Slys dating site advice help thread.

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It's nice to have a checklist of requirements in order to know what to work on & strive towards.

Also, sly, you do have a college education. It's valid. It shows you can learn & commit to things and follow through and all that good stuff regardless of what field it's in. So, you do meet that requirement. You're 5/7ths of the way there and only have 2 things to really work on before you qualify completely. That's a lot less work to do than starting at square one and having to develop all 7!

That’s not easy answer. It’s complicated, I could answer in a pm I don’t feel like disclosing my finical information publicly.

I’m hesitant to ask workmfor less days currently I’m working 3 days a week due to it being the slow time of year. Maybe I aske to keep it this way i dont know but if they had it their way I’d be working 38 hours a week the rest of the year.

FYI sly I never post anything with malicious intent to cause you distress.

I just don’t sugar coat anything I think you need to hear whether you like it or not.

If I didn’t care about your health or if you ever felt any better I simply would never respond to your posts, but it’s hard not to care when someone is expressing such dissatisfaction with their health & well being. So, myself and others post advice in hopes that maybe someday you’ll follow some of it and begin to heal instead of continuing as you are.

I’m gradually moving back towards full-time education after so many years of part-times, and my wife has always worked full-time in a variety of jobs. What I’ve learned is this: Qualifications are not meant to be taken too literally. I was a clarinet major in college, had little collaborative piano background AT ALL, and yet I was picked to be the lead instrumentalist at my church. I have since moved into choir arranging, transcribing music for band members who largely do not read music, and I lead and coach the youth worship team. I haven’t set one foot in a seminary. All I’ve done is attend yearly workshops/seminars/conferences in the area of worship arts and that has made a tremendous difference.

I’d given up on my teaching career and even lost my creds from failure to renew. After my wife lost her last bank gig, I had a chance encounter with a high school principal at a groundbreaking ceremony when I asked about their instrumental program. I wasn’t looking for a job. But I was given an impromptu interview early the next week DESPITE not having a current license. I’m 100% legal and legit now thanks to my school being willing to work with me.

Previously I was offered a band director gig at a different school without even applying. They just gave it to me. It didn’t work out after 2 years, and that’s when I gave up.

Until recently, I taught at a community college extension. They heavily promoted the non-credit program back then and I did really well for a while. I quit after a few years of administrative “musical chairs” and too many students flaking out, but all in all I had a good run. I didn’t apply for that job, either. I got a phone call and was told when to show up and where.

Other one-off gigs I get word-of-mouth. I have a decent reputation. Every now and then I get to play with bands, though that seems to have dried up at the moment. These things come and go. None of them ask me about my “qualification.”

My wife has had very similar experiences except she’s moved around more than I have. I tend to find slow grooves and stick with them, whereas she’s taken more risks and earned a lot more money. We both mainly just fill out applications so employers have something on file, but that’s merely a formality. We both worked as paralegals without a degree. I’ve been a process server before, and I have no law enforcement background whatsoever. After she got tired of lawyers, she worked as a bank teller for a few short years. Made head teller within months. No degree. She took a demotion when things got screwed up and took another head teller position at a different bank. She got fired after a loan officer felt threatened because she was so good at her job and was looking to advance. So the school handed her a teaching assistant position. No degree in education or childhood development. Things got real with a finance officer, so...musical chairs and now she’s an administrative assistant for the entire elementary. No degree.

Point is this: “qualifications” are only there to scare off the flakes and weirdos. Probably most of your actual employees, and I mean the really GOOD ones, never actually apply for jobs or drop resumés unless specifically asked to. And a lot of THEM probably aren’t actually qualified on paper for the job. If you have the talent or at least the willingness to train, that’s just as good as any. Some professions REQUIRE creds, like law, medical, and education just to name three, but by far most positions aren’t all that concerned about your background. Can you do the job, do it well, and without going on an axe/chainsaw/AK47 rampage in the workplace? And do we like you? Then you’re hired. If “qualifications” are all it takes to scare you off, their thinking is you’re probably not the kind of person who would work well in that workplace.

I’ve often been pleasantly surprised inquiring about jobs, and I think most people would. Never take it for granted that “qualifications” alone are enough to keep you out of a job you know you could perform and even enjoy.

