Charlie Squarepants

Ahhh, vacation. A chance to see what life would be like if I didn’t have to work for a living – staying up late (it’s 2 am now), sleeping in, and doing things I never have energy for while on the treadmill called working class America. Maybe it’s a vestige of owning a 24-hour business for so many years, but I was never good at turning off work-mode, at adjusting from a work mindset to one of leisure. Even days off are sometimes spent with that nagging awareness that I have to work the next day, preventing me from enjoying the present one.

Not so this past week. I knew the vacation was coming, that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and this changed my outlook entirely. My midweek day off was very leisurely and enjoyable, even though I had to work the next day.  It’s all in my head! It’s a problem of getting stuck in dreary work mode. Do others suffer from this, I wondered? I bet they do! (well, depends on how they feel about their jobs). Our work life can prey on our consciousness, tempering leisure hours with reminders of our forced servitude. It’s like being Cinderella at the ball, with one eye on her glorious surroundings and the other on the clock. At midnight, it’s all over. We may physically leave work, but mentally we can still be there.

I’m reminded of a Charlie Brown cartoon that was stuck to the wall of my bedroom as a kid: “I’ve developed a new philosophy on life. I only dread one day at a time.” I definitely adopted that mentality early in life, and it’s probably no accident that I put that cartoon up. I had to chuckle recently when I saw a similar sentiment on a soda can cooler: “I barely survived yesterday and it’s already today!” These attitudes view life as a burden, something to be endured and struggled through. According to your belief, so be it unto you.

We get what we believe about ourselves and about life, good or bad, and unhealthy habitual thought patterns can insidiously silence our loftier ideals. We can get stuck seeing life a certain way, and that is what becomes our reality – even though it’s not the reality. Case in point: I’ve always disliked mornings. I am not an early riser unless forced to, and have often said that the only thing I’ll get out of bed for at 5 am is surgery. Do you know what other Charlie Brown cartoon I had on the wall of my bedroom? “I think I’m allergic to mornings.” Whether he was creating, affirming, or reinforcing my beliefs, that Charlie Brown sure is a Negative Nellie. He could take a few lessons from Spongebob, who definitely is a better role model.

So here I am with a week of freedom to maybe change my outlook a bit, to give me a fresh perspective, mostly where my career is concerned. The only limitations I have in life are the ones I place on myself. One of my favorite quotes, paraphrased from the Bible, is “All things are possible to him that believeth.” Time to believeth in more positive outcomes than that bunk Charlie Brown was dishing out years ago. He’s a blockhead, and I’d rather have squarepants.

On One Condition

I was watching my new favorite show today, Doc Martin, a British sitcom centered around a very rude, blunt, and anti-social doctor with a horrible bedside manner. A character on today’s episode mentions to the doc that he likely has Asperger’s Syndrome, which he bristles at. While I had heard of this condition, I decided to look it up (I do this often), and sure enough, Doc Martin is a textbook case: great difficulty with social interaction, flat facial expression, all work and no play, few friends, narrow and obsessive interests (the doc works on fixing clocks in his spare time), disdain for chitchat, attention to small detail, lack of imagination, love of routine.

What struck me was that I recognized many of these traits in myself, which could be why I like the show so much. We all would like to be as blunt as Doc Martin at times when someone is being annoying or stupid (especially when you work with the public), but for me it goes much deeper. I understand the character on a personal level in addition to finding his behavior amusing.

While looking up Asperger’s, which is basically a mild form of high-functioning autism, I found a reputable quiz that is used to diagnose the disorder. I took it, and came up as a textbook case myself: out of 50 questions, the way I answered 42 of them pointed strongly to Asperger’s.

While this didn’t come as a complete surprise (I have been told before that I may be mildly autistic), it does explain a lot of my behavior. It actually is a bit affirming in a way. It’s always comforting to find a reason for things, and I understand now why I react in certain ways and why I’ve made certain life choices – why I’ve always been a workaholic and can feel panicky when unstructured events arise, for instance.

Perhaps much of what I’ve been attributing to introversion is more a result of Asperger’s (named for the doctor who first observed it in 1944), but it seems many of the Asperger symptoms are also in line with introversion. However, one trait of Asperger’s can be excessive one-sided talking (boring your listener to death and not noticing), which I most certainly do not have. I talk very little, which is another extreme the condition can go in.

We all have most of these traits in us at times, but when they are pervasive is when the bells and whistles go off – and when they become a “syndrome,” which is simply a collection of traits that come as a set in some people. I will seek to learn more about the condition in an effort to understand myself better, and this will actually be a good thing. I have no desire to wear a label, but I may have missed my chance to star in a sitcom.

(P.S. On a side note, another characteristic of those with Asperger’s is a dislike of fiction and a strong preference for non-fiction. I changed my major in college last year from English literature (now my minor) to – you guessed it – non-fiction writing).