A Little Of Nothing

Tag: autism

  • The Cost of Looking Fine

    The Cost of Looking Fine

    That’s fine as in adequate, not fine as in exceptional. I doubt I’ve ever looked exceptional. 😀

    Picture the scene. An average day in the office.

    I get up, shower, shave, get dressed, catch a bus, catch a train, then walk to the office from the station at the other end. I then have eight hours, give or take, of Teams chats, impromptu meetings, office banter and general work-focused social interaction, all under the unyielding glare of overly bright LED lighting, office noise and the continual hum of the aircon.

    I’ve dealt with issues, servers going down, urgent requests that really should have been given to me several hours earlier rather than five minutes before they were needed, and generally finished the day without anyone needing to rescue me from under the desk, where I’d built myself a rudimentary cardboard fort out of discarded laptop boxes.

    All in all, a successful day.

    I’ve gone home, repeating the journey in reverse, walked in the front door and my wife has greeted me and asked how my day was.

    “Fine, fine!” I reply.

    I mean, yeah, I guess so. I survived without any meltdowns or burnouts. I didn’t attempt to disembowel a colleague using a staple extractor, nor did I attempt to end it all by forcibly inserting myself into the printer paper feed tray and pressing Print.

    But was it fine? Really?

    In retrospect, I probably spent my entire day’s budget of mental energy/capacity/spoons (whatever you want to call it), and quite a bit of tomorrow’s as well. I’m already in deficit, and I have to repeat the process tomorrow and the day after as well.

    Crikey!

    Just because something SEEMS fine, it doesn’t necessarily mean it IS fine.

    A computer can still run, and be seen to be running and fulfilling its required tasks, when it’s at 98% memory capacity, the CPU is thrashing around in the high 90s and it’s getting hot enough to cook an egg.

    It’s still “working”, right? So where’s the problem?

    Sure, it’s working, but at what cost?

    It’s not maintainable running at that sort of level. One unexpected hiccup and you’re personally experiencing the human equivalent of a blue screen of death as you crash spectacularly.

    The odd thing is, this isn’t necessarily just a neurodiversity issue. We can all experience this to some degree.

    We See Outputs Rather Than Costs

    Generally speaking, someone attends a party, so we assume parties are fine for them. Someone delivers a confident and eloquent presentation, so naturally we assume public speaking isn’t a problem. Someone makes eye contact, so obviously eye contact isn’t uncomfortable.

    Hey, if you can work in a noisy office for eight hours straight, then you obviously have no capability issues, right?

    Sure, someone may be able to do a thing…

    But at what cost?

    An introvert can be excellent socially. A person frightened of flying can get on an aeroplane. Someone with chronic pain can smile. A shy person can give a speech. Someone grieving can make everybody else laugh.

    Human beings are extraordinarily good at doing difficult things while looking remarkably ordinary.

    I’ve previously discussed this in Isolation Vs Exposure, where I boiled it down to an idea that, in essence, states:

    “Difficult things cost me energy, therefore I should eliminate every difficult thing.”

    But in that previous discussion, I also said that this has its own costs and is ultimately self-defeating. Sure, you avoid things that give you stress, but you’re no longer exposed to them, so may find yourself less able to deal with them when they invariably crop up.

    I paraphrase. Go read the other essay. 😀

    Perhaps the goal isn’t to make life cost nothing. It’s to understand the price before deciding whether something is worth buying.

    On consideration, some expensive things are worth it after all!

    (Leaning into the other definition of fine here.)

    Comic Con might be exhausting and still worth doing. A museum day might tire me out and still be wonderful. Seeing friends can consume social energy and still leave me glad I went.

    Yet, conversely, an office meeting might consume the same energy while providing almost nothing in return.

    So there are really two questions:

    Can I do this?

    and

    What does doing this cost me?

    They’re not remotely the same question.

    And perhaps there’s a third:

    Was it worth the cost?

    And what happens when you factor in all the additional masking taxes?

    Consider the following Pete-brand, slightly techie analogy.

