My story, the beginning-- getting stuck and not fitting in. Let me ask you a question. Do you ever feel like you don't fit in? I felt that way when I was a kid. I was the 12-year-old that was happy browsing a forum about a video game. That was my idea of a fun time.

Obviously, I didn't have many friends. I didn't go out and do many things. I stayed in and was on the computer. My world was the computer. And if you took me away from what I knew, I was really sad and really depressed. As I said, I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was 12, and people always ask me what was it like being diagnosed with Asperger's.

Well, one day, I was playing computer games, and the next day, my mom came in and said, hey, you have Asperger's. I just thought, can I get back to my computer game now? But underneath, I was so confused and scared about life, my future, and my ability to succeed. There was nobody to say, what you're feeling is real. There was nobody to say, it's OK to feel this. There was nobody to say, here, let me teach you how to do life.

All they cared about was what year Rome fell and different types of verbs, the stuff that, to be honest, I couldn't care less about. See, when you are trying to survive and get through the day, you don't have the time or emotional capacity to care about different verb types or really anything else that is in the school system. That was the start of the decade of my life where I was shut down. I was defensive. I was disconnected.

Defense mode robs you of your humanity because you feel like you want to connect to people, but you're so internally scared of every single sensation that there's this gnawing emotional hole, and all you can do is constantly try to avoid and compensate for it, avoid the world, and defend against anything that comes near, even things that you wouldn't normally need to defend against, such as a pen. If it makes you uncomfortable at all, if there's any uncomfortable sensation, you want nothing to do with it.

So this is what I was like for a decade of my life. I was in this defensive state. I was in this stuck state, and I was scared. Defense mode affected me on more than just a fear level. It affected me biologically, psychologically, emotionally, and prevented me from having a full life. As someone with Asperger's, you can try to do life all you want. But you're never going to flourish and thrive until you're out of defense mode.

The answer to getting out of defense mode isn't complicated. Defense mode is a state where you are extremely stressed out. The way to get out is to reduce that stress. The concept is simple. The implementation requires consistency, similar to working out. The concept of a push-up is easy. The magic lies in the consistent implementation.

By the way, there is no permanent state of out when it comes to defense mode. Sometimes you are out. Sometimes you are in. The goal is to minimize the time you are in and be able to get out quickly. As far as I'm aware, the only way to permanently avoid stress, anxiety, and emotional intensity is to be dead. That isn't our goal. Our goal is to be resilient against stress so that we can deal with it effectively and efficiently when it shows up in our lives.

So I progress through middle school, somehow, and then I started high school. Sometimes my high school teachers would take me aside and say, Danny, you really need to stop asking questions, because in the real world, people won't accept that, and you aren't going to go far in life.

Once, during one of my IEP, Individualized Education Plan, meetings, the special education director sat down with us and said, point blank, Danny's probably not going to do much in life. He's probably just going to go to city college, and he's probably just going to go to work a part-time job and live at home.

So first of all, screw him. Who is he to dictate what I will and will not do in life? It really frustrates me when someone takes away another person's hope like that. I've heard countless stories from our community, like, when my kid was five, the doctors told me he would be retarded and never learn' to walk or hear us. I've also seen a few TV specials that claim that people with Asperger's don't have empathy or emotions. And therefore, they're just an automaton.

So I checked out. I decided I was done, so done that in my senior year of high school I actually ended up just working in a computer lab that-- fun story-- I didn't even get assigned to. It was there, it needed fixing, and no one else was doing it. I ended up being a self-proclaimed IT guy and setting up all the things. I was in that computer lab every single day of the week, sometimes on Saturdays too, just fixing things, configuring things.

It was this giant mess. There was a Mac OS 10.5 server sitting in the corner that nobody was using. Students didn't have a good way to log in or access their files. So some days, instead of going to English class or Chemistry, I ended up working in that computer lab. And no one stopped me, because at that point, all of my teachers realized that soon I would be out of their hair and it was easier to just let me do my thing as long as I maintained my grades.

My life with video games. Growing up, I spent the majority of my free time playing video games. It was my social life. It was how I learned about the world. It was how I explored different sides of my personality and how I satisfied my curiosity. When I wasn't allowed to play video games, I was reading books about video games, designing video games in my head, and talking about video games.

