April ends tomorrow. The blue puzzle pieces come down. The awareness campaigns wrap up. People move on to whatever the next awareness month is. And autistic people are still autistic. I say that not to be cynical about awareness — awareness matters, visibility matters, conversation matters. I say it because acceptance is a different thing…

My daughter Katie wrote the foreword to my memoir. I gave her a questionnaire. A structured set of questions about who she understood me to be, what it was like growing up with me as a father, what she wished other people knew about me. I approached it the way I approach most things —…

There’s a version of this post that frames neurodivergence as a gift. The hidden superpower. The secret weapon of Silicon Valley. I’ve read those posts. I understand why people write them. I’m not going to write that post. Not because it’s wrong — there are real cognitive advantages that come with how my brain is…

Nobody called it autism. Nobody called it anything. What they called it was “intense.” Difficult. Too much. Not a team player. Doesn’t read the room. Brilliant but exhausting. I heard versions of all of those at various points in my career and filed them under “things you push through.” That’s the thing about masking —…

April is Autism Acceptance Month. I’m releasing my memoir on March 31st. That timing isn’t a coincidence. I spent most of my life not knowing I was autistic. Not because the signs weren’t there — they were, everywhere, in retrospect — but because I was good at adapting. Good at performing. Good at building systems…