Chapter 17, Finding My Way.

My name is Adrian. I am 32 years old. I'm a person on the spectrum and I'm currently living in New England. When I applied for University, it was as a physics major. This was one of the many times in my life when my eyes were bigger than my stomach. I can give you any number of examples where I thought to myself, oh, that looks cool or I want to do that when I grow up. In that situation, the work came hard and I was not willing to work. Ultimately, that compelled me to change my major to English.

The thing about physics is that you have to really want to do the math. And I simply did not want or have the motivation to do the sheer amount of math. Back then I was also not willing to get out of defense mode and seek the necessary help in order to figure out where I was going wrong. I was stuck in a little bubble, if you will, and I didn't even know it. I ended up switching to English because it was my next best subject. Or at least I thought it was.

In any case, I had hit my ceiling with physics because I was not willing to do the math or take the necessary steps outside my comfort zone in order to get the job done. English was a little more my element. It came a lot more naturally to me, and I did much better there than I did with physics.

Post college and martial arts. After graduating from University, none of the jobs that I had were related to physics or English. That went on for several years, and that bothered me quite a bit. I was not fully comfortable with doing something that I did not see as inline or directly pointing in the direction of a goal that I envisioned for myself related to English, physics, or something of that nature.

The first job I had was an order picker at a warehouse. Pretty much every job I have had has had some aspect of menial labor to it. Behind the cash register, warehouse, factories, et cetera, all of them entry level jobs that could be done by anybody and not specialized to any particular field.

One thing, though, that really changed my life and the way I approach work is martial arts. What it taught me was that if you stick with anything long enough, then you can be willing to roll with the punches. The job I have now is as a recycler at a copper wire manufacturing plant. It isn't that much different from the other jobs I had, but the difference is that I was so much more prepared for this job because of what I learned through martial arts.

I've had more perseverance. I've been more willing to open my mind and accept doing things that I need to do in order to make a living. It has given me the self confidence to do what is necessary even if I am not entirely OK with doing it.

The thing is, before my martial arts mindset, I was afraid that if a job is not what I wanted to do, then I wouldn't be good at it. I had this thought process of I don't want to be here. I have better things to do with my life. Through simply accepting things and rolling with the punches, I have been able to find joy in things, even if they are not my dream thing to do. Now even if I don't have half the future that I imagined, for instance I don't have a place of my own, I'm not married, I don't have my dream job, even if those things never happen, I am much more OK with them not happening.

That said, that doesn't mean I don't have goals or a dream job. I'm still working towards them. Right now my goal is to become a martial arts instructor, but I've placed a lot of emphasis on being OK if that doesn't happen and put a lot of focus on my own self improvement.

Answering the question am I doing what is currently good for me has now become much more important than do I have my dream job. As of right now, I'm planning on sticking with my job at the copper wire manufacturing plant long term and doing martial arts instructor training on the side. Even though that wasn't the original plan, I've realized that I may have to continue to do it for a long while for self supporting reasons.

Advice for others. One of the biggest difficulties for me, and I'm sure it's true for many others on the spectrum, is that when we are in defense mode, we don't want to accept reality if it does not conform to what we had already planned out. Getting past that and getting out of your comfort zone can take a long time. But the thing is that nothing gets done just because you want to do it. You have to be willing to learn things that you don't know and take actual steps to get outside of your comfort zone.

That's a lesson my father tried to teach me when I was growing up. But because I was so deep in defense mode, I didn't learn it until many years afterwards. What finally got me out of my comfort zone was the notion that you don't need to live the dream life in order to live a good or happy life. It's not what you have on the outside that matters. It's how you view yourself on the inside.

I would say to those entering the workforce it is important to know in advance that it is not always going to be easy, but it is going to be much more rewarding if you do the things that are not easy. For example, if you test for a black belt, the test is designed to run you into the ground for several hours to see if you still have what it takes to stay standing at the end. It's not the easiest thing. But if you can stick with it and put in the effort, you'll be so proud of yourself when it's all over.

To close with a physics analogy, it's not as simple as taking an equation out of a textbook, plugging in the numbers, and letting the equation do all the work. Life isn't like that. In physics, whenever we solve problems, we have to take the parameters that we're given and then derive the equation based on those parameters.

In life, we ourselves are the equation. We are the signs, the variables, and the constants. It's up to us to make sure that what is on the other side of the equal sign is a sufficient answer. Life isn't going to give you the equation. We ourselves have to be the equation which solves the problems that we have.

Life is worth living even if it seems like you are never going to land that dream job or live a happy life. You hold the power. You just need to find a way to make the equation work.