A Little Of Nothing

Category: Neurodiversity & Identity

  • The Surprisingly Bearable Lightness of Being Alone

    The Surprisingly Bearable Lightness of Being Alone

    My wife and I can happily spend an entire evening in the same room, each doing our own thing. She’s reading, knitting, or crocheting. I’m probably tinkering with something, researching some obscure Minecraft modpack code on my tablet, or catching up on Mastodon. The cat is supervising, as befits her position as Supreme Leader of the Household.

    We’re together without constantly demanding each other’s attention.

    Our cat has very clear rules about social interaction.

    She wants company.

    Until she doesn’t.

    She wants affection.

    Until she doesn’t.

    She wants to sit on your lap.

    Until she suddenly remembers she’s an apex predator and bites you.

    In many ways, she’s taught me something rather profound about companionship. It’s perfectly possible to enjoy company without needing it every waking moment.

    I do, however, usually manage not to sit in people’s laps and bite them.

    Growing Older (Or How I Learnt to Stop Socialising and Love Solitude)

    From my mid-twenties to my mid-thirties, I lived alone in a flat in Aberdeen. I had an extensive movie collection, back when films came on gloriously space-hungry VHS cassettes instead of DVDs. I had my PC, my World of Warcraft account, and my hamster, Quark.

    Also I had a group of ex-university friends who regularly dragged me out to clubs, pubs, Sunday morning greasy fry-ups, and parties.

    I went because I thought that was what people were supposed to do.

    Don’t get me wrong. I had fun… ish.

    I didn’t know I was autistic back then. That particular bombshell hadn’t even been manufactured yet, never mind dropped from an overhead B-52.

    But most of the time I was on my own. I’d spend evenings watching films, playing games, or trying to work out where Quark had managed to roll his exercise ball this time.

    I was content.

    I enjoyed my own company.

    Even then, I instinctively understood there was a profound difference between being alone and being lonely.

    I’m now in my mid-fifties, and that feeling hasn’t changed.

    As I’ve written before in Growing Old without Growing Up, getting older hasn’t made me feel old. If anything, it’s made me more comfortable ignoring society’s expectations.

    I genuinely enjoy my own company.

    That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy spending time with my wife. Quite the opposite. She’s my companion, my best friend, my soulmate, and the person I most enjoy sharing life with.

    But we don’t live in each other’s pockets.

    She has her allotment. While I greatly appreciate eating what she grows, that’s her thing. She’ll happily disappear there for hours while I disappear into my home office to write code, build a new Minecraft mod, or update this blog, as I’m doing now.

    She’s even been known to disappear to Greece for a fortnight on one of her spiritual retreats while I stay at home, work, look after the house, and consume quantities of junk food that would never pass Wife Quality Assurance.

    Two Whole People

    I’ve never liked the expression “my other half”.

    It suggests we arrive in the world as unfinished jigsaw puzzles, wandering around until someone finally turns up holding the missing piece.

    I don’t believe that.

    When my wife and I married, we were already two complete human beings, each with our own interests, quirks, ambitions, and ways of spending our time.

    We simply chose to walk through life together.

    Sometimes our paths overlap completely.

    Sometimes they briefly diverge.

    Most of the time, they run happily alongside one another.

    Healthy relationships aren’t two halves making a whole. They’re two complete people choosing to share their lives. Otherwise we accidentally make relationships responsible for fixing problems they were never designed to solve.

    Alone Is Not Lonely

    I’m not antisocial, and I certainly haven’t given up on people.

    I just don’t need quite so many of them.

    I’ve stopped mistaking constant interaction for happiness.

    It turns out the old saying “quality over quantity” applies to friendships as much as almost everything else.

    Being alone is a description while being lonely is an emotion.

    One tells you who’s in the room, the other tells you how you feel about it.

    You can feel desperately lonely in the middle of a crowded pub.

    You can spend an entire weekend by yourself without feeling lonely for a single moment.

    They’re completely different states.

    We often assume one causes the other.

    It doesn’t.

    Why We Fear Solitude

    Modern life seems oddly suspicious of solitude.

    There’s an unspoken expectation that adulthood should involve an ever-expanding network of friends, colleagues, networking groups, WhatsApp chats, neighbourhood associations, social media platforms, and community events.

    As though popularity can somehow be measured by unread notifications.

    But relationships aren’t Pokémon.

    Collecting more doesn’t necessarily improve your life.

    You certainly don’t need to catch them all.

    Learning to Enjoy Your Own Company

    If you can’t enjoy an afternoon by yourself, adding another person doesn’t magically create contentment.

    Sometimes it simply creates another person to disappoint.

    There’s a quiet confidence in being able to entertain yourself, pursue hobbies, disappear down strange rabbit holes of curiosity, spend an afternoon wandering around a museum, sit beside a river watching the world go by, or simply think.

    Many of us have felt far lonelier surrounded by people we couldn’t truly be ourselves around than we ever have sitting quietly on our own.

    Company is wonderful when it’s shared with people who let us be authentic.

    Company simply for the sake of avoiding silence can feel surprisingly empty.

    I’m not suggesting we all become hermits.

    Please don’t finish reading this article, delete all your social media accounts, and move into a cave somewhere in the Highlands.

    We’re social creatures, and spending time with people we care about can be deeply rewarding.

    Some of my happiest memories involve my wife.

    Others involve good friends.

    But some involve nobody else at all.

    Cycling through the countryside.

    Sitting in a park watching deer run across a field.

    Heading into London with absolutely no plan beyond wandering wherever curiosity takes me.

    Looking at things.

    Really looking.

    Watching boats drift along the Thames.

    Eating an excellent burger.

    Drinking great coffee.

    Spending far too long in a bookshop.

    Simply sitting and watching the world move around me without feeling any obligation to join in.

    Bliss.

    Maybe the goal isn’t to spend less time with people.

    Maybe it’s simply to stop measuring the health of our lives by how many people happen to be in the room.

    Being alone isn’t the opposite of belonging.

    Sometimes it’s simply the place where you finally belong to yourself.

    As I finished writing this, Spotify decided to shuffle on All By Myself by Eric Carmen.

    I laughed out loud.

    Not because it proved my point, but because somewhere inside the vast collection of algorithms analysing my listening habits, a computer had spectacularly misunderstood me.

    Then again, perhaps that’s the whole point.

    Being alone and being lonely aren’t the same thing.

    Spotify still hasn’t worked that out.

    Besides, the song got one thing wrong.

    I wasn’t by myself.

    My wife was in the next room.

    The cat was almost certainly plotting something.

    And, perhaps most importantly, I was already exactly where I wanted to be.

  • The Curious Freedom of Pretending to Be Somebody Else

    The Curious Freedom of Pretending to Be Somebody Else

    (Or: How Dressing as a Victorian Ghostbuster Became the Most Authentic Version of Me.)

