I used to like taking risks sometimes. The problem was, however, that as a result I would often end up in trouble. Not always but often.

The most horrid mess that I put myself through was the result of my employment tribunal case against Home Group. Despite having evidence that there were fabricated documents in my file I had to drop my claim. I then ended up in psychiatric hospital for 4 months and had a suicide attempt.

I have another example here that is not really about risk taking as I wasn’t risking anything, but it shows how I wasn’t able to predict not only other people reaction but also my own.

Before I found out I’m autistic I wanted to be a maths teacher. Maths teachers are in demand in the UK and I used to be very good at maths. So I got in touch with Polish Saturday School in Swindon and became teaching assistant.

Mind you, I was only working 5 hours, once a week, but I was coming home exhausted! All that noise kids make! But I also wasn’t very good at managing kids’ behaviour. I naively thought before I started that because the school wasn’t compulsory kids will naturally behave themselves.

I barely survived to the end of a school year.

Let’s take another example: I like when food items are arranged very nicely on a supermarket shelf so possibly I should get a job in a supermarket. But what if it turns out that it’s much more about dealing with impatient customers than about arranging items on the shelves?

This is all due to problems with social imagination; I suppose at times I’m naive like a child.

Only after experiencing a situation I can understand why it didn’t turn out the way I was hoping for. So finally, a while after my employment tribunal failure I decided I won’t be taking any risks, I won’t be changing anything in life at all. But what I didn’t predict is that the situation will change anyway. Colleagues will change, managers will change, rules will change. So despite avoiding risk I ended up in trouble anyway.

Having a blog also a risk. I deeply admire people who openly talk about their issues and can build community around that, like for example Cecilia McGough, a student and an activist with schizophrenia. I doubt I’d be able to build any community, I’m autistic after all so building a community is not my thing. But I always wanted to be heard in some way and it was just another thing that never happened.

I published a novel in my early 30s, as an e-book, and received that one, rather harsh review: that’s not how real people think, it’s very fake. I didn’t know how to react to that. My character was thinking exactly like me and I was convinced I revealed the truth about people that other authors were missing!

Obviously I didn’t know at the time I was autistic, but it was one of those situations where I didn’t predict the outcome. I was hoping to be heard and again it didn’t happen.