“I am on the higher functioning end and have had people comment on walking slow, not being flexible enough, etc.  I would be glad to share how I got disability with a lot of patience, a lawyer, and the effects of our condition such as anxiety, depression, and fatigue. You have to have some detailed notes etc.  Once you get turned down you can get a lawyer at no cost up front -  comes out of lump sum disability payment.

I volunteer right now and would like to have a job but after years of not being able to hold on and my age, now it will be hard.  I am a dedicated and committed employee. It is just on the high functioning end.  People want to ask what is wrong and instead I get fired.  I got social security so I can have the disability protection that at the time could help me keep a job, due to past harassment from employers.  You have to stay the course.

Texas is not the best place for help.  I went to the re-hab folks and was told I was too old.  They cannot help.  I would be glad to share my process more,  that started when I was a kid.”

photo from www.autismparents.net

I have sought and received excellent career counseling but sadly found no career ideas with them.

One light is here: Socrates Cafe. For about 6 years now I have been facilitating two such groups and am told by the long-attending participants that I am especially good at it. What I do is ask good questions of people which results in good answers. I also make sure people don’t talk too much nor too little. And when someone is speaking I make sure they have fully expressed themselves before anyone else gets to speak.

No one does this for a living. Many skilled people do it as a part of their living (journalists — DO NOT ask me to cover a town hall meetings; managers — I dread the thought of disciplining employees, Chairpersons of the Boards — yeah, right) but because this is my “special interest”  I find any job that merely includes group facilitation to be uninteresting.

I would be thrilled beyond imagination if you can help me.

I have been home with the kids for 20 years now, and we homeschool. We love it. Three of our boys are very quirky, and our oldest has had great difficulty. He attempted university, but came back home after a semester. He is now going to community college, has just moved into an apartment, and is working PT. He has great difficulty finding and keeping jobs, too, as he also has fibromyalgia, and is in pain a lot of the time. There are a lot of challenges in life, but we just take it one day at a time. Peace to you all — stay positive, and continue to reach out and seek help!

It was then that Tom, a former employee at the mental hospital showed up with an idea of starting a custom screen printing shop manned by the mentally disabled. I loved the idea! It meant that, for once, not only would I get a job in spite of being disabled, I would have a job because I was mentally disabled. I jumped at the chance.

I spent the next fourteen years cleaning the company tools after a print job and was bored to death. I’d have quit long ago, but my psychotherapist assured me I could only work at a job that allowed for mental deficits, and the one I was at was the only one of its kind.

Finally, I decided to have some surgery I’d been putting off for years, which put me out of my hated job for about six months.

A couple of years earlier, Tom, who established the place, had sold it to an organization for the mentally retarded and was very dissatisfied with the way we were treated, so had established a competing new place, this time for autistic people, which I am. After having been out of work and not wanting to go back to that drag of a job, I jumped for Tom again, as I had a decade and a half before

I now work on a computer as the company marketer and sales person. I make no more than minimum wage for eight hours a week and love every minute of it!”

- contributed by Lorie

- contributed by Scott in Texas