    I’ve spent most of my life pretending to be somebody else.

    Every day I slip into the role of a “fully functioning adult”, whatever that’s supposed to be. I mask, I moderate my behaviour, I soften the rougher edges of my personality and generally do my best impression of somebody who has absolutely everything under control.

    At weekends, however, the mask begins to slip. I’m far closer to my authentic self and considerably less restrained by the image I’m expected to project in the office. That isn’t to say I suddenly become a different person. It’s more that I stop spending quite so much energy trying to look like everybody else.

    Masking takes a tremendous amount of mental effort. It’s one of the biggest contributors to the autistic burnout I’ve written about previously, which is probably why people find it rather odd when I tell them one of my favourite hobbies involves dressing up as a Victorian Ghostbuster.

    Surely, if I spend all week performing one role, the last thing I’d want to do for fun is perform another?

    Well… not quite.

    My Everyday Performance

    I’ve written before about masking, about my “stage voice” developed to hide my stammer, and about the burnout that often follows from constantly monitoring my behaviour. I won’t repeat all of that here, but it essentially boils down to one simple observation.

    To some extent, Everyday Pete is a carefully rehearsed performance.

    I monitor how loudly I’m speaking and pay attention to my body language. I’ll try to maintain the right amount of eye contact. I avoid wandering too far down conversational rabbit holes, no matter how desperately I want to explain why TCP handshaking is the perfect analogy for small talk or why slide rules are infinitely more interesting than calculators.

    It’s a performance I’ve become very good at.

    It’s also exhausting.

    Enter the Ghostbuster

    You’d therefore think that taking this daily performance and turning the dial up to eleven would be the last thing I’d choose to do for enjoyment.

    Oddly enough, the exact opposite is true.

    Before I explain why, let me introduce the character.

    Not the costume.

    The personality.

    He’s confident, bombastic, friendly, outgoing, slightly pompous, and considerably larger than life. He’ll happily wander up to complete strangers, pose for photographs, chat to children about ghosts, and generally behave as though the world is one enormous stage.

    In other words, he’s the sort of chap who cheerfully says hello to strangers.

    I generally hope strangers haven’t noticed me.

    Even his name is rather revealing.

    He’s called Professor Mycroft Spengler, which, if you’re familiar with my literary and cinematic tastes, tells you almost everything you need to know about me.

    He’s a shameless fusion of Mycroft Holmes and Egon Spengler.

    Mycroft Holmes is hyper-intelligent, analytical, quietly formidable, happiest solving problems rather than socialising, and far more comfortable working behind the scenes than standing in the spotlight.

    Egon Spengler is a scientist, collector of obscure knowledge, enthusiast of spores, moulds and fungi, socially awkward, endlessly curious, and gloriously unconcerned with appearing “normal”.

    Neither of them are conventional action heroes.

    Nor are they particularly charismatic.

    Neither are especially loud.

    So naturally my subconscious looked at those two characters and thought:

    “Yes… let’s combine them.”

    Apparently, given complete creative freedom, my brain built a character whose defining qualities are intelligence, curiosity, scientific obsession, and spectacular social awkwardness…

    …and then gave him brass goggles and a wooden proton pack.

    When I stop and think about it, that probably says something important about my personality!

    The Tax

    Let’s clear one thing up, though.

    For years Comic Con terrified me. I’d travel all the way there, reach the entrance, see the crowds stretching off into the distance and quietly turn around and go home. On the occasions I did make it inside, I’d often become overwhelmed within twenty minutes and leave feeling thoroughly dejected.

    Mycroft changed that.

    He’s become a form of armour. Not armour that hides me, but armour that allows me to function in an environment that would otherwise overwhelm me. He gives me a role to play, a script to follow and, perhaps most importantly, permission to interact with people in ways that everyday Pete would normally avoid. I no longer worry about whether I should talk to strangers because, quite frankly, that’s exactly what a Victorian Ghostbuster ought to be doing.

    It works.

    But it isn’t free.

    I can never manage more than one day at a convention because afterwards I have to pay the bill I’ve quietly been running up. I’ve hyper-masked for most of the day. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people, posed for countless photographs, answered questions, smiled, joked, improvised, stayed in character and absorbed the noise, lights, crowds and sheer intensity of the event. By the time I get home my social battery isn’t merely low, it’s running on fumes.

    The following day I usually disappear. I’ll spend it quietly reading, listening to music, tinkering in the workshop or simply enjoying the blissful absence of people. Not because I didn’t enjoy Comic Con. Quite the opposite. I loved every minute of it. I’m simply paying yesterday’s invoice. It’s worth every penny, but it’s an expensive hobby in ways most people never see.

    The Subtle Difference

    I should probably correct myself slightly because calling cosplay a form of masking isn’t entirely accurate. It’s a useful analogy, particularly as I’m technically wearing a physical mask of one sort or another, but the two things are fundamentally different.

    Masking, at least for me, is about hiding parts of myself. I minimise my differences, smooth away the rough edges and quietly blend into the background. The aim is to become less noticeable, less awkward and, if I’m honest, a little more forgettable.

    Cosplay does exactly the opposite.

    Instead of hiding my differences, it exaggerates them. It takes my enthusiasm, curiosity, theatricality and love of the absurd and turns the volume right up. It’s the difference between whispering and standing on a table shouting:

    “THIS IS ME. I’M WEIRD, AND I’M PERFECTLY HAPPY ABOUT IT.”

    There’s something wonderfully liberating about that.

    Why Ghostbusters? Why Steampunk?

    People occasionally ask why I chose Ghostbusters.

    My usual answer is simply:

    “Why not?”

    Ghostbusters has always been one of my favourite film franchises because, when I stop and think about it, none of the characters are conventional heroes. Ray Stantz is wonderfully enthusiastic and endlessly curious. Egon Spengler is socially awkward, intellectually brilliant and entirely unconcerned with appearing “normal”. Peter Venkman presents himself as confident and charismatic, but I’ve always suspected the sarcasm and bravado are simply another form of armour. Whenever life becomes complicated, he deflects it with humour.

    They’re not superheroes.

    They’re underdogs who accidentally become heroes.

    I find that strangely reassuring.

    Steampunk satisfies a completely different part of my personality. If you’ve read my article about museums you’ll already know I have an enduring fascination with discovery, invention and curiosity. The Victorian and Edwardian periods were full of people pushing at the boundaries of science and engineering, trying to understand how the world worked and asking, “What if?”

    Now, before the historians reach for their keyboards, I’m well aware that Victorian Britain had more than its fair share of problems. Steampunk isn’t history. It’s alternative history, a world where Babbage’s Difference Engine really did work, where Jules Verne reached the Moon. A fantasy world where Wells and Poe somehow became engineers instead of novelists. It’s a world of steam-powered computers, impossible inventions and outrageous imagination, but without the poverty, colonialism, misogyny and social inequality that accompanied the real Victorian era.

