I have, and had, a hard time speaking like a kid, then like a cool teenager. After all I didn’t grow up talking like a kid with my parents, and they didn’t talk to me like a kid.

In fact, my mother was usually most comfortable taking up her role of university professor with me and growing up, a lot of times I felt more like she was treating me like one of her university students than like the little girl that I was. Although to be fair she did treat me like I was her pet university student haha.

Several years ago I moved to Europe, where I now happily live with my 2 boys.

And as for work, sigh. Yes I have worked in the past, but all work experiences always ended up sad and melancholy and disappointing and disillusioning for me. Perhaps at some point in the future I will blog about work experiences.

As I have both Asperger’s and attention deficit, that doesn’t precisely make me a model employee I’m afraid. Among the trials I’ve experienced working in the corporate world are difficulties such as:

• being unable to remember my boss’s instructions (because I have practically no short-term memory at all)

• difficulties figuring out which task I was supposed to do first, and therefore making the wrong choices and finishing the wrong tasks first

• difficulties remembering the names, faces and roles of people that I met at work (it’s okay if you can’t remember someone’s name 2 or 3 times, but when you reach 20 it kinda gets a bit unforgiveable!)

And of course the most obvious and important, I could never ever ever understand what people wanted from me at work. For me, making eyes at me, gesturing, moving about from one place to the other or nodding your head at me just doesn’t cut it.

I would have probably become a model employee if only people would actually SAY TO ME IN WORDS what it is that they wanted from me! But since most information at the office (and in life) is usually conveyed with gestures, or by moving about, well it just simply flies over my head.

I have no idea what people want me to do when they make eyes at me, or gestures. My brain is just simply incapable of figuring it out. So as a result, I don’t do what they want me to do.

And that isn’t particularly conducive to you keeping your job for very long.

I suppose if I could’ve actually passed out business cards at work with the message “Please tell me USING WORDS what it is you want me to do” printed on them, I might actually have enjoyed some measure of success in the corporate world.

But then again, people would probably also think there is something seriously wrong with you if you need to pass out this sort of business card at all.

And yeah, there actually is something “seriously wrong” with me, I suppose: I have Asperger’s!

Oh and don’t forget to Subscribe to Follow this blog, puh-leeease! I’d be thrilled if you do. Thanks so much.

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