It seemed to others that I was addicted because that was all I would focus on. But on the inside, I was learning new vocabulary. I was hanging out with friends in the online world. I was creating a safe place to explore what it means to be a human. I was processing the day's events. I was just having fun and exploring. And most importantly, I was actually having an active, engaged, thoughtful learning experience that contributed a large part to my growth and development. It made me the person I am today.

I think a lot of parents don't see the positive benefits of video gaming. All they see are the evils and the negative side, not how video gaming can be a viable rewarding hobby or an extremely lucrative career path. I've seen videos of dads running over their kids' video games with a lawnmower for their own good. Great way to destroy all the trust you have with your son, dad.

Look, video games have good aspects and bad aspects, just like anything in life. When most people worry about balance in terms of playing too many video games, they have a few very valid points wrapped up in a lot of misunderstanding and fear. I don't believe that there is such a thing as too much video gaming. I do believe-- and the science easily supports this-- that there is such a thing as too much sitting and too much staring at a screen.

Too much sitting leads to extremely stiff muscles and a lack of physical coordination. I'm not a physical therapist here to tell you why moving is important. But if you want all the details, I'd suggest asking one. Too much staring at a screen can lead to-- A, trouble going to sleep because the blue light of the screen tricks your body into thinking it's still daytime; and B, nearsightedness, which can make it harder to see in general.

Beyond that, the question I am asking myself every day is, is this serving me? Am I genuinely doing this because I want to or because I'm bored? I realized that after almost two decades of playing video games, killing virtual people no longer appealed to me. Building things no longer appealed to me. The last time I played Roller Coaster Tycoon, I was so focused on it, I started to dream about it. So I stopped and filled my time with other more enjoyable activities.

It took me many years of being an adult to come to these conclusions and make better decisions for my life. And to be honest I still play video games occasionally. They're a great way to connect with friends and explore my interests. But I've also realized that the real world is much more real.

When I was in defense mode, I played video games because it was safe. I could pause the game at any point. And if something bad happened to me, I'd just reset and try again. While the real world doesn't offer those benefits, I am much happier playing an existing in a non-video game world, assuming I have the emotional capacity to do so.

The boat story. I got a boater education card for the state of Washington while living in Denver, Colorado, even though I'd never owned a boat and I'd only been to the state of Washington once when I was 12 and on vacation. So why would I do such a thing? Why would I get a boater education card for a state in which I had never lived for a vehicle which I had never owned?

Well, it has to do with the sentence "do what you can with what you have." It was my goal at the time to live in Seattle and to own a boat. I got a boater education card for the state in which I didn't live for a boat I didn't have, and I had no way to get there. But I understood that the secret to life is that there is no secret. Life is just a recipe. Once you learn how to follow the recipe and have the emotional capacity to consistently implement that recipe, then it gets really easy.

The first step to any recipe is always answering the question, what do you want? In other words, which recipe do you want to follow? I wanted the "live in Seattle and own a boat" recipe. So I started to do what I could with what I had. Even though I didn't live in Seattle or own a boat, there were still logistics I needed to figure out. Where would I live? Where would the boat be? What kind of boat?

So I googled where to put a boat in Seattle. I used Street View to look at the location, and I went on their website. For the boat, I did hours of research on different types of boats available and picked one out. I did all that I could with what I had because I knew that eventually I would reach my goal.

Once you know what you want, step 2 is to go out and get it to the best of your ability. If you really want to go after it, go after it. Get your boater education card. Or if you want to learn how to cook, start cooking. Or if you want to have a girlfriend, you start talking to people.

Now, where a lot of people get tripped up is in the uncomfortable feelings and lack of emotional capacity. I've certainly gotten tripped up there more times than I can count, which is why I stress that it is so important to focus on getting out of defense mode at the same time as going after your dreams.

To give you another example, whenever I wanted to travel somewhere, I would go on the internet and find the flight I wanted, find the hotel, and do all the work and plan the itinerary, regardless of whether I had time and money necessary to make the trip happen and double regardless of whether I had the emotional capacity to handle being somewhere new and eating weird food.

What that did was motivate me to do the work necessary to make the goal a reality. In today's world, the knowledge is the easy part. It's the implementation of that knowledge that gets you where you want to go. So I got my boat and spent many years out on the water with friends having various boating adventures. Now I've moved on. But I always remember that boat because that was the first time I really set my mind towards something, did the work I could to achieve the goal, and eventually managed to succeed because of focus, motivation, and implementation.