20 x 20 hindsight or warning lights in the rearview mirror.

It didn't really occur to me until today that, as an Aspergian male going to work in libraries, I am entering a world populated and managed largely by neurotypical (NT) women.

The flashing red warning lights are now quite blinding in my philosophical rear-view mirror as I look backwards through time.

My ability to relate to neurotypical (NT) women on any level has been historically not promising, to put it mildly. NT male-female communication is challenging enough. Throwing an AS diagnosis into the mix "turns it up to eleven", so to speak.

I left a job that was damn near ideal for me as an Aspie (as a Medical Travel Assistance Coordinator for AIG International Services) and entered what turned out to be a goddamn minefield of intrigue, misunderstanding and dirty poker politics.

In part because my well-meaning mum thought the AIG job was "beneath me" and that "someone so smart" as me should have a better paying, more respectable job. I did come to embrace the idea of librarianship for myself eventually...but I'd be lying if I denied that part of my motivation was just to make mum finally shut up about my career choice. If I could become a librarian just like her, she'd have no further grounds to gripe about me, or so I had naively reasoned.

Gawd, some days I just want to crawl under a rock and literally die of embarrassment.