    Two smartphones. Both similar in appearance and functionality. Both performing the same long, arduous task.

    One phone finishes the task on 87% battery. The other is down to 14%, running hot enough to act as a hand warmer, and the user has had to disable Bluetooth and NFC just to stop it crashing completely or getting hot enough to trigger a small lithium explosion.

    From the outside observer’s viewpoint, both phones did the task asked of them and therefore both phones are equally capable of doing that task, or a similar one, again in the future.

    The appearance of coping is not the same as coping.

    How Are You? Fine Thanks!

    Again, as discussed previously in Small Talk Is TCP Handshaking for Humans, sometimes “Fine, thanks” is just that.

    Fine.

    Sometimes “fine” means that the Earth has split asunder and a vast dimensional portal to a Lovecraftian hellish dimension has opened within the chasm and is threatening to swallow you and all you hold dear into its dark domain…

    …but the kettle is still working, so you make a brew and try to get through things as best you can.

    I’ve noticed an underlying theme, or leitmotif, in my essays here. I’ve written about appearances of normality, masking and fitting in, followed by essays about burnout, an inability to write and, most recently, my thoughts on isolation versus exposure.

    There seems to be a question running through all of them:

    What is actually happening inside a person when the outside world thinks it already knows?

    Stammering. Masking. Solitude. Sensory experience. Autism. ADHD. Adulthood. Pretending to be someone else.

    Even dealing with my congenital anosmia involved writing an article about hiding who I really am.

    Perhaps that’s the problem with looking fine.

    Eventually, people start believing you.

    And, occasionally, so do you.

    Until one day the internal fans are screaming, the battery is at 3%, several important background processes appear to have stopped responding and somebody cheerfully asks:

    “How are you?”

    “Fine, thanks.”

    Because, technically speaking, nothing has actually caught fire yet.

  • Isolation Vs Exposure

    Isolation Vs Exposure

    An AuDHD look at working from home, office life, and what happens when your comfort zone becomes very comfortable indeed.

    One of the great promises of working from home is that you can finally escape all the unnecessary nonsense of the office.

    No commute. No fluorescent lighting. No mysterious person microwaving fish at 11:14 in the morning. No conversations happening three desks away while somebody else is on Teams without headphones and somebody behind you is apparently trying to destroy a keyboard using only their index fingers.

    For someone with autism, ADHD, or the increasingly common buy-one-get-one-free combination of AuDHD, this can feel less like a perk and more like the removal of several dozen small obstacles you previously assumed were simply part of having a job.

    I can work from home quite effectively.

    Increasingly, I do.

    And yet I’ve noticed something slightly inconvenient.

    If I work from home for a long stretch, the next time I go into the office I find it much harder.

    The noise seems noisier.

    The movement around me becomes more distracting.

    Conversations interrupt my train of thought more easily. People appear beside my desk unexpectedly, which is apparently a completely normal thing for humans to do to each other.

    By lunchtime I can feel as though I’ve already done a full day’s work, even if most of the morning was spent doing entirely ordinary office things.

    None of this is particularly surprising. What did surprise me was the contrast.

    I used to cope with it.

    Or at least I coped with it better.

    Which left me wondering whether removing stress from my working life had also reduced my ability to deal with stress when it returned.

    Had working from home made me softer?

    I dislike that wording, because it sounds like something said by my high school PE teacher (Ex Army PT instructor and bane of my youthful existence!) while making me run through freezing mud, but there is something in the question that I haven’t quite managed to dismiss.

    The appeal of the cave

    There are very good reasons to retreat from environments that exhaust us.

    For autistic people, an office can contain a remarkable number of things demanding attention at once.

    Phones ring. Doors open. People walk past. Conversations appear and disappear. Somebody has adjusted the heating to a temperature normally associated with commercial bread production.

    Then there are the social calculations.

    Should I say hello?

    Have I said hello already?

    Was that person talking to me?

    How long am I supposed to stand in the kitchen after making coffee?

    Is someone going to ask what I did at the weekend, and if they do, are they expecting the accurate answer or the approved two-sentence version?

