From someone who’s on the spectrum to another: To classify a difference in focus or a difference in processing as a defect is inaccurate. “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will go through life believing it is stupid”. There are things that come naturally to neurodivergent brains of which neurotypical brains are utterly incapable. “Hyperfixation” is just a way of saying that we become subject matter experts faster than other people. Even the reviled “attention deficit” is just our mind getting bored of things we’ve seen before. You are an explorer of the cosmos. If someone else says you are less, just because you find it difficult to care about the meaningless monotony of social constructs, that is a limitation not of you, but of them. Fuck 'em. Find your superpower, and follow it.

I figured out that I am preternaturally talented at classifying bits of knowledge and drawing them together to form syllogisms and comparisons. This has made me find my life’s work in teaching chemistry. I get go be paid to be an alchemist, teaching the arcane secrets of the universe to students, showing them how we have learned to bend the very fundaments of reality to our will. I think that’s pretty neat.