    Put Ghostbusters and Steampunk together, add a dash of amateur dramatics and an unhealthy enthusiasm for brass and mahogany panelling, and out walked Professor Mycroft Spengler.

    In Closing

    The funny thing is that my Ghostbuster costume isn’t really hiding who I am. It’s revealing parts of me that everyday life quietly encourages me to keep folded away. He’s louder than I am, more confident than I am, and considerably more theatrical than I am, but none of those qualities are fake. They’re all me.

    Just with a proton pack.

    Eventually the goggles come off, the proton pack goes back on its stand and Mycroft quietly disappears until the next convention. The exhaustion arrives shortly afterwards and, as always, the masking tax has to be paid. For a few glorious hours, though, pretending to be somebody else allows me to stop pretending to be somebody I’m not.

    That’s a trade I’ll happily keep making.

  • The Slow Creep of Autistic Burnout

    The Slow Creep of Autistic Burnout

    One of the more irritating things about autistic burnout is that it rarely arrives with the theatrical flourish I imagine. There is no dramatic collapse, no warning klaxon, and no helpful message from my brain politely informing me that I’m running critically low on mental resources and should pull over at the next convenient lay-by for a recharge. That would be far too convenient. Instead, burnout usually sneaks up on me.

    It’s less like falling off a cliff and more like gradually walking into the sea. I don’t notice the water reaching my ankles because I’m too busy concentrating on the horizon. Then the water is up to my waist and I’m still too busy focusing on my destination. Before I realise it, I’m out of my depth, floundering slightly, unable to feel the bottom, and wondering which direction the shore lies.

    My day involves a surprising amount of invisible effort. There’s the social masking, the “stage voice” I wrote about in my stammering article, filtering background noise, monitoring facial expressions, trying to remember whether I’ve made enough eye contact to appear interested without accidentally crossing into “slightly unsettling”, keeping track of conversations, and trying not to infodump about slide rules, cravats or my nihilistic theory of human existence. None of those things are particularly difficult in isolation, but together they’re like dozens of little computer programs quietly running in the background. Each one consumes a little memory, a little processing power, and a little battery until, eventually, I simply run out of something to give.

    I’ve started thinking about burnout less like stress and more like a battery. Most people notice when their phone reaches five per cent. My autistic battery has the remarkable ability to leap directly from sixty per cent to, “Why am I irrationally irritated because somebody stacked the dishwasher incorrectly?” Looking back, the warning signs are actually fairly obvious. The world seems louder than usual, conversations start feeling like hard work, and even simple questions such as “What do you fancy for dinner?” suddenly require the computational resources of a AI server farm. Eventually I reach the point where I no longer want to see or speak to anyone, not because I dislike people or because I’m depressed, but because my brain has quietly put a little sign on the door saying, “Capacity reached. Please call again tomorrow.”

    This is perhaps the biggest misconception about burnout. It isn’t laziness, a lack of motivation, or “not trying hard enough”. If anything, it usually arrives because I’ve been trying too hard for too long. I often picture it as carrying a rucksack while somebody quietly drops another pebble into it every day. One pebble isn’t a problem. Neither are ten, or fifty. The trouble is that one day I realise I’m carrying several thousand of the things and I’ve become so accustomed to the weight that I’ve forgotten life wasn’t always supposed to feel this heavy. That’s what burnout feels like to me. It isn’t one dramatic event. It’s the cumulative effect of hundreds of tiny demands, each insignificant on its own, quietly adding up until my brain eventually decides it’s had enough.

    The frustrating thing is that I already know what helps. The solutions are spectacularly uninteresting. More sleep. Less noise. Fewer demands. Time with people I trust. A walk somewhere green. Music. Noise-cancelling headphones. A mug of coffee. None of this is revolutionary, and none of it would sell many self-help books, but it works. The difficult part isn’t discovering the solution. The difficult part is giving myself permission to stop before my brain makes that decision on my behalf.

    At fifty-something I’ve become slightly better at recognising the warning signs. Not because I’ve become particularly wise, but because I’ve ignored them often enough to recognise the consequences. These days, if the world suddenly seems louder than usual, if every conversation feels like hard work, and if the thought of another Teams meeting fills me with existential dread, I know it probably isn’t the world that’s changed. It’s me. That’s usually my cue to slow down before my brain pulls the emergency brake and does it for me.

    Sadly, I do not always pull the emergency cord in time, and sometimes I get so overloaded that I am barely capable of leaving the house. The most banal tasks become Herculean, and routine things I do every day suddenly take on a distinctly Sisyphean quality until it all becomes, well, too much. I have been in that stage fairly recently. Instead I ignored the warnings, went on against my brain’s better judgement, and then promptly fell over. Naturally, I paid the price and am now trying to pick up the pieces. At least I noticed it fairly early in the burnout process and had not sunk too deeply into the depressive mire that can accompany it. I am still close enough to the edge to grab a low-hanging branch and haul myself back out. Muddied, exhausted but still in one piece.

    Perhaps the biggest lesson burnout has taught me is that being autistic or having ADHD isn’t just about the things other people notice. It’s also about the invisible effort that nobody sees. The conversations that looked effortless. The office that seemed manageable. The shopping trip that appeared uneventful. The social gathering everyone assumed I enjoyed. Sometimes my greatest achievement on any given day is convincing everyone else that I’m coping effortlessly. Burnout is often the bill arriving several weeks later.

    I’ve finally stopped thinking of myself as a machine that ought to run continuously. Batteries aren’t defective because they eventually need recharging, and neither am I. Every time I’ve ignored the warning signs and tried to keep going, my brain has eventually overruled me anyway. These days I try to recognise when my own battery is running low and quietly plug myself back into the charger before the screen goes completely black.

    Even if, occasionally, I don’t manage. At least I tried.

  • Smell Is Basically a Superpower

    Smell Is Basically a Superpower

    People often ask me what it’s like not being able to smell.

    The honest answer is:

    I haven’t the faintest idea.

    If that sounds odd, then consider this: I’ve never experienced life with a sense of smell, so how can I possibly say what life is like without it?

    To me, smell occupies roughly the same category as telepathy, X-ray vision, and flying.

    I understand the theory.

    I simply have no frame of reference for the experience.

    What Exactly Is Congenital Anosmia?

    Put simply, anosmia is the lack of a sense of smell.

    Anosmia is to smell what blindness is to sight, or deafness is to hearing.

    Congenital means I was born this way.

    I didn’t lose my sense of smell later in life.

    I never had it in the first place.

