Ahoy. My name is Rob. I’m a late-diagnosed neurodiverse chap from the UK.

My brain is (apparently) wired to solve complex problems. I love digging into a topic, especially psychology, until I hit the most granular, ‘loopy,’ weird, meta-level details to see how it all ticks. I don’t really control this; its just how it goes. I tend to write evidence based stuff, mostly to make sure I am not just idly speculating.

Rather than my proclivities being used for mental self destruction, I am trying to build sensible, well constructed, and thought-through things that help people like me (often neurodiverse, usually on the more introspective and quiet side), navigate a difficult and often strange world.

I haven’t figured it out at all, by the way.

I can occasionally be a bit.. surprised by current solutions. Not because they are are irrational, but because people often solve for an idealised version of a problem rather than the actual one. They focus on how things should work, ignore the messy reality (especially the uncomfortable bits), then solutions don’t quite work. I’m more interested in what’s actually happening, even when it’s inconvenient or doesn’t fit the model.

This is a public notebook. I’m efficient, so I write about whatever problem is right in front of me, which is why some of the topics might not seem to quite fit the theme. So as an example, because I have always found them… brutally unpleasant, I decided to decode interviews (the Autism Interview Guide) using evidence, my personal experiences / difficulties and some stuff I was taught by job coaches. Then I am having to get the word out about it (ugh), so I need to figure out how to do that without feeling ethically wrong and creepy, so I wrote about trust signals. I recently realised how much shame I deal with on a daily basis, so I am writing about that next (that one is also touching upon some strange meditation meta-cognitive awareness stuff).

A Fair Warning: This is where I figure things out. I post the finished, practical guides, but also some occasionally difficult stuff. The shame guide, for example, it’s not hugely comfortable to write about (it’s a personal struggle, and how shame works is kind of excruciating), but I want to offer some help to myself and others who deal with it. I’ll probably talk about psychology, why our minds work the way they do, and meditation-crossover stuff based on what I’ve experienced observing myself.

I try my best to be kind, because I dont want to make anything worse.

This isn’t a cheesy ‘you can do it!’ blog. Sometimes you cant. This is digging into the truthful mechanics of the problems I have personally faced and trying to build better, quieter, more honest tools to solve them.

If that sounds useful, you’re in the right place.