Missing the lid.

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I'm not sure quite how else to describe it.

I've used this analogy with a few people to explain what it feels like to find out you're an aspie. "It's like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle for 25 years, with no idea how it all goes together, then someone handing you the lid of the puzzle box."

The thing is, it feels like it doesn't just apply to my AS.

Most of my life I've collected things to do with my interests/obsessions. For instance, there was art stuff, then computer games, then music, also hand & power tools. I still collect software.

Problem is I get all this stuff, and I can develop skills necessary to utilise some of it, but then it feels like I hit a plateau in my understanding. It feels like yet another puzzle that I can't put together. I'll read tutorials or books, or even muster up the courage to ask someone, but that's where it ends. I just don't seem to be able to put the pieces together most of the time beyond the basics.

And when I do manage to create something, it almost always feels very mechnical & rigid or formalised. It lacks, for want of better words, grace & fluidity.

I'm not stupid, but it makes me feel like I am.

Is it just me?

How depressing. I feel the same.

Nope. It's not just you. Don't know what more to say at the moment. My brain went into it's shut down routine right after I clicked the reply link. I believe you are in much good company with your unfinished puzzles, and those that lack fluidity. You'll have to trust me that I know what you mean. I just can't articulate at teh moement, and my finners ahve quit coopreating.....

I might be able to apply the puzzle lid analogy to me, but all my life I could apply another puzzle analogy...

It's like every time that i feel i've figured out something about myself, that instead of "completing the puzzle" i realize that the box beside the one i'm currently putting finishing off, all connects to the one I've just did (which still has a few pieces missing... it must've been one I bought used, and didn't have all the pieces) and to find the answer to myself that I was previously so close to solving... I have to finish that puzzle to, And I know when i'm done that one, there'll be another.. but each time i get close to finishing one, i feel soooo strongly that this must be the last one.

Maybe if i just had those few missing pieces, I wouldn't need to keep moving onto the next puzzle. Maybe those few missing pieces are symbolic of the puzzles that still lie ahead on my life's journey. I don't know for sure... But I can tell you one thing, nothing i have ever done in my life has ever been a puzzle that I actually have the lid for...

I think realizing i had AS was more a revelation as to WHY i'm sitting around and trying to put together all these figurative puzzles in the first place instead of helping me put them all together.

Yeah! That's it! That's the problem! Where's the damned lid? Where are the INSTRUCTIONS?

I know where they are. They're hidden, hardwired, inside the brains of NT's! Somebody forgot to install them in us!

If only they weren't hardwired, but software. Then they could just be copied and distributed.

No. That wouldn't work, because every copy would come with a EULA including a disclaimer and no guarantee it'll be suitable for any particular purpose. And, more than likely, most of them would come from Microsoft, and we'd ALL be SCREWED!

Some of my family keep needling me to do stop motion animation since I talk about it so much i use to do it when I was younger on super-8 film but it was only movement studies. I stopped because the wire armatures I used would snap making a pain in the ass for me to repair or replace. I know how to make proper ball and socket armatures now and have the skills to do it from working in a machine shop i just have to light a fire under myself to do it.

I dont really find this the case when it comes to my special interests.

Mostly because the solution I found was to create my own lid instead of using the usual one given. Maybe it's arrogant, but I find regardless of being an aspie or NT, if you embrace and truly take time to understand your differences you can figure out a way to make things make sense to you.

Although when I explain this to NTs, they think I'm nuts for some reason. So this could possibly be an aspie-only tactic (I still doubt this...).