    ADHD adds its own complications. An office can provide stimulation, which sometimes helps, but it can also provide far more stimulation than you actually ordered.

    Working from home gives you control over a surprising amount of this.

    You can choose the lighting.

    You can control the noise.

    You can decide when to speak to people.

    You can arrange your desk properly and leave it arranged properly, safe in the knowledge that nobody from Facilities will suddenly announce that everybody is moving three floors down on Thursday.

    You can sometimes work according to your natural rhythm rather than the rhythm produced by twenty other people existing nearby.

    That control has value.

    It can mean having more energy left at the end of the working day.

    It can mean concentrating for longer.

    It can mean fewer headaches, fewer shutdowns, less masking, and less time spent recovering from things that had almost nothing to do with the actual work.

    For some people, home working may simply allow them to do their job better.

    There is no prize for completing a spreadsheet or fixing a code bug while simultaneously tolerating a noisy air-conditioning unit.

    The problem with becoming too comfortable

    Comfort, unfortunately, is rather good.

    Once you have discovered that work can happen in a quiet room with your preferred lighting, your preferred chair, your own toilet, and access to coffee that costs considerably less than £3.80, voluntarily returning to the office can feel like an administrative error.

    The difficulty is that life rarely agrees to remain inside the environment we have carefully designed for it.

    There are meetings.

    Appointments.

    Family gatherings.

    Training days.

    Conferences.

    Restaurants.

    Public transport.

    People.

    Awful lot of people, actually.

    And my working theory, based entirely on observing myself rather than conducting anything remotely resembling respectable science, is that tolerance can change.

    Things I encounter regularly become familiar.

    Things I avoid can start feeling larger.

    When I was regularly in an office, I expected the noise. I had routines. I knew where I sat, when I took lunch, where I could disappear for five minutes, and which parts of the day were likely to be chaotic.

    After a long period at home, I lose some of that familiarity.

    Then I return and suddenly notice everything again.

    The office itself has not necessarily become worse.

    My baseline has moved.

    That leaves an awkward question, especially for neurodivergent people who have spent years being told to endure environments that were genuinely harmful.

    When does protecting yourself become avoiding something?

    And when does exposing yourself to something stop being useful and start being pointless suffering?

    I don’t think those questions have universal answers.

    Annoying, really. A five-point solution would make this article much easier for me to finish.

    Exposure is not automatically good

    There is a dangerous version of this argument that says we should deliberately make ourselves uncomfortable because discomfort builds resilience.

    Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it does.

    Mostly it just makes Tuesday horrible.

    There is a difference between gradually maintaining familiarity with an environment and repeatedly forcing yourself through something that leaves you exhausted for days.

    If spending one day in the office costs you the following evening and half of Wednesday, that belongs in the calculation.

    If home working means you can concentrate properly, communicate more clearly, and finish the day with enough energy to cook dinner rather than staring into a cupboard for six minutes, that matters too.

    Avoiding unnecessary stress is not cheating.

    We have air conditioning because being too hot is unpleasant and sweating buckets into your laptop isn’t a useful skill to learn. We wear glasses because it transpires that squinting at everything builds character and increases resilience remarkably slowly.

    The fact that just because you can tolerate something does not mean you actually need to maximise your exposure to it.

    Isolation has a cost as well

    At the same time, I know what happens when my own world gets too small.

    Things become easier.

    Then easier becomes normal.

    Then normal becomes necessary.

    A trip into the office starts feeling like a major event.

    Going somewhere after work becomes less appealing because I have become accustomed to finishing the day already at home.

    I have a tendency to become a virtual hermit in my own home on self imposed house arrest. I look out the window and “THE OUTSIDE” in the same manner as Gollum reacts to the Elvish rope he’s tethered to. “IT BURNS US !!”

    Casual conversations disappear.

    I miss information that never makes it into formal meetings.

    I lose those peculiar little workplace interactions that are mostly pointless but occasionally lead to something useful.

