Living life to the fullest

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When do we Aspies live our life's to the fullest? Is it in our 20s, 30s or older? I have gotten different answers from several blogs about Adults with Asperger Syndrem.

I'm not sure what you mean. Why would there be a specific decade for this?

We start living our life to the fullest right now. That is to say, when we decide to.

What I mean is since a lot of people seem to live there life's at a young as like dating, traveling, learning to drive etc.. Most people I know with Aspies don't seem to do any of those things until later in life.

It depends on what living life to the fullest means to you. I am obsessed with nature, trees, plants, rivers, waterfalls, mountains and beautiful scenery so to me it means getting out of the house and traveling far across the country, camping in the hills and mountains, seeing the sights and visiting beauty spots.

As soon as I moved out of my parents house at the age of 21 last year, I moved into an apartment with 3 best friends and I saw this as an opportunity to make my life how I want it and live how I want so every year I organise camping trips for us round the UK driving as far as 10 hours to Scotland where we walk across the hills, visit historic monuments, find a waterfall or river to swim in. My favourite place being Dartmoor in west Devon England. Wouldn't live live any other way. My friends call me a hippy because of my nature obsession.

The picture I added if it worked is foggintor quarry in Dartmoor, west Devon England. One my my favourite places I have camped and had the best days of my life with friends. Pic not taken by me

Last edited by Roo95 on 11 Feb 2018, 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

^^^^^ Excellent!

OP, when I was growing up, nobody had any ideas about asperbergers or autism, and I spent a LOT of my life trying to fit in, trying to stuff down special interests, trying to move forward to.....I don't know what. So, in spite of all the things I have done in life, which are considerable, I don't think I started living life to the fullest until well past middle age. Of course, I have a very long lag phase in my learning curve. Others, I am sure, moved more quickly toward their "fullest" life and others are still searching. Actually, I don't think I'll ever stop searching...there is always more to learn.

You can live your life to the fullest at any age.

Very true.

But I think that what that actually means changes over time. I thought dating, social life (such as it was), education, and career were EVERYTHING in my 20’s, and I waited later to get married and start a family. Having the nice, big house and all that. Eating all kinds of food and as much as I wanted. Drinking beer, wine, Scotch, and tequila any time I felt like it. Rockin’ the bars with my band.

Then the bottom fell out, good times were over. I didn’t live to live to the fullest...I lived to survive.

And then it became about getting out of debt and spending time with my kids and taking whatever gigs I could get.

Then all 3 kids were in school, I got steadier work, and my wife decided to start running. So I trained with her. Lost a lot of weight. Finished my first half-marathon yesterday.

So...living to the fullest now means pushing my limits, finding out what I’m really capable of. My music life is slow at the moment, so I started learning PD in my spare time, and just last week finished writing a patch that will help me realize music compositions that would have been too time-consuming to write out (algorithmic composition). I’m not and never have been all that bright, so I’m just thrilled to have succeeded at doing something a little more on the tech side of electronic music, not simply pushing buttons.

And that has inspired me to create a mobile app to generate relaxing, slow, contemplative music that might actually have an appeal to a wide base, for example: ambient music, art installations, yoga classes, or relieving insomnia. PD is an open-source, visual platform that’s easy to learn and use. What I really need is to create my own code and rebuild this thing from the ground up. So I’m slowly, gradually learning Swift. I got so excited when I made an “array literal” because writing and reading to arrays was the bulk of what I did in PD.

When I look back on it, I believe the kinds of things I’m doing now really should have been what I was doing in high school. I should have accomplished so much more then and doing so much more now. But that’s hindsight and crying over it won’t move things forward. With living life to the fullest, I think you just have to find what your awesome really is and never back down. Never stop. And when you get tired, put in three more hours and shoot for 6-8 hour’s if sleep. Back in the day 4 hours was typical, and some nights I didn’t sleep at all. I think you really want to cram as much into your days as you can with activity that’s meaningful, and that’s living as full as anyone can.

Point # 1: We start living our life to the fullest right now. That is to say, when we decide to.
Point # 2: Never forget point # 1.
The point is: you are not other people, you are DrewLewis.
So many people listen to so many people and they never find themselves and THEIR happiness.

When I get tired, put in three more hours? I prefer quality of work over quantity of work. If I'm tired I won't be concentrating very well so I won't produce anything of quality.

