#(of course my OCD means I may learn the lesson but still be unable to change the need to get an A++ in a pass/fail course lol)

[help-me-find-a-name-please-lol]

help I need career advice.

on the one hand I can keep trying to get a job in IT in my ongoing struggle to break into a new industry. these jobs, if I ever land one, will no doubt be entry-level pay and a lot of grunt work, plus potentially arduous car travel all over the region, in a field of IT I don't even really care about necessarily. on the plus side, I get something relevant on my resume, some references/referees in the field, and get to work and network with some people who can maybe help me get to where I want to be. one of the jobs (the one with travel) is only 2 days a week, so the money will suck, but I'll have time to work on my own projects.

VS.

a job currently going at my local council to be the coordinator of the vet clinic and the community programs aimed at improving the responsible animal care and management in the city. as an experienced veterinarian I have immediate skills I can apply to this, plus a thousand and one ideas to revolutionise pet care education. it pays significantly more than I ever got paid as a vet, and more than the IT jobs I feel I have a reasonable chance of getting. BUT I am terrified that it will mean I'll be responsible for managing the budget of the council's vet clinic and animal shelter, and deciding the number of animals that get saved vs put down. (my city gets no support from RSPCA, there's only the council pound and 2 volunteer rescue organisations). I'm worried that the vet clinic management side will completely consume all of my time and leave me no room to implement my desired drastic changes to pet care education. I left the veterinary industry to salvage my mental health and don't want to get badly caught up again. I'm also worried all of my new IT skills will languish and I'll never get closer to launching a career in this industry. but otoh, a lot of the stuff I want to do with IT involves trying to bring about change to improve the lives of pets ...

wwyd???

[gaiatheorist]

“We’re all on the spectrum.”

One of my old managers had evidently heard the phrase ‘On the spectrum’ in relation to autistic spectrum disorders, and decided to use it randomly in relation to anyone he found a bit odd. Head-fuck there, because one of the many and varied indicators of ASD is a person deciding that they are ‘right’, and everyone else is either like-them, or wrong. My linear-logical flow-chart head has decided that the former manager in question wasn’t autistic, he was just a bully. (That’s why I had to ‘boss’ him, to show him that, despite him earning three times what I did, I wasn’t going to show him my belly. That didn’t entirely work to my advantage, because I ended up with a lot of additional workload, “Just cast your eyes over this for me?” I’m a pedant of a proof-reader.)

I have been guilty, in the past, of using a similar phrase, but in a contextually correct manner. Similar, not that lazy, throw-away ‘all on the spectrum’, mine was more nuanced “If you look hard enough at anyone, you’ll find traits consistent with autism.” Boring, procedural side-waffle, that to be diagnosed with an ASD, you have to fulfil the ‘triad impairments’, ever-shifting, but generally grouped into communication, social interaction, and restrictive or repetitive behaviours. (Damn and blast, I wrote an absolutely stunning overview of some ASD training I had at work in about 2003, that’ll be lost now.)

Lazy stereotypes abound in relation to autism, that we’re ‘all’ Rain-man, that we’re ‘all’ unable to socialise, or form attachments, that we’re ‘all’ idiot-savant, with some super-power sort of skill. Autism is not astrology, we’re not ‘all’ watching out for falling pianos, or expecting good news from afar because we’re labelled ‘Virgo’, or ‘Leo.’

In the same way as it being impossible to be ‘a bit OCD’, or ‘a bit pregnant’, a person can’t be ‘a bit autistic’, you’re either on the spectrum, or you’re not. I once worked with a student, and, after literally years of trying to access the right support for him, his Mother casually dropped into conversation the fact that he’d been seen by an educational psychologist, who had suggested ‘borderline autistic traits’. Puberty hit, his hormones went haywire, and we had a student displaying a plethora of traits-consistent-with-autism, but, because there was no formal record of an AS diagnosis, we had to start from square one, in a chronically under-funded CAMHS system. Numbers aren’t my thing, but I think he had five ‘allocated’ workers in a period of about a year and a half. I pushed through his Education and Health Care Plan, which was way above my pay-scale, I badgered CAMHS to keep trying, to accept that this boy really wasn’t coping, and said he was ‘fine’ because he thought that was the ‘right answer.’ He wasn’t the same as the boy who threw his bag up trees, and hid under tables. He wasn’t the same as the girl who screamed. He wasn’t the same as the boy who would spend hours walking around trees when he should have been in lessons, or the boy who genuinely believed he was Dennis the Menace.  