    There is also the social equivalent of getting slightly rusty.

    If I spend several days mostly communicating through text and scheduled calls, spontaneous conversation can feel harder when it returns. Not impossible. Just less automatic.

    There is a strange contradiction here.

    Removing friction can give me more capacity.

    Removing too much friction can sometimes reduce what I feel capable of doing.

    I’m still trying to work out where that line is.

    The office is not one thing

    Part of the problem with conversations about remote working is that we talk about “the office” as though everybody is attending the same one.

    They aren’t.

    One person’s office is a quiet room with eight colleagues and decent lighting.

    Another person’s office is an open-plan aircraft hangar containing ninety-seven people, six sales teams, a coffee grinder, and a man called Steve who conducts all telephone conversations at the volume normally reserved for emergency evacuations.

    Likewise, home is not automatically peaceful.

    Some people live alone and have a dedicated office.

    Some work from a kitchen table.

    Some have children, partners, neighbours renovating a bathroom, poor internet, nowhere comfortable to sit, a dog who has appointed itself Director of Incoming Deliveries, or a cat that thinks your laptop keyboard is the most comfortable cat bed ever!

    Some people get energy from being around colleagues.

    Others spend energy being around colleagues.

    Some ADHD brains work better when other people are present because the activity creates momentum and accountability.

    Others experience every passing conversation as a new browser tab opening in their head.

    Autism varies just as much.

    What is calming routine for one person can become claustrophobic repetition for another.

    A universal recommendation starts falling apart quite quickly.

    So what are you actually trying to optimise?

    This may be a more useful question than asking whether home or office working is better.

    Better for what?

    Productivity?

    Energy?

    Concentration?

    Career visibility?

    Social connection?

    Learning from colleagues?

    Mental health?

    Family life?

    Tolerance of busy environments?

    The answer might change depending on what you are doing.

    If I need several uninterrupted hours to write, analyse something complicated, or disappear into a problem, home has obvious advantages.

    If I need informal conversations, quick feedback, or a sense of what everyone else is doing, the office can be better.

    There are also days when I simply benefit from leaving the house.

    I resent this because it means all those people who say “you’ll feel better if you get out for a bit” occasionally have evidence.

    Finding your own mixture

    I suspect the useful compromise begins by treating this less like a question of identity.

    You do not have to be A Remote Worker or An Office Person.

    You can treat location as another part of how you manage your workload.

    A few things might be worth watching.

    What does the day actually cost you?

    Not just whether you survived it.

    Notice what happens afterwards.

    If an office day is productive but you need the entire evening to recover, that is part of its cost.

    If a home day feels comfortable but you achieve very little because the washing machine, fridge, internet, and sudden urge to reorganise a drawer have formed an alliance against you, that belongs in the calculation too.

    What happens after several days of either environment?

    One day tells you something.

    A pattern tells you more.

    Does a week at home leave you refreshed?

    Or do you become increasingly reluctant to leave?

    Does several days in the office help you settle into a rhythm?

    Or does fatigue accumulate until Friday becomes a matter of staring at Outlook and hoping nobody notices?

    Which tasks work where?

    You may not need one rule for every working day.

    Deep concentration might belong at home.

    Collaborative work might be easier in person.

    Routine admin might work anywhere.

    There is nothing particularly noble about doing a task in the environment least suited to it.

    Are you avoiding discomfort or avoiding damage?

    I find this one difficult.

    Some discomfort gets easier with familiarity.

    Some does not.

    If something feels difficult at first but becomes manageable once you settle in, occasional exposure may be useful.

    If repeated exposure consistently leaves you overloaded, exhausted, or unable to function properly afterwards, simply doing more of it may not achieve much beyond proving that you can suffer repeatedly.

    How much recovery do you need?

    Recovery time is easy to ignore because it happens outside the official working day.

    An arrangement can look perfectly sustainable between nine and five while quietly consuming everything between five and nine.

    That seems like fairly important accounting.

    What are you losing by staying home?

    This will vary enormously.

    Maybe nothing.

    Maybe informal learning.

