Level of autism

I got very hung up on my level one too when diagnosed in January. I got obsessed with the score even - how close was I to where 1 meets 2, or was it only a bit beyond the ‘on the spectrum’ bridge or what? The thing that helped me relax a bit about was hearing about spiky profiles. As it’s the changing environment that disables us, as well as other factors that give you your ‘spoons’ for the day, sometimes (maybe a day at home) we’ll feel less challenged or anxious and start to feel imposter syndrome. Then the next day, we are back to masking, dealing with sensory overload, being drained as we mask, etc. leaving no doubt at all. The struggle is real. And permanent. I got in touch with my assessor so me weeks after diagnosis wanting more of a precise fixed point placing on some sort of axis and they told me to stop looking it like that. I suppose in a way the fact that I did get so intensely fixated on wanting that specificity tells me a lot in itself! I’m sure you can empathise, and that tells you something too…

Exactly.
"Level 1" is only helpful if you actually meet (whatever standard) criteria is supposedly "level 1".
The arbitrary level system doesn't actually describe exactly what our experience of autism is actually like.
If I went by the social driven decription given by https://www.verywellhealth.com/what-are-the-three-levels-of-autism-260233 for example then I'm not even level 1, assumably I wouldn't even be on the spectrum. But being able to go into a meeting, shake a strangers hand (hold off sanitising said hand until after I leave) meet their gaze and gently smile at them and then hold a conversation for 10-20 mins has never stopped me getting a meltdown from geting sensorially overloaded.
It's almost never a case of "am I austistic? And how much? " it's "where/when am I autistic? And is that a negative or a positive in this specific incidence?" Because yes, sometimes it is a positive.

By the way, when you say "spiky profiles" do you mean like the image I have in my profile description?

Yes, I think your pie chart thing there fits the description. Those are probably decent mean averages for you, but there will be fluctuations affected by context, so (to use how I heard a YouTube person put it) it’s not like a stick of rock throughout your day - entirely uniform all the way. Not in every aspect anyway. I’m sure anger stays low in the mix for you, so pretty stable, but anxiety may go even further up at certain points and so on. Noise sensitivity too. And it’s in response to the NT-skewed situations we have to move between. 

I agree that article was very disheartening in general tbh the language in it was not just lacking (for lack of a better word) but I could really tell it was written by a NT for NTs.

I think my social difficulty should be higher, it didn't seem to ask the right sort of questions to catch that. I mean, I like parties, but mostly when I can just dance. ;) 

And don't worry about the reply delay- I can't figure out the notifications here either. But I kind of like that people just respond when they're ready and they feel like dipping in, no pressure.  It feels relaxed and friendly and accommodating. 

their ableism speaks

Oh sorry to have taken so log to reply to you (I have notifications turned of as they tend to interfere with my work focus) the test I took is:
https://www.idrlabs.com/autism-spectrum/test.php
I think it's an okay test the best part is how it sorts the results into parts rather than an added percentage. But it could be better if it were longer to use more examples of things too, like the sensory category only has sound based questions which could miss if someone's sensory thing was mostly visual, smell, or touch instead.
But I do prefer the layout of the test result categories this way as it really helps me explain my relationship to the spectrum better than other tests imo.

Which test is it from? (I want all the tests.  I keep a list of my scores.  Do I get more autistic points for that?)

Also, holy moly the link you posted with levels is so terrible, isn't it?  Just the picture alone.  Here is one guy getting completely ignored and excluded by two people and he's the one with all the deficits? I don't think so.

It really is about how much we inconvenience the neurotypicals, isn't it?

Ah I know what you mean, I have taken the test that gives that image result a few times and it does have a degree of variation depending on if it's a good day or a bad day, but the near constant is the sensory result whereas the other areas wax and wane depending on how much sleep I've had, etc. Actually that particular .jpeg* wasn't an individual result but an average I composited out of 10 separate results because I wanted to be extra sure that the image I would then go on to share would be a true "average" in a more meaningful sense.

*(it may actually be a .PNG file as I prefer a lossless image format, but that's another thing entirely, I simply wanted to clarify in-case it was noticed and caused any confusion.)

Ah I know what you mean, I have taken the test that gives that image result a few times and it does have a degree of variation depending on if it's a good day or a bad day, but the near constant is the sensory result whereas the other areas wax and wane depending on how much sleep I've had, etc. Actually that particular .jpeg* wasn't an individual result but an average I composited out of 10 separate results because I wanted to be extra sure that the image I would then go on to share would be a true "average" in a more meaningful sense.

*(it may actually be a .PNG file as I prefer a lossless image format, but that's another thing entirely, I simply wanted to clarify in-case it was noticed and caused any confusion.)

I agree that article was very disheartening in general tbh the language in it was not just lacking (for lack of a better word) but I could really tell it was written by a NT for NTs.

I think my social difficulty should be higher, it didn't seem to ask the right sort of questions to catch that. I mean, I like parties, but mostly when I can just dance. ;) 

And don't worry about the reply delay- I can't figure out the notifications here either. But I kind of like that people just respond when they're ready and they feel like dipping in, no pressure.  It feels relaxed and friendly and accommodating. 

their ableism speaks

Oh sorry to have taken so log to reply to you (I have notifications turned of as they tend to interfere with my work focus) the test I took is:
https://www.idrlabs.com/autism-spectrum/test.php
I think it's an okay test the best part is how it sorts the results into parts rather than an added percentage. But it could be better if it were longer to use more examples of things too, like the sensory category only has sound based questions which could miss if someone's sensory thing was mostly visual, smell, or touch instead.
But I do prefer the layout of the test result categories this way as it really helps me explain my relationship to the spectrum better than other tests imo.

Which test is it from? (I want all the tests.  I keep a list of my scores.  Do I get more autistic points for that?)

Also, holy moly the link you posted with levels is so terrible, isn't it?  Just the picture alone.  Here is one guy getting completely ignored and excluded by two people and he's the one with all the deficits? I don't think so.

It really is about how much we inconvenience the neurotypicals, isn't it?