Happy new year

There's a curious inevitability about this time of the year. The sands are running out on the old year, the dice are cast for the new one, and we just watch in awe as the whole thing rolls by.

A bit like a market shakeout, really. But, somewhere in amongst it all, each of us is making choices, or failing to make choices, every moment of every hour of every day.

I've been known to be a bit gloomy sometimes. There's a cast iron sort of resistance to change that infects nearly everything I've ever known about. And yet, the only reality that enforces that resistance to change is the behaviour of individual human beings.

At least this time around the clock I can see some small gains from the year gone by - compared to the stock market, I'm doing pretty well - but none of things I really wanted to change are changed. I've begun to write, and the last time I tried that was around 1969. I've remapped my brain, a little but that hasn't made a lot of difference. Well, not in the real world outcomes, to date.

So, another round. It's what we do that makes the difference in the world. Even when we do it without acknowledgement or recognition, without the doing there can be no change.

Fighting the diagnosis

There are a number of patterns that become distressingly familiar as the years since diagnosis pass - "if only it were different" is a frequent participant, and "it's not my fault goddamnit" gets its share of the airspace too.

Here I am at the end of a year where my team fought a runaway project to a standstill, and led it - quivering and docile - back into the exercise yard. I got the boot from the team leadership, and am forced to fight as a grunt - I'm just following orders - once again.

It's not an unfamiliar scenario, although it's the first time I've had to go on doing the job after the axe fell. It just seems unfair.

Deep background

So, how does one get to a sixth decade without ever suspecting that something like aspergers even exists?

Not so hard really, in the twentieth century. The last decade was nearly over before aspergers even became a respectable diagnosis. Even then, it was assumed to be rare and interest in it was confined mainly to parents trying to work out why their little darling wasn't performing as expected.

When I was young I spent a lot of time in hospitals. Tonsils at the age of two, mastoidectomies a few times during the next half decade, lost hearing, various other minor distractions. That lot, coupled with my dad changing locations every few years and me changing schools even more often, meant that noone ever paid a lot of attention to my existence as a social being. I scored well in exams and that was all that counted. 11+ at ten, GCE O levels at 15, and then Australian university entrance at 16. That was it for education, of course. Once the enforced structure of school was taken away I was gone.

A year or two into the wandering minstrel thing, I tried university again. Still hadn't mastered basic skills like talking to people, though, so it didn't go much better. My fundamental take on life was still that everyone else got by with the same equipment I had so there wasn't anything to complain about. Sad.

Meanwhile, I'd soaked up a lot of what was in print or freely available on the nature of life, the universe and everything. It seemed that, since everyone else got by with the same equipment I had, there must be important things I didn't know yet.

It all went together rather well. Eventually, the government very kindly paid for me to learn programming and I had it all.

For some things, aspergers helps

I mean, it's not all grim news. We have to look on the bright side, don't we? Dazzled, we're easy work for the slaughterman.

For example, I'm a diabetic. Without fairly rigid behaviour patterns it's hard to be insulin dependent. After a few decades, there's precious few of us staving off the disabling and deadly long term effects of the disease. Aspergers helps with that.

Knowing about aspergers? Well, in part that's bad because it's a distraction. Equally, knowing about it opens the door to better understanding of - perhaps eventually even better success at - the business of life. Of course, that's a distraction too but one has to have a reason to go on trying.

And, of course, there's systems work. I'm not yet convinced that one can live normally in the people world and still get along well in the depths of information systems. All the people I've met down here are strange in one way or another.

There may be exceptions. One can only go on evidence.

Living with Aspergers

Well, there's more to it than that. For the last quarter century I thought that being insulin-dependent was the worst that the universe could throw at me. Now, I'm presented with an analysis that makes most of what I've thought, felt and done through both that quarter century and the one before it a little bit questionable.

The really big question is: if I'd stayed on the track I was on before that, instead of getting sidetracked into this black hole question of "Do I have Aspergers?" and "What can I do about it?", would I be better off, or worse?

It's a difficult analysis. Three years after becoming convinced - after personal research, consultations with nearest and dearests, consultations with GPs and psychologists - that Aspergers syndrome offered a better explanation of recurrent situations that bugged me than the next best explanation, I've found out that I don't have a diagnosis yet. I discovered this in conversation with an aspie who's pursuing a PhD studying the workplace experiences of Aspies.

I'm not eligible for inclusion in his researches because the local organisation that promotes the cause of autism and its treatment doesn't have me on its books. To get there requires formal diagnosis from specialists in two different fields: the ones I'm waiting for appointments with are a psychologist who's been applying neurofeedback techniques to me for the last few months, and - if the second opinion is essential - a psychiatrist who spent a year or so treating me two decades ago.

Well, I wouldn't care except that the whole thing has me feeling a little short-changed by life. If I can use my experience effectively and in doing so make the experience even a tiny bit easier for someone else that'd be worth it. If I can use my experience to make what remains of my life even a tiny bit easier, that'd be worth it.

If I try everything in sight and fail completely to get any closer to a productive role - well, that isn't going to feel terribly good to me but if I record it all honestly, there's a chance that someone else can gain from the information. Isn't there?