A Very Expensive Lesson

When one learns the limits one's handicap places upon oneself, that's one hell of a thing to learn. Learning about it by starting and failing at a business is quite the dark night of the soul. We didn't always know what to call my autism but everyone always knew something was off about me and wondered, nervously, just how deep the rabbit hole of problems this seeming fact would cause for me. Long before I got my official diagnosis at the age of 27, I knew there would be three major questions about what I could achieve in my life. Could I have friends? This seemed doubtful until college, but hasn't been a problem since then. Would it be possible for me to have romantic love and a family of my own. The track record here is largely a train wreck, but my current dating situation seems to offer some hopeful signs. Is it possible for me to hold down a job of some description and become financially independent? Much blood, sweat, and tears have gone into a meaningful attempt to answer this question and I think I have reached a sadly definitive answer of, "no." Maybe in another article, past or future, you'll get something like a detailed account of what exactly about my autism makes me unemployable, but I'm not concerned about that now. All I want to focus on here is the experience of having to make that final acceptance of my unemployability.

I don't know if you can imagine it or not, what it is to be a 33-year-old man who's completely incapable of earning a living. For me, it's mostly a mental experience. Not being and not wishing to claim to be one of the truly unfortunate autistics out there with no resources or support system, I will say that I live very comfortably and will likely be able to do so the rest of my life. We all know there are autistics like me, not to mention far lower-functioning ones as well, without support systems or resources. If I were in their shoes, I don't know that I'd survive it. Either I'd die of the elements or by my own hand. No one tells you you're unemployable as an autistic, unless you're low-functioning enough that there is simply no other conclusion to be reached. This is a conclusion you come to on your own from many years of pounding your head up against a brick wall. You fail over and over again for various reasons and you keep moving to careers that seem to avoid the problems you encountered in the past. Finally though, you've tried everything you could think of and still failed. So many levels of failure are present in a person who is unemployable that the shame is simply overpowering. Imagine looking back on every question you've ever gotten about what you want be when you grow up and answering, "nothing." Make no mistake, when you can't work, that's exactly what you are and you know it in your bones.

There will never come a time in my life when I am self-sufficient. I will always need to rely on resources I inherited, the income of a spouse, or the government dole. However, I am here and may as well make the best of things, which is why I write this blog and at least try to do something useful and worthwhile with my time and talents. Though I suppose I can see no other way that I could've learned that I was completely unemployable than start my company and prove to myself that I could not work for anyone, not even myself, because I simply am too disabled to run a business, I still wish I hadn't done it. Failing at owning the company was a very expensive lesson, and one that will rumble through the remaining time I've left. That lesson teaches me to keep my dreams very small and my ambition nonexistent. Maybe I dream that this blog or my other writing could make some money, but only in the sense that I dream of getting a hot oil massage from Kirsten Dunst. Certainly, I dream of having a wife and family, along with all the joy and wonderful complexity that brings to life. When it comes to dreaming of a career and the freedom that financial independence from that career though? No. Thus ends the professional ambitions of Frank Coffman Bailey. Here endeth the lesson.

-Frank

Ten Points Of Contention

I am often told of the merits of an intellectual and moderate faith. It's an old canard and, since I keep encountering it via people who have quite a bit of education to back up their claims, it merits thought. Said thought has led me to conclude that there are certain elements that must be present for me to consider a religion moderate. As an autistic, clarity is something I need the way a vampire needs blood, so, in order to do my best to clarify matters, I shall lay out ground rules. Everyone from the author of the pentateuch to David Letterman has known lists sound more impressive when they are rendered in increments of ten. So, that in mind, here are then things that must not be present in your religion for me to consider it moderate. For stylistic reasons, I'll be listing them in a pseudo King James syntax.

1. Thou shalt not believe followers of any religion other than your own (or no religion at all) are going to be punished for it after death.

