It’s Autism Acceptance Month, and… I am that.
It’s not something I’ve been secretive about. And I’ve tended to talk about challenges I deal with related to it, in part because I’m frequently talking about accommodations, and those are usually accommodating challenges. It’s not usually “How do we accommodate this ability to quickly switch between brand voices?”
I’m also reluctant to bring the whole “autism is a superpower” discussion into a professional context. (I don’t judge anyone who does view autism as their superpower — your neurodivergence, your business — but it comes with a little too much built-in Kryptonite for me to see it as mine.) So frequently, “Here’s why you should hire autistic people”-type articles end up more “Because they have Rain Man abilities that can be useful to you” than “Because they can be valuable team members with valuable perspectives.”
THAT SAID. Being autistic isn’t exclusively a misery and a thrash. I have strengths I can tie back pretty tightly to my personal qualities and/or some of the challenges I’ve had to overcome. And these are some of they.
Strengths I can tie back pretty tightly to my own personal qualities and/or some of the challenges I’ve had to overcome
For instance,
Finding the right words
Obviously, a crucial strength for a copywriter. Language was my first special interest — I’ve always been a reader, I’ve always been a writer, and I’ve always been fascinated with the way words are used and the various etymologies, connotations, and implications. There’s a real sense of satisfaction in knowing there’s exactly the right word for what I’m trying to express, and being able to find it.
It’s not about finding the fanciest word — usually, the fanciest word isn’t the one that’s going to really connect with people. But, y’all, there’s a difference between time and moment, calm and soothe, acceptance and awareness (ahem), and the difference might be subtle, but subtle things make a huge impact with your audience. And when something is Wrong, linguistically or otherwise, I can literally feel it across the back of my neck and shoulders — my trapezius muscles are surprisingly skillful editors.
So, yeah, the same tendency that has me stockpiling cobalt-blue glass cafe mugs because they are the Correct Mug is the one that makes me an extremely effective copywriter. Go figure.
(Side effect: Puns. Sorry, y’all.)
Finding the little details
I’m an all-pro riffer. I love concepting sessions — it’s like creative playtime with the rest of my creative friends, and I get paid to do it — and I love being able to jump in with, “Y’ALL. Y’ALL. WHAT IF WE…” It comes back down to the subtleties, and I’m all-pro at the tiny details and subtleties.
I often have to dig myself out of the tiny little details, of course, because there are definitely times when the weeds are not a helpful place to be. But I always make notes, because those details will be useful eventually. “Y’all, that needs to be a dude calling his mom” is what makes the client cry, and I know that for a fact.
Picking up on new brands, industries, and subjects
Ain’t no deep dive like an autistic deep dive, ‘cause an autistic deep dive don’t stop until you realize you’ve missed several meals. What starts as a new brand or industry can easily turn into a research K-hole for me, learning All The Things, and then All The Related Things, and by the time I come out of it, I’m damn near fluent in your industry and I super duper need to pee. Ever wonder what it’s like to be a special interest? If you’ve paid me to write for you, now you know.
On the subject of brand voices, and at the risking of bringing down the mood: Like many autistic people, I had trouble coming up with a personal sense of identity growing up (and, honestly, since). And that meant trying on a lot of other identities to see if anything fit. That was the perfect warmup for being able to adopt and switch between brand voices — I’ve been asked how I do it, and my answer has always been an unsatisfying, “… I dunno, I just do,” but the real answer is pretty much, “I inhabit your soft drink company and speak as it for a while. I mean, I wasn’t being anyone else at the moment anyway.”
Understanding people
I want to make a distinction here between “understanding people” and “understanding a given person,” because I’m aces at the former and sometimes kind of crap at the latter. The thing y’all normies can apparently do with reading subtle cues and inferring intentions and implications and stuff? Might as well be magic. It rather escapes me. But my efforts to apprehend said dark arts has led me to be a pretty apt student of human tendencies.
I get psychology. I get motivations. I get patterns. I get communication — on a macro scale. One-on-one or in small groups, I still get kind of lost sometimes, because no one individual is going to conform to the patterns you see in an entire demographic. At audience scale, though, I’m on it.
Organization
My organizational tendencies are both defensive, in response to my chaotic brain, and recreational, because organized stuff is just… pretty. Color-coded things, things in folders in folders, everything in the cloud so I can get to it wherever I am at a given moment. Anything that cuts down on my need to process, locate, and/or remember things significantly cuts down on my mental exertion. To me, your project management system is just another way I can be gleefully organized about something.
(I mean, it really helps if you use your system effectively, too, because my Trapezius Muscles of Truth also cringe at inefficient processes when there are all kinds of features to make it all better.)
So no, not a superpower per se, but I’ll take it.
(Fun fact about the linguistic thing: I didn’t actually realize I have a somewhat stiff, precise way of speaking until I saw it on my autism evaluation. I guess “Ha ha, you talk funny!” is the one thing kids at school never got around to making fun of me for, so thanks for picking up that stray, Doc.)
It’s yet another nuanced thing: I don’t want to be hired because I’m autistic. I don’t want a client or employer to say, “She’s a broke-brain, so let’s snap her up so she can be useful.” I want to be hired because I’m a really, really good copywriter… and a big contributor to that is being autistic.
I contain multitudes.
Being autistic definitely presents a lot of challenges — I won’t pretend it doesn’t — but it’s not without its upsides. There have legitimately been times when I’ve thought, I wish they could see this the way I do, because I think they’d love it. But failing that, at least you can borrow my creative brain, and all the creative output therefrom. I’ve made my autism work for me, and now you can have me work for you.