    Maybe friendships.

    Maybe visibility.

    Maybe confidence in dealing with unpredictable situations.

    Maybe just the strange comfort of complaining about the same printer with another human being.

    It is worth knowing.

    What are you gaining?

    The same applies in reverse.

    Better concentration.

    More control.

    Less sensory overload.

    More sleep.

    No commute.

    More time with family.

    The ability to construct a working environment around how your brain actually behaves rather than how office furniture companies imagine it behaves.

    Those gains count.

    An experiment rather than a verdict

    One thing I am considering for myself is treating office attendance less as an all-or-nothing decision and more as an ongoing experiment.

    Maybe I need regular exposure to the office without needing maximum exposure to it.

    One or two days might maintain familiarity.

    Five days might drain me.

    Zero days for several months might make returning unnecessarily difficult.

    That is only my version.

    Someone else might discover that four office days and one quiet home day works beautifully.

    Someone else might realise the office contributes almost nothing useful to their job and that forcing themselves to attend because they ought to be “more resilient” is just a complicated way of becoming tired.

    Another person might discover that working from home slowly turns them into a slightly feral creature who considers answering the door an unreasonable social demand.

    All valid data.

    The useful part is noticing what happens rather than deciding in advance what ought to happen.

    Keep track for a few weeks.

    Where did you work?

    How productive were you?

    How tired were you afterwards?

    How much did you dread the next day?

    Did you speak to anyone?

    Did you concentrate?

    Did you recover?

    Did you enjoy any of it?

    That last question deserves to be in there somewhere.

    Then change the mixture.

    One more office day.

    One fewer.

    Half-days, if they are possible.

    Office days for meetings and home days for concentrated work.

    Avoid consecutive office days.

    Or deliberately use consecutive days because the first day is always the difficult one and the second is easier.

    There are a lot of combinations between permanently hiding in your house and enthusiastically hot-desking five days a week.

    I’m fairly sure my own answer sits somewhere in that untidy middle.

    I like working from home. I am better at some things there.

    I also suspect I need to keep putting myself into the world often enough that the world does not start feeling impossibly loud whenever I encounter it.

    How often that needs to happen is something I am still working out.

  • A Little Of Nothing. Emphasis on the Nothing.

    A Little Of Nothing. Emphasis on the Nothing.

    Burnout is a funny word for something that feels so completely unfunny when you’re in it.

    At the moment, even putting pen to paper, or more accurately fingers to keyboard, feels harder than it should. Creativity has wandered off somewhere, motivation seems to have gone with it, and most things feel more like chores than choices. The mood is low, joy is proving annoyingly difficult to locate, and there isn’t much spare energy left for turning any of that into something clever, witty, or worth reading.

    So that’s why things are a little quiet here right now. I could probably force myself to write something, but I’m not sure that would help. For the moment, I’m trying to accept that sometimes there just isn’t much in the tank. Hopefully that changes. Until then, this is about as much as I’ve got.

  • Two Wolves? No. Inside Me Are Four Petes

    Two Wolves? No. Inside Me Are Four Petes

    There’s an old story about two wolves fighting inside each of us. One represents kindness, the other anger. The one that wins is the one you feed.

    That’s all very profound.

    Unfortunately, my brain has slashed the internal budget, and I can no longer afford the zoo bills for two argumentative Canis lupus.

    I don’t have two wolves.

    I have four Petes.

    They all live inside my head, they all think they’re in charge, and they hold regular committee meetings. Sadly, nobody ever bothers to appoint a chairperson, so very little gets agreed.

    Meet the Committee

    First, there’s Adult Pete.

    He’s the one who pays the bills, books the dentist, washes the car, remembers to renew the insurance, and insists vegetables are an important part of a balanced diet.

    He’s sensible.

    Nobody likes him very much.

    Then there’s Five-Year-Old Pete.

    He wants to visit every museum, gets ridiculously excited by sweet shops, believes every bookshop deserves “just a quick look”, could happily spend an hour staring at fossils, and firmly believes chores should be postponed until after another game of Minecraft.

