04/30/2026
April is autism awareness (acceptance) month.
I wanted to take the opportunity to speak a little about how it shows up for me as an autistic adult and business owner. It’s not something I do a lot, but with all the harmful rhetoric, I think it’s important.
The eye contact thing. I don’t make a lot of eye contact, and it’s mostly because it’s far easier for me to access the files in my brain when I’m not getting a lot of visual stimulus. If I’m not looking into your eyes, that is not a reflection of my attentiveness or lack there of.
You might notice that I seem at ease and chatty when I’m in the store, and if you see me out in public, I may seem uncomfortable or avoidant. It’s not personal. There are a couple of things going on there. The first is that my AI facial recognition software is buggy. I have a hard time recognizing people unless I see them daily and then if you get a haircut or change something else about your outward appearance, it might throw the software off further. The other thing is that I have a lot of scripting set up for interactions within the shop. When I step out of the store, those scripts are no longer useful and my social interactions tend to feel strained. I don’t really want to know about the weather or sports. I’m more interested in what makes you tick deep down and most of those short interactions just don’t let me get that far 😂
I am a direct communicator. This gets me in some hot water. Direct tends to translate to angry, upset, hostile, etc. When I write emails, I go back through and add a calculated number of niceties and exclamation marks so that my tone is more acceptable to the average person. If I don’t, it’s “just the facts ma’am” and people think I’m being rude.
One of favorite parts about being autistic is my inability to self censor when I see something is unjust. It does create some barriers for me socially, but I will absolutely be the person in the room who points out what everyone sees (at least I think they do) but won’t mention. Nothing changes when no one talks about what’s wrong. This is the part of my personality that people might describe as rigid. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
Continued in comments