    Technically, anosmia is the complete absence of smell. There is actually a spectrum of smell-related conditions, of which anosmia is just one.

    Anosmia

    The complete absence of any sense of smell.

    Hyposmia

    A reduced sense of smell. Think of it as turning the detection volume down.

    Phantosmia

    Smelling things that aren’t there.

    I hear this one can be pretty awful for sufferers.

    My brain obviously never generates imaginary smells. It has enough trouble detecting real ones.

    Parosmia

    Distorted smells.

    Coffee may smell like burning rubber. Perfume may smell acrid or unpleasant.

    Unfortunately, following COVID, cases of parosmia, hyposmia, and anosmia all became significantly more common.

    So now you know what the various smell disorders are.

    How is congenital anosmia different?

    You Can’t Miss What You Never Had

    Well, I’ve never had a sense of smell.

    Never experienced what smell is.

    To me, the sense of smell is effectively a fictional experience.

    Someone who acquires anosmia later in life, through illness, infection, head trauma, tumours, or simply old age, experiences a genuine sense of loss.

    They remember smell.

    They miss smell.

    They know what coffee smelled like.

    Freshly baked bread.

    Cut grass.

    Rain.

    Those memories remain even after the sense itself has gone.

    In some ways, being born without a sense of smell is easier.

    That may sound strange, but it really doesn’t bother me.

    That’s not to say it isn’t serious.

    Depression among people who lose their sense of smell later in life is sadly quite common.

    I do not envy them their memories.

    People often ask whether I feel I’ve missed out.

    It’s a bit like asking how I cope with losing £100 billion on the stock market.

    I haven’t lost £100 billion on the stock market.

    I never had £100 billion on the stock market.

    I’m aware that both smell and £100 billion exist.

    My emotional relationship with either is somewhat limited by their complete absence from my life.

    Smell as a Superpower

    I’ll tell someone I’m anosmic and can’t smell, and invariably I get variations of the same conversation.

    “What? You can’t smell coffee?”

    “No.”

    “What about burnt toast?”

    “No.”

    “What about aftershave?”

    “No.”

    At this point the conversation starts descending into that famous scene from BBC’s Red Dwarf.

    “Everybody’s dead, Dave.”

    “What, Captain Hollister?”

    “Everybody’s dead, Dave.”

    “What, Peterson?”

    “Everybody’s dead, Dave.”

    No.

    I can’t smell coffee.

    I can’t smell toast.

    I can’t smell aftershave.

    I can’t smell anything.

    Funny as it is, it becomes a little tiring after the hundredth repetition.

    These days, when someone asks:

    “So you can’t smell roses?”

    I sometimes reply:

    “Can you see through walls?”

    Both questions are equally unhelpful to understanding.

    I then explain that I know smell exists and I know Superman can see through walls.

    I understand the theory.

    I simply don’t, and never will, understand the experience itself.

    I understand smell intellectually in much the same way I understand quantum mechanics.

    I accept that it exists.

    I can even comprehend some of the details of the process.

    Beyond that, things become rather fuzzy.

    Things People Forget Smell Does

    Once people understand that I can’t smell, I occasionally get this sort of response:

    “Ooh, lucky you. You’ll never have to experience a hot, sweaty Tube train.”

    I usually have rather less patience with this one.

    My response is generally something along the lines of:

    “And blind people never have to experience what passes for modern art these days.”

    Smell is an important sense.

    Not only is it heavily linked to flavour, but it also contributes significantly to memory and environmental awareness.

    Taste itself is largely handled by the tongue and remains unaffected. We can detect sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami flavours, as well as sensations like the cooling effect of menthol and the burning sensation of capsaicin.

    Smell, however, contributes enormously to the richness and complexity of flavour.

    It’s also closely connected to memory.

    The olfactory bulb has direct connections to parts of the brain involved in emotion and memory, particularly the amygdala and hippocampus.

    There’s a reason certain smells can instantly transport people back to childhood and why senses are important in laying down new memories.

    My memories simply use different triggers.

    Smell also provides environmental awareness.

    It helps detect danger.

    It warns of fires, gas leaks, spoiled food and other hazards.

    I’ve had so many cases of food poisoning over my lifetime that I’ve genuinely lost count.

    So yes, there are disadvantages.

    Detecting spoiled food.

    Detecting smoke.

    Detecting gas leaks.

    These are all things I have to think about differently.

    That said, there are advantages too.

    I grew up on a dairy farm.

    Without going into too much detail, I’m sure you can imagine at least some of them.

    Summing Up

    Do I wish I could smell?

    Of course.

    Curiosity alone would make it worthwhile.

    I’d love to know what coffee smells like.

    Or petrichor after rain.

    Or my wife’s perfume.

    Or whether everybody has been telling the truth about bacon all these years.

    But congenital anosmia isn’t really a story about loss.

    You can’t lose something you never had.

    It’s simply a different way of experiencing the world.

    Besides, the only thing I know for certain that stinks is my sense of humour.

  • The Difference Between Sound and Noise.

    The Difference Between Sound and Noise.

    I’m a bit of a contradiction when it comes to my autistic sensibilities.

    I cannot tolerate noise.

    Office chatter, traffic noise, dripping taps, ticking clocks, snoring, eating sounds (misophonia), or other people’s phone calls and conversations in general.

    This would lead you to think I am sensory avoidant and, to some extent, I am.

    However, My autistic noise sensitivity has an exception, I adore music.

    Music is one of my great pleasures in life.

    My noise-cancelling headphones are rarely off my head. I wear them as soon as I leave the house or office and listen to music constantly.

    My musical tastes can best be described as:

    “Yes.”

    On any given day I might listen to progressive rock, punk, heavy metal, opera, film soundtracks, musical theatre, dad rock, classical music, or, on particularly unusual afternoons, Mongolian throat singing.

    Spotify’s recommendation algorithm has long since given up trying to profile me and now simply appears to be selecting tracks using a random number generator and mild panic.

    In the world of sound there is a profound difference between music and noise.

    Music is controlled, predictable, and chosen.

    Noise is intrusive, random, unwarranted and, in most cases, unavoidable.

    I live in London.

    It’s hardly a haven of peace, calm and quiet serenity and not a place for someone with autistic noise sensitivity!

    Well, bits of it can be. More on that later.

    But the city isn’t designed to be noisy. It’s not even designed to be quiet. Noise is simply an unavoidable side effect of being a large, bustling metropolis.

    London is a loud place.

    Then again, it’s not always about volume.

    It’s about the inescapable wall of sound and its chaotic, unpredictable nature.

    Noise Fatigue

    Being constantly immersed in a sea of sound is draining.

    Much like Chinese water torture, it slowly chips away at my calm and increases my cognitive overload. External noise increases my internal static and makes my stammer worse.

    This results in difficulty concentrating, feeling worn out, exhaustion and an increased likelihood of meltdown.