    He’s also convinced that pudding is a perfectly acceptable main course.

    Autistic Pete is a man of systems.

    He likes routines. Autistic Pete alphabetises things that don’t really need alphabetising. He becomes mildly irritated if someone uses his favourite coffee mug. He’s already planned what we’re doing next Tuesday.

    It’s currently Saturday.

    And finally, there’s ADHD Pete.

    He has absolutely no interest in Tuesday.

    Or Saturday.

    Or chronology in general.

    He’s currently suggesting we learn Norwegian, buy a new soldering iron, reorganise the bookshelves, write half a blog post, and spend the afternoon researching medieval trebuchets because… well… why not?

    Committee Meetings

    This arrangement presents certain challenges.

    Adult Pete decides it’s time to review the pension.

    ADHD Pete has just discovered lock-picking and won’t stop talking about it.

    Five-Year-Old Pete wants to watch Minecraft videos on YouTube.

    Autistic Pete simply wants everyone to sit down, stop interrupting each other, and quit moving the metaphorical furniture.

    Planning a day out requires unanimous agreement.

    In fifty-six years, unanimous agreement has been achieved approximately never.

    For a long time, I assumed maturity meant eventually becoming one consistent person. I imagined that one day I’d simply know what needed doing and quietly get on with it, without internal debate or distraction.

    Instead, I’ve become a reasonably competent referee and arbitration expert.

    Growing Older Without Growing Up

    I’ve written before about growing old without growing up.

    Perhaps this is why.

    The five-year-old never actually leaves.

    He simply has to negotiate with the adult who now owns a mortgage.

    The more I think about it, the less I believe this is really an article about ADHD or autism.

    It’s about identity.

    We like to imagine that healthy adults are internally consistent. They know exactly who they are, what they want, and why they make the decisions they do. They stride confidently through life without ever arguing with themselves over whether to tackle the washing up or spend three hours learning about medieval castle architecture because one interesting fact led to another.

    I don’t think that’s how people work.

    I think we’re all a collection of competing ideas, instincts, responsibilities, hopes, fears, and impulses. Most people have an internal dialogue.

    Mine just sounds more like a committee meeting where everyone insists they’re the chair.

    Getting diagnosed with autism and ADHD didn’t create those different voices. They’d been there all along. The diagnoses simply handed me a couple of name badges. Suddenly the part of me that craved routine made sense. So did the part that could cheerfully demolish that routine because it had discovered an exciting new hobby before breakfast.

    Perhaps that’s true for all of us.

    We’re not contradictions waiting to be resolved.

    We’re complicated people learning to live with all the different versions of ourselves, each convinced they know best.

    The Bookshop Test

    The other day I wandered into a bookshop intending “just to have a look”.

    Those are among the most dangerous words in the English language.

    Adult Pete quietly reminded me that I already own enough unread books to last until at least the next ice age.

    ADHD Pete had discovered three entirely new interests before I’d even reached the history section.

    Autistic Pete was admiring how beautifully everything had been organised. Whoever decided biographies should be shelved alphabetically deserved a small medal. He’d also straightened three piles of books and answered enough questions from other customers that I suspect at least one of them thought he worked there.

    Meanwhile, Five-Year-Old Pete had wandered off to the science section wearing the expression of someone who’d just discovered dinosaurs for the very first time.

    “LOOK! DINOSAURS!”

    I left with two books I hadn’t intended to buy, a bag of jelly beans from the sweet shop next door, and absolutely no regrets.

    Perhaps growing up was never about evicting the child inside us.

    Perhaps it was never about becoming one perfectly sensible, endlessly responsible adult.

    Maybe it’s about learning to let every version of yourself have a voice.

    Adult Pete makes sure the bills get paid.

    Autistic Pete stops life descending into complete chaos.

    ADHD Pete reminds me that curiosity is very rarely wasted.

    And Five-Year-Old Pete still has the wonderful ability to point excitedly at something unexpected and remind the rest of us that the world is still full of amazing things.

