I almost always travel anywhere with
A manbag (50 year old swiss army canvas and leather medical bag which i put a nice smelling leather strap onto, it has an unusual mechanism to hold it closed which I can fiddle with .)
Containing:
- A Tiny Victorinox penknife (minichamp) which is great to fiddle with.
- A Moleskine blank notebook in a really scuffed up nice leather cover, and a propelling pencil (0.5mm.. Must be Pentel 2B leads in the little orange oval tubes!)
- A 100 year old wooden ruler in the back of the notebook (EBay..£10)
- My latest design I'm working on for mechanical art kits I sell.
- My carbon fibre walking stick, I need this because of terrible knees, but I can also collapse it and twirl it while I walk as its colourful, has interesting textures, fittings on it and is super light.
- Noise Cancelling EarBuds
- If I'm going somewhere likely to be really loud I take full noise cancelling headphones instead that fit well over my ears.
- Something natural I've found like a feather or stone.. to remind me of somewhere I've been.
- iPhone, possibly the greatest gift to autistics in the history of mankind!
- A couple of cough sweets because if I need a moment to think in the middle of a conversation I just say I have a sore throat and take one.
I've found that pulling out a sketchbook and looking intent while designing something complex will typically mark you out as odd but talented which is better than odd and strange!
I've realised that even before my diagnoses, this was a way to carry things to help me integrate with the NT. It helps if everything has a story, like the unusual bag and worn notebook cover, otherwise you really look weird drawing on scraps of paper you pulled out of a plastic bag with the stump of a crayon, even if its fulfilling the same function.
Whats your EDC (Every Day Carry) ?