^ Excellent post about qualifications being wish lists vs. set in stone requirements. Same goes for peoples' dating profiles & app accounts. Sly's thinking is very rigid black-and-white aspie thinking and he can't see the gray area in these things. If I read peoples' personal ads or app profiles as black & white set in stone there's a whole lot of dates/hookups I'd have never had. Someone might say "not interested in anyone over 30," or "not interested in anyone under 40," but after a chat we might just go out for a beer. Reality. Posting because sly needs a reminder that life isn't so black and white & people are more flexible than their wish lists convey.

As for jobs, that list of requirements was from an organization that helps autistic people get jobs. They may be a little flexible on their requirements, especially for someone who's enthusiastic about wanting to be able to help themselves improve & succeed in the workplace. Retro is an example of someone who succeeded through them because he was wanting & willing to help himself do so. Sly is still stuck in a rut of a mindset where he's unwilling to improve himself for any reason, work, relationships, or otherwise, because he falsely believe that he cannot. At this point since he has no desire to make any attempts at improvement to enable himself to eventually work full time, this organization would not be able to help him. He has to get passed that hurdle & want to change before they, or anyone, can. Funny (ironic funny) thing is that sly's recently posted in another thread that his various mental/neurological ailments & constraints keep getting worse (as did mine years ago) and thus he acknowledges that his abilities and capabilities can in fact change (in this present case for the worse) but still refuses to acknowledge that if they can change for the worse, that it's possible for them to change for the better, too. Realizing & accepting those things are pretty much the very first steps a guy like sly has to take before he can build himself up to being a more employable, or for the purposes of this thread, a more datable sly. Once he does that everything else will start to slowly become possible for him. But until he does there's approximately Zero that anyone can do to help him, as is evidenced by more than 50 pages of ignored or discounted as valueless advice & pretty much the only positive responses from sly being for the sympathy he seeks.

Indeed.

This is a it firm. I suck at computers and know nothing. They’d have to train me from scratch, they want people who have experience from their site it seems in the USA, they are a program to take college graduating aspies and help them find work in the field.

Not take random aspies and train them to do the job. They a head hunter. Companies pay them to find qualified employees.

So, you're not interested in IT/STEM aspie things or work.

That's fine. You don't have to be interested or capable of doing that stuff.

The point still remains that "requirements," and "qualifications," in both employment AND personal ads are simply wish lists and that most employers and people are flexible. Interpreting a list of "requirements," or "qualifications," as being written in stone is a part of the social world that you're blind to. Life isn't as black and white as your thoughts & perceptions make it out to be. There are maaaaaaany shades of grey; way more than 50 even. What we're telling & teaching you right now is that those lists aren't set in stone, they're ideals of perfection of someone's wish list for that job role or life partner that they believed & wrote in the moment they were authored, no more no less. Yes, some employers and people will be very rigid and say "Didn't you read my ad/profile? It has requirements for a reason," but MOST will have some degree of flexibility from their so called requirements.

I’m sorry, but I’ve known IT guys who were perfectly useless idiots. Trust me, it can NOT be that hard!

Nah, I mean, if you can’t, you can’t. I get it.

But I’ll just say the only way I’ve survived is by always learning, finding diff things to obsess over. Right now it’s PureData and distance running. I have people falling all over me to help me get more money to support my instrumental music program and they’re just waiting for me to tell them what to do. I lead a youth worship team on Wednesday nights at church. I don’t necessarily get paid for everything I do. But if I were to break my pattern of waiting for people to hand me jobs and actually apply for something, I could honestly point to my recent accomplishments and say yep, been there done that.

What’s kinda neat is I do have a master’s degree in music composition and specialized in electronic music. Most of your electronic comp profs have extensive backgrounds in interactive music systems and programming languages. I’m good with PD for now, but eventually I may go back to Reaktor and maybe even MAX/MSP when I get a little extra cash. Or maybe even buy a KYMA system. I don’t have my doctorate, but the experience up to now would make my next degree much easier to attain. Then I could go for university jobs. Good fun. And those you DO have to have an advanced degree to do. But really for a lot of things you could do just spending the time working at it is enough. I’m a piano hack to be honest, but I learned to improv on my way to becoming a composer. The improv background helped me adapt to changing church music styles, play in bands, and help keep bread on the table. Who knows where I’ll go from here?

If there’s something you enjoy, keep at it. Might be a hobby today but a career tomorrow.

