I’ve never had many friends my own age. It’s challenging for me to relate to my peers and I naturally gravitate toward older and younger people. I find them more interesting, more patient, and more than anything - less interested in “cool”. I’ve never been cool. But this has always suited me fine.
January 2022 I found myself burnt out. After getting my Art Business Master’s degree at Sotheby’s in London I spent a few years doing internships at various prestigious contemporary art galleries in London and finally managed to land a job as the executive assistant to the gallery owner. Now, this all sounds positive when framed like this, however, I was struggling.
I was taking a handful of ADD medications throughout the day and a mix of anti-anxiety and sleeping medications every night to maintain the appearance of being "normal". Not only was I adjusting to the new responsibilities of the role in a very competitive work environment, but the sheer amount of energy I was expending in order to attempt to decode all the unsaid social rules of a professional environment was debilitating.
Having grown up in Miami, gone to boarding school in Toronto and outside of Toronto, university in Los Angeles, and then living in London, I had managed to gather a basic understanding and work within these unsaid social rules in 3 different countries. However, the professional work environment was a totally different ball game. It was not one I had been exposed to personally or via my parents and was a completely new landscape I was unprepared to navigate.
I spent hours and hours pouring over books such as Principles by Ray Dalio, The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels by Michael D. Watkins, HBR Guide to Office Politics by Harvard Business Review, Karen Dillon. As insightful as I found all these books, I continued to struggle to connect with my colleagues and found myself the easy target. I continued to persevere by reading books such as, Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers (A NICE GIRLS Book) by Lois P Frankel and Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Nell Scovell and Sheryl Sandberg but was still floundering.
Finally, I stumbled upon Asperger’s Syndrome Workplace Survival Guide by Barbara Bissonnette. This book finally had the information I hadn’t even realised I was missing. This was my first hint that I might be Autistic.