Out of control Windmill
Here's a snippet of the song by Sting, 'The Windmills of your Mind'
Never ending or beginning on an ever-spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning, running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind"
So what's that to do with the 'tism, I hear you ask in your non-existent voice? It's six-ish in the morning, and I've not slept especially well. Brain wouldn't shut the fuck up last night. You know, I've been getting into woodwork but as with everything new in life, I'll swallow all the information over a period of time, and leave the brain alone to process it - recipes for an example. Well I swallowed too many woodworking designs... processing. all. night. long.
For me (and I suspect some other autistics), this can sometimes be a real advantage, allowing a gestalt leap ahead in terms of subject / field knowledge, skipping months of real learning as the extra 40% kicks in, processing, storing, re-working, mixing, cross-propagating with everything else ever etc... I know from my own standpoint I can learn learn learn learn, get completely off my face drunk, and do an exam the following day with eyebrow raising high marks; first time this happened was Computer Studies A-Level, where it yielded an a*. Mostly this isn't available for neurotypicsls. It's a royal pain in the arse when this backfires and won't allow downtime. Yes, I'll hopefully be functional today, but the brain has already used its quota of energy so I'll be borrowing energy from future me, and trying to catch up with naps - zombie mode anyone? Fuck.
Today I'm aiming to do anything other than woodworking stuff, hopefully the brain will loosen off some, and will spread its efforts out so I'll be able to sleep some. The brain will do the keep-awake thing and process a lot of stuff when I'm supposed to be sleeping, this even happens with TV shows. If I've watched a whole bunch of episodes, it'll process away, not dreaming, but running simulations based on the shows' universe. The TV show processing isn't as bad as what happened last night, but still there.
An example from around a decade ago is learning project management. I went on a three day course for that one, it was crazy, having never done project management I was in a class of 20 actual Project Managers - people who were doing this for a living - I'm just an IT Guy, right - nothing to do with Project Management. The first day on these courses is always wibble, getting to know you, that kind of crap. A day of learning gets shoved in the middle, and on the third day, it's an hour or so of questions, and then an exam. You're expected to have some prior knowledge or substantial practise in the subject matter.
Day two, the learning day. I ended up in a hotel getting completely smashed off my face on vodka and cider (yes, I mixed, and that's hard cider for those who don't know). Turned up on day three, hungover as a racoon on an entire bin of fermented bananas, and passed the exam; not only did I pass the exam, but got the highest mark in the group of actual fucking project managers.... there's the 40% extra - and I was undiagnosed at the time. Yes, now I'm a qualified Project Manager.