    I wouldn’t want to silence any of them.

    I just try very hard not to let ADHD Pete chair the meetings.

  • 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 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.

  • 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.

  • Small Talk Is TCP Handshaking for Humans

    Small Talk Is TCP Handshaking for Humans

    I have long suspected that small talk is not really about talking at all. I mean, obviously it’s about talking, but it’s not about imparting information or saying anything of actual interest.

    It is, I think, more accurately described as a kind of human protocol negotiation. A lightweight exchange whose purpose is not to transfer meaningful information, but to confirm that both parties are present, functional, and broadly willing to proceed without causing a scene.

    In computer networking terms, it feels rather a lot like a TCP three-way handshake.

    That may sound like an over-complicated way to describe “Morning” and “Busy day?” but I maintain it is exactly the right amount of over-complication.

    The analogy works on several levels at once.

    TCP handshakeHuman small talk
    SYN“Morning.”
    SYN/ACK“Morning. Busy today?”
    ACK“Yeah, not too bad.”
    Connection establishedActual conversation may now proceed

    The actual content is almost irrelevant.

    The handshake exists to establish availability, willingness, compatibility, safety, and communication parameters. Small talk does much the same thing. It is not there to win prizes for insight. It is there to say, in the safest possible way:

    I see you. You seem non-threatening. We may now continue.

    That is quite a useful invention, really.

    It is also, for some of us, faintly bewildering.

    Because my brain has a tendency to assume conversations should do one of three things:

    1. exchange useful information.
    2. explore an interesting idea.
    3. contain at least one genuinely terrible joke.

    Small talk often does none of these things.

    Which is not to say it is pointless. Far from it. It is just that its point is not always the same as the point my brain is looking for.

    That can make it feel a bit like packet loss.

    Some of the signal gets through. Some of it doesn’t. A few words arrive intact, but the important meaning seems to have been dropped somewhere between the intention and the execution.

    The weather is discussed.

    The weekend is mentioned.

    A vague inquiry is made about one’s wellbeing.

    And yet the actual data being transmitted is something like:

    I am safe. You are safe. We may continue this interaction without immediate risk of social collapse.

    That is a rather elegant system when it works properly.

    It is also a system with some spectacular failure modes.

    Failed Handshake

    Sometimes the handshake fails immediately.

    You offer the smallest possible opening.

    “Morning.”

    And the other person replies:

    “Is it? I mean the way the world’s going it might as well be the end of days. The planet’s going to hell in a hand basket and we’re all doomed.”

    At that point the connection has not merely failed. It has been forcibly terminated, the cable has been unplugged, and the router has probably started smoking.

    Connection reset by peer.

    Timeout

    Then there is the timeout problem.

    Someone asks:

    “How are you?”

    and the answer requires a socially acceptable level of detail, emotional calibration, and acceptable honesty.

    My brain, meanwhile, is attempting to calculate whether “fine” is technically accurate, whether “surviving” sounds too bleak, whether “not bad” is too British to be believable (see below!), and whether any response longer than six words will prompt a follow-up I do not have the energy to sustain.

    By the time I have finished this internal analysis, the moment has passed.

    Connection timed out.

    Packet Flooding

    Some people go in the opposite direction.

    You offer:

    “Morning.”

    And they respond:

    “Morning! Did you see that interesting show on TV last night about medieval bridge taxation? Made me think about my current view on plug in solar panels, my advancing years, my neighbour’s cat, and the collapse of the world’s democratic politics systems..”

    That is not a handshake.

    That is packet flooding.

    ADHD can do this rather beautifully. One tiny conversational spark and suddenly a completely unrelated archive of information is bursting out of the firewall at speed.

    Which, to be fair, can sometimes be entertaining.

    It just isn’t small talk anymore. There’s nothing small about it.

    Encrypted Traffic

    Us British people add another layer of complexity, because many of us speak in what is essentially encrypted traffic.

    “Not bad.”