2. Thou shalt not believe that the only way to have morals and ethics is through your religion.

3. Thou shalt not believe that any other faith constitutes worship of Lucifer or similar demonic forces in disguise.

4. Thou shalt not believe martyrdom or indulgence of any kind are automatic paths to a blissful afterlife.

5. Thou shalt not believe in conversion either by the sword or any other form of coercion.

6. Thou shalt not believe in demonic possession or that demonic beings can live in inanimate objects such as roleplaying games, heavy metal albums, or entire buildings. 

7. Thou shalt not believe in special legal privileges for your religion unavailable to other religions or secular people.

8. Thou shalt not believe your religious law supersedes secular law.

9. Thou shalt not believe in faith healing to the extent of foregoing medical treatment, especially in the case of one's children.

10. Thou shalt not believe blood sacrifice, human mutilation, or other violence are indispensable elements of your religion. 

Keep in mind, I'm not necessarily calling things on this list evil, although I think some absolutely are. They just make one a religious fundamentalist or extremist.

-Frank

College Is In Its Twilight

Some of my favorite time of my adult life was college and I consider the experience to be a grand one full of noble intention. So it's hard for me to admit that college as we know it is probably on its way out. It was originally only for the elite, but it made no small amount of sense that, as the world became more complicated, a more complicated education was going to be required by more of the people than ever before. There was a time when that was enough and parents across the country figured that a college education was necessary to good career prospects. What we're seeing now in universities and colleges across the country is simply a riding of the inertia of that mindset. None of this should come as any surprise. How hard does your average B.A. recipient work and how much money do they, or their benefactors, spend in order for them to arrive at the end of the four-year journey, only to be told that their degree does not matter in the slightest? About the best you can see, and that graduates these days hear, is something along the lines of, "Well, it's a baseline everybody has to have," or, "You'll be ever MORE screwed without it." Being a baseline everybody is required to have won't save college forever because, eventually, enough generations will have realized how worthless their own degrees were to stop being biased towards people with them. If you've got a young person with a degree, a few summer internships, and lots of participation in extracurricular activities versus a high school graduate of the same age who's been waiting tables and working temp jobs since high school, the college graduate is going to win most of the time right now. Sooner than most think, the only difference most employers will see between these two is the high school graduate has less debt, has a more proven work ethic, and has gained a greater variety of applicable skills.

Part of the reason college has hung on for so long is that it's a clear path of what you're supposed to do when you grow up. Going to college was presented to me in the same spirit that, "Learn to use to potty," or, "Learn to drive a car," were at earlier ages. This wasn't a polite suggestion, but an inevitability to which I was to get used. It was comforting for me, in a strange way, because I knew that, as long as I went to and graduated college right after high school, I was doing what I was supposed to be doing when I was supposed to be doing it. The reality is considerably less comforting. Perhaps, in my own case, I really was where I was supposed to be doing what I was supposed to be doing because my talent is writing, for which I needed training, and I am autistic, for which I badly needed time to mature and adjust to adult life. However, the general idea of college right out of high school constituting doing the right thing at the right time is nothing like a sure thing. Maybe it is, but maybe a tremendous amount of money is being wasted while years of potential job history are being cast as either spotty or nonexistent. College is always going to get the kids who are born academics or actually need some sort of special training, but that isn't what the university system we see today is built on. It's built on just about everyone who can manage it somehow or another going to college because that's just what you're supposed to do. If only the academics and the knowledge-specific professionals go to college, it'll be a very different university system than the one we all know.

I suppose I'm both biased and unbiased, in a certain sense, writing this article. For me, college was very socially useful, absolutely essential actually, but utterly useless to me in terms of career. However, that is mitigated by the fact that I have autism and ultimately have proven to be unemployable in general. So a lot of what I'm basing this on comes from friends and classmates and what I've been watching them go through. It is impossible to be a recent (okay 11 years ago) graduate and not be aware of the maddening nature of the world into which we seem to find ourselves. Other than friends who required some very specific training for their career, nobody is considered valuable in the workforce based upon things they learned in college. Their student debt crushes them with greater force than the surprising casualness with which people inform them that their degrees are useless. In the course of eight failed careers, I have filled out many job applications, I have sat in many job interviews, and I have been informed quite extensively about what my weaknesses are. What 100% of the employers from whom I have ever sought work want is experience. College is almost looked at as time wasted that could've been spent on gaining experience. The disparity between what college is thought to, and claims, to offer and what graduates experience when they leave makes it hard for them not to think of themselves as people who have just been conned. What needs to change here? I don't know, but this isn't sustainable. This is not even in the same neighborhood as sustainable. Whatever the solution is, it had better arrive soon because charging a lot of money for degrees most employers think of as worthless isn't morally sound.