Over the years, I worked with hundreds of children, possibly thousands, some had confirmed diagnoses of ASD, some showed multiple traits, but had no diagnosis. Some, we managed to process through the convoluted and complex CAMHS teams for interventions, some we didn’t. Personally, I slipped through the diagnostic process at school because my traits were mostly productive, and the unproductive ones were attributed to other factors. (I’m smirking, at the memory of the Child Psychologist trying to use a visualisation technique with me. “Imagine the bad man in a bubble, imagine him floating far, far away, becoming smaller, and smaller until he’s gone.” “Yeah, no, the bubble has burst, and now everything is covered with him.” You can’t put a person in a bubble. I used visualisation techniques with some students, the undiagnosed-ASD ones couldn’t do it.)

My current verbal diagnosis of ASD makes sense. (Lazy stereotype about autistic people craving order- most humans crave order.) It also makes sense that other-issues historically have muddied the water, and that more recent issues have made the situation even more complex. Migraines, sensory issues, IBS, PTSD, sporadic anxiety and depression, then brain injuries. It also makes sense that, as a high-functioning female, I was able to mimic and mask, to work around my difficulties as not to burden other people. Until I wasn’t. The masking and passing always took additional effort, as the second neuro-psychologist phrased it ‘At what cost?’ The brain injuries made it very clear that I had multiple sensory issues, because I had to re-learn my masking behaviours, it wasn’t that the brain injuries had ‘caused’ the issues, they’d always been there, I just had more available cognitive capacity to conceal them. I’ve always had issues with ‘smells’, my brother used to buy ‘Pacers’ sweets, and then breathe the spearmint-smell onto me, knowing perfectly well it would trigger a migraine, that was before 1985, I remember the sweet-shop. Bright lights, flickering lights, even the noise light-bulbs make, I can tell when I’m really unwell, because I can feel the heat from light-bulbs on my face. ‘Scratchy’ fabric in clothes, or clothes that are too tight around my throat, garish patterns on clothes make my eyes feel sick, the ex found it hilarious that I referred to most of his ‘going out’ shirts as ‘clothes that would give me a migraine from the other side of the room’, it wasn’t funny. (Argh! The DAMNED striped shirts that the m-i-l insisted on buying him, I was the only one in the house that ever ironed anything, ironing striped shirts made me feel nauseous.)

I’ve never been a big fan of being touched, except in certain circumstances, first aid courses were a nightmare, and I’m that one who freezes rigid when people try to hug me. Lazy stereotype, which Tim Minchin knows not to be true, “If you have this vaccine, you’ll get autism, and you WON’T LIKE HUGS!” I’d totally let Tim Minchin hug me. That ‘could’ be attributed to the PTSD, there are reasons I’m not much of a hugger or a kisser, but that doesn’t necessarily explain my aversion to touch-in-general.   

Everyone is not on the autistic spectrum, people may exhibit traits consistent with autism, but that doesn’t make them ‘a bit autistic’, my ex wouldn’t eat sandwiches if the ingredients were in the ‘wrong’ order. He wouldn’t drink out of blue mugs, and he had several million hobbies, and obsessions,  my loft and shed are still full of his crap, He wasn’t autistic, he was just a prat. My step-father wanted my mother to keep the house to his very high standards, which caused arguments, but he wasn’t autistic, my mother was just a slattern. My father had an over-inflated idea of his own importance, and all-who-opposed-him-were-wrong. I worked with a teacher who brought the same sandwich for lunch every day, strawberry jam, no butter, actually, thinking about her communication style, she might have been autistic. I’ve worked with people who are incredibly neat, with people who became genuinely distressed if anyone moved things on their desk, I’ve worked with people who couldn’t read body-language, or would bang on about their chosen topic, and not notice people virtually climbing out of the windows to escape.  In isolation, these behaviours, habits, and choices do NOT mean that the individual is ‘on the spectrum’, they’re just a bit odd. (Odd as in peculiar, not as in ‘Oppositional Defiance Disorder’, that’s a whole different kettle of worms.)