A friend who is the mother of a young autistic boy has posted a picture of her son meeting the family’s new pet, a golden retriever puppy. She writes that her son “demonstrates the appropriate way to greet a new pet: by smelling it, of course.”

My response was;

I’ve always enjoyed the smells of (some) animals. Not fish, though. Anything that smells fishy (including seaweed) literally turns my stomach. Skunks, though, yum! Dogs and cats — nothing like getting my face into their fur! I love the way horses smell — it’s one of the joys of horseback riding. I think many autistics have a special connection with animals, and pets can be comforting and true friends.

Many, many years before I was diagnosed, I had a friend say to me, “You’re the only person I know who asks a dog a question and then waits for an answer!” I told that to another friend, who added, “You’re the only person I know who would understand the answer!”

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Pets are important to many people, of course, not just to autistics. Still, I think they may play a special role for those of us who have had trouble feeling accepted by our human peers. Pets seem to give unconditional love, and that is rare for us to find.

I think I will reread the story “Happiness is a Warm Puppy” and give some thought to the special role that pets have played (and continue to play) in my life. I have many other things to write about first, but I’ll circle back here at some point and expand on these thoughts.

As I write this, my cat Tigger (my father used to read us the Winnie the Pooh stories, and they were my absolute favorites!) came into my office and jumped up on my desk, as if to say, why did you leave the bed so early?

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A later addition:

A friend of my friend wrote, “My son has been know to try to ‘bite’ our puppy back as well. Literal thinking, I guess… 🙂”

and I responded, “Interesting. Biting back has nothing to do with literal thinking, in my mind. It is an instinctive behavior that animals have to establish boundaries and dominance. I see it all the time in my horses and cats.

It might just be imitative behavior, searching for affection, trying to be like the other. My cats like to nibble on my fingers for some reason, so I let them, as long as they don’t hurt me. If they bite too hard I yell “ouch” and they stop, and apologize. Again, it’s simply a matter of setting boundaries.

I don’t know if you ever read “The Horse Whisperer” but that book describes what I knew intuitively. The best way to get a horse (or any other animal, including humans) to do what you want is to become friends. We all have an urge to please others, and, as they say, you can attract more flies with honey than with vinegar. (No one ever explained to me why you would want to attract flies — now, *that’s* literal thinking!)

So, the biting could be a lot of things, but I don’t know how it could be “literal” if there are no words involved!“

Regular readers of my blog (and I know I have at least 2 or 3 — or so they claim!) will know that I have obsessed lately with my speculation that Steve Jobs was autistic.

Every community likes to have its heroes, and I’d like to claim Jobs as one of ours. Whether or not he was autistic, he is still a hero to me for all that he accomplished. Not every genius is autistic, any more than every autistic is a genius. We have already claimed Einstein, and rightly so! There are many others.

One of the things that has fascinated me about Jobs is how nearly every description of him (and I’ve read many, only some of which I reference in my post) talks about his perfectionism. Here’s an example, by Malcolm Gladwell. One trait does not alone make for a diagnosis, I realize, but one could hardly be autistic, I believe, without a tendency toward being a perfectionist.

So, view this short entry as the beginning of an essay on perfectionism, and a place for me to add/subtract/edit my thoughts as I develop them. Here’s what started me thinking about this topic today:

I finished a painting project in my living room (pictures below). House painting, that is, not artistic painting — I have no talent for that! It was the last piece of a larger project to repaint my entire dining room/living room area (no wall separates them). It was a 2-person job, and I did only a small part of it (in terms of surface area). The room is approximately 15′ x 30′ and there are two beams (wooden coverings of supporting metal I-beams) that run the 15′ way. There are two windows that are about 9′ long and maybe 4′ high, that are divided into 3 panels (that open out), with 6 lights in each.

In addition, there are a couple of built-in bookcases, and (of course) walls and the ceiling. About a month ago, all that was left was one beam (I had painted the other — and nothing else!) and one window. I agreed I would do those two things. Well, of course, I’ve had lots of excuses — snowstorms, travel, etc.; but, truly, it wasn’t a huge project. Still, I find such work intimidating.

One day, I painted the second beam. Not too bad. It went well, looked good, and took me only an hour or two. I figured I could knock off the window in a couple of hours or so. Wrong!

On a bright, sunny, warm day, I got out all the tools and supplies and tackled the leftmost part. By the time I had finished the entire left panel and surrounding woodwork, an hour and a half had passed, and I was exhausted! Besides the physical discomfort of raising my hands above my shoulders (I have ancient rotator cuff injuries in both shoulders), the work required intense concentration on very small pieces of wood, and my attention span can extend, when challenged, to about ten minutes. [I sense another post coming up “On Why ADHD and Autism are Indistinguishable”!]

So, realizing that I could not do another panel before dark, and feeling somewhat disappointed with the quality of my work (it was not nearly as easy as painting the broad, flat surfaces of the beams!), I threw in the towel (or the paint rag, as the case may be).

Another day, I did the middle panel, and had the same feeling of disappointment. I just didn’t know what the problem was; whether the paint was getting old and thick, whether the brushes needed to be replaced, whether the quality of the wood was somehow different, whether the fact that is was a window meant that it was more weathered, some or all of the above plus other things? Anyway, I wasn’t happy with the quality of my work.

