WAIT... I'M... AUTISTIC? | Something Curious I Might've Learned About Myself Last Night.

After taking an online personality assessment, I discovered I exhibit very high traits associated with autism — not a formal diagnosis, but an explanation for patterns I've lived with my entire life. The results helped make sense of why I thrive during structured performances like stand-up comedy, stage acting, radio broadcasting, and podcasting, yet feel completely drained by unstructured social interaction afterward. I recount how remote broadcasts and convention appearances left me counting the minutes until I could escape to solitude, and how my favorite parts of traveling in the Weird Darkness Beast were always the quiet hours alone on the road or in hotel rooms — not the events themselves.The assessment also shed light on smaller quirks, like my tendency to let my beard grow wild before trimming it all at once (efficiency over daily maintenance), and deeper emotional patterns, like processing my father's death without tears or visible sadness. A medical professional once reassured me that being naturally stoic is simply a different way of experiencing life, not a sign that something is missing.I reflect on my earlier depression diagnosis and wonder whether some of what was treated might have been the cumulative effect of decades spent not understanding how my own brain operates. Ultimately, the experience gave me context rather than a label — a quiet recognition of why certain things drain me and others restore me. I encourage you to examine your own patterns and see if perhaps you can learn something new about yourself - or explain some of your own personality quirks.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, where those I want to share something that caught
me off guard, not because it changed who I am,
but because it helped me explain who I've always been. Recently,
I took an online personality quiz after hearing somebody on
a podcast describe how they experienced the world, and as
they talked, I had one of those quiet moments of recognition,

(00:20):
not dramatic, not emotional, just a steady thought of yeah,
that sounds familiar. The results suggested I have very strong
traits commonly associated with autism, not a diagnosis, just tendencies.
I want to be clear about that too. This was
not a medical evaluation. I'm not suddenly adopting a new label.

(00:41):
Hey I'm autistic, treat me differently. What mattered was not
the category, it was the explanations. A lot of long
standing patterns in my life suddenly made sense. For example,
I've always loved performing. I know, big surprise, I've done
stand up comedy. I've been a stage actor in plays
and musicals. I've been a singer and songwriter, performing in

(01:03):
front of audiences. I've also worked in broadcasting, stepping into
a radio job back in nineteen ninety and still somehow
being in the industry. All these years later, he had
podcasting and narration to that list. There's a clear theme.
You give me a microphone or a role to play,
and I'm comfortable, focused, energized. But when the performance ends,

(01:27):
I'm done. I don't want to linger. I don't want
small talk, I don't want extended interaction. I want quiet.
I want to leave. For a long time, that felt contradictory,
loving audiences but not socializing with audiences, until I realized
it's really not. It's not really a contradiction. Performance has

(01:49):
a structure, it has rules, there's a purpose, a role,
and a clear beginning and end. Casual social interaction doesn't
come with any of that, and my brain well finds
it exhausting. That pattern showed up constantly in radio. On
a pretty regular basis. I would be sent out to

(02:09):
do remote broadcasts or personal appearances, live events for stations
and advertisers, and I was good at it. The crowds
liked it, the clients were happy. By every outward measure,
it was a success, and the entire time, even though
I appeared to be having a blast, I couldn't wait

(02:30):
to get out of there. I wasn't uncomfortable on the mic.
I wasn't nervous, I wasn't bad with people. I just
knew that once the role ended, I was done spending energy.
I did the job, I did it well, hopefully, and
then I wanted silence. That same pattern showed up years
later when I started traveling to horror festivals, paranormal conventions

(02:53):
and comic cons and the Weird Darkness Beast. From the outside,
it probably looked like a dream, and it made perfect
sense for me to be doing that, to promote the
podcast and radio show, to let people know, hey, I exist.
But over time I realized I was not actually enjoying
the events themselves. What I did enjoy was the time

(03:14):
in between. My favorite part of those trips was being
alone in the Beast, driving for hours, listening to exactly
what I wanted, or not listening to anything at all.
I loved the quiet of the hotel room at the
end of the day, closing the door and finally being alone.
The crowds, the noise, the constant interaction. Those were draining

