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Keirts
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Joined: 15 Jan 2009
Age: 44
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17 Jan 2009, 3:35 pm

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What is your first name? Kenneth (Ken)

Age: 30 in March

Location: Suburbs of Toronto, ON, CA

Hobbies and Interests: Computer science, gardening, automotive mechanics, wilderness backpacking

Why are you here? I have Asperger's

When were you diagnosed?(skip if you don't have a disorder): Tough question. It's more of a realization I came to after several months of self-deliberation.

Favorite subjects: Was history, rather odd considering I was pursuing a degree in information security.

Favorite music: Just about anything. Currently listening to industrial, although my collection covers everything from Metallica/Alice Cooper to Aretha Franklin/Billie Holiday to Britney Spears/Justin Timberlake.

Books: Biographies lately. Currently reading "Shake Hands With the Devil", (then Mj. Gen.) Senator Romeo Dallaire's biopic on the Rwandan Genocide of 1992. He was Commander in Chief of the UN forces there at the time. It's rather disturbing.

TV shows/Movies: Anything with a message. Movies include Crimson Tide, The Sum Of All Fears, The Pursuit Of Happyness, Schindler's List, A Clockwork Orange, and A Time to Kill, to name a few. Television series include Star Trek and Law and Order.

Instrument: Piano.

Do you like sports? Individual sports, yes. Team sports, no.

Family: Very large and accepting family. I see all of my 12 or 13 cousins, as well as half a dozen aunts and uncles, and quite a few great aunts/uncles and second cousins, and their children, quite regularly. No wife or children, and living with my brother.

Clothing: I live in Canada. The windchill outside right now is -40 celsius. Nobody cares about fashion in this cold. Long underwear, two pairs of pants, three shirts (tee and button-up), sweater, two pairs of socks, three pairs of gloves/mitts, and sometimes two jackets is a requisite just to avoid frostbite while waiting for the bus.

How did you find this website? It was mentioned in a self-help book for adults with Asperger's I read (can't remember which one).

Job: Currently unemployed but managing some side work as a computer consultant.

Plans for the future? Use my technical skills to put bad people in jail.


That's me in a nutshell.

My mother had mentioned to me sometime in May or June that she believes I have Asperger's. I dismissed the idea at first, as apparently I had a rather narrow-minded view regarding autism. But being my mother, knowing me better than I know myself, and having a psychology degree, I swallwoed my pride and looked into it. My early research showed me that it's a borderline/mild case, or that I have adapted by using cognitive skills to overcome social deficiencies; I'm not really sure which one is the case. What really struck me was upon visiting this site for the first time I realized that so many other people have had exactly the same problems in their lives that I've had - things that after several months of research I had failed to connect with possible Asperger's.

As a child I was incredibly socially awkward, although I can now manage it to a good degree. My mother would throw me birthday parties and I would hide in my closet; I was known as a child for doing the same thing at family gatherings (I remember the latter, however not the former.) To this day I still have a terrible aversion to overly social situations, mostly with strangers, or work/casual acquaintances. I have a few friends I've known for well over ten years now (a long time at my age), which is long enough that they've come to accept me and all my "weirdness", my socially inappropriate comments, my needing to be told when to leave, and my lack of conversational proficiency. I absolutely love getting together with these people in a more intimate setting, but cannot stand large gatherings of people, even at family functions, and my family has always gotten along incredibly well with each other; they would be just as accepting if I came out gay or got myself a sex change as they would be if I told them I have Asperger's (I haven't). But too much time with a lot of them, and I need to wander off by myself, sometimes in the freezing cold, just to recharge.

I have suffered my entire adolescent and adult life with a severely debilitating sleep disorder which no psychiatrist has yet been able to diagnose. I simply can't fall asleep, and can't wake up. Every job I've ever lost, and (almost) every course I've ever failed can be pinned down to that. It may or may not be related to my Asperger's.

This is not a decision (for lack of a better word) I have arrived at lightly. I am well aware of the dangers associated with self-diagnosis, however the cost of therapy and diagnosis is prohibitive. I think a major determining factor has been me finding myself reading support columns (social skills primers, life coping skills, and such) for Asperger's patients and being able to apply something around 75% of them to my life, and seeing a marked improvement in my own social functioning.

I'm seeing things differently now, looking back on the last 30 years of my life and realizing why I did the strange things I did, why I was so different. My social awkwardness can be explained by a complete lack of empathy, many other things as well; I was reading three inch computer programming manuals and rewriting operating systems when I was eight years old, never noticed that nobody else was, and was rather confused when nobody else took an interest in it. To this day I tend to talk at length about cloud formations and how I can predict weather with them (I'm small craft pilot), although my friends give me a quick smack upside the head when I start to go off on that (I actually appreciate it), and I still can't read sexual and/or romantic signals from women. Not if my life depended on it, not until they walk up to me naked (happened once, she was rather frustrated; she could read my signals somehow but I couldn't read hers), and even then, I was thinking "Gee, she must be rather warm if she's taking her clothes off."

That's it for now; I'm hoping to learn quite a few new things about myself here; perhaps I may be able to help others as well. Most of all, it just feels relieving to know I'm not alone in my "weirdness".


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pakled
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17 Jan 2009, 3:40 pm

don't feel bad, prior to figuring it out, the only autistic I'd met was LFA, so it did come as a surprise, but also a relief.

welcome



richie
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17 Jan 2009, 4:34 pm

Image
To WrongPlanet!! !Image

Love your goofy avatar and as you mentioned in another thread, I too have an interest in
chemistry, homemade gun-powders, pyro-metallurgy, pyro-chemistry and thermite....


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JetLag
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17 Jan 2009, 5:54 pm

"Hello," Keirts. Nice to see you aboard Wrong Planet.


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Tim_Tex
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17 Jan 2009, 10:02 pm

Welcome to WP!



Dollypony
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19 Jan 2009, 9:01 am

Welcome^^



asplanet
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19 Jan 2009, 8:02 pm

Hi welcome to the aspie weired, quirky, differently minded world - we can only believe and know what we understand: AS Symtoms (Full Official Criteria), test and more -
http://asplanet.info/index.php?option=c ... &Itemid=63


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