    Death by a thousand auditory paper cuts.

    The Survival Equipment

    In order to get through the day with minimal fuss, I have an everyday carry survival kit.

    • My noise-cancelling headphones (a battered pair of Sony WH-1000XM3s held together with duct tape)
    • Loop Quiet earplugs
    • A spare set of fallback Bluetooth earbuds (some cheap brand, as I keep losing them)

    My morning routine as I leave the house is:

    Headphones.

    Keys.

    Wallet.

    Usually in that order.

    I’d rather discover I’d forgotten my wallet or my keys than my headphones, which probably says something quite worrying about me.

    More worrying, perhaps, is that I’ve frequently forgotten the latter, but as long as I have my headphones I’m fine.

    I may not be able to get back into the house.

    I may not be able to buy lunch.

    But hey, at least I’m not exposed to noise.

    Havens of Calm in the Chaos

    As mentioned above, not all of London is a hellish soundscape.

    For all its flaws, London has an astounding number of parks, museums, churches and galleries.

    When I’m in the middle of London I can often find much-needed respite by nipping into one of the many parks and listening to birdsong, or by popping into a museum or gallery to calm my inner turmoil.

    And although I’m not a religious person, I do love the peaceful calm of a church or cathedral.

    I can understand why those of a more spiritual nature feel something in such places.

    The peace is almost palpable.

    Like a comforting presence.

    Closing Thoughts

    So yes, I love sound.

    At least, I love music and the sounds of nature.

    I love birdsong, babbling brooks, complex harmonies, soaring orchestras, distorted guitars, operatic voices and whatever noise Mongolian throat singers have somehow persuaded their anatomy to produce.

    What I don’t love is my brain trying to process every single noise in the environment simultaneously.

    The difference between music and noise isn’t volume.

    It’s consent.

    One I invited in.

    The other kicked the door down and started defecating on the furniture.

  • Pride Month and the Anxious Asexual

    Pride Month and the Anxious Asexual

    This is a post I thought I might not write.

    Not because I’m ashamed or anything, but mainly because I wasn’t sure I could do it justice.

    It’s LGBTQIA+ Month (June), coinciding with and commemorating the Stonewall riots. It’s a month of marches, festivals and parades celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community, promoting equality and acceptance, and remembering the activism that laid the bedrock for many of the rights we enjoy today.

    Every June, my social media fills with rainbow flags, Pride events, celebrations and discussions.

    And every June I find myself wondering the same thing:

    Am I allowed to be here?

    The Invisible Letter

    I’ve always carried a nagging feeling that perhaps I shouldn’t.

    Maybe if I expand the acronym from LGBTQ+ to LGBTQIA+, I feel a little more comfortable including myself. It’s that all-important A at the end.

    A for Asexual, Aromantic or Agender.

    I am, for my sins, asexual.

    One of the main reasons I struggle to include myself in LGBTQIA+ festivities is what is often called passing privilege.

    Nothing about me, save perhaps my asexual flag pin or rainbow lanyard, immediately singles me out as “different”.

    My autism is invisible.

    My congenital anosmia is invisible.

    My asexuality is equally invisible.

    I’ve never been picked on, abused, beaten up or discriminated against for things people couldn’t see.

    Most people assume I am straight, and unless I choose to disclose my asexuality, I can move through the world without attracting much attention.

    That can create a feeling of awkwardness, or even guilt, when engaging with LGBTQIA+ spaces.

    I feel as though others have fought battles that I have largely been spared.

    Yet invisibility brings its own challenges.

    Asexuality is frequently misunderstood, dismissed or erased entirely.

    The result is a curious sense of standing both inside and outside the community at the same time; connected to its struggles and history, while sometimes feeling hesitant to claim a place within it.

    The Feeling of Not Being “Queer Enough”

    I often wonder whether I should even be here.

    Am I taking up space meant for others?

    Do I really belong?

    Am I part of the community or merely an ally?

    Should I even describe myself as LGBTQIA+?

    These questions are surprisingly common among asexual people.

    I and those like me spend so much time being overlooked that we can end up overlooking ourselves.

    Pride Isn’t Actually About Sex

    One of the reasons asexuality can seem confusing to people outside the community is that many assume LGBTQIA+ identities are fundamentally about sex.

    Mention Pride and some people’s minds immediately jump to attraction, relationships and sexuality.

    Viewed through that lens, asexuality appears to be an odd fit.

    After all, how can someone who experiences little or no sexual attraction belong within a community that many outsiders mistakenly define by sexual attraction?

    The answer is simple.

    Pride has never really been about sex.

    At its heart, Pride is about identity.

    It’s about authenticity.

    It’s about visibility and community.

    It’s about recognising that human beings don’t all fit neatly into society’s expectations and that nobody should be shamed for existing outside those expectations.

    Asexual people understand that experience all too well.

    Many of us grew up feeling different without quite understanding why.

    We watched friends develop crushes, navigate relationships and talk about attraction in ways that simply didn’t resonate with our own experiences.

    Some of us spent years wondering whether we were late bloomers, broken, repressed or somehow missing a piece of ourselves.

    The journey may look different from those of other LGBTQIA+ people, but the underlying themes of self-discovery, acceptance and belonging are often remarkably familiar.

    The Ace Spectrum

    It’s also worth remembering that asexuality isn’t a single, uniform experience.

    The ace umbrella encompasses a wide spectrum of identities, including demisexual and grey-asexual people whose experiences of attraction may be infrequent, conditional or significantly different from what society considers typical.

    In my own case, I’ve been very happily married for seventeen years, which often surprises people when they learn that I’m ace.

    One of the most persistent misconceptions about asexuality is that it somehow excludes relationships, intimacy or deep emotional connections.

    It doesn’t.

    Being ace isn’t necessarily about the absence of love, companionship or commitment; it’s about the way attraction is experienced.

    The ace spectrum is broad enough to include people who never experience sexual attraction, those who experience it only rarely, and those for whom it emerges primarily from strong emotional bonds.

    Human relationships, as it turns out, are rather more nuanced than simple tick-box categories.

    Why Pride Matters

    Pride celebrates the freedom to exist honestly.

    It celebrates the right to be seen as who you are rather than who society expects you to be.

    Those are things asexual people share completely with the wider LGBTQIA+ community.

    You don’t need to experience sexual attraction to understand the importance of authenticity.

    And you certainly don’t need to experience sexual attraction to deserve a place at Pride.

    In Closing

    Perhaps that’s what I’ve slowly come to realise over the years.

    Pride isn’t a competition.

    It’s not awarded based on visibility, hardship or how obvious your identity is to strangers.

    It’s not about proving you’re “queer enough”.

    It’s about recognising that people come in many different forms and that none of them should have to hide who they are.