Today, I finished the project. Same pain, same complaints. I tried to adjust the outcome by letting parts of it dry and then going over it again. A bit better, but NOT PERFECT!

Here’s a shot of the finished product, showing part of one beam and a section of the window:

The entire window, from a different angle:

Tigger demonstrates his keen interest in my project:

Once I was done, I had a great feeling of satisfaction. It was truly a noteworthy feat that I had stuck it out; persevered until it was all done. I hear the chorus out there: “What’s the big deal?” Well, for me, it is. I have abandoned many projects and left them undone because they were not going as well as I had expected.

So, I stepped back to evaluate what I had done. It looked pretty good. How would I rate my own work? Well, that would depend on your standard. If your standard is, “Does it look a lot better than it did when you started?” then the answer is “Heck, yeah!”

If your standard, like mine, is perfection, and the question is “Is it perfect?” then the answer is, “Heck, no!”

So, how do I rate my performance? I failed. To make it more personal, I am a failure.

If your standard is perfection, you are destined for a lifetime of disappointments. Yet, it can also be a driving force, propelling you on to great heights, as seems to have been the case with Steve Jobs. Evidently, Jobs found a salve in Buddhism, in Zen meditation. I have found a path to acceptance in many ways, and yoga has been an important one. I have learned to respect my limitations. I have also worked hard at appreciating my accomplishments, and to not dwell on the things undone. That does not come easily to me, and I think that is part and parcel of my autism. It is so hard to see the glass as half full. It is worth the effort.

Update on November 14:

Yesterday, I finished bringing Quicken up to date through July. Only 3 more statements to go before I actually know how much money I have on hand! AND I finished a painting project! What is going on here? Am I growing an Executive Function? Ω

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So proud of myself today! I just reconciled (on Quicken) my February bank statement. I haven’t yet received my November statement, so technically I wasn’t quite ten months behind, but close enough!

Now that I’ve broken the ice-jam, I will be able to focus on this project, and bring myself up to date in short order. It’s one of those chores I hate to do, so I put it off till tomorrow, which turns into a week, then a month, then several months; until I have very little idea of just how much money I really have on hand.

This has both practical and psychological penalties. I become paralyzed when it comes time to pay some big bills, because I’m afraid that I might write a check that’s too large for my bank balance. Then, I get anxious about the possibility of falling behind on important obligations (like my property tax, for example), and this leads to further paralysis and avoidance of the whole issue. My tax bill is here? Okay, I guess it’s time to do some yardwork!

Why is this so difficult for me? After all, I made my living as a financial analyst! I am a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), which in the investment industry carries about the same weight as an MBA (maybe more!). I have a graduate degree in economics. I published extensively on all kinds of investment subject; stocks, bonds, international diversification, security valuation, pricing of futures, forecasting foreign exchange rates, and on and on.

Well, the essential difference is, I think, that my mind can grasp financial theory; I can study equations and play with them until they become friends, I can visualize probability distributions in my head, and predict how they will change if parameters are modified. In fact, I loved doing this, and found it fascinating, stimulating, and satisfying.

But, balancing my checkbook? How boring! I mean, who really cares; it’s such a pedestrian thing to do! Sorta like washing the dishes or vacuuming. Sure, I like living in a clean space, but if it’s a bit messy, it doesn’t bother me because I can visualize what it looks like when it’s neat and clean, and that’s enough for me.

Well, all of that makes a nice story, and parts of it may even be amusing, but it’s not necessarily fun to live this way; it is a great source of anxiety for many reasons. One is a sense of personal failure. I should be able to keep track of my personal finances. I know how to do it, and I know it’s important, so why don’t I do it very well?

As I’ve learned more and more about my autism, I’ve come to forgive myself for lapses like this. I now realize that using what psychologists call “executive function” is very difficult for me. I can set priorities in my mind; I know that keeping track of my bank balance is more important than raking leaves, yet I don’t “execute” those tasks in that order.

I am going to think and write more about this topic, so stay tuned for updates. For now, let me acknowledge that I have come to realize that I need help (my own version of a 12-step program, perhaps), and I have sought that out. But I also realize that I must take some personal responsibility for doing what I know is important.

I recognized this some time ago, and resolved to do something about it. I came to the understanding that I had always lived an undisciplined life, and I vowed to change that. Yet, it is difficult to change behavior patterns developed over a long lifetime. Still, I know I can do it, and I shall! I call this “no more lilies” and have written this elsewhere:

My philosophy of life was a lot like Alfred E. Newman; “What, me worry?” Or, more elegantly, as expressed in these words from the Sermon on the Mount:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. … Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

… Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.“

For most of my life, whenever I was feeling down and out (which was often), I would simply remind myself that somehow, things seemed to work out.

More anon!

Update on November 5:

I have now listened to the replay, and am totally favorably impressed with the job that John Dankosky did in directing the conversation. He was able to involve many callers in the discussion, and gave each panelist a chance to respond. I, of course, am not a totally unbiased observer, but I do believe the professionalism on display here deserves some kudos!

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I haven’t yet had time to listen to this radio show from yesterday, which was a lot of fun for me.

There were three other panelists (as well as a call-in participant), and the host, John Dankosky, did an excellent job of fielding call-in questions and farming them out to the four of us.

I’ll have more to say once I have had time to listen and to read the comments that have been made.