    Not only is this British understatement at its very best, this can mean:

    • life is actually pretty good actually!
    • life is acceptable.
    • life is mildly annoying and could be better.
    • life is a bit of a struggle but let us not make a fuss.
    • a bottomless abyss has opened beneath me, but the kettle still works, so we are continuing cup in hand and trying our best to avoid the hordes of demons spewing forth from this hellish portal.

    That is an extraordinary amount of information to pack into two words.

    It is also one of the reasons small talk can be so difficult to decode. The literal words are only half the message. Tone, timing, context, and cultural expectation carry the rest.

    The protocol is not just words.

    It is inference, and unfortunately, not something I’m particularly good at.

    UDP People

    Then there are people who skip the handshake entirely.

    They are the conversational equivalent of UDP.

    “HELLO STRANGER HERE IS MY INFODUMP OF TRAUMAS, PROBLEMS AND CONCERNS!!.”

    No connection setup.

    No reliability guarantees.

    No orderly exchange of packets.

    Just pure, immediate data transfer with absolutely no regard for conventional protocol.

    This can be alarming, but occasionally refreshing.

    Stateful Firewall

    Autistic masking probably deserves its own category here.

    It can feel a bit like trying to pass through a stateful firewall while manually monitoring every tiny aspect of your own behaviour.

    Eye contact? Adjusted.

    Tone? Checked.

    Facial expression? Calibrated.

    Volume? Sensible.

    Response time? Natural enough to avoid suspicion.

    Internal panic? Well hidden, hopefully.

    The result is not always elegant, but it is functional.. barely.

    NAT Traversal

    Trying to socialise at parties is also very much like NAT traversal.

    You know there is a connection somewhere in there.

    You know the other person is a perfectly ordinary human being.

    You know you are supposed to be able to reach them.

    And yet the routing is somehow wrong, the ports are blocked, and everyone is standing in awkward little clusters pretending not to notice that all communication has become mysteriously more difficult than it should be.

    And when you do get into a cluster, the least said about the actual handshaking the better. (Especially Dave with the sweaty palms!)

    So Why Does Small Talk Exist At All?

    Because it is doing a job.

    A very human job.

    Small talk reduces uncertainty.

    It establishes connection.

    It signals intent.

    It gives both parties a safe place to stand before deciding whether to move into more meaningful territory.

    It is a social compatibility check.

    A “yes, we can talk” exchange.

    A way of saying:

    I am friendly.

    You are safe.

    We may proceed.

    That is actually rather beautiful, when you think about it.

    Even if the words themselves are often about absolutely nothing of consequence.

    Why It Feels So Hard

    For many neurodivergent people, the difficulty is not that small talk is meaningless.

    The difficulty is that its meaning is often indirect.

    It is a social ritual disguised as conversation.

    A lot of the work is happening in the subtext.

    And subtext is a slippery little creature.

    If your brain prefers clarity, precision, and explicit information, small talk can feel like being asked to decode a message written in invisible ink.

    Which, admittedly, is not very helpful.

    The Human Side of the Protocol

    And yet…

    And yet, for all my cantankerous grumbling, I do think there is something lovely about it.

    We are, after all, social animals operating a remarkably fragile but surprisingly effective communication system. Small talk is one of the tiny pieces of software that keeps the whole thing from crashing immediately.

    It is how we ease into each other’s company.

    It is how we test for warmth.

    It is how we say, with minimal risk and maximum politeness, that we are willing to share a moment. You’re lowering your shields and allowing the Klingons to beam aboard.

    That is not nothing.

    In Closing

    So yes, perhaps small talk is the human equivalent of a TCP handshake.

    A few neat little exchanges whose real purpose is not the content, but the connection.

    Sometimes it works perfectly.

    Sometimes it fails immediately.

    Sometimes the packets arrive out of order.

    Sometimes somebody starts talking about medieval bridge taxation or python programming before the connection is even established.

    But when it does work, it lets two strangers become, very briefly, not strangers at all.

    And really, that is quite a clever trick for a few essentially meaningless words and a friendly look over a cup of coffee.

  • 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.