    Including those of us whose differences are invisible.

    Including those of us who sometimes stand at the edge of the parade wondering whether we should even be there.

    We do.

    And maybe that’s reason enough to celebrate.

  • This Post Was Written by AI

    This Post Was Written by AI

    Wait, just wait…

    By “AI” I do, of course, mean an Actual Idiot.

    Namely, myself.

    Obvious clickbait title, eh? Thought that’d catch you!

    Let me elucidate.

    Actually, no. Let me explain.

    Words like elucidate are what got me into this mess in the first place.

    Despite my best intentions, I apparently sound artificial.

    I’m not offended by this. In fact, I’m quite fascinated by it.

    I’d noticed that my writing scored embarrassingly highly on various online “Was this written by AI?” tests. At first I couldn’t understand why.

    Well, that’s not entirely true.

    I had a fair-to-middling idea why.

    It’s my writing style.

    It’s too… measured.

    Too formal.

    Too structured.

    Too fond of words like fair-to-middling.

    I grew up with a fairly severe stammer. (See my previous post about that.)

    As a result, I spoke slowly and used small, simple words. But just because I spoke slowly, chose my words carefully and delivered them in a flat, measured manner didn’t mean I lacked a vocabulary.

    Far from it.

    I was a voracious reader.

    If there was something to read, I read it.

    Books.

    Magazines.

    Newspapers.

    Encyclopedias.

    Dictionaries.

    The backs of cereal boxes.

    If it contained words, it was fair game.

    My nose was almost permanently buried in a book.

    I developed a particular fondness for older literature. Poe, Lovecraft, Shelley, Dumas, Dickens and many others filled my head with strange vocabulary and elaborate sentence structures.

    Reading dictionaries and encyclopedias gave me a phenomenal vocabulary. Positively Brobdingnagian, one might say.

    (I use that word rather a lot. It’s one of my favourites. Perhaps I should stick with “Big” going forward?)

    My irritating near-photographic memory meant I accumulated a vast store of facts and trivia. So much so that my parents’ nickname for me was “The Professor”, because I was always explaining how something worked, who invented it or why some obscure historical event mattered.

    In public, however, I was deeply introverted.

    I embodied the old instruction:

    “Speak when you’re spoken to.”

    And even then, I generally replied with the minimum amount necessary to remain polite.

    I developed an inferiority complex that never entirely left me.

    I’m fifty-six years old.

    I work for a large multinational IT company and support some fairly significant clients.

    Think military.

    Think government.

    Think organisations with enough bureaucracy to make Kafka and Orwell ask everyone to calm down.

    And yet, in my head, I’m still just a code monkey.

    Most people my age have become team leaders, managers, senior managers or directors.

    Not me.

    I never particularly wanted promotion.

    I lack anything resembling a healthy ego.

    I’m just as happy writing a flagship application or major piece of software as I am testing somebody else’s code or filling out administrative paperwork.

    I’ve never been good at putting myself forward.

    I rarely assume excellence.

    I rarely even claim competence.

    Which is ridiculous, of course.

    I know I’m good at what I do.

    I find that difficult to say.

    In fact, if I’m being painfully honest, I’m very good at what I do.

    There. I’ve said it.

    Please don’t make me do it again.

    At university, the expected trajectory was a PhD.

    I dropped out at the end of my BSc during my Master’s.

    Why?

    Because I couldn’t picture myself as a doctor.

    (Albeit a Doctor of Mathematics rather than the Gallifreyan variety.)

    Me?

    A stammering working-class lad from a family of labourers and cooks?

    I knew my place.

    And in my mind, it certainly wasn’t “Doctor”.

    Looking back, that says rather more about me than it does about academia.

    My lack of ambition and reluctance to promote myself influences my writing too.

    I minimise myself.

    I soften statements.

    I hedge.

    I qualify.

    I write passively because active statements feel uncomfortably close to boasting.

    Even writing this article feels slightly unnatural.

    I’ve deliberately filled it with “I am”, “I did” and “I think” statements.

    Normally I’d be restructuring sentences, removing myself from them and quietly disappearing into the background.

    The urge to do so is considerable.

    I’m resisting it for the sake of the experiment.

    So perhaps that’s why AI detectors think I’m an AI.

    Not because I write like a machine.

    But because I write in a style that is structured, measured and oddly formal.

    The irony is that I was probably sounding like this long before anybody took artificial intelligence seriously.

    For the record, I’m not particularly an AI enthusiast.

    My mathematical background means I understand the statistical prediction and pattern-matching taking place beneath the surface.

    My IT background helps me understand the engineering behind it.

    I find the technology fascinating.

    I find many of its applications considerably less so.

    Personally, I wouldn’t trust a large language model to write a postcard, let alone a blog or novel.

    Speaking of novels, I have one.

    Actually, I have ten.

    Although, technically, they’re ten versions of the same novel.

    None of them will ever be published because none of them will ever be finished.

    I keep discovering ways to improve them.

    Or ruin them.

    The distinction becomes increasingly blurry after version seven.

    As for AI-generated writing?

    I find much of it technically impressive but emotionally hollow.

    Competent.

    Coherent.

    Soulless.

    Perhaps that’s why I’m amused when people accuse me of writing like an AI.

    I’ve spent a lifetime trying to figure out how to sound more human.

    It would be deeply ironic if I finally succeeded just as the machines started sounding like me.

    BEEP BOOP.. END OF POST ERROR : REFILL #C0FFEE.

  • My Life as a Stammerer

    My Life as a Stammerer

    Most people are surprised when I tell them I have a stammer.

    That’s because they don’t hear it.

    Or rather, they don’t hear the amount of work that goes into making sure they don’t hear it.

    The Early Years

    I am a stammerer and have been all my speaking life.

    At school I was picked on for it and tried to minimise it by speaking more slowly and using smaller, simpler words. This, in turn, made people assume I wasn’t intelligent. Everyone talked down to me and treated me as if I was less capable than I really was.

    People didn’t just hear my speech difficulty.

    They assumed I had a thinking difficulty.

    I quickly learned that if people struggle to understand how you speak, many of them begin making assumptions about how you think.

    If eyes are the windows to the soul, then perhaps the mouth is the WiFi enabled smart speaker to the mind?

    (Hmm, you’re stretching the analogy a little thin there. – Ed.)

    It wasn’t until later, when I was in secondary school, that I got a speech therapist who actually made a difference.

    Although, at the time, I was less than pleased with her approach.

    She wrote me a letter, sealed it, and told me to deliver it to my headmaster at school the next day.

    Now, in the early 1980s, at my school you only went to the headmaster’s office for one thing.

    Namely, corporal punishment.

    So there I was, standing outside the headmaster’s office, listening to the sound of leather on palms and hearing the wails of the student inside, getting more nervous by the second.