-Frank

Advice To Autistic Children

I have, several times, been asked to offer advice either directly to autistic kids or their relatives. For the longest time, I was reluctant to do so, because I just know too much that they won't want to hear. This isn't so much for the ones who are catatonic or otherwise so low-functioning that they're deemed mentally incompetent. For the ones like me though, who are deemed high-functioning, there's this thing that is with us our whole lives. Like the Greek myth of Tantalus, who was damned to Tartarus where he would always have a tree with fruit just out of reach and water that recedes just before he can take a drink, so too is the autistic to humanity. It is a life spent on the outside, looking in. To a degree, it is possible to reduce this sense of isolation, but only to a degree. Even the most patient, the most loving, and the most accommodating of friends and family can't remove it entirely. So you've got this nagging sense of loneliness always with you and that makes you very insecure about your contributions and whether you even deserve to be here. Compounding this issue, you've got social limitations, non-obvious physical handicaps (can't ride a bike, mop, snap your fingers, that sort of thing, but you look like you can), noise sensitivity, poor coordination (sporting activities lead to hearing the word, "retarded," a lot), and that's just off the top of my head. Depending on the particular traits that manifest themselves and how they do so, this can render an autistic virtually unemployable, friendless during childhood (even beyond without the right environment), tragically inept at relationships, and vulnerable to exploitation by friends, lovers, and business associates. From all this endless struggle and profound misery, what hope and constructive advice can I possibly offer? Well, I didn't have anything until recently. Like all advice and all answers, it is profoundly based in my own meandering experience and may not work for any autistics besides myself. However, it is what I have and it has taken me a long time to get the few answers I have to offer. 

When you are a child, especially if you're not diagnosed and everyone, including you, is confused as all hell about what's going on, you're going to think you can be and do anything when you grow up. That's not true. Actually, that's not true for most kids. Some kids are virile, highly bright, and possessed of natural ambition. These people become high-level politicians, military officers, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, et cetera. Most people are not these people and these people are definitely not you. You're autistic and that means that achieving success the traditional way isn't going to work for you. You've probably got at least a couple of defining obsessions though, and your path to success probably won't come about regarding those either unless you find a way to make them marketable. If the traditional paths to success won't work for you, then you've got be clever. Invent a new path to success and fail until you don't. More specific instructions would, admittedly, be helpful, but the thing about cutting new paths is you have to figure out where to cut on your own.

Autistics spend their lives relying on neurotypicals to guide them through the world. There will come a point, however, where you've got to stop that. Having control over your own life is a quiet power. It doesn't have a lot of flash to it and it can seem scary and daunting. However, the time will come when listening to other people should stop and what you want your life to be should start. If you need legal work done, hire your own attorney, make sure you like and trust him and that he really works for you instead of some other interested party. The same thing applies to insurance people, CPAs, bankers, doctors, or any other professional that will have a great impact on your life. None of that will rid you of autism, but it will so something almost as good. It will mean that can have a life that is yours, that you like, and that matters to both you and other people. There will be resistance to this, to be sure, much of it coming from people who mean well. Especially if you went undiagnosed for a long time, like I did, there will be many people in your life that mistake your high-functioning autism for something equivalent to being mentally incompetent. These people can sometimes be reasoned with and other times not. Do whatever you have to get around them as obstacles because being in control over your own life, whatever danger it may present, will be better than being safely controlled by others.