Sure in places like China they can work or study for 12 or 15 hours per day yet I don't think this improves the quality of their work or their education. It's only given them a reputation for producing shoddy products (sometimes even dangerous products).

Even Chinese people don't like to buy Chinese made products. Especially not after the deaths caused by the Chinese milk powder scandal. Of course when the workers exhausted they'll do things the easy way, not the best way. Ironically, working extremely long hours makes them lazier in a way.

Now look at the Germans. They work only 7 hours per day yet they produce some of the best engineering in the world. Would you rather drive a car made in Germany or a car made in China? I wouldn't entrust my life to a car made by a sleep deprived worker.

Maybe you can push yourself longer because your work is your passion. That's fine. Me? I have no passions.

Retro:

I’m not everyone and everyone isn’t me. Some people can find a few extra hours and some people can’t. There’s nothing wrong with a full 8 hours rest every night.

But I think if someone can find the energy, I think they might find life more satisfying to keep going a little more creative distance. I’ve been waking up around 4-ish and staring at the ceiling until my alarm goes off. If I can’t sleep anyway, why not take advantage of it?

I know a few folks in the production and publication side of the industry. They have plenty of stories of wrapping up a recording session, sending everyone home, losing track of time while editing, and leaving the studio at sunrise only to come back in 4 hours. Heck, I’ve rolled in from gigs at 4am only to turn right around for sound check at church at 9am.

We don’t live in a day or age when you need a lot of money and a pro studio to make high quality music and art. My industry contacts have expressed their frustration that pretty much anyone can flood the market and big record labels lack the ability to act as the gatekeepers they once were. There’s really no excuse to not make it anymore, no limits.

Maybe music isn’t your awesome. Maybe you need to sacrifice the hours, maybe you don’t. Maybe you are at a stage in your life when living your life to the fullest means something else than what it means for me.

There’s not really a right/wrong answer for everyone. If I have any regrets, it’s just that I didn’t learn the really good lessons early enough in life.

Perfect timing on the topic. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this topic, and watching online talks.

Everyone is going to have a different take on this, and the previous posts are each brilliant in their own ways. To me, I started living life to the fullest once I started answering two questions. One: what matters to you and two: how to keep every day focused on what matters without getting caught up in unimportant crud. I once read a great quote that stuck with me. It said essentially whatever lofty goals you start with, eventually what you do daily becomes what matters most to you. I have three major life purposes that matter to me, and my daily schedule now revolves around them, not society’s expectations. I was already heading off on the nonconformist path, but finding myself on the spectrum helped by giving me that extra permission to jettison so much of conventional wisdom and choose my own unique lifestyle. I’m not supposed to be like most people! In the words of the Great Prophet Lada Gaga, baby, I was born this way!

As for prime decades, there may be some enlightened souls that figure this shite out young, but boy, have I taken the long and winding road, and I suspect most do. I wonder if it’s easier for young Aspies today than it was for my generation, since they have so much more information and fellowship available than the basically nothing we had. Then again, we didn’t have to deal with the online world... teenage society definitely got more vicious!

Based on current plans and my life so far, I'll finally have a degree and job by age 35....
....at least a couple friends in the five years after that...
....and a partner I love 5-10 years after that.

Good thing I'm losing weight - gotta get in shape for Ms. One In A Million I'll be ready for in my 40s or 50s!

When you get your own income and can live independently.

How functioning you are can also affect how much you will be able to live your life. If you are low functioning and are in the hands of others, you just have to do the best you can with the situation.

This is why i am against parents who put their autism kid in a "plastic bubble" to protect from the world outside the door - that does not scale well when they grow up.

When I win the lottery.....

As of now, I have the resources to live somewhat of a "full" life.

And, most of the time, I am satisfied with that.

It varies for each of us. I started driving at 16 like everyone else. At 35 I've still never had a significant other, only dates/hookups/fwb.

I think if you want to put a general number on it that it's fair to say that we can expect things to come a little later in life as we're said to have an emotional maturity of 2/3rds our chronological age. So, at 35 it's reasonable for me to expect to be doing the things a 21-22yo might be doing. That sort of thing.

Some things I did early, others late, others yet maybe never.. and other things I've done others never well, and other things I will do others never will.. so, whatever. I think we each truly live our lives to the fullest when we're at our healthiest and doing things we want to do in life, whether that's in our teens, 20's, 30's, or beyond is going to vary for everyone - Aspie or not.