Neverending game of catchup

My whole Adult Life was spent playing catch-up.

Once I lost the Civil Service job in 2004, I was fired, my life was never the same. But, suppose, my life had to change.

Growing up doesn't come with an instruction manual. One has to learn through research and being prepared to make mistakes.

  • Not Furze and not quite jet boots...

    This guys got a whole business doing this..... incredible stuff Grinning

  • Yep, he did that.


  • One wonders how grown up we really are, after seeing the TikTok clips of Nurses dancing to some naff Pop Hit to 'boost morale'.

    Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what the NHS has done for us - I also donated to UnitedWeStreamGM to help with Health-related issues, but a line has to be drawn regarding PR.


    Well there are mental, emotional and physical ages with autistic people generally having much lower emotional ages due in part to a lack of developmental interactions with others on the autism spectrum, and due in part to psychological age proficiencies in also non autistic populations being stunted due to birth-trauma, parental and familial separation anxiety trauma and other traumatic instances involving incompatible lifestyles, education systems and abusive states of affairs and all that.

    1.) Type ones as being the greater majority (approximately 60%) of the population have psychological age proficiencies ranging from 0 to 11 years.

    2.) Type Twos as the lesser majority (approximately 30%) have psychological ages proficiencies ranging from 11 to 22 years.

    3.) Type Threes as the greater minority (approximately 9.99%) have psychological age proficiencies ranging from 22 to 33 years.

    4.) Type Fours as the lesser minority (approximately 0.01%) have psychological age proficiencies ranging from 33 to 45 years.

    Some may have to take the existence of Type Fives (and above) with anything from a pinch to a grain silo or mountain range of salt ~ with sole ages as opposed to souls having ages as they form at four and half months gestation in the womb and burst or dissipate at the event of physical death involving thereafter however many lifetimes of embodying rebirths for the ‘conscious sole’ (individual personality), and hence perhaps people in sacred texts of old got to have ages involving hundreds of years reportedly, and thus the term ‘old soles’ (or ‘old souls’ depending upon people’s knowledge and contextualisation of such things).

    Anyway, perhaps forgive my metaphysical / theosophical digression there, and getting back more directly to growing up ~ one of my tutors many confirmed anecdotes involving them attending an infants school for prodigies, was one about a presentation they had to give on what they wanted to do when they grew up.

    So with teachers, parents, financial sponsors and scientific dignitaries with tape recorders, note books and all that ~ my tutor as the last on stage explained molecular cohesion and electron captures and transfers involving waves and particles, corrected the formula of E equals MC squared as being an atmospheric constant rather than a universal law, and then went on to state that the aim of any physicist is to achieve the impossible! On that basis my tutor announced that he was going to grow up despite the complete lack of examples anywhere!

    All the teaching faculty, parents, invited scientific dignitaries and financial sponsors were utterly offended whilst all the pupils were in fits and having stitches laughing hilariously.

    The teaching faculty all wrote furious letters to the principle who with their own furious letter also sent them to a psychological unit, where thereafter my tutor was upon that letter of request assessed for being psychologically unbalanced ~ as the presentation had not been the only example of such disrespectful behaviour to authority!

    The report was sent to both my tutors parents and the principle ~ stating that the psychological team had only read about the potential of a truly balanced mind until they had met what all considered and agreed was the real deal, who taught them a great deal, and the problem really was with the teaching faculty itself.

    My tutor was six years old, and considerably more mature in his sociological settings even then ~ sort of thing!

    In my own circumstances when I about 8, my Mother demanded to know when I was going to grow up ~ to which I replied in total bafflement, “But you told me that that I had be patient about that!?!


  • One wonders how grown up we really are, after seeing the TikTok clips of Nurses dancing to some naff Pop Hit to 'boost morale'.

    Don't get me wrong, I appreciate what the NHS has done for us - I also donated to UnitedWeStreamGM to help with Health-related issues, but a line has to be drawn regarding PR.

  • if you're going down the cool but impractical invention path, jet boots? Ironman suit?

  • Good point. Is there a "grown up" way just to "be"? Hell no. Fun is exactly that. I knew someone very senior at work who did cosplay battles at the weekend (medieval/LOTR - can't remember which). Colin Furze on You Tube makes incredibly fun (technically brilliant but useless in everyday life) devices - wolverine claws anyone? stars wars landspeeder?

    I'd do a whole list---- actually there's a thread there! May open that up to the floor. Smiley

  • outside of work why grow up at all? Only between 9 and 5 am I wiling to pretend to be a grown up. in my social life I've no intention of acting my age. Personally I feel if I had to act my age to have a social life it wouldn't be worth having.

  • Growing up doesn't come with an instruction manual.

    Agreed. I feel I'm learning things for the first time. Some of it to do with my diagnosis, some of it to do with a lack of emotional awareness while I was growing up (I was taught there was a correct way to feel - go figure!). 

    I feel like I need to read books instructing me on the obvious. Last one I read was Sean Barron/Temple Grandin's book "The Unwritten Rules of Social Relationships". The latest one on my pile is a kids book on how to manage anger. Why a kids book? 

    I was never taught how to cope with anger when younger - my ability to manage it is probably at the level of a kid.  All I learnt growing up was that expression of anger was bad so I pushed it down rather than learn how to deal with it. 

    Mistakes. True. We're all a work in progress. I'm enjoying the honesty of some popular writers/researchers (Brene Brown, Mark Brackett) when they point out all the stuff they're telling their readership, they wrestle with too - and sometimes they fail. 

  • We're gluttons for punishment. Slight smile

  • so i have met another autistic who got fired from the civil service  just a bit strange there is another Desmond97 running around Runner

  • Complaints about me.

  • but why was this one moment such a decisive point of transition?

  • As I said, the place felt like an incarceration.

  • Sadly I don't think the civil service had really got to grips with autism in the work force even over a decade later. But I think greater awareness would have at least given them pause before sacking you.

  • I didn't declare my disability; back then.

    However, it was a blessing, as the location felt like a Prison Cell.

  • That, is absurd. these days I'd have said you might have made a discrimination case out of that. Back then I have no idea what the rules covered.

  • Poor Personal Hygiene.

  • are you allowed (or indeed do you wish to) tell us what you were fired for? Or for that matter why this job in particular was important?

  • did we meet at the waverley hospital ballymena in a post diagnostic meeting ?