These are the constructive things I've managed to come up with to tell autistic children. I know they feel like aliens and I know that that isn't going to change. What can be done is for them to live a worthwhile life among neurotypicals. Some autistics even find romantic love, but there are a great many who don't. Want to have every hopeful notion you've ever held for there being somebody for everybody dashed? Go to a autistic message board sometime and read the despair. Horror stories analogous to mine are present and you can feel the hope in young men, and sometimes women, dying out like the last flickering light of a firefly. So I wouldn't tell an autistic child that they'll definitely find someone. What I would say is that they may well not find someone and that they need to find a way to be happy without someone. Beyond the practical aspect of being prepared to sustain happiness without the cooperation of another hypothetical person, being happy being single actually makes one more attractive for mating. Confronting the very real possibility I'll never be coupled or reproduce did most of the work of turning me into an atheist, so I know it can be very hard to take. The only real advice I have for coping with the loneliness is that one should cultivate a philosophy of compassion. When the happiness in oneself comes from the knowledge that one made a positive difference in the life of others, one can take solace in the fact that one's life was a worthwhile one. Be as clever as possible, take control of your own life, and develop a philosophy of compassion and you can do great things. Great things are worth the tears, worth the nagging ever-present loneliness, and beat sitting about fretting about things that will never change. 

-Frank

Are Children Valuable?

If you're wondering if this article will conclude that children are, in fact, valuable, the answer is yes. So, if you're thinking I'm going to call your children overrated parasites or something, calm down because I'm not. What I am going to do is ask whether or not they are. There does not exist a maxim or axiom I will shy away from without question. All ideas, without exception, become better for being questioned. Some become better because they are reinforced, others become better because they are revised to be more sound, and some become better because they were without merit and the only means of improvement available to a bad idea is its own destruction. So for the purposes of this discussion, I will not simply take it as a given that children are valuable. Indeed, I will not be assuming it is a given that we ought to care for, be kind to, or avoiding stabbing children. These things are true, but the reasoning must be explained. Otherwise, we are just making assertions and no one ever gained wisdom through sheer force of assertion. First of all, we will see that value, in this context, has many different meanings and that I would not agree that children are valuable in all these senses. Second of all, we will discuss the nature of how we're valuing children in practice.

The most common concept of value is the monetary sense. We know that gold, for instance, has monetary value. Are children valuable in this sense? Obviously not. Children are, in fact, expensive and get increasingly so until they achieve full self-sufficiency, which can take decades. Are they valuable in the sense of having some practical merit? To an extent, yes. Children were useful farmhands in earlier times and useful for taking care of us as we get old in modern times. Are they valuable in the sense of being a miracle? No. A miracle is, by definition, a suspension of natural law that is done in one's favor, whereas reproduction is the whole point of the laws of nature. Are they valuable in the sense that their parents care about their well-being and happiness to an extent further than they do of their own? Clearly this is the case. Are they valuable to society as a whole? That's a case by case basis, usually based upon quality of parenting. So, yes, in a few important senses children are, in fact valuable, and in a few other senses they are not.

While children are valuable in certain senses, this does not mean that they are special. Every child is special to its parents and if everyone is special, no one is. Why does any parent need a special reason to consider their child valuable? Look, I don't care if your child is an absolute picture of mediocrity. The kid is valuable in some senses. If nothing else, if a parent puts the kid's happiness and well-being above that of their own, then the kid is valuable because it is valued by the parent. Those who need to see a child as special to see it as valuable do not value children. They value specialness.

-Frank

Ten Reasons I Don't Vote

Having been a nonvoter ever since November 2012, I've wrestled a great deal with the reasons for it. Already, I was threatened by the oncoming storm of hopelessly theocratic lunatics charging the gates of the Republican Party, most notably Todd Akin, and I thought that men like Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, and such could be, if not ideal, then at least sensible options to lead the party into the future. Romney's failure in the face of my calm assurance he would prevail made the fact that, like Sergeant Schultz, I knew nothing unmistakable and it is that absolute collapse of my confidence in my powers of political discernment that initially threw me from the horse. Well, since then I have acquired new reasons to not vote on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. Time and distance from defeat and disgrace has made my decision resolutely redoubled. At no point in the days since have I been given a single good reason to enter a polling place again in my life. Presented here are ten of the reasons I no longer vote. Resorting to list form is a way of organizing my thoughts. Before I begin, I want to make it clear that I propose no solutions to the problems I raise and haven't the foggiest idea what to do about any of it. If I did, I'd vote for someone who I thought would do those things.