(03:37):
in a way that I just didn't have language for
at the time, but now I do. It wasn't the
work that I disliked. It was the environment. The same
understanding even explains something much smaller, like well grooming. I
tend to avoid routine things like shaving, and not because
I don't care, but because my brain treats constant and

(04:00):
maintenance as unnecessary friction. So I will go from a
neatly trimmed beard to something approaching zazy top, and then
eventually trim it back down again. It's not neglect, it's
well a strange efficiency. Why do something a little every
day when you can ignore it completely and then fix
it all at once, which, by the way, explains the

(04:22):
beard you are seeing right now. Emotionally, I've always understood
why people feel what they feel, but I don't necessarily
feel it with them. This is something I've always struggled with.
When people make a comment on one of my videos
on YouTube and they tell me something that's going on
in their life, or they send me an email, and

(04:42):
I want to relate, I want to tell them, you
know what, I sympathize, I empathize, I'm really sorry other
people's emotions they can feel overwhelming, and it's not because
I don't care, but because they come across as loud
and demanding, even in print form. My empathy is more
cognitive than emotional. See I get what you're feeling, I

(05:04):
just don't absorb it. If that makes sense. Understanding that
has helped me make some sense of something I quietly
questioned for a couple of years when my father passed away,
somebody I was very close to, somebody I would consider
my best friend. I didn't cry. I didn't feel sadness.

(05:24):
I still haven't. For a while, I wondered if something
was wrong with me, if maybe I was broken, And
eventually a medical professional told me something simple, You're naturally stoic,
and that's okay. That one sentence. I've had numerous conversations
with this person. That is the only sentence I truly

(05:45):
remember her saying. It helped me understand that not everybody
experiences emotion the same way. Some people process life quietly
and internally without outward display, and that doesn't mean anything
is missing. This whole process also made me reflect on
something else from my past. Years ago. I was twenty

(06:06):
years ago. I think I was diagnosed with depression. It
took a long time to find the right balance, and
the medication did help. I've talked about that numerous times,
but looking back now, After learning some of this, I
can't help but wonder if what was being treated wasn't
just depression but the effects of living for years without
understanding how my brain actually works. Twenty years ago, adult

(06:31):
autism wasn't widely discussed, especially in people who were functional, articulate,
and outwardly successful. Today the conversation is different, and while
I'm not rewriting my history or questioning the care that
I've received, it does make me think that context matters.
Sometimes the symptoms are real, but the root cause isn't

(06:52):
what anybody realized at the time. But all of this
gave me wasn't a diagnosis or a new identity. It
was just context. It explained why verbal reminders don't always
stick unless they're written down, why phone calls drain me,
Why routine matters, Why I can focus deeply on creative

(07:12):
work for hours but feel worn out by unstructured interaction.
Why I'm not broken, just wired differently. The most meaningful
part of this experience was not a dramatic revelation. It
was a quiet sense of recognition, that simple moment of oh, so,
that's why understanding how your brain works doesn't always come

(07:37):
with fireworks. Sometimes it just means you stop arguing with yourself,
You stop forcing experiences that don't fit you, stop assuming
there's something wrong when there isn't. And if there's any
reason I'm sharing this, it's not to label myself. I'm
not going to go around saying hey, I'm autistic, treat
me differently. It's to encourage bill well. Plus I'm not
medically diagnosed with it, so I think that would be

(07:59):
a response. But this is to encourage you to pay
attention to your own patterns, the things that drain you,
the things that restore you, the ways that you've learned
to cope that maybe deserve a second look. If you're
struggling or even just wandering, you don't have to figure
it out alone. There are a lot of resources out there,
including many that are completely free. If you ever need guidance, support,

(08:24):
or somebody to talk to, you can find links and
information on the Hope in the Darkness page on my
website at Weird Darkness dot com slash hope. I'll probably
be talking to a medical professional again here in the
near future to say, hey, do I really have depression
or is this maybe autism that we need to treat differently?

(08:44):
It's not going to hurt ask for me. This wasn't
about finding something wrong in me. It was about finally
understanding the operating system that I've been running all along.
And honestly, that understanding has been more useful and more
reassuring than I ever expected. And now you also have
an explanation for why you keep singing this Beard