I don’t have any talents. Only thing that’s s benifit is my eye for detail. Which I suppose might be good for quality control but such jobs don’t exist here anymore.
So it’s a useless thing, perhaps if I had engineering or art talent in conjunction with eye for detail and prefection id be useful but I don’t

I know a lot about guns but my social issues mean I can never use said knowledge for work, I’m not a good salesman since that requires reading people, and then pushing them to buy something. I attempted to go to th gun counter where I thought my knowledge about guns would be useful, and sure I’d be able to give information and help people, but it’s about sales not helping people, it’s about usaling people to more expensive guns. They also then required gun counter people to do the atf forms so now I’m kinda glad. I’d like to think I do a good job st work but they keep changing policy day to day so now I’m going have a lot of upset customers and I can’t be as helpful to them anymore. I’d like to think maybe I’d donok at a small gun shop but then I’d have to fill out atf forms and making any mistakes on them can land you prison time or ge the shop closed. Again I lack sales experience it’s why I couldn’t transfer to the gun counter it’s why small shops won’t hire me.

Otherwise I don’t have any knowledge or talents useful. I play video gamers but I suck. So I won’t be going pro anytime soon. Im no contractor either. Honesty I’d probably only be useful as infantry in the military. It’s not too complicated.

Your very next statement is of a talent you possess. If you can see that you're wrong about that, you may begin to see that your depressed thinking is wrong about other things, too. When I was severely depressed I used to think & believe the very same about myself - that despite my education & experience, I had no value to contribute to any job in the economy. I now know that was a direct result of my depression distorting my perceptions. I'm the very same human being but I know I can do all kinds of things - and I do. The difference is in what I think & believe more than anything else.

So, don't make mistakes. Triple check instead of double check. It's not rocket surgery. Once you do it dozens of times it'll become so routine it'll be easy for you and you'll have confidence in your ability to fill that form out. Go grab one from your local gun store and make copies, fill it out a hundred times w/ various fictional customer info for practice. Even if you never work in a gun store, at least you'll learn to overcome that particular anxiety and then may be able to see that you can overcome other things, too.

I bet you do have other knowledge & talents that are useful. There are video game stores. There are coin shops. Any knowledge of any interest could be put to work somewhere.

So don't be a contractor. Mmmmaybe be an infantry man if that's your thing.

As for sales ability.. you're even better at that than you give yourself credit for. Think about it, sly, you've successfully sold dozens of people from all around the world on reading & replying to your posts, regardless of the fact that you choose to ignore much of the advice you ask for. Still, though, you've sold people on reading your endless complaints, on trying to offer you helpful advice, and also on giving you the sympathy you seek in some cases. If you were such a terrible salesman you wouldn't have been able to do any of those things. Now, maybe a career in retail sales isn't exactly right up your alley.. but, just sayin', you've sold a lot more than you realize or give yourself credit for.

And to wrap up this post with the root cause: Gotta deal with your depression & anxiety, sly. It's the source of your frustrations. Everything else is a bunch of band-aid quick fixes and sympathy that gets you nowhere except right back where you started, still depressed & anxious.

Another lady stopped messaging me after exchanging pictures

That’s a regular, normal, thing, sly.

Maybe it’s not the most polite way to end an exchange of messages vs a short note to say they’re not attracted to you, but “ghosting,” is extremely common practice in all forms of internet dating.

We just have to accept the simple fact that we may not be what someone else is physically attracted to and that’s that, move on to chatting with someone else.

Yes, it’s a form of rejection & didn’t want always feel good, but it is what it is and it happens countless times a day. Just gotta chat with someone else.

I speak from experience, too. If someone’s not into my pics they stop replying. If I’m not into theirs I don’t reply usually. It’s just a part of present day internet dating communication - no communication is communication.. no reply means they’re not attracted to ya & that means move on to chatting with someone else, simple as that.

One major way to accept this stuff and just carry on is to realize that you can’t instantly change what you look like OR what that person is attracted to, so it’d never ever have worked out anyways. Way better to learn that now after a few messages and a pic exchange than to invest more time messaging one another or meeting in person to find out one or both parties aren’t attracted.

Last edited by goldfish21 on 05 Feb 2018, 7:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If I did Internet dating, I'd probably get lots of rejections, too. I'm short.

A lot of my rejections came from being too old.

I get a lot of rejections in person too, one lady actually got physical sick from me asking her out. Ugly is ugly doesn’t matter if it’s online or in person