1. Hate is inescapable.

Vote for the R and you vote for the hatred of the homosexual. Vote for the D and you vote for the hatred of the affluent and anyone born into money. I cannot any longer vote for hate.

2. I don't have the slightest idea what I am talking about.

Age has brought the purest and most terrible form of wisdom there is. That is knowing what you don't know. It was easy to vote when I thought I knew everything. Understanding the world is more complex than I can grasp. I may as well flip a coin before I pull a lever.

3. Compromising what you believe kills you inside.

Socially liberal. Hawkish on foreign policy. Fiscally conservative. The D is the first, isn't the second, and isn't the third. The R isn't the first, is the second, and is the third. So every time I pull the lever, I make a blow against every socially liberal belief I have. Gays, women, uncensored art, drugs, gambling, prostitution, and more all sacrificed because I want tough foreign policy and more financial freedom. That's a deal with the devil and I'm done making it.

4. I cannot any longer tolerate the news.

To be a good voter, you must watch the news. I can't. My life requires I am not constantly mired in maddening futility.

5. I can no longer debate politics with my heart in it.

You have to really care to discuss the issues of the day effectively. I feel myself not caring when I try. There's no there there. This has to do with the lack of certainty I once had.

6. My party is doomed.

Cubs fans, (for a long time) Red Sox fans, and Cleveland Indians fans may be willing to back a loser to the death, but I can't. Republican is another word for evil. A whole generation believes that and the social conservatives representing us play into their hands. We're over and I'm not going to keep kicking a dying horse to try and make it go to a destination it'll croak long before it ever reaches.

7. I'm very fatalistic when it comes to policy.

The people will vote as they will and who they elect will do as they do. Having accepted that, I don't really have any fight left in me. I just hope everyone else elects a good government and accept my powerless nonrole in the whole thing.

8. I've never gotten anything out of it.

I've been paying attention to politics since I was 11 years old. For 20 years, I cared, I argued, I watched the news, and I voted. For this, I got the second Bush Administration and the Obama Administration. Yelling obscenities at my testicles would've yielded more impressive results.

9. I'm simply happier not voting.

All the energy I used to use thinking about politics is great for thinking about work, hobbies, philosophy, religion, and any number of other enjoyable activities. What good is being a politico if it makes you miserable?

10. I'm no longer viewed as a threat by anyone.

There's a fire in arguments when people think you vote that isn't there otherwise. This is especially helpful in issues that are tangentially political. People don't jump to conclusions or get defensive when it's clear you've gutted and gelded your own political power. That makes for more peaceful discussion, which is enjoyable.

-Frank

A Unique Way To Live

Only last month, my business failed and I now carry a heavy burden of debt that is only soluble by means of the wealth of my family. While I'll be okay, it has occurred to me that there are many autistics out there who will not because they don't have money on which they may fall back. You see, many autistics are unemployable, even if they seem like friendly intelligent people and are quite high-functioning. Anyone for whom this is the case must discover the fact in quite painful ways. One tries, one fails, and one prepares to do it all over again. Bad enough though this is, each failure brought about by one's disability will be mostly unbelieved, derided as an excuse, or insisted to be soluble. Some autistics, including myself, find riding a bicycle quite impossible, for example, and are routinely disbelieved about our inability to operate the machine. It is as though everyone else can fly when the floor turns to lava, that you are disbelieved when you try and explain that you cannot, and finally that, over your ashes, onlookers peer down from they skyward perch and say, "He just didn't try to fly hard enough." Well, through eight failed careers, I have done my damnedest to fly and I've fallen into the lava every time. The time has come for me to acknowledge that I cannot fly and that I should stop trying. To the extent one needs to have a reason to get up in the morning and have something to do, I have my writing. Freelance writer feels like a euphemism for unemployed, but it is a unique way to live.