Greg Fuqua, Mona Kay, and Scot Simpson recently had a conversation on the Neurodivergent Connections podcast about Autistic special interests and Monotropism and I wanted to share my thoughts.
Greg was very brave to share his story about how he wanted to turn his art special interest into a job and that it ultimately lead to failure, suicidality, and a deep depression. I think everyone should hear it and learn from it and take it as a cautionary tale.
He concluded that due to the high risk of failure, a person’s special interest shouldn’t be their work.
I disagree. Here’s why.
I had a very successful career at Google for 13 years doing my special interests of art and web development. I came in as an intern but I had more expertise and skill in web development than most of my peers. This is because I had spent significantly more of my free time creating, learning, and building websites compared to my peers because I was so fixated on it. And my weird combo of knowing both art and web design gave me a competitive advantage which landed me the job.
I’ve since left Google to build my own business, PaperDemon.com. I have the privilege of being able to combine my special interests of art, gaming, and web development into building something niche for the neurodiverse community.
It’s stressful not making an income right now. I wont lie. There are many days where I ask myself if I should give it up and go back to a corporate job. But I love it, I have a clear path forward to profitability, I am confident I will succeed, and I know my autism offers me a huge competitive advantage. Most businesses fail because people give up. Most people can’t tolerate failure or persist toward a goal as much as I can. And I owe a lot of that to my autism.
Am I a work-a-holic? Most people would say yes.
Is that a bad thing? For me, I think not.
I love my work. When I create, I feel a great sense of accomplishment, and I believe I am fulfilling my life’s purpose and using my unique gifts to make the world a better place. Not only did I make a great living doing it, it also gave me confidence early in my career that I desperately needed as a person with very low self-esteem.
Just because there’s a chance you’ll fail, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth pursuing.
The real lessons are:
Failure is the price you pay for success.
Learn to expect and accept failure. Failure is a great teacher. Learn to overcome perfectionism, and that persistence and practice will eventually lead to success.
Did my passion for my business create conflict in my marriage? Yes. But I did all the things Mona recommended in the video and it still didn’t work.
I was 100% transparent about everything, we set a budget, and every year I came in at or very close to budget, most years I was under budget. But my partner ended up resenting me anyway because I could not meet his unrealistic expectations. (There were a multitude of other problems too)
I am now happily divorced. My relationship with my work is my relationship with my self and it is sacred. If my partner does not understand or support my work, especially after I’ve objectively proven myself to be very capable of succeeding, then they are not the right partner for me.
Also I agree with Scott’s perspective. I really wish I had known about my autism much sooner. I would have reached self acceptance earlier and not tried so hard to be what everyone else wanted me to be.
Great conversation and thank you for posting this Neurodivergent Connections! Watch the video “When Autistic Special Interests Help, and When They Hurt – Monotropism IRL“.