Here's a job that I once had, like just this past year: door-to-door canvasser. If that doesn't take communication, I don't know what does. I mean, it's mostly one-to-one communication and so forth, and not something I'd recommend to aspies in general. I took the job, which had to do with environmental issues, because that's one of my interests. And it was the only job within that field that I could find close to home.
Needless to say, the job didn't last long. They had this quota you had to reach every week, which was like too much for me. So, I started to put money into the job straight out of my paycheck, but that became too much after a while. I found myself making way too little money, so I had to quit.
At first, people there didn't seem to notice any sort of communication problem in regards to me. It's not until later on that they sort of took notice. Like, during a training session, one person was trying to break me of "talking at" people. There was supposed to be this rhythm of speech that seemed to lack when I talked, and I sort of had no idea what she was talking about. A couple of other people had trouble catching on, and these were NTs, but they caught on quite quickly. I still had no idea how to create any sort of rhythm when speaking. I do have a more excited rhythm at times, but I generally try to keep that out of work. Nobody there knew I had AS or anything, and whether or not they thought this lack of rhythm was strange? I have no idea? They never harped about it after that one session.
If you're deeply into what you strongly believe in, I guess you'll do whatever you can. The job wasn't all that bad, but I wasn't exactly comfortable. And I consider my social skills to be stronger than some people on this forum, though the oddities are there if one would pay close attention.
I don't need to mimic like many people do on this forum. I constantly converse with myself on a continuous basis when alone, sort of a compulsion with me. This probably steers my social skills into positive directions, but this is just me. There is an internal drive to do this, and if the drive isn't there, I doubt if self-conversation, including talking and then answering back, would be helpful, but maybe some people can force themselves to do it. I also believe that self-conversation may be related to anxiety stimuli. It sort of feels like it, but I don't know for sure.
- Ray M -