    The door opened, a crying boy emerged, and the headmaster , a veritable mountain of a man feared by all , stepped out, took one look at me and exclaimed:

    “Little? What are you doing here? Come in, boy.”

    Long story short, I nervously handed him the letter and he did something I’d never seen before, nor since.

    He laughed.

    He promptly marched me down to the “forbidden zone” ( namely the teachers’ common room, which in those days was a haze of cigarette smoke ) addressed my English teacher by her first name and told her, in no uncertain terms, that I was joining her after-school acting club.

    I couldn’t argue.

    I mean, I wanted to, but you never answered back to the headmaster.

    Press-ganged against my will into the acting club?

    I swear there must be something in that which violates the Geneva Convention.

    Oddly, on stage I noticed something.

    I rarely stammered over my lines.

    I never stammered when singing.

    (I mean, I couldn’t hold a tune if you gave it to me in a bucket, but at least I didn’t stammer tunelessly.)

    And I could recite whole Shakespearean monologues like…

    Well, I was going to say like an RSC professional, but no…

    Like a sixteen-year-old Scottish schoolboy.

    The difference?

    The speech became:

    • structured
    • rhythmic
    • intentional

    I wasn’t speaking spontaneously.

    I was performing.

    The Post-Education Years

    Over the years, through university and into work, I kept the performance up.

    I developed:

    • a comfortable speech rhythm
    • pacing and pauses
    • a fallback repertoire of repeated phrases
    • verbal scaffolding
    • and, eventually, my “stage voice”

    Many decades (and one very late autism diagnosis) later I realised something else.

    In researching autism and trying to understand its impact on my life , and ways to mitigate it , I discovered the concept of autistic masking.

    Once I understood masking, I recognised I’d been doing exactly the same thing with my speech. My repertoire of repeated phrases and stock responses? Echolalia!

    Long before I knew the word “masking”, I was already an expert at it.

    Today people often look at me with genuine confusion when I tell them I stammer.

    Invariably someone replies:

    “But… you don’t stammer!”

    That means I’m doing what I’m doing well.

    But what they don’t see is:

    • the intense concentration
    • the constant monitoring and adaptation of what I’m saying
    • the fatigue from the continual mental effort
    • the stress of trying to do all of that and get my point across at the same time

    I’ve become remarkably good ( you might even say circus-level good ) at spinning plates on sticks.

    What people don’t realise is this:

    Fluency is not the absence of effort.

    When the Mask Slips

    Of course, it doesn’t mean I can get away with this all the time.

    Maintaining the performance takes a tremendous amount of mental energy.

    Running my ship with shields up all day eventually depletes the dilithium crystals and I need time to recharge.

    When I’m tired, my stammer returns.

    When I’m overwhelmed, my stammer returns.

    When I’m under pressure or stressed, my stammer returns.

    This isn’t failure.

    It’s simply the consequence of running out of the resources required to maintain a very energy-intensive system.

    The Stigma of the Stammer

    Despite it being 2026 as I write this, and despite the enormous strides made in neurodiversity awareness and acceptance, I still encounter stigma.

    Sometimes it is unintentional and well-meaning.

    Sometimes it is neither.

    People:

    • become impatient and try to rush me
    • make assumptions about my intelligence (or perceived lack thereof)
    • take pleasure in mocking or joking about my stammer
    • simply talk down to me

    And the thing that really grinds my gears is when people, under the guise of being helpful, decide to finish my…

    (Sandwiches? – Ed.)

    No.

    My sentences.

    Like so many neurodiversity-related challenges, the actual problem isn’t usually the stammer itself.

    The problem is often society’s reaction to it.

    Summing Up

    When I was young, the goal was often to hide differences.

    Today we’re increasingly learning to understand them.

    I still have a stammer.

    The difference is that now I understand it.

    I understand the techniques I’ve developed, the effort they require, and the role they’ve played in shaping who I am.

    I also understand that communication is about far more than flawless delivery.

    A person’s worth isn’t measured by the smoothness of their speech.

    And perhaps that’s one of the more encouraging things about the growing neurodiversity movement.

    We’re slowly learning that different doesn’t mean broken.

    Sometimes it simply means different.

    That seems like a conversation worth having.

    …. Even if it occasionally takes me a little longer to say it.

  • Why Neurodivergent People Often Become Collectors

    Why Neurodivergent People Often Become Collectors

    I sit here in my home office, surrounded by many little boxes, each containing a strange assortment of items.

    If you’ve read my About Pete page (or followed me here from my Mastodon profile), you’ll know I am a collector of collections. Not content with collecting just one type of thing, I somehow ended up collecting multiple collections. So much so that my collections have effectively become a collection in their own right.

    A collection squared, if you will.

    How did this happen?

    More importantly, why did this happen?

    I used to simply pick up things I found interesting. At some point I realised I didn’t merely “own some things”. I had somehow become the curator of a growing museum dedicated to obscure enthusiasm.

    Slide rules. Rubik’s Cubes. Cravats. Books. Albums and CDs. Fossils and minerals. Obsolete retro technology. Raspberry Pis.

    Left unsupervised long enough, I would probably begin alphabetising pebbles or categorising sawdust!

    What is it about collecting that I find so satisfying? What part of me does it appease? What itch does it scratch?

    Speaking as an autistic person, I know from first-hand experience that neurodivergent brains often experience:

    • overwhelm
    • anxiety around unpredictability
    • sensory chaos
    • cognitive overload

    Collections, and the act of collecting, provide:

    • systems
    • categories
    • rules
    • predictability
    • control

    A collection is a tiny universe whose logic makes sense; a small island of order in an otherwise bewilderingly noisy world.

    Many neurodivergent people possess brains that seem permanently configured to look for patterns. We sort things. We categorise things. We organise things into neat little systems that make perfect sense to us and absolutely nobody else.

    Give us a collection and we won’t simply see a shelf full of objects.

    We’ll see relationships.

    A Rubik’s Cube isn’t just a Rubik’s Cube. It’s a particular mechanism, produced by a particular manufacturer, with a particular turning feel and a particular place in the evolutionary history of twisty puzzles.

    A slide rule isn’t simply a calculator from before calculators. It’s a fascinating collection of scales, layouts and design decisions reflecting the mathematical needs of a particular era.

    Books aren’t merely books. They’re editions, printings, cover variations and publishing histories.

    The same applies to fossils, stamps, coins, model trains, vintage computers, or whatever flavour of obsession has currently attached itself to the brain.

    What often fascinates us isn’t simply the object itself but the system surrounding it.

    The classifications.

    The subtle differences.

    The exceptions to the rules.

    The one obscure variation that only three people on Earth appear to care about.

    Most people look at a shelf and see “a collection”.

