Need a little bit of support.

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Things have changed considerably for me over the past year and it's worrying me a lot. At the same time, I'm stuck because my own self-discipline is stopping me from getting to the root of the cause of this worry.

Basically, over the past year or so, I have become increasingly addicted to building my life and career. I am trying my best to do any work as well as school as well as I can. I have pretty much fully removed any tendency in myself to procrastinate. However, I also rarely socialize with my friends; I've only done perhaps five things this summer that were truly social events. I used to have a fairly wide network of friends and went to some of their parties, as well. However, last fall, I have experienced a major anxiety/depressive episode which lasted for several months and indirectly caused me to shut down Facebook, which played a pretty large part in my ability to keep in touch with everyone. The drawback of it was that I spent time on Facebook instead of studying, which made me even more anxious, hence me shutting it down.

Now, I get a lot of emails from my friends, and I barely have time to respond to them due to either work or school. I have become independent and am trying to make my own money, which isn't easy to manage while also being a student who studies quite meticulously. The truth is, I like the competitiveness and the structure of the career world. I love the feeling of having gained new skills or a new job. Since I work as a respite worker for now, I really enjoy getting to know how to work with different people, seeing their similarities as well as differences from myself, and problem-solving to enable them to improve. I am happy just doing this, school, and spending time with my partner as down-time. I also am fighting my hardest to stay away from any kind of supports. Really, I just want to find a way to live a fully independent life without having to succumb to being treated as a subordinate, as an inferior.

But I feel really bad about the people I have left behind. My relationship with these people isn't the same anymore. There is no rich, live foundation to build the relationship upon; any attempts to communicate with some of my friends feels like trying to fire up some burnt-out logs. Perhaps this is what change and maturation is. I used to be able to keep a vast social network of friends back when my parents were supporting me and I had plenty of free time to do random things. But things have really changed now. I have a tendency to grab onto any new, shiny goal and then not let go until it's obtained. The thing is, my very new goal is quite huge, which is to go to one particular program in grad school. It will involve me needing tons of research and practical experience. But it is something I'm dead serious about.

I wonder how those people who do, like, three jobs while going to school full-time maintain their friendships...

I think your goal is admirable. Your self-discipline is a gift. You may lose touch with old friends for a while but in later years you will most likely reconnect. You will make other friends through school that are reaching for the same goals you are. They will form a new support network for your new goal. Deep down true friends never forget about each other. This is what I have seen. Best of luck

That people you are talking about with 3 jobs, full-time school, and friends... Probably only do one of three right. You are a perfectionist and thats why you cannot do so many things at the same time, because it is impossible to do all those things, all well done, at the same time. I do not have AS, and when I was at the University I attended classes during the day and worked in the evenings until night, and I did not have time for friends... and very little for resting. So do not feel do bad about it. It is sad loosing your old friends, but you are at different stages right now, so probably what you used to have in common is not there anymore anyway. Try to make new friends at work or at school. Those are gonna be easier to keep. By the way, when I was at the University my only friends were people so also worked, because we had more in common and did not have time to waste like everybody else.

Thing is, my past (and present) friends were pretty much all people with ASD. Anyway, I don't consider them past friends, just friends on hold for maybe two more years. I hope they survive the wait. Due to my difficulty communicating with them via distance methods like online, I don't even know how they feel. Some of them live far away or moved away, and since I only really do face-to-face communication properly and since I don't have time/money to travel so much anymore, my connection with them has faded.

I expect people to be brutally honest and to shed any politeness/nicety in order for me to be able to feel comfortable around them, which is, along with shared personal experiences, the reason why my friends have been dominantly people on the spectrum.They're the only people I actually can understand and empathize with. I'm also not a really approachable person, I guess, because I'm loud-spoken, extremely blunt, logical, don't make small talk, and don't read other people's body language quite the same way other people do, and some things about my appearance make me look a bit different, so people have rarely approached me unless it's for some kind of academic help. Even when I tried forming relationships with regular folks, I found that it took too much effort but came to nothing in the end. But I think I'll be fine without any friends for a while, because my jobs still enable me to have some interaction with people. Once I get my BA and find a full-time Monday-Friday job, it'll probably be much easier to find some free time for my friends.

To be as simple as possible, you can't have/do both. Even people without an ASD have trouble balancing material success with social relationships. The key to happiness is the latter. But for us, building an independent life takes all of our energy. I'd personally be glad to have your self-discipline. At least later on you'll be successful and lonely instead of a failure and lonely. Sorry if that seems harsh, I don't mean it that way.

To be honest, the folks who do as you suggest: multiple jobs, students, actively maintain friends... I think they manage it by sleeping 3 hours a night and putting up with it. To be fair I don't have any of that in me. I like 10 hours, and I need 8 hours to actually wake up a normal human being. Short my sleep and I wake up somewhat less than human, as well as less than polite.

That's very true. Thanks for your help. It made me feel much better to get this sort of feedback.

I must argue, though, on the point of happiness not being linked to material success. It's really not the material stuff that drives me, it's the ability to have more power and influence over other people. Being able to have that does make me happy, actually. My biggest fear is having minimal control over my own circumstances. Unfortunately, money plays a huge part in the level of influence you can exert nowadays.