    A pattern-seeking brain looks at the same shelf and sees a map.

    Every object has a place. Every category has a purpose. Every missing item creates a tiny itch in the back of the mind that quietly whispers:

    “You know exactly what’s supposed to go there.”

    The collection becomes more than a pile of things. It becomes a system to explore, understand and occasionally obsess over.

    And for brains that derive genuine pleasure from finding order amidst chaos, that’s immensely satisfying.

    Of course, collections aren’t just about categorisation and pattern-seeking. If they were, a spreadsheet would be every collector’s dream and nobody has ever become emotionally attached to a spreadsheet.

    Well… almost nobody. :embarrassed smiley:

    Over time, collections become something more than the objects themselves.

    A favourite book isn’t merely paper, ink and glue. A battered old slide rule isn’t simply a calculating device. A particular Rubik’s Cube isn’t just coloured plastic.

    They become markers in the timeline of our lives.

    Some remind us of places we’ve been.

    Others remind us of people we’ve known.

    Some represent achievements, discoveries or periods when life felt particularly good.

    Others survived difficult times and somehow became associated with comfort, familiarity and stability.

    For many neurodivergent people, objects can provide a reassuring sense of permanence in a world that often feels unpredictable.

    People change.

    Jobs change.

    Circumstances change.

    Favourite television programmes get cancelled.

    Entire social media platforms appear, dominate the internet for five years and then vanish into obscurity.

    But that slightly battered book you’ve owned for twenty years?

    It’s still there.

    That curious fossil sitting on the shelf?

    Still there.

    The collection remains a small constant in an ever-changing world.

    Objects also possess several advantages over people.

    They don’t judge your interests.

    They don’t suddenly decide they no longer like you.

    They don’t require careful interpretation of facial expressions, body language or implied meanings hidden beneath three layers of social convention.

    Most importantly, they don’t initiate small talk.

    I’ve yet to encounter a slide rule that felt compelled to discuss the weather.

    A collection is predictable. It has structure. It behaves according to understandable rules. You know where things belong and what purpose they serve.

    In a world that can sometimes feel noisy, confusing and chaotic, there is something deeply comforting about that.

    Perhaps that’s why collections often become emotional anchors.

    They’re not merely accumulations of objects.

    They’re accumulations of memories, interests, experiences and fragments of identity.

    They’re little pieces of ourselves arranged neatly on shelves.

    The Dopamine Hunt

    Then there’s the dopamine hunt.

    If autism often provides the catalogue, ADHD frequently supplies the expedition.

    For many collectors, the real excitement isn’t owning the item.

    It’s finding it.

    The search itself becomes the hobby.

    Tracking down a rare edition.

    Discovering an obscure variant.

    Learning some wonderfully unnecessary fact about a manufacturing change made in 1973.

    Completing a set that has been taunting you for years.

    It’s part treasure hunt, part side gather quest and part Pokémon for adults with back pain.

    An ADHD brain can derive astonishing amounts of happiness from locating a very specific obscure object that nobody else on Earth appears to care about.

    Hours of searching, weeks of waiting and countless dead ends can all evaporate the moment the target is finally acquired.

    Of course, this creates a slight problem.

    The dopamine was never entirely in the object.

    It was in the chase.

    Which explains why collectors are often found muttering the dangerous phrase:

    “I’m only looking…”

    Right before accidentally acquiring three more items for the collection.

    Some Collections Are Apparently More Respectable Than Others

    One of the more fascinating quirks of society is that some collections are considered sophisticated while others are considered evidence that you should perhaps be supervised more closely.

    Collect vintage wines and you’re a connoisseur.

    Collect rare watches and you’re an investor.

    Assemble a garage full of classic cars and people nod approvingly while using words like heritage and craftsmanship.

    Collect Rubik’s Cubes, slide rules or obscure retro clothing and suddenly you’re “that bloke with all the cubes” or “that fat prat in the cravat”.

    The strange thing is that the underlying behaviour is often identical.

    In both cases someone is spending considerable amounts of money acquiring objects they don’t strictly need, learning unnecessary amounts of information about them and becoming disproportionately excited when they discover a rare variant.

    Apparently spending £10,000 on a watch is a sensible investment.

    Spending £10 on a forty-year-old slide rule is a cry for help.

    I remain unconvinced by this distinction.

    The Danger Zone

    Of course, like most things that bring us comfort and enjoyment, collecting can occasionally wander into less healthy territory.

    A collection can become clutter if it grows faster than our ability to manage it.

    The thrill of acquisition can become an expensive habit.

    The search for the next item can sometimes become more important than appreciating the things we already have.

    For some people, collections can also become a form of avoidance; a way of retreating into a familiar and controllable world when life outside feels difficult, uncertain or overwhelming.

    There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of this.

    Most hobbies have their excesses.

    The trick, as with so many things, is balance.

    A collection should enrich your life, not consume it.

    It should be a source of joy, curiosity and comfort rather than stress, debt or obligation.

    After all, if your collection starts requiring its own collection to keep track of it, it may be time for a quiet sit-down and a cup of tea.

    Physical Objects in a Digital Age

    In an increasingly digital world, I sometimes wonder whether part of the appeal of collections is simply that they are real.

    So much of modern life exists behind glass screens.

    Books become files.

    Music becomes subscriptions.

    Photographs become pixels.

    Entire friendships can be reduced to a collection of messages stored on somebody else’s server.

    There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. The digital world has given us remarkable things.

    But digital experiences can sometimes feel strangely weightless.

    A physical object occupies space in the world.

    A book has weight in your hands.

    A fossil connects you to a creature that lived millions of years before the first human wondered where they left their keys.

    A slide rule carries the fingerprints of the engineers, scientists and students who once used it to understand the universe.

    These things have history.

    They’ve travelled through time.

    They existed before you discovered them and, with a little care, they’ll probably continue to exist long after you’re gone.

    Perhaps that’s part of what makes them meaningful.

    When I hold an old slide rule, I’m not simply looking at an obsolete calculating device.

    I’m holding a small piece of human ingenuity.

    A reminder that generations of curious people spent their lives trying to understand the world around them.

    In that sense, collections aren’t really about ownership.

    They’re about stewardship.

    For a little while, these objects become part of our story.

    Then one day they’ll become part of someone else’s.

    There’s something rather comforting about that.

    In Closing

    So yes, perhaps neurodivergent people do collect unusual things.

    But maybe that is because we notice unusual beauty.

    Maybe we find joy in patterns other people overlook, or comfort in systems that make sense to us, or delight in a slightly odd shelf of interesting nonsense that happens to look brilliant in our own particular internal lighting.

    Or maybe we just like collecting things that make us happy and occasionally confuse visitors.

    Honestly, it is probably all of the above.

    And really, that seems